Appraising Gary Hamel’s Future of Management – Any Relevance for Small Businesses?

Abstract

Management theory and practice in the 20th Century is one of predictability, accountability, prescription and little has changed over time. New theories have emerged but they are all founded in the boundaries, barriers, and traditional views of Boards decide, Management manages, Employees do cycle of old theories. Hence, modern management practice is based on a set of principles whose origins date back a century or more. Such practices include specialization, standardization, planning and control, hierarchy, and the primacy of extrinsic rewards. Generations of managers have mined these principles for competitive advantage in various forms, and large variation of results has been put forward. However, after decades of digging, the chance of discovering a gleaming piece of new management wisdom in these well-explored arenas is far-off. Managers’ challenge therefore is to uncover unconventional principles that open up new layers of management innovation. This paper has systemically reviewed Gary Hamel’s book – the Future of Management and its relevance to small and medium enterprises. It has been argued that management innovation is an important phenomenon in the field of management and that the generative mechanisms
through which it occurs (i.e., management innovation processes) can be applicable for small business operational efficiency.