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This is what the professors in business schools study. MBA’s often get a bad rap, but as far as the actual research goes, that’s where the current efforts at ri

This is what the professors in business schools study. MBA’s often get a bad rap, but as far as the actual research goes, that’s where the current efforts at rigorously studying management and organizational dynamics are.

barry-cotter 4y ago
Is there any evidence that these academics affect the practice of business much? When I think of ideas or changes coming out of business schools and changing how businesses are run the only thing I can think of is Michael Porter’s five forces. Toyota has likely had a greater impact on how business is run than every business school professor combined, ever. More bluntly most business professors never even try to become successful entrepreneurs. They’re unwilling to bear the costs of the market test because they don’t expect the benefits to be worth it.
- ajb 4y ago
  Sure: W Edwards Deming.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Deming became a business school professor in 1946 and was brought to Japan in 1947, where he taught statistical process control. That was extremely important but Deming functioned more as a conduit for work Walter Shewhart and others had done than anything else. A man with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematical physics with less than two years of experience in a business school before transforming Japanese manufacturing by teaching them about techniques developed for the American war effort by statisticians does not seem a great example. > Deming edited a series of lectures delivered by Shewhart at USDA, Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, into a book published in 1939. One reason he learned so much from Shewhart, Deming remarked in a videotaped interview, was that, while brilliant, Shewhart had an "uncanny ability to make things difficult." Deming thus spent a great deal of time both copying Shewhart's ideas and devising ways to present them with his own twist.[16] > Deming developed the sampling techniques that were used for the first time during the 1940 U.S. Census, formulating the Deming-Stephan algorithm for iterative proportional fitting in the process.[17] During World War II, Deming was a member of the five-man Emergency Technical Committee. He worked with H.F. Dodge, A.G. Ashcroft, Leslie E. Simon, R.E. Wareham, and John Gaillard in the compilation of the American War Standards (American Standards Association Z1.1–3 published in 1942)[18] and taught SPC techniques to workers engaged in wartime production. Statistical methods were widely applied during World War II, but faded into disuse a few years later in the face of huge overseas demand for American mass-produced products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
    - ajb 4y ago
      It says that he just transcribed Shewhart, but he also afterwards studied academically under Fisher and Neymann, two foundational figures in the world of statistics.
      - barry-cotter 4y ago
        I don’t deny he was an important figure in statistical process control and its popularization. I’m just saying he’s a bad example of a business school professor having a big impact. He was a statistician/engineer/physicist during WW2 who was very important to Japanese manufacturing. He had barely any business school experience when he did his most impactful work, and that was on teaching SPC, an American invention not made by business school professors, to the Japanese.
        ajb 4y ago
        Ok, makes sense. If we are focusing specifically on business school professors then I agree.
- ellen364 4y ago
  Peter Drucker was influential mid-20th century and I still hear MBAs talk about his work. He wrote in the 1950s-1970s about the importance of the customer, the value of decentralisation rather than command and control, managers as influencers of company culture, etc. Standard management guru stuff now, but novel at the time. Of course it’s difficult to know how much management change was due to him. E.g. I’ve seen claims that he influenced the re-building of Japanese industry after World War 2, but I don’t know if it’s true. The British Library has interesting pages about Drucker and other people they describe as “management thinkers”: https://www.bl.uk/business-and-management/management-thinkers https://www.bl.uk/business-and-management/management-thinker...

barry-cotter 4y ago

Is there any evidence that these academics affect the practice of business much? When I think of ideas or changes coming out of business schools and changing how businesses are run the only thing I can think of is Michael Porter’s five forces. Toyota has likely had a greater impact on how business is run than every business school professor combined, ever. More bluntly most business professors never even try to become successful entrepreneurs. They’re unwilling to bear the costs of the market test because they don’t expect the benefits to be worth it.

ajb 4y ago
Sure: W Edwards Deming.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  Deming became a business school professor in 1946 and was brought to Japan in 1947, where he taught statistical process control. That was extremely important but Deming functioned more as a conduit for work Walter Shewhart and others had done than anything else. A man with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematical physics with less than two years of experience in a business school before transforming Japanese manufacturing by teaching them about techniques developed for the American war effort by statisticians does not seem a great example. > Deming edited a series of lectures delivered by Shewhart at USDA, Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, into a book published in 1939. One reason he learned so much from Shewhart, Deming remarked in a videotaped interview, was that, while brilliant, Shewhart had an "uncanny ability to make things difficult." Deming thus spent a great deal of time both copying Shewhart's ideas and devising ways to present them with his own twist.[16] > Deming developed the sampling techniques that were used for the first time during the 1940 U.S. Census, formulating the Deming-Stephan algorithm for iterative proportional fitting in the process.[17] During World War II, Deming was a member of the five-man Emergency Technical Committee. He worked with H.F. Dodge, A.G. Ashcroft, Leslie E. Simon, R.E. Wareham, and John Gaillard in the compilation of the American War Standards (American Standards Association Z1.1–3 published in 1942)[18] and taught SPC techniques to workers engaged in wartime production. Statistical methods were widely applied during World War II, but faded into disuse a few years later in the face of huge overseas demand for American mass-produced products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
  - ajb 4y ago
    It says that he just transcribed Shewhart, but he also afterwards studied academically under Fisher and Neymann, two foundational figures in the world of statistics.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      I don’t deny he was an important figure in statistical process control and its popularization. I’m just saying he’s a bad example of a business school professor having a big impact. He was a statistician/engineer/physicist during WW2 who was very important to Japanese manufacturing. He had barely any business school experience when he did his most impactful work, and that was on teaching SPC, an American invention not made by business school professors, to the Japanese.
      - ajb 4y ago
        Ok, makes sense. If we are focusing specifically on business school professors then I agree.
ellen364 4y ago
Peter Drucker was influential mid-20th century and I still hear MBAs talk about his work. He wrote in the 1950s-1970s about the importance of the customer, the value of decentralisation rather than command and control, managers as influencers of company culture, etc. Standard management guru stuff now, but novel at the time. Of course it’s difficult to know how much management change was due to him. E.g. I’ve seen claims that he influenced the re-building of Japanese industry after World War 2, but I don’t know if it’s true. The British Library has interesting pages about Drucker and other people they describe as “management thinkers”: https://www.bl.uk/business-and-management/management-thinkers https://www.bl.uk/business-and-management/management-thinker...