Urgent: Management Needs Its Mojo Back!

In school studying management I believed it was a profession with a societal mission and that was made it worthwhile.


I belonged to the Drucker school which believed that management was about maximizing the good of society and the economy at large while providing reasonable returns to shareholders and investors.

I still believe that management can be a noble calling only if it sticks to the above core viewpoint. Otherwise management becomes the handmaiden of money-making , a secondary and servile profession whose ranks will always be dominated by the greedy, the lazy and the weak.

Why do you need the great new science and art of management if the objective is to help some people make more money. The businessman knows how to make money better than anyone else and sure, if you are willing to subvert your talent to his end, he will throw you some shekels.

For the past decade there has been a great debate raging in the management schools about how to teach the profession better. I think the great debate and soul-searching instead should be not about how to teach but how to “do” the profession better? How to strengthen its backbone and regain its soul? The malaise is not just among those millions-of-dollars-bonus boys. The malaise runs deeper.

The malaise is not about big egos but small and weak egos that are all too ready to kowtow to the capitalists and the capital markets in return for pelf, power and perks.

If management is ever to fulfill the Druckerian potential of becoming one of mankind’s noblest modern professions, management urgently needs to get its mojo back.