<story><title>Management theory is becoming a compendium of dead ideas</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/business/21711909-what-martin-luther-did-catholic-church-needs-be-done-business-gurus-management</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anotherhacker</author><text>The problem lies in business schools and degrees like the MBA.&lt;p&gt;Check out the faculty list at Harvard Business school [link below]. I randomly looked at profiles of 14 of them and &lt;i&gt;not a single one had real world business experience&lt;/i&gt;. If there are any who do have real world experience, it&amp;#x27;s often superficial.&lt;p&gt;To carry on this article&amp;#x27;s analogy, business schools are the Catholic church of 1500: incestuous, detached, and self-serving.&lt;p&gt;Harvard Busisness school faculty: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hbs.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;Pages&amp;#x2F;browse.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hbs.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;Pages&amp;#x2F;browse.aspx&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lordnacho</author><text>I went to business school (top European) as part of my engineering degree.&lt;p&gt;They actually do make a point of mentioning that there&amp;#x27;s more than one philosophy of management. For instance, in the Germanic world, it&amp;#x27;s common to promote managers from the ranks of whatever business is being managed, whereas it&amp;#x27;s a bit of an anglo thing to have a &amp;quot;manager&amp;quot; who is somewhat business agnostic.&lt;p&gt;But of course there&amp;#x27;s a problem. If you tell people they need specific experience in the car industry to be a car industry manager, or as a software dev to manage devs, then WTF are you doing in a business school? Especially as an undergrad? You gonna manage the student bar?&lt;p&gt;So then when it comes to all the case studies, you have to kid yourself that what happened to Betamax in the 1980s is going to be relevant to you in 2016. It&amp;#x27;s interesting to read all this historical &amp;quot;strategy&amp;quot; stuff, but the students I hung out with (being engineers, technically competent and skeptical of BS) tended to see them as something akin to a history class. Sure there are lessons, but a lot of it is just interpretation and conjecture. Nothing in it with the rigour of an engineering course.&lt;p&gt;As to why MBAs are useful, it seems it&amp;#x27;s really a question of signalling. If you pay a few hundred grand in fees, rent, and opportunity cost to do an MBA, you probably have some motivation. And there is some value in generic management; not every line of business requires deep technical knowledge, and those are fine for hiring some guy who&amp;#x27;s happy to work long hours and fly around a lot. It&amp;#x27;s a problem for something like software dev though.</text></comment>
<story><title>Management theory is becoming a compendium of dead ideas</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/business/21711909-what-martin-luther-did-catholic-church-needs-be-done-business-gurus-management</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anotherhacker</author><text>The problem lies in business schools and degrees like the MBA.&lt;p&gt;Check out the faculty list at Harvard Business school [link below]. I randomly looked at profiles of 14 of them and &lt;i&gt;not a single one had real world business experience&lt;/i&gt;. If there are any who do have real world experience, it&amp;#x27;s often superficial.&lt;p&gt;To carry on this article&amp;#x27;s analogy, business schools are the Catholic church of 1500: incestuous, detached, and self-serving.&lt;p&gt;Harvard Busisness school faculty: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hbs.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;Pages&amp;#x2F;browse.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hbs.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;Pages&amp;#x2F;browse.aspx&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danielrhodes</author><text>You see this same thing happening at law schools as well.&lt;p&gt;If you look at the faculty of Harvard Law [1], many of the professors have not served in a professional capacity as lawyers.&lt;p&gt;In fact, many firms have to train their new associates in the actual practice of law because law school itself has become so detached from the reality of being a lawyer. [2]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hls.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;index.html?s=15&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hls.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;index.html?s=15&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mobile.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;20&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;after-law-school-associates-learn-to-be-lawyers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mobile.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;20&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;after-law-scho...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>