Irrational Institutions: Business, Its Leaders, and The Lean Movement

For more than a century people have speculated why business leaders resist or reject new systems of progressive management. The first comprehensive analysis of this problem appeared in the book The Triumph of Classical Management Over Lean Management (2018). Irrational Institutions examines this problem from a different direction using two new analytical methods. It explores how irrationality functions within the institutions of business, leadership, and the Lean movement, and how the social habits of thought and action that produce these institutions thwart efforts to impose rationality in leadership and management practice. Irrational Institutions critiques the aesthetics of the institution leadership and the Lean movement, and describes how aesthetics function as a powerful mechanism to maintain the status quo despite the obvious need for change.