A business philosophy or popular management theory is any of a range of accounting, marketing, public relations, operations, training, labor relations, time manent, investment, and corporate governance approaches claimed (by their proponents, and sometimes only by their proponents and selected clients) to improve business performance in some measurable or otherwise provable way. Accountancy (British English) or accounting (American English) is the process of maintaining, auditing, and processing financial information for business purposes. ... Marketing is the process of planning and executing the pricing, promotion, and distribution of goods, ideas, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals. ... Public relations is, simply-stated, the art and science of building relationships between an organization and its key audiences. ... Operations is that unit (be it a division or department) of an organization that carries out the actual execution of the core operating functions. ... Training is the teaching of vocational or practical and relates to specific useful skills. ... The field of organization development (OD) has had several definitions. ... // Definition Investment or investing is a term with several closely-related meanings in finance and economics. ... Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws and institutions affecting the way a corporation is directed, administered or controlled. ...

These management theories often have their own vocabulary. They are sometimes built around the business philosophy of a single guru. They rarely have the sophistication or internal consistency to qualify as a school of philosophy in the conventional sense - some resemble a cult religion. What they tend to have in common is high consulting fees to consult with the "business gurus" who have created the "philosophy". Only rarely is the capacity to teach others transmitted to any trusted students - one of the key requirements of any legitimate school of thought. A vocabulary is a set of words known to a person or other entity, or that are part of a specific language. ... Philosophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... In religion and sociology, a cult is a cohesive group of people (often a relatively small and new religious movement) devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture or society considers to be far outside the mainstream. ... Management consulting (sometimes also called strategy consulting) refers to both the practice of helping companies to improve performance through analysis of existing business problems and development of future plans, as well as to the firms that specialize in this sort of consulting. ...

Most of these theories tend to be popular for a time (about 5 to 10 years). Then they disappear from the popular consciousness. Occasionally one has lasting value and gets incorporated into textbooks and into academic management thought. For every theory that gets incorporated into strategic management textbooks there are 100 that are forgotten. Many theories tend either to be too narrow in focus to build a complete corporate strategy on, or too general and abstract to be applicable to specific situations. The low success rate is fueled by the management talk circuit in which hundreds of self appointed gurus sell their books and explain their "revolutionary" and "groundbreaking" theories to audiences of business executives for phenomenal fees.

While there may be a great deal of truth in this cynical view in the short term, it should be realized too that management theories are tested in the real world. By being applied and being found to be either consistently applicable over time, or merely an "idea du jour", the relevant and valuable principles become recognized, and in this way are incorporated into academic management thought.

See also:

• Business
• Management
• Philosophy
• Philosophy of business
• Fraud
• Management consulting
• Strategic management

External links Business Articles growFolio - Online Business Magazine for Fresh Thinkers Yahoo! Finance Aggregates some really good business articles Categories: | | | ... Management (from Old French ménagement the art of conducting, directing, from Latin manu agere to lead by the hand) characterises the process of leading and directing all or part of an organization, often a business, through the deployment and manipulation of resources (human, financial, material, intellectual or intangible). ... Philosophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... // Definition and scope The philosophy of business considers the fundamental principles that underlie the formation and operation of a business enterprise; the nature and purpose of a business, for example, is it primarily property or a social institution; its role in society; and the moral obligations that pertain to it. ... Management consulting (sometimes also called strategy consulting) refers to both the practice of helping companies to improve performance through analysis of existing business problems and development of future plans, as well as to the firms that specialize in this sort of consulting. ... Strategic management is the process of specifying an organizations objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve these objectives, and allocating resources so as to implement the plans. ...

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• List of business theorists
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This is a list of articles on general management and strategic management topics. ... This is a list of over 200 articles on marketing topics. ... This list of ethics topics puts articles relevant to well-known ethical (right and wrong, good and bad) debates and decisions in one place - including practical problems long known in philosophy, and the more abstract subjects in law, politics, and some professions and sciences. ... Organizational studies - an overview Organizational development Management development Mentoring Coaching Job rotation Professional development Upward feedback Executive education Supervisory training leadership development leadership talent identification and management individual development planning 360 degree feedback succession planning Skills management performance improvement process improvement job enrichment Training & Development managing change and also change... This aims to be a complete list of the articles on economics. ... What follows is a list of over 250 Wikipedia articles on finance topics. ... This is a list of topics which are relevant to Accountancy. ... Management information systems an overview E-business Intranet strategies Database management system Data warehousing Data mining Document warehousing Customer relationship management (CRM) Sales force management system Enterprise resource planning (ERP) Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS) Business performance management Project management software Integration management Middleware Groupware and collaborative systems RSA Computer... Manufacturing and manufacturing systems manufacturing factory Craft system English system of manufacturing American system of manufacturing Mass production Batch production Just in time manufacturing Toyota Production System Lean manufacturing Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) Mass customization Theories of production Taylorism Fordism Theory of constraints Productivity Productivity benchmarking cost accounting experience curve... Commercial law an overview Adhesion contract Blue law Civil law notary Contracts Consideration Duress Breach of contract Remedy Lien Legal entity Corporate law Corporation Incorporation Delaware corporation (US) Limited liability company Fiduciary Partnership Agency Escrow Trustee of a trust or executor of an estate; see also trusts and estates Charitable... See business ethics, political economy and Philosophy of business for an overview. ... This is an annotated list of important business theorists. ... This is an alphabetical list of well-known economists. ... Set out below is an annotated listing of corporate leaders, who are or have been the head of large or successful business enterprises, or who are otherwise well known for their commercial acumen, listed alphabetically by last name. ... This is an incomplete list of companies. ...

References

• Micklethwait, John; Wooldridge, Adrian. The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus. ISBN 0812929888

• Albran, Kellogg The Profit : This is a parody of the master-devotee relationship. Albran humourously examines our relationship with "gurus" (whether business, political or religious), our tendency to be followers, and our drive to find answers outside of ourselves.