Business guru

There is no definitive list of business gurus, but some writers have proposed "personal" lists. These lists are mostly created by organizations such as business magazines or management writers. There have been many business guru lists created through history.

A list consisting of people who are included in almost all of the lists created, collectively known as the "Famous Five", are: Frederick Winslow Taylor, Michael Porter, Alfred Sloan, Peter Drucker, and Douglas McGregor.{{cite book|last=Hindle|first=Tim|title=Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus|year=2008|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|pages=1|isbn=9781846681080|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-K_wp74bK3sC&pg=PA1}}

In 2001, Harvard Business Review asked the gurus to name their favorite gurus. The people named were Peter Drucker, James March and Herbert Simon.

Another list includes Peter Drucker, Michael Porter, and Tom Peters as the three leading gurus of our time.

There are also many gurus who have emerged and disappeared through history. Fordism - named for Henry Ford - ranked alongside Frederick Winslow Taylor's Taylorism in the early-20th century. A Russian tradition commemorates Lavrentiy Beria (executed in 1953 despite having run the massive Gulag organisation and the Soviet atomic bomb project) as the "best manager of the 20th century.

{{cite book

|last1 = Кремлёв

|first1 = Сергей

|date = 14 February 2017

|orig-date = 2008

|title = Beriya - luchshij manedzher XX veka

|script-title = ru:Берия. Лучший менеджер XX века

|trans-title = Beria, the best manager of the 20th century

|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Z70gDgAAQBAJ

|language = ru

|edition = 6

|publisher = Litres

|isbn = 9785040433704

|access-date = 9 February 2025

}}

In Germany, {{ill|Reinhard Hôhn|de|Reinhard Höhn}} became the postwar management guru.

{{cite book

|last1 = Sorge

|first1 = Arndt

|date = 17 March 2005

|chapter = The South Germanic bedrock under foreign incursions

|title = The Global and the Local: Understanding the Dialectics of Business Systems

|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=iYR5_s_6-PgC

|publication-place = New York

|publisher = Oxford University Press

|page = 134

|isbn = 9780191535345

|access-date = 9 February 2025

|quote = It would be worth investigating the extent to which Americanization in business and management behaviour was [...] a convenient way of developing and adapting solutions which also had domestic roots. Interestingly, one of the major post-war normative conceptualizations of 'sound business and management practice' which at the time engrossed prominent American gurus such as Austrian-born Peter Drucker, was the {{ill|Harzburger Modell|de|Harzburger Modell}}. This was certainly not presented as a 'German model' but as a universalistic doctrine. The 'model' was developed under the leadership of a former SS officer from the war economy management (Reinhard Hôhn).

}}

The Japanese were known for making improvements to the business world and producing gurus in the 1980s, including Keniche Ohmae and Akio Morita. Then European gurus emerged, such as Yves Doz, Geert Hofstede, Manfred Kets De Vries and Charles Handy.

One management expert, Gary Hamel, says there have been "few genuine breakthroughs" since the work of Taylor and Max Weber.{{cite book|last=Asian Development Bank|title=Compendium of Knowledge Solutions|year=2010|publisher=Asian Development Bank|pages=304|isbn=9789290922117|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vAo_CQAAQBAJ&pg=PT304}} In his book, Hamel says that management is "stuck in a time warp."{{cite book|last=Hamel|first=Gary|title=The Future of Management|year=2013|publisher=Harvard Business Press|pages=4|isbn=9781422148006|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gLktvtlqHSYC&pg=PA4}} Similarly, even one of the authors of a book about management gurus warns that management theory is "not served well by fads," citing Enron as a "management fad for its supposed culture of innovation."

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