Management Theory Quotes

At the end of the day, man-management is all about managing people's sense and sensitivity... ~ Sandhya Jane

When, however the elements of this [book] such as time study, functional formanaship etc, are used without being accompanied by the true philosophy of management, the results are in many cases disastrous. And, unfortunately, even [when those] who are throughly in sympathy ... undertake to change too rapidly ... they frequently meet with serious trouble, and sometimes with strikes, followed by failure. ~ Frederick Winslow Taylor

Any vigorous competition will entail at least two elements: offense and defense. Offense is the effort you put into scoring against your opponents, and defense is the effort you apply to stop them from scoring against you. Those who suggest that "a little healthy competition can't hurt" are thinking only of the offense part....

The offense component of internal competition is problematic, but the defense component is always injurious. When peer managers play defense against each other (try to stop each other from scoring), they are engaging in anticooperation. ~ Tom DeMarco

Without theory there is nothing to modify or learn. ~ W. Edwards Deming

There is no knowledge without theory. ~ W. Edwards Deming

It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually. ~ Abraham H. Maslow

I wrote an ITV drama in the 1960s, a satire on management theory that starred Leonard Rossiter. I'm also a poet and have had work in the 'Spectator.' ~ Maurice Flanagan

20% of management theories are responsible for 80% of results. That's assuming the Pareto Principle makes the cut. ~ Ryan Lilly

Without theory we can only copy. ~ W. Edwards Deming

I've concluded that getting the categories right is an absolutely crucial step to building useful management theory, and unfortunately too few writers do this. You've got to engage in serious scholarship, and then figure out how to write it in a way that lots of people can understand. ~ Clayton Christensen

A rational prediction has an explanation based on theory. ~ W. Edwards Deming

Astronomers have been bewildered by the theory of an expanding universe, but there is no less expansion in the moral infinite of the universe of man. As far as the frontiers of science are pushed back, over the extended arc of these frontiers one will hear the poet's hounds on the chase. ~ Saint-John Perse

When it comes to busines ... I mean your business. Always remember you are the leader of your businesnot the Manager. You are the inspiration of your organization, you are the core that moves your business forward ... and this is your added value as a business owner. ~ Sameh Elsayed

All human beings are connected. It's like we're all holding onto ropes that tie to each other. The bond is closer and stronger with people you've met; the longer or better you know someone, the easier it is to tune into their energy. ~ Brownell Landrum

In 2002, a Scottish journalist, during a dinner meant to be private, absolutely wanted me to react to Stephen Hawking's comments. I said one shouldn't pay too much attention to what Hawking was saying because he was a celebrity but not a specialist of elementary particle theory. ~ Peter Higgs

[Mathematics is] purely intellectual, a pure theory of forms, which has for its objects not the combination of quantities or their images, the numbers, but things of thought to which there could correspond effective objects or relations, even though such a correspondence is not necessary. ~ Hermann Hankel

The ancestors of the higher animals must be regarded as one-celled beings, similar to the Amoebae which at the present day occur in our rivers, pools, and lakes. The incontrovertible fact that each human individual develops from an egg, which, in common with those of all animals, is a simple cell, most clearly proves that the most remote ancestors of man were primordial animals of this sort, of a form equivalent to a simple cell. When, therefore, the theory of the animal descent of man is condemned as a 'horrible, shocking, and immoral' doctrine, tho unalterable fact, which can be proved at any moment under the microscope, that the human egg is a simple cell, which is in no way different to those of other mammals, must equally be pronounced 'horrible, shocking, and immoral. ~ Ernst Haeckel

However much you are read in theory, if thou hast no practice thou art ignorant ~ Saadi

Study the lives of highly successful people from any corner of life, across history, in any environment, and you will discover they share one trait: They keep moving forward. Sometimes slowly. Often with great difficulty. Frequently after painful mistakes, defeats, or failures. Success is less about talent and opportunities, and more about commitment and motivation. ~ Joe Jordan

