Mindless Drivel (aka the state of modern academic literature)

Greetings,

I am nearing the end of the "key stone" class for my MBA:  Strategic Management.  After this I have three more classes left to go before I am finished.  Hooray!  And....... at this point I think it's fair to say I have started noticing a trend in a large percentage of the required class textbooks.  What is this trend you ask?  Mindless drivel, I say.

I have a couple theories on why this is the case:

1. Those Darn Greedy Corporations.  Academic textbook producers want to increase their profits by writing new books and new editions of books as fast as possible for all the classes being taught out there.  The newer editions of these books may not be necessary, but they pump them out anyway.  Some instructors then feel they ought to be "teaching the latest material" to their students.  (It does make sense!)  But, whether or not the newer edition of book X actually delivers on that promise is quite up for debate.  Either way, the textbook companies get what they want.....  namely students purchasing the newer required edition, instead of buying and selling the previous edition from each other at a lesser cost (which produces no revenue for textbook companies).
   
   The result is textbooks are pumped out faster than they need to be.  With books being written in haste, quality is not the priority.  On the other hand, consider non-textbook-writing authors.  These authors write a book they want to sell to the world; they take their time to get it right and make it provide value of some sort.  If the book is good then it will sell because of its quality and popularity.  When the 12th edition of textbook X is produced, its success is not dependent on becoming a New York Time's best seller and getting that fancy stamp imprinted on the front cover.  No.  Instead, schools offering class A that uses textbook X (11th edition) will simply upgrade over time to textbook X (12th edition).  There is no large incentive for the upgraded book to be more than mediocre in order to generate sales.
   
   
2. Multi-author books.  Take the book I am reading for class now:  Competing for Advantage by....  Hoskisson, Hitt, Ireland, and Harrison!  Really?  This 381 page book needed FOUR authors?  That's funny because I just finished reading Name of the Wind, a book that was 672 pages, written by one mere mortal man (Patrick Rothfuss), and of excellent quality.  Ok ok... mayhaps my logic is faulty.  The book I was referencing was fiction after all, and I am comparing that to a textbook....   which should be fact....  right?  :-)  Maybe there is a reason they used four authors instead of one.  Perhaps the company was only able to find four semi-competent authors who, each contributing material from their particular domain of expertise, were able to produce a semi-competent (?) textbook.
   
   This multi-author scenario encourages poor quality for another reason: free loaders.  Perhaps 2 out of the 4 authors put forth a good deal of effort in making their portions highly intelligible.  Perhaps the other 2 do not.  Who is going to take the blame and who will get the praise?  Well, from looking at the book I don't see any way of determining which author write which chapter!  The mediocre authors can hide because they are part of a group.  Anyway, it has been shown that a person is more motivated to higher performance when it is clear that the success or failure of that work will be directly correlated with that person.  In other words, clear task ownership.
   
   
3. Chapters towards the end of textbooks.  These chapters have an even higher probability of being garbage.  I believe this is because they assume most people won't have the stamina to make it to the later chapters.  If there are university employees who actually put forth effort to read potential textbooks before buying them.....  they probably won't make it to those later chapters before making their decision.  Correlating with point #2 above, they probably relegate the chapters written by the especially stupid/boring/unintelligible authors towards the end of the book in hopes they won't be discovered.

The book I'm reading for my current class, Competing for Advantage, is somewhat of a mixed bag.  (Other books I have had to read for previous classes have been more clearly bad.)  For this particular book, I'll read one really good chapter...  and all the concepts are fairly well presented and make sense.  The sentences even logically follow each other.  Then I read the next chapter and I am being stabbed in the eye with what is largely mindless drivel.  Sometimes I am being stabbed in both eyes simultaneously, which makes it difficult to continue reading because of all the blood and eye goop splatter across the pages and because of the fact that I can no longer see.

You want some examples?  Great!  Now I get to share the reason I stopped reading my chapter tonight and opted for writing a blog post instead.  (Which goes to show that inspiration doesn't always have to come from something beautiful.)  Following are some excerpts from my book.  Keep in mind these quotes are coming sequentially out of my book -- one sentence after another.  I am not picking random sentences from different chapters and slamming them violently together.  (Although that sounds strangely appealing right now.)

