Management Gurus

A Research Overview

David Collins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000091601
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

This book provides a concise, critical expert overview of the elite group of consultants, analysts and commentators known as 'management gurus'.

Often dismissed as lacking in substance, this volume demonstrates that gurus must be taken seriously given their impact on the world of management. Noting that the gurus are very much products of the 1980s, the book accounts for the rise of this group while challenging those who have attempted to personify – to name and acclaim – the gurus. Reviewing the research on management gurus the book proceeds from a consideration of 'guru theory' to offer an analysis of 'the guru industry' and 'guru speak'. Building upon this analysis the book offers a critical engagement with those who have sought to understand gurus as performance artists.

Concluding with a radical agenda for future research which situates management's gurus within the frame of stand-up comedy, this book will enlighten and entertain scholars across the business disciplines and beyond.

1
Introduction

Aims and structure

This short, but important, chapter has been designed to introduce the aims and the structure of this little book. The chapter is important, despite its size, because it has rather a lot of work to do. Or as managers are now wont to say: This chapter must perform some ‘heavy lifting’. Yet despite the fact that I understand that (as the Irish proverb has it) ‘a good start is half the work’, I hesitate … I struggle to express my core intention in a fashion that is lucid and yet robust.

The front cover, of course, suggests that this little book is about management’s gurus. And this is, of course, perfectly correct … at one level. This text is concerned with the gurus of management. It aims to provide an overview of current research and suggestions for future research directions. Yet this bald statement does not actually amount to a promising start. And it will most certainly not take us half-way to the task that I hope to complete!

There are, after all, rather a lot of texts about ‘the gurus of management’ presently available in the market for management knowledge. And academic narratives, if they are to secure and sustain an audience, need to demonstrate that their focus and intent is distinctive. That is why so many scholarly works turn upon the hinges of ‘currency’ and ‘controversy’ (Collins, 2007). So let’s agree shall we that this little book is not simply about the gurus of management?

Why am I defining this book in negative terms? Why am I making such an effort to tell you what this book is not concerned to examine? The answer is relatively straightforward: I fear that to do otherwise would be to indulge a number of ideas that we must now reappraise. Thus to state simply that this book is ‘about the gurus of management’ would be to indulge the presumption that we can readily identify an elite cadre of wise actors (the gurus). Furthermore, an opening statement of this form would project the understanding that such gurus deserve our veneration because through some combination of education, experience and energy (Huczynski, 1993) they have enabled those who manage our corporations, our schools and our hospitals to secure mastery of the problem of change.

For reasons that I will elaborate here, and throughout this book, I must reject these suggestions. It is, as chapter two will demonstrate, not at all clear that we can forge a general consensus as to the identity of the gurus of management. Nor is it obvious that the individuals identified as the gurus actually convey benefit to ‘organisations’ (as united entities). Working at a more pragmatic level it may also be useful to note that a simple declaration to the effect that this book is ‘about the gurus of management’ would make this text just another derivative work within a rather crowded market segment. Indeed a declaration of this sort would make the text you now have before you just another one of those books which casually lists and ranks both ideas and people – typically men and more often than not members of the Mormon congregation¹ – according to some under-developed and largely unarticulated notion of utility and/or popularity. And no publisher I hope is presently commissioning books of this sort!

So let us be clear: This is not just a(nother) book about ‘the gurus of management’. A book in this form would lack novelty and currency. It would be a bore.

Yet this suggestion of ennui should not be taken as an indication that I am not actually interested in the broad grouping of writers and speakers who have been named and acclaimed as ‘gurus’ of management. I am in fact fascinated by this grouping and have devoted much of my adult life trying to come to terms with it. Why have I done this? Well, some would say I lack imagination. I protest however that I take this grouping seriously (while debating its nature and contours) because I understand that the gurus have:

• (re)shaped the essence of management thought,
• (re)defined the nature of management practice,
• altered our sense of ourselves, and through this reworking of identity have
• acted to reshape how we live, how we love and how we die.²

(see Ritzer, 2003³)

For these reasons (and more) I am quite convinced that the actors, agencies and institutions which now shape our understanding of ‘good’ management should be discussed and need to be scrutinised. Books which focus upon the gurus however commit to just a proportion of this agenda. Texts on the gurus discuss management and managing, of course, but their central concern is not analytical nor is it critical. Instead texts on the gurus generate accounts of the problems of managing and organising that are subordinated to a chauvinistic desire to array and to applaud the contribution of those special individuals who are taken to be, both, wise and charismatic.

