False Prophets: The Gurus Who
Created Modern Management and
Why Their Ideas Are Bad for
Business Today by James Hoopes
Hoopes, J. (2003)
A critical reassessment of the ideas that shaped modern management.
According to Jim Hoopes, the fundamental principles on which business is
based--authority, power, control--are increasingly at odds with principles of
life in a democratic society--freedom, equality, individualism. False
Prophets critically examines the pioneering theories of the early
management thinkers, such as Taylor, Follett, Mayo, and Deming, which
intended to democratize corporate life yet have proved antithetical to the
successful practice of business. Hoopes challenges popular management
movements that followed in the wake of these thinkers and accuses todays
business theorists of perpetuating bad management in the name of
democratic values. He urges executives and managers to recognize the
realities of corporate life and learn to apply the principles of power. He also

unveils a new management agenda that will be of paramount significance
to modern organizations. A rich and lively read, False Prophets provides a
refreshingly new and original overview of the history of management in the
larger context of the American culture, brilliantly illustrating its evolution--
from the ivory tower to the shop floor.
Personal Review: False Prophets: The Gurus Who Created
Modern Management and Why Their Ideas Are Bad for Business
Today by James Hoopes
Edmund Burke wrote that 'coarse distinctions' are the foe of good
judgement. James Hoopes' writing here is no enemy of good judgement.
He makes clear ethical distinctions about the moral content of rule by
managers and political rule by the people. In the early days of
management writing in the slave south - one of the historical highlights of
this book - such distinctions would have been commonplace. But in our
day, with the spirit of Humpty Dumpty governing the use of language in
business, academia and politics, Mr Hoopes' assertion that management is
un-American is bold iconoclasm.
But Mr Hoopes is no Seattle street fighter. Showing the moral difference
between free government and management is only one part of his project.
He knows that not everything democratic is good; and not everything good
is democratic. Mr Hoopes praises management for its many achievements
in the sphere of business organisation and defends it against those 'false
prophets' who attempted to give it democratic legitimacy. Management is
legitimate because in its rightful place, the business world, management
achieves what businesses need and what society needs business to
provide: profit, productivity, workplace order, efficiency, speed and
flexibility.
Outside of that sphere, however, management is bad. Applying 'industrial
best practice' to free government is to fetter the people. So, Mr Hoopes
argues, let us weigh the worth of management and free government on
different moral scales and never get them confused. Though he never
makes the analogy himself, Mr Hoopes is arguing for a similar distinction
we already make with judicial courts and military structures. Neither of
those are democratic either, though both are useful and good and enable
the larger democratic project to continue. Therefore, we explicitly confine
their undemocratic powers to discrete areas and maintain those
boundaries forcefully. And the members of the judiciary and military
support them too. It is not legal prohibitions that ultimately prevent
generals from taking over government: it is because they have internalised
the doctrine of civilian control of the military. Businessmen and gurus and
all of us must do the same for business, Mr Hoopes seems to say. If
business cannot itself be run democratically and government regulation is
too prone to failure, such an attitude is probably the only sustainable way
we can defend free government from 'industrial best practice'.

My one wish is that Mr Hoopes made a longer, more detailed argument
about 'how top-down power increased American productivity' (the title of
part 1). He shows the clear improvements Taylor ('the demon') and Gantt
made in their time. But he doesn't reflect on how they are still applicable
now in the age of the long-tail and internet; nor how they have been
applied to, say, agriculture or the service sector in our day (Fast Food
Nation by Eric Schlosser is good here, but of course doesn't have the
same focus as False Prophets). Nor on how management can be the
enemy of speed and flexibility and innovation.
But beyond that, this is an excellent book, highlighting some important and
still influential thinkers of last century; giving us short bursts of business
history; and revives a clear moral language with which to discuss the
intersection of business and government.
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