Investigating the rhetorics and realities of popular management literature, this concise text offers a very distinctive challenge to the conventional wisdom that now underpins the theory and practice of managerial leadership.

Taking the best-selling management book, Good to Great, as a starting point, the author notes that popular management promises a serious conversation on the processes and practices of business and yet fails to deliver upon this covenant. Exploring the conduct of those organizations featured within Good to Great, the author examines the omissions and elisions that sustain the core narrative. In doing so, the author allows readers to draw back the curtain of greatness and to recognize that business bullshit has covered a multitude of sins.

This short-form book will be enlightening reading for scholars and reflective practitioners with an interest in leadership or management, organizations, and management history.

David Collins is Professor in Management at the University of Northumbria and a Research Fellow with Transilvania Executive Education (TEE), Romania. In an academic career spanning more than 35 years, David Collins has acquired a reputation for a body of scholarly work that is critical, often challenging, and yet thoroughly engaging. He is known, particularly, for his work on Tom Peters and ‘the excellence project’; for his work on ‘popular management’; and for his work on narratives and storytelling within business contexts. A graduate of the universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde, and Essex, David is British by birth and Scottish by the grace of God.