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dot com books
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voodoo
This page
looks at dot com voodoo: perspectives on the dot com
gurus and the consulting industry.
witch doctor dot com
We enjoyed the cautionary tales in The Witch Doctors - What the Management Gurus Are Saying, Why It Matters & How To Make Sense Of It (London,
Heinemann 96) by John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge and Dangerous Company (London,
Brealey 97) by James O'Shea & Charles Madigan.
They're entertaining and useful reading before hiring any
consultants.
Stuart Crainer's Gravy Training:
Inside the Business of Business Schools (Oxford, Capstone 98)
offers a jaundiced but often perceptive account of the MBA factories and the
latest dogmas about doing business online. It builds on his irreverent
examination of Tom Peters - Corporate Man To Corporate Skunk (New
York, HarperBusiness 97).
Connoisseurs of planning fads can't go past Henry Mintzberg's The Rise & Fall of Strategic Planning
(New York, Prentice-Hall 94), an incisive corrective to the reincarnations of Tom Peters &
Co, and Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds of Strategic Management (New York, Simon & Schuster 98), co-authored
with Bruce Ahlstrand & Joseph Lampel.
Alfred Chandler's magisterial works - in particular The Visible Hand:
The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Harvard
Uni Press 80) and Scale & Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial
Capitalism (Cambridge, Harvard Uni Press 90) - are a starting point
for understanding what's lasted .... and why.
As a reminder that there are no silver bullets Paul
Strassmann in
The Squandered Computer - Evaluating the Business Alignment of Information Technologies
(New Canaan, Information Economics Press 97) provides a detailed analysis of outsourcing, usability, IT consultants and best
practice.
Michael McGill's American Business
& the Quick Fix (New York, Holt 88) retains its relevance as an
analysis of management fads, fixes and phobias: quality circles, matrix
management, managerial grids ..... Were he writing today Prof McGill
would have a lovely time with the dot com mantras - embrace the free,
hug the void - and the spectre of one-minute managers competing on
internet time.
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