And..... starting on page 278....

"But fostering multiple and dispersed capabilities is also a challenge.  Firms have been effectively managing 'centers of excellence' as they emerge in foreign subsidiaries to help with this challenge."

• When is the last time someone you know has "emerged in foreign subsidiaries"?  What an awkward way to say something.  Ok, the author mentions "centers of excellence" here, which sounds kind of intriguing.  I wonder what one of those things is or does?

"An example would be firms in the global automobile industry, which are choosing the transnational strategy to deal with global trends."

• Global trends?  That's pretty broad.....  I get the suspicion you might just be throwing around buzz words, but I'm still listening.  I am actually interested in this "example" you mention, which might make things easier to understand...

"Many of these companies produce automobiles with a basic design that is standard through the world but also a variety of models that reflect local markets."

• Ok....  is this part of the example yet?

"Standard designs help create efficiencies in engineering and production, while customized models appeal to individual markets."

• Right.  That actually makes sense.  Please go on...

"Also, automobile companies are increasing their production of models in the countries where they are sold."

• Okaay......    .....     ....although I'm not really sure what this has to do with the books definition of transnational strategy....  HEY.  Where is my example of "centers of excellence"?  I have not forgotten.

"For example, in 1999 Ford spent $150 million on a plant near St. Petersburg, Russia.  In 2006, New York Motors in southwest Moscow sold more cars than any other Ford dealership in the world."

• What?  Why do I care how much the new plant in Russia cost?  Ok... so a dealership did really well selling Ford vehicles in Russia.  And....   I guess this somehow proves your point that companies are increasingly producing in countries where they are going to sell?  Did you really need to prove this to me with an example?  Or were you just hoping I would be lulled to sleep by unimportant information and never finish your chapter, saving you the embarrassment of one more human having read it?
  
  
• I have to stop and point out that this book is FILLED TO THE BRIM with needless examples that are usually only (at most) vaguely related to the current concept being taught.  I know I may sound harsh, but by this point I have read so very many of these pointless "examples that tie into the real world" but are really "just filler to make the book longer and more painful".

"Ford's prosperity in Russia, however, is in stark contract to its lackluster performance in its domestic market."

• Okaaaaay....   and the point of telling me this is..... what exactly?  Or were you just trying to fill out your required 20-30 pages per chapter?  Strange how these chapters are all similar in size, when reason would dictate some concepts simply don't need as many pages to get their point across.
  
  
• So, also, I was thinking......... where is my @#$*ing EXAMPLE???  Oh well, at least the author started off well-intentioned, even if he completely failed to follow through like a total lackwit ne'r-do-well.

Lastly, I would like to close with buzzwords.  Have you seen those word clouds that depict how often certain words are used by the size of the words?  I have decided to generate a word cloud that will accurately demonstrate the frequency of words/buzzwords used throughout my textbook.

And here it is:

(Thanks to WordItOut.com for the word cloud creation tool.)

BLAMMO!!  See you don't need to get an MBA anymore!  Just memorize this list of words, use them with the frequency indicated by the word's size, and soon you too can be a blabber-mouthed business professional spouting off all sorts of intelligent sounding phrases.... and who knows.... you might even score a book deal!

Side note:  There actually are some valuable things I have learned from this class and the ones before it.  But there also really are parts where the authors seem to be literally saying nothing of importance while spouting out buzzwords like they are hotcakes emitting from some kind of highly-operational hotcake fountain.  Furthermore, it's good stress relief for me to criticize and make fun of the bad stuff.  So I feel better now, and that's the important thing isn't it?  ME.  ;-)

Last side note:  One of my favorite buzzwords from the book:  "hypercompetition."  Definition:  basically things are.... uh.... really, really..  real competitive.  And stuff.  GLOBALIZATION!  

And that is all for now.  Goodnight.  I have succeeded in not reading my chapter or taking my quiz.  (Winning.)