“This book is to management writing what Lawrence Johnston’s Hidcote is to gardening. Whereas the latter is a “garden for all seasons”, the former is a reflection on management that never goes out of fashion. The book shows that in the context of social sciences and the humanities the meaning of management reflection can be seen and appreciated. Indeed, while some business schools have been dedicating themselves to building castles of managerialism, scholars and managers have been increasingly more concerned about the futility of such hollow gigantomania. The book offers a much-needed antidote to this ‘triumph of emptiness’ that has been attributed to much modern management. In fact, for the reader seeking meaningful management, it is a glorious find, offering refreshing ideas, answers, and questions to ponder, to delight in, struggle with.”

Monika Kostera, Professor Ordinaria of management and the humanities, University of Warsaw, Poland and professor at Södertörn University, Sweden

“This book is an admirable tour de force practicing thinking as an imaginative, curious and creative act that brings management to a place where readers have to agree - it must and can become something different. The holder of seemingly fixed certainties of management knowledge is seduced (led astray) into erudite conversations by Deslandes, the result of which is nothing short of an imaginative and timely diagnosis. A critique nouvelle, if you like, showing the ways to a ‘healthier’ management thinking and practice.”

Daniel Hjorth, Lund University School of Economics and Management, and Copenhagen Business School

“Deslandes considers management with an urbane and wry detachment, alive to the perhaps absurd preoccupation its exponents have with organizational performance and its continual improvement. His loose detachment allows him to ask basic, and so, at times, devastating questions of managers: ‘Why count?’, ‘Why correct?’ ‘Why use alliterative lists of threes, and so include here another ‘c’?’ In all this unpicking of, and picking at, the a priori of managerial practice, what comes to the fore is how much more enjoyable organizational life would be for all of us if managers paused awhile and took stock of their competitive jockeying for positions whose promise offers nothing more than a prospect from which new positions might be spied. Søren Kirkegaard suggested ‘the most ludicrous of all ludicrous things, it seems to me, is to be busy in the world, to be a man who is brisk at his meals and brisk at his work.’ Time and time again throughout this original and provocative book Deslandes reveal why. Written less a traditional narrative than a codex of impressionistic reviews of literary, artistic, and academic texts, Deslandes is relentless in questioning the questions to which managers have dedicated their lives, and in the process ruined the lives of others.”

Robin Holt, Professor of Strategy and Aesthetics, University of Bristol Business School, U.K.