The Case For and Against the Use of Management Tools and Techniques

Abstract

The amusing quote above might lead one to conclude that business managers are the unwitting dupes of unscrupulous academics and consultants selling snake oil. Yet the major argument in this volume, which reports the findings from a survey of the use and performance of business management tools and techniques across 237 firms in 16 different industrial sectors, is that managers are not always as gullible as some may believe (Micklethwaite & Wooldridge, 1996). Indeed, the research reported here shows that there is a definite link between the willingness of managers to use management tools and techniques and the risks that have to be managed given the functions and the types of industry sectors that they operate in. This implies that there is evidence of practitioners being able to understand when specific tools and techniques are appropriate (the right tools for the job) and also when they are not (the wrong tools for the job).

‘Imagine going to your doctor because you are not feeling well. Before you’ve had a chance to describe your symptoms, the doctor writes out a prescription and says, “Take two of these three times a week and call me next week”’.

“But — I haven’t told you what’s wrong”, you say. “How do I know this will help me?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” says the doctor. “It worked for the last two patients”.

No competent doctors would ever practice medicine like this, nor would any sane patient accept it if they did. Yet professors and consultants routinely prescribe such generic advice, and managers routinely accept such therapy, in the naïve belief that if a particular course of action helped other companies to succeed, it ought to help their’s, too’.

Christensen & Raynor (2003), p. 67.