An Irreverent Look at "Management Stuff" in Business Administration

This is the first in a series of essays that addresses major topics in the field of management. I'm basing these essays on countless provocative lectures and irreverent discussions as a nutty professor of business administration.

Here's the setting. Picture yourself as a new professor of business administration, having spent many moons studying Management as an undergraduate student, as an MBA student, and finally, as a Ph.D. student. Well over seven years have gone by in total, devoted to studying management as one of the most important social phenomena of the industrialized age. What would your outlook be? (It's a rhetorical question.)

Another fifteen years down the road, you walk into another of innumerable Introduction to Management courses that you have taught, beginning another semester with the usual, casual approach to the first day of class. After the syllabus is reviewed and the usual administrativia is in the bag, you begin the entire semester by going around the room, asking for a response from each student to the following question:

"Why are you in this course?"

Insisting that no honest answer will be punished in any way, typical answers are "Because I have to as part of my major," "My advisor told me I needed it to graduate," "It was the only elective I could take this semester," and my favorite, "I don't know. This is a waste. All this management stuff is just a lot of common sense."

"So," I ask, "if all this management stuff is just a lot of common sense, why are there so many bad managers? Anything that uncommon, cannot by definition be common! Are they insensible, or stupid, or what? What's wrong with this picture you've painted?"

Shift to another setting you may be more familiar with. It is you, not I, that is found in a popular chain bookstore. You are browsing for something to help you in your career. You just got promoted to a legitimate management position, albeit a low-level one. In your mind's eye stop for one moment, and note all the management books on the shelf for sale. How, you ask yourself, can I possibly know what's any good amidst all this management stuff?