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Who Are the Gurus' Gurus?

One thing is clear: They’re not the usual suspects.

by Laurence Prusak and Thomas H. Davenport

Laurence Prusak is an independent researcher and consultant and a Distinguished Fellow in residence at Babson College in Wellesley,

Massachusetts. Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at

Babson College and an Accenture Fellow.

It’s not always obvious where management ideas come from. In our recent book, What’s the Big Idea?, we

sought to make plain how these ideas originate and make their way through organizations and how “idea

practitioners” can better judge and apply them. In the course of that work, we set out to identify the most

influential living management thinkers and business intellectuals—the “gurus” who develop, package, and often

broadcast breakthrough business ideas. We employed a quantitative, objective method (based on a combination

of Internet search hits, media mentions, and book and article citations) and came up with a list of 200 names.

Shelley once said that poets are the

unacknowledged legislators of mankind.

Perhaps the names on this gurus’ gurus list are

the poets’ equivalent in the business world.

As our research progressed, several gurus suggested that it might be equally interesting to report on those who

had most influenced them—to create a “gurus’ gurus” list. After all, if our original guru list was critical to

understanding contemporary management thinking, it would surely be illuminating to unveil the gurus behind

the gurus. So, we asked our 200 gurus who their gurus were, and we received more than 60 responses. The

“gurus' gurus” who received at least two mentions are listed in the accompanying table.

The Gurus' Gurus

Sidebar F0312A_A (Located at the end of this

article)

Some names, of course, appear on both the original guru list and the gurus’ gurus list, but their rankings vary.

Peter Drucker is highly influential in the public eye and among gurus; he was fourth on our original gurus list,

and, with eight mentions, heads the gurus’ gurus list. James March, a Stanford-based social scientist, however,

is much more a gurus’ guru than a guru to the general public. He finished second on the gurus’ gurus list and

48th on the original list. Paul Lawrence, a Harvard-based organizational behavior expert who is fourth on the

gurus’ gurus list, doesn’t appear on the original list at all. Leaders such as Bill Gates, Andrew Grove, and Jack

Welch scored high on the original, but each got relatively few or no mentions from the gurus themselves.

A number of points struck us as we contemplated the gurus’ gurus list and the comments that accompanied the

names. One is chronological. As we make our way into the twenty-first century, much of what we read and learn

about business comes from people born in the early twentieth century and even in the nineteenth century. The

durability of management ideas through all of the past century’s technological and economic transformations is

something to ponder. What business fundamentals transcend the immediate environment? Long ago, John

Maynard Keynes pointed out that even the least reflective businessman is a slave to the ideas of dead

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Harvard Business Review Online | Who Are the Gurus' Gurus?

economists. Interestingly, our gurus’ gurus list does contain a few dead economists (among them, Simon,

Schumpeter, and Marx), but they are of the least orthodox kind and hardly what Keynes had in mind. And there

are more dead (and alive) sociologists than there are economists on the list!

We were curious to find out how many of these names would be familiar to managers. So we asked a sample of

executives if they knew of Beckhard, Mintzberg, March, or Weick. Although we sometimes got a glimmer of

recognition, more often we received blank looks. Shelley once said that poets are the unacknowledged

legislators of mankind. Perhaps the names on this gurus’ gurus list are the poets’ equivalent in the business

world. We recommend the gurus’ gurus list to anyone who wants to achieve a more thorough understanding of

the “legislation” that influences business each day.

We were also struck by how intellectually fragmented the list is. Historians, psychologists, sociologists, and

anthropologists mingle freely with one-of-a-kind polymaths (actually three or four of them), economists,

systems analysts, and a few difficult-to-classify folks. What a diverse mix! If few of business’s many, many

practitioners have had much influence on management theory, what does this tell us about the value of the

“standard model” economics and organizational behavior that academics continue to teach? And since so many

of us spend so much time in so many organizations of all kinds, why has so much energy been devoted to work

that has had so little influence?

Finally, what can we make of the discovery that, of the 280 names mentioned by our gurus, the most popular

received only eight votes? Is there any other field besides management theory where there is such radical

fragmentation and lack of defining figures? We think not. Is management so complex or so new a field that there

hasn’t been time for dominant or consensual founding fathers to emerge? Is management a real discipline or

just a collection of people from across disciplines commenting on one of the most fundamental arenas of modern

life?

Reprint Number F0312A

The Gurus' Gurus

Sidebar F0312A_A

We asked 200 management gurus—the business thinkers most often mentioned in the media and management

literature—who their gurus were. Below are their responses.

Eight Mentions

Peter Drucker: Management theorist

Seven Mentions

James March: Social scientist at Stanford

Six Mentions

Herbert Simon (1916–2001): Nobel laureate economist and organizational theorist

Five Mentions

Paul Lawrence: Organizational researcher at Harvard Business School

Four Mentions

Richard Beckhard (1918–1999): Management theorist at MIT • Fernand Braudel (1902–1985): French

historian • Henry Mintzberg: Management writer and critic at McGill • Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950):

Economist at Harvard • Karl Weick: Social psychologist at the University of Michigan

Three Mentions

Russell Ackoff: Operations and systems theorist at Wharton • Warren Bennis: Leadership theorist and writer

at the University of Southern California • Ronald Coase: Nobel laureate economist at the University of Chicago

• W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993): Statistician and quality consultant • Erving Goffman (1922–1982):

Sociologist • Gary Hamel: Consultant and management writer • Jay Lorsch: Organizational researcher at

Harvard Business School • Michael Porter: Professor of strategy and competitiveness at Harvard Business

School • C.K. Prahalad: Management theorist at the University of Michigan • Jack Welch: Former CEO,

General Electric • Oliver Williamson: Organizational economist at the University of California, Berkeley

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Harvard Business Review Online | Who Are the Gurus' Gurus?

Two Mentions

Chris Argyris: Organizational psychologist at Harvard • Kenneth Arrow: Nobel laureate economist at Stanford

• Gregory Bateson (1904–1980): Anthropologist • Daniel Bell: Sociologist at Harvard • John Seely Brown:

Former chief scientist at Xerox • Alfred Chandler: Historian at Harvard Business School • C. West

Churchman: Systems theorist • James Collins: Management writer and consultant • Eric Erikson

(1902–1994): Psychological-growth theorist at Harvard • Michel Foucault (1926–1984): French polymath •

Anthony Giddens: British sociologist • Andrew Grove: Former CEO, Intel • Everett Hughes (1897–1983):

Sociologist • Michael Jensen: Organizational strategist and former professor at Harvard Business School •

Stuart Kauffman: Biologist, chaos and complexity theorist • Kurt Lewin (1890–1947): Social psychologist •

Karl Marx (1818–1883): German economist and social theorist • Douglas McGregor (1906–1964):

Management theorist at MIT • Robert K. Merton (1910–2003): Sociologist at Columbia • Geoffrey Moore:

Management writer and consultant • Richard Pascale: Management writer and consultant • Jeffrey Pfeffer:

Business professor at Stanford • Paul Samuelson: Nobel laureate economist at MIT • Edgar Schein:

Psychologist and management scholar at MIT • Adrian Slywotsky: Management writer and consultant •

Frederick Taylor (1856–1915): The “father of scientific management” • John Van Maanen: Ethnographer at

MIT • Sidney Winter: Economist at Wharton

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