Under the present dispensation, the great majority of factories are little despotisms, benevolent in some cases, malevolent in others. Even where benevolence prevails, passive obedience is demanded by the workers, who are ruled by overseers, not of their own election, but appointed from above. In theory they may be the subjects of a democratic state; but in practice they spend the whole of their working lives as the subjects of a petty tyrant. ~ Aldous Huxley

According to quantum field theory, fields alone are real. They are the substance of the universe and not 'matter'. Matter is simply the momentary manifestation of interacting fields which, intangible and insubstantial as they are, are the only real things in the universe. ~ Gary Zukav

Toyota would be credited for its just-in-time theory of manufacturing, in which parts arrived from suppliers just in time to be part of the final assembly. But in any real sense that process began at the Rouge. Toasting Philip Caldwell, the head of Ford who in 1982 was visiting Japan, Eiji Toyoda, of the Toyota company, said, There is no secret to how we learned to do what we do, Mr. Caldwell. We learned it at the Rouge. ~ David Halberstam

You are either supporting the vision or supporting division ~ Saji Ijiyemi

This theory worked well for my sister, who has never been sick a day in her life, and is one of those Amazonian women who could squat in a field to have a baby and then pick the baby up and keep on hoeing, except also the field would be on fire, and she'd be all, "Fuck you, fire!" and walk through it like that scary robot in The Terminator. ~ Jenny Lawson

Once management is on board, the sales team needs to understand the rationale behind the micromarket strategy and have simple tools that make it easy to implement. That means aligning sales coverage with opportunity and creating straightforward sales "plays" for each type of opportunity. ~ McKinsey Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum

A good manager instills staff with self-confidence, teaches them to believe in themselves and helps them to realise their brilliance. Do not ever treat your staff with disrespect. It is competent until proven incompetent; not incompetent til proven competent. ~ Miya Yamanouchi

I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. Bu t my intellectual development was retarded,as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up. ~ Albert Einstein

Schools should look behind classroom doors and determine the factors that contribute to the kinds of interactions between teachers and students that promote student achievement. ~ James Heckman

The situation of the Old Left was the theory of Socialist Realism, etc. It seemed pointless to argue. We stayed carefully away from people who wrote for the New Masses. ~ George Oppen

Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Nobody is ever ready for the top job, despite what they may say. As long as there is at least one management layer above you, you are shielded. The management takes the final decisions and carries the ultimate responsibility for those decisions. Once you are at the top, reality hits and you feel the umbilical cord being cut. Now the buck stops with you. I ~ S. Ramadorai

My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic. ~ Brian Greene

Life is Time Management and then you're dead. ~ V. Vale

So that's when the witch somehow pulled off her own restraint and flung herself at me like a beautiful and deadly panther. I think she'd seen my stupid clipboard and realized that I'd been writing down sordid lies about her mental state. I'm very jealous of her, you see, and use my middle management position… ~ Cassandra Gannon

Life is so unlike theory. ~ Anthony Trollope

Women are taught that size doesn't matter, that it's the motion in the ocean. But this is a theory propagated by those bright guys with insecurities who need big theories. ~ Toni Bentley

His latest theory about his dealings with women isn't that he's lost his reason or that women are illogical (Deb, for instance, displays exemplary thought processes;) it's just that a certain vital part of the interface between them is strongly encrypted and requires some workaround. ~ Adam Felber

I have a theory: I believe that with the advent of the United States and the lawful definition of marriage, it was defined as between one man and one woman. It was anti-polygamy, in effect saying no man can hoard his women. ~ Ariel Pink

Here's my favorite bonehead concept from the 1990s in the Pentagon: the theory of anti-access, area-denial asymmetrical strategies. Why do we call it that? Because it's got all those A's lined up I guess. This is gobbledygook for 'If the United States fights somebody, we're going to be huge. They're going to be small.' ~ Thomas P.M. Barnett