In contrast to the chauvinism which underpins so much of what has been written on management’s gurus, this book seeks a broader and more critical engagement with management knowledge. Indeed this book – while taking management’s gurus seriously – has been designed to allow you, the reader, to explore and to reconsider the representations of managerial work that now saturate our world. This book, therefore, seeks to provide a critical overview of research on management’s gurus and suggestions for future inquiry. It seeks a deeper engagement with practices, with processes and with the people (the hewers of wood and the drawers of water)⁴ variously pushed aside (or pushed under) by the problematics embodied within, and enabled by, guru theorising.

Accordingly the book is structured as follows: Chapter two offers an analysis of those texts on the gurus which, as we shall see, have attempted to order and array those, now, empowered to define management. This chapter will consider attempts to personify the gurus of management. It will suggest, however, that such attempts to name and acclaim the gurus of management are deeply flawed and distracting. Yet having criticised such attempts to order and array the gurus we will drop a ladder back down into the black hole which is guru personification.

Building upon the seminal work of Huczynski (1993), we will offer a consideration not of the gurus but of the nature and contours of guru theo-rising. While observing that attempts to personify the gurus of management amount to a fool’s errand,⁵ we will argue that we may begin to come to terms with management’s gurus through an analysis of the deeper structure of ideas that bring form and (perhaps more importantly) dignity to their concerns.

In chapter three we will pause to consider the rise of the gurus. Here we will ask: Why and how do we find ourselves beholden to management’s gurus? This is an important but often overlooked issue. Indeed those under the age of 40 (perhaps) may struggle to understand that there was a time, not so long ago, when the shelves of airport bookshops did not sag under the weight of texts designed, ostensibly, to make our organisations better, bigger and more competitive. But there was I assure you a simpler time when the rhythms and processes of our working lives were not shaped by notions of culture change, re-engineering and hyper-competition.

Placing guru theory (and the representations of managing and organising upon which it both builds and depends) within the turbulent decade that was the 1980s we will locate the rise of the gurus within an appropriate socio-historical context. Having established a (potted) history of the gurus and, having established the presence of ‘demand-pull’ factors which made the need for the resolutions proposed by guru theory apparent, we will turn to consider ‘supply-side’ issues. Building upon Engwall et al. (2016), we will offer a brief account of the manner in which business schools, management consultants and the business press have, together, enabled the rise of the gurus. Finally in an attempt to provide some measure of rehabilitation for the users of guru theory we will consider the typology developed by Grint (1997a, 1997b).

In chapter four we will turn our attention to those commentaries that have grown up around ‘the gurus’. Here we will offer reflections on the ‘guru industry’. This ‘guru industry’, as we shall see, has been configured to situate and to account for the different ways in which academics, journalists and, indeed, practitioners have attempted to come to terms with the gurus. In chapter five we turn to consider what, elsewhere, I have termed ‘the full circuit of guru theorising’ (Collins, 2019). Here we will blur the boundaries between the worlds of business and ‘show business’ as we offer reflections upon the seminar performances offered by management’s gurus.

Greatbatch and Clark (2005), as we shall see, have suggested that academic attempts to come to terms with guru theory have been limited by a tendency to focus, narrowly, upon the books produced by/for the gurus of management. This focus upon the written word, the authors protest, has led to a failure to consider guru performance (which we will refer to as ‘guru speak’). Chapter five will acknowledge the validity of this critical intervention. Yet we will argue that the ‘guru speak’ project is counter-productive because it is limited by problems conceptual, methodological and empirical which have not been properly scrutinised. In chapter six we build upon this critique as we signal new directions for research on management’s gurus. Building upon the essence of the argument developed by Greatbatch and Clark, this final chapter will frame a new agenda for research and will suggest a new conceptualisation of the guru-as-performer which builds upon an appreciation of the dynamics of stand-up comedy.

