Business Theory Versus Business Reality - Do Not Rely On Theories You Have Never Put Into Practice

Business Theory Versus Business Reality - Do Not Rely On Theories You Have Never Put Into Practice

There are plenty of business theories around, but many either never worked or no longer work. The popular theories of the text books at many business schools provide outdated theories that were questionable at best when they first were dreamed up. Experience will always trump mere theory and speculation.

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[kansamlatthanhot]

Thank you very much for very real words.

[dekimqik]

Hi, I graduated from a london business school with my MBA. I now find myself in a position where I am writing a paper on the academic/business practice knowledge gap for a local university. Obviously there is a lot of academic research and papers claiming that many managers are not using the best practices available, but few even try to explain why.


As a real life manager for 30 years before bothering with an MBA (it was a career requirement for me to advance) I have experienced first hand the UK business owners lack of trust and even scorn for "educated managers". Personally I think a little learning never hurt anyone but I dont think you can make a manager in a classroom, and also many "established" management theories have been overturned, found out to be untrue (the business case for diversity is under constant challenge even though a decade ago it was the big many others are just plain out of date.


I want to show a balanced picture on this but find it so much easier to find support for the academics (it is their profession(??) to writ about this stuff after all, the papers are their scorecard for many.


You seem to have looked into this somewhat, any chance you could give me some sources or anything usable in representing the business owners point of view please?

[elmomelmo]

What “theories” are you talking about that “don’t really work in the real world”?