Wandering through The Atlantic I came across an article I loved back when I first read it. The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart (June 2006) has a subtitle that says it all, “Most of Management Theory is Inane …” Stewart compares philosophy to business degrees and comes to the conclusion that philosophy should take over.
The recognition that management theory is a sadly neglected subdiscipline of philosophy began with an experience of déjà vu. As I plowed through my shelfload of bad management books, I beheld a discipline that consists mainly of unverifiable propositions and cryptic anecdotes, is rarely if ever held accountable, and produces an inordinate number of catastrophically bad writers. It was all too familiar. There are, however, at least two crucial differences between philosophers and their wayward cousins. The first and most important is that philosophers are much better at knowing what they don’t know. The second is money. In a sense, management theory is what happens to philosophers when you pay them too much.