Management fads come and go, Matthew Stewart notes — and come back again, in an endless cycle:
Why does every new management theorist seem to want to outdo Chairman Mao in calling for perpetual havoc on the old order? Very simply, because all economic organizations involve at least some degree of power, and power always pisses people off. That is the human condition. At the end of the day, it isn’t a new world order that the management theorists are after; it’s the sensation of the revolutionary moment. They long for that exhilarating instant when they’re fighting the good fight and imagining a future utopia. What happens after the revolution — civil war and Stalinism being good bets — could not be of less concern.
Between them, Taylor and Mayo carved up the world of management theory. According to my scientific sampling, you can save yourself from reading about 99 percent of all the management literature once you master this dialectic between rationalists and humanists. The Taylorite rationalist says: Be efficient! The Mayo-ist humanist replies: Hey, these are people we’re talking about! And the debate goes on. Ultimately, it’s just another installment in the ongoing saga of reason and passion, of the individual and the group.
Management fads come and go… in cycles! This was pointed out to me by my boss in 1979, when I was learning the ropes of healthcare management.
Also, the referenced article contains this gem:
“For companies, M.B.A. programs can be a way to outsource recruiting. Marvin Bower, McKinsey’s managing director from 1950 to 1967, was the first to understand this fact, and he built a legendary company around it. Through careful cultivation of the deans and judicious philanthropy, Bower secured a quasi-monopoly on Baker Scholars (the handful of top students at the Harvard Business School). Bower was not so foolish as to imagine that these scholars were of interest on account of the education they received. Rather, they were valuable because they were among the smartest, most ambitious, and best-connected individuals of their generation. Harvard had done him the favor of scouring the landscape, attracting and screening vast numbers of applicants, further testing those who matriculated, and then serving up the best and the brightest for Bower’s delectation.”
This supports my own long-held belief that corporations have outsourced their personnel departments to top universities using “generous” endowment programs. From a social and political standpoint, this means that universities are now the gatekeepers for the good jobs – and they take the heat for it.
This fact also leads to the nonsensical belief that if everyone went to college, then everyone would have a good job. Colleges don’t create jobs – they just winnow the population to help corporations find the people with both high general intelligence and excellent work habits.
Even better, college shortens the amount of time that it takes people to fall into what the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” author called The Rat Race – the state in which your debt forces you to work harder just to keep up. It used to take people until their late twenties. Now, young people can actually START their adult lives heavily in debt. Progress!