How Reliable is Management Practice?

As I make clear in my book, the urge to publish became irresistible with the economic crisis of 2008 and the self-evident need for change. As far as possible, however, I tried to refrain from being critical of people or institutions. Two primary reasons for this are that I believe:

• Criticism is counter-productive;
• Change is going to depend significantly on business leadership and thus it is preferable to stimulate new ideas rather than stanch them by provoking self-defensive attitudes.

Thus the book is intended to be a book of ideas and a platform for new ways of thinking. In that vein, however, I would encourage readers to read this address to the US Congress by Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

Although made in March 2007, before the economic crisis, those events clearly validate what he had to say. I was particularly struck by the statement, that, “The mere prevalence or persistence of some management practice is not evidence that it works – there are numerous examples (my emphasis) of widely diffused and quite persistent management practices, strongly advocated by practicing executives and consultants, where the systematic empirical evidence for their ineffectiveness is just overwhelming.” You probably cannot get more ‘overwhelming’ than the economic crisis that followed the crash of 2008.

Clearly there is a need for business leaders to take a good hard look at themselves and their practices and see what they can do to change. Professor Pfeffer draws the lovely parallel with the popularity of blood-letting. What practices are you following blindly, that will be looked at with incredulity in generations to come?