The Witch Doctors [antikvár]

ACKNO WLED CEMENTS There are two long, equally inglorious traditions in management theory. The first is for books to come complete with a hst of acknowledgements long enough to make a decent chapter in any other sort of book: every person at every conference, every research student, every corporate public-relations manager has somehow delivered a valuable insight to the writer. The second tradition is to mention nobody, thereby presumably reiterating the message that the great ideas that await the reader are the author's alone. What follows is something of a compromise. Our primary thanks go to The Economist for giving us the time to write The Witch Doctors and also for giving us permission to use articles that we have written for the newspaper. In particular, we should thank Bűi Emmott, the editor of The Economist, and Peter David, the business affairs editor, for their tolerance and support. A small squadron of colleagues kindly agreed to read all or parts of this book, including Brian Barry, Barbara Beck, Matthew Bishop, Victor Earl, Carol Mawer and Nick Valéry; Victor was particularly helpful in checking facts and Carol in reading proofs. We are also grateful to Jenny Geddes, for providing invaluable help, and to Gideon Rachman, for acting as a source of encouragement in the darkest moments. Three non-Economist readers were kind enough to offer their comments when the book was in preparation: Partha Bose, Joel Kurtzman and Alan Kantrow. They all work for the same 'vested interests' which we claim in The Witch Doctors make management theory such an un-self-critical business. Perhaps seeking to prove us wrong, they proved to be remarkably objective critics, often urging us to be harsher. When it came to writing the book, we were helped in the very first instance by AUegra Huston, who convinced us - perhaps wrongly - that it was not an insane project. We have been enormously lucky to have Gillon Aitken and Andrew Wylie as our agents; the book would not have been