ABSTRACT
At the outset, I mentioned that one of the primary motives for writing this book was to attempt to facilitate what I felt was a much needed yet all too rare dialogue between academics and practitioners about management gurus and management fashions. I hoped that the rhetorical critiques that are presented in this book might serve to stimulate discussion about the sources of the underlying appeal of these and other management guruinspired management fashions. I also hoped to encourage some critical reflection on the quality of managerial and organizational learning that management fashions have been responsible for generating, either directly or indirectly. I have come across numerous practitioners who share the same kinds of concerns and are asking the same kinds of questions about the management guru and management fashion phenomenon as many of my academic colleagues. In light of these common interests, it is somewhat unfortunate that there has been little evidence of these two communities
talking across their respective boundaries. I hoped that this study might provide some stimulus, or at least raw material, to enable such a dialogue to take place.
