Witch Dictirs

by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge

Book Overview

This Business Week bestseller made a big stir in the business world by taking to task the self-important gurus responsible for trends like excellence and reengineering. A scalpel job on prominent... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812929888
• ISBN13: 9780812929881
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA)
• Length: 398 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

The best summary on management theory there is

Great fun, great wit, great journalism. These guys started off as outsiders but they clearly are top-class journalists: they truly captured all the "strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats" that all the true, semi or fake gurus have produced since Taylor, Sloan and Drucker. A must have!

The best management book ive read

Would recommend this book strongly to two sets of people:1. All those who feel they do not read enough about management2. My B-school strategy professors that tried to treat books by gurus as biblesAfter working in companies that have consistently outperformed the market, my conclusion is that good managements are those that have the ability to learn about the environment all by their own and have the knack to apply it well bt themselves. No consultant or management guru can ever know a company's business better than its employees do. The best the gurus can ever do is mouth generalities. All of management theory is ephemral, transient. It is good to know concepts and use them sparingly and caringly.This book validates what ive been feeling for a long time.

An excellent analysis of "the Management Theory spectrum"

This book provides a clear-thinking analysis of the wide spectrum of management theories and applications, and points to several very important limitations inherent in the modern management consultancy industry. In particular, it exposes:1. the unnecessary promotion of business and management 'jargon'2. the excessive tendency towards pursuing the latest 'fad'3. the reluctance to look beneath the surface of ideas or concepts, in order to analyse them critically.Aptly titled "The Witch Doctors", this book lifts much of thefacade from the management advice industry, providing a reasonedevaluation of 'the workability factor' underpinning key management theories.The book contains 14 very interesting chapters, but perhaps the most insightful are the following four:Chapter 2: The Management Theory IndustryChapter 6: Knowledge, Learning and InnovationChapter 9: The Future of WorkChapter 10: What Does Globalisation Mean?Although written in 1996, this book retains much of its currency and relevancy at the beginning of the 21st century. It won the Global Business Book Award in 1996 for the best book written about strategy and leadership, and received high acclaim from the Journal of Business Strategy, arguing that it was "possibly the best-written business book of (its) decade". Even Harvard Business Review considered it "a worthy contribution" noting that "it is broad in its range of information and insights".Perhaps its highest endorsement, however, comes from Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor of Management at Harvard Business School, and herself the author of a number of very good management and business books. She says "Read it before buying any other book!"To the ordinary reader looking to gain relevant insights into the world of management thought, this book is an ideal tool. It is written in an easily accessible style, and doesn't necessarily require the reader to absorb it from cover to cover. Genuine insights can be gained by reviewing individual chapters in isolation.Along with "Dangerous Company" by O'Shea & Madigan, and "The Lexus & the Olive Tree" by Tom Friedman, "The Witch Doctors" is arguably one of the most insightful business books to be released in the past 20 years.