Percy Barnevik’s 200 Advice- Corporate Bullshit or Scientifically Proven Praxis : A picture of how well Guru Theory in general and Percy Barnevik specifically is connected to management research and practice

• Main Authors: Öster, Ella Erika, Sjögren, Emilie
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen 2014
• Subjects: Percy Barnevik; Advice; Rigor; Relevance; Evidence; Guru Theory; Evidence Based Management; Managers; Practitioners; Management Research
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-233152

Percy Barnevik is one example of a renowned leader publishing a book, “Leadership- 200 advice”, on his experiences as a manager. The overall quantity of this so called Guru Literature on the market demonstrate that it exist a great interest in advice from business leaders but further raise a question of soundness of the advice. The aim with the thesis is to generate a picture of how well Guru Theory in general and Percy Barnevik specifically is connected to management research and practice. What constitute evidence is often debated within the management research field and scholars mean that one cannot assume a fact without any evidence created from research. This leads to a discussion about rigor and relevance and how management research should be designed to create a rigorous study, without overshadowing its practical relevance to the operating business. To answer the research question, interviews were executed with complementary questionnaires. In order to create a picture of what kind of anchoring Barnevik’s advice have in management theory a literature review was conducted. It is possible to see that the majority of the practitioners compared to research have a different level of cohesiveness with Barnevik regarding the studied advice. Practitioners, tend to a high level agree with Barnevik although management research stand for a more hesitant approach. Our conclusions are that management researchers should consider Guru Theory to a greater extent rather than discard it. This we believe could generate relevant research contributions to practitioners and add rigor to an unscientific field of theories