Let's begin, then, at the beginning, as Stewart does: with the origins of the business schools and the business of advising business itself. If any political party funded political science departments in the way that corporations fund the business schools, we would naturally consider their research to be little more than propaganda. And the book's timing couldn't be better as outsiders look in on Wall Street and wonder how so many supposedly brilliant financiers could have been so wrong, Stewart's look at the underbelly of CEO's and their parasitic class of consultants provides several clues as to how the current economic crisis came about. and spent years on the front lines taking notes like an embed in the consultant industry, rising from a low-level (but highly compensated) hire to founding partner of a spin-off firm, a company that (ironically) ended badly in a tangle of lawsuits and textbook examples of bad management practices.Īlternating tales of his own personal rise and disillusionment with the industry with historical background on how business education and business management became its own field in the first place, Stewart's keen eye and biting insight provide a work that is both entertaining and informative. in Philosophy from Oxford!-he interviewed on a lark for a consultant position, urged on by a friend with about as much business experience as Stewart who'd struck gold with a firm with a top-tier firm.

Armed with no business experience or even a record of academic business classes-but a Ph.D. Stewart's personal story exemplifies the ludicrousness of the consultant trade in a nutshell. Whether the problem is a soul in search of salvation, a relationship on the rocks, or a superpower in trouble, according to the received wisdom the answer is to turn it into a private corporation and then manage it like a CEO. When Jesus is compared with a CEO, it is Jesus who is thought to gain by the comparison.

University leaders, philanthropists, hospital administrators, and politicians promise to manage their fiefdoms like CEOs manage their companies. This darkly funny, brutally detailed look at the management consultant class manages to unveil nonsense and presumptions of everyone involved in corporate life in America, from current gurus like Tom Peters ( In Search of Excellence) to modern-day Fortune 500 company heads to the worshipped founders of business schools and management theory.Īlong with the money has come a whole lot of admiration for the great leaders of the corporate world. The answer to this question, posed by a professor of author Matthew Stewart, is basically the entire volume of The Management Myth, itself.

The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart