Management Practice and Mispractice

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1992. The task of management has become increasingly complex in recent years. Chief executives and senior management are confronted with the task of making sense of the multiple factors affecting business systems, and identifying causal relationships in seemingly unstructured problems. In the field of management, a wide gulf exists between theory and practice. Pronouncements from theorists have become increasingly unintelligible to practitioners. Practical propositions from management consultants - often in the form of recipes derived from experience and case studies - are often based on limited hard evidence. This has given rise to many fashions in management. The danger of fashionable doctrine is that they can lead to the adoption of what may be regarded as "management mispractices", namely practices that are based on questionable beliefs and premises. The topics and problems discussed in Management Practice and Mispractice aim to provoke the reader to think about the many issues involved and to question established doctrines and beliefs. This book should be of interest to managers, management consultants and students of management.