Notes

1 This quip (it is truthfully no more than a quip) derives from Hindle (2008), who observes that there are more Mormon management gurus than there are British-born gurus!

2 This is of course particularly the case for those texts and for those authors concerned with ‘self-help’ and within this market segment, ‘stress management’, ‘time management’, ‘self-confidence’ and ‘anxiety’.

3 Ritzer’s work suggests that we might extend my reference to ‘living, loving and dying’ to include mourning. Thus Ritzer demonstrates that notions of ‘organisational needs’ and ‘efficiency’ demand that the recently bereaved limit their ‘on-site’ mourning at London’s crematoria to no more than 15 minutes! Those who transgress this time limit are, it seems, now subject to fines that are levied upon the undertakers.

4 This is of course an allusion to the Book of Joshua 9:23. The hewers of wood and the drawers of water are revealed as cursed in this book of the Bible. Those down-sized, delayered and de-hired in the name of ‘good’ management, ‘good’ practice or enhanced ‘shareholder value’ might well consider themselves to be marked in a similar manner.

5 A fool’s errand may be defined as a task designed temporarily to remove/detain those who would otherwise impede purposeful endeavour. I can recall, for example, my father speaking of foolish apprentices who would be sent to a far part of the establishment where he worked in Kilmarnock to retrieve ‘a long stand and a big weight’ from the individual in charge of the store room. Those who worked within the storeroom it seems understood this code well, such that apprentices sent on this errand would endure ‘a big wait and a long stand’ before being returned to their normal place of employment!

2
Who are the gurus?

The limits of personification

Introduction

This chapter will offer a critical analysis of those texts that have sought to identify the gurus of management. We undertake this analysis so that we might come to recognise the chauvinism that prevails in this arena and the limits of personification. This chapter however is no simple exercise in debunking (Collins, 2001, 2012a). Where others would dismiss the gurus as distractions from the real business of managing, this chapter will demonstrate that these pundits are important and are, despite the critical reflections developed here, worthy of serious research.

The chapter is structured as follows: We begin with very brief reflections on the origins of the term ‘management guru’. Here we will observe the existence of a dispute as regards the origin of this term. Yet having considered this dispute we will, in effect, set it aside. Instead we will consider the manner in which contemporary commentators have sought to apply and to account for this label.

Noting that casual usage of the term ‘management guru’ is generally associated with an attempt to name and acclaim the gurus we will consider the limitations of such attempts to constitute and to personify an organisational elite. Having revealed the limitations of this agenda we will consider the account of ‘guru theory’ developed by Huczynski (1993) and the complementary analysis offered by Kieser (1997). This alternative means of framing debate on management’s gurus, as we shall see, is productive because it invites reflection not on the gurus but upon the deeper structure of ideas and assumptions that makes the representations of life, work, organisation and change, preferred by this elite grouping, both substantive and pressing.

Yet, having applauded the works of Kieser and Huczynski, we will nonetheless suggest that the accounts of guru theory developed by these authors are limiting because they a) tend to indulge an externalist form of analysis and b) presume that the gurus are, in a simple and conventional sense, the authors of ‘their’ texts. Noting the presence of ‘internalist’ (Grint, 1997a, 1997b) and ‘translation’ (Collins, 2004) based alternatives to the ‘externalist’ reading of guru theory, we will offer counter-points to the resonant analyses of Huczynski and Kieser before turning to consider the question of authorship.

McKenna (2016) offers a truly fascinating account of the developm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1 Introduction: aims and structure
• 2 Who are the gurus? the limits of personification
• 3 The rise of the gurus of management
• 4 The ‘guru industry’
• 5 Guru speak
• 6 Reframing guru performance
• Bibliography
• Index