[Evolution] doesn't mean God-guided, gradual creation. It means unguided, purposeless change. The Darwinian theory doesn't say that God created slowly. It says that naturalistic evolution is the creator, and so God had nothing to do with it. ~ Philip Johnson

Things just seem so much better in theory than in practice. ~ Chris Wooding

I operate under the theory that all publicity is good publicity, and then, if that theory doesn't work, you just say that any newspaper article ends up on the bottom of the parrot cage. But, of course, you can't line a parrot cage with Internet bloggers, can you? ~ Joel Edgerton

No part of mathematics is ever, in the long run, "useless." Most of number theory has very few "practical" applications. That does not reduce its importance, and if anything it enhances its fascination. No one can predict when what seems to be a most obscure theorem may suddenly be called upon to play some vital and hitherto unsuspected role. ~ C. Stanley Ogilvy

Cranks live by theory, not by pure desire. They want votes, peace, nuts, liberty, and spinning-looms not because they love these things, as a child loves jam, but because they think they ought to have them. That is one element which makes the crank. ~ Rose Macaulay

We don't have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many. ~ Larry Page

Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise - bureaucrats. ~ Alvin Toffler

his theory that all of the world's problems were caused by notions of ethnic virtue and that if marriages were limited to interracial lovers there would be peace on earth. There ~ Jim Harrison

It's important for me to show my children the richness of life and be a role model. I find that my organizational and management skills are tested more at home than at work! ~ Susan Wojcicki

In the early days of the video game business, everybody played. The question is, what happened? My theory - and I think it's pretty well borne out - is that in the '80s, games got gory, and that lost the women. And then they got complex, and that lost the casual gamer. ~ Nolan Bushnell

I don't care. I want that one out. We can't afford a stampede. Find some polite way to get rid of him." Anderson pulls over another stack of paychecks waiting for his signature.
Hock Seng tries again. "Khun, negotiating with the union is a complicated thing."
"That's why I have you. It's called delegating." Anderson continues flipping the papers.
"Yes, of course." Hock Seng regards him drily. "Thank you for your management instruction. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

The future science of government should be called 'la cybernétique' (1843)

{Coining the French word to mean 'the art of governing,' from the Greek (Kybernetes = navigator or steersman), subsequently adopted as cybernetics by Norbert Wiener for the field of control and communication theory.} ~ Andre Marie Ampere

It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct. ~ Michio Kaku

Intellectuals ... advertise their superiority to political practice but are absolutely in its thrall ... It is no accident that Marxist theory and practice use the intellectuals as tools and keep them in brutal subservience. ~ Allan Bloom

The error in positivism is that it takes as its standard of truth the contingently given division of labor, that between the science and social praxis as well as that within science itself, and allows no theory that could reveal the division of labor to be itself derivative and mediated and thus strip it of its false authority. ~ Theodor Adorno

Most regular, two-year MBA programs provide both experience and the capacity to link together the essential elements of management such as finance, marketing, organizational behavior, and operations. ~ Warren Bennis

Time is management,look for he who keeps to time, he is a potential leader ~ Uzoma Kelechi

Project leaders need to focus on value in several ways: value determination (with product owners), value prioritization (backlog management), and value creation (iterative development). ~ Jim Highsmith

I do not believe in censorship, but I believe we already have censorship in what is called marketing theory, namely the only information we get in mainstream media is for profit. ~ Sam Sheppard

The final problem is called overdetermination (or, sometimes, multiple sufficient causes). Consider a firing squad that dispatches the condemned man with perfectly synchronized shots. If the first shooter had not fired, the prisoner would still be dead, so under the counterfactual theory his shot didn't cause the death. But the same is true of the second shooter, the third, and so on, with the result that none of them can be said to have caused the prisoner's death. But that is just crazy. ~ Steven Pinker

A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the theory of reincarnation. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle