The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus - Softcover

Management theory is a worldwide growth industry these days. Terrified of falling behind, business executives flock from one management guru to another in search of a competitive edge. Catchwords such as "chaos," "excellence," and "quality" echo in corporate halls and bounce around boardrooms the world over. Which ideas and theories are sound, and which are ultimately useless fads? John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge spent two years answering this question. Their resulting book, The Witch Doctors, separates the management wheat from the chaff. In mercifully jargon-free prose, they look at the promise and problems of what's driving the current management industry explosion. Starting with Peter Drucker and Tom Peters, the authors examine the major ideas and their proponents, focusing not only on corporate implications but on social consequences as well.

In a skeptical, entertaining, iconoclastic audit of the management-guru industry, Economist editors Micklethwait and Wooldridge focus primarily on pundits such as Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, James Champy and Michael Hammer, but also puncture the management-theory hype emanating from consultancies and business schools. Much of the advice dispensed by these sources, the authors argue, is faddish, riddled with contradictions and jargon, based on simplistic formulas, no more reliable than tribal witch doctors' medicine. They view the craze of reengineering (organizing a business around processes rather than departments) as, too often, a pretext for downsizing. Along with giving an analysis of Japan's hybrid, flexible managerial practices, they identify the phenomenally successful network of family businesses created by the overseas Chinese as an alternative model for business growth. Micklethwait and Wooldridge have built their fair-minded, balanced critique around hotly debated issues in modern management?a company's optimal size, harnessing knowledge as a resource, leaders' accountability, strategic planning, globalization?making this a useful, thoughtful tool for managers in large or small firms.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.