I provoked an interesting flurry of academic exchanges on my Facebook account today. I posted on my ‘status’ that ‘Martin Westlake has just finished reading (yet) another management theory book and increasingly wonders why he bothers…’ The one that tipped me over the edge, so to speak, was Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, which I have indeed just finished. My point is not that Senge didn’t have something interesting to say, applying systems thinking to develop the concept of the learning organisation. And, to be fair to him, he said it a long time ago – in 1990, to be precise, so if a lot of what I read felt old hat it could be argued that this is because his thinking has had so much influence on business theory in the intervening two decades. Cyril Connolly once famously observed that imprisoned in every fat man, a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out. Well, echoing Connolly, my theory is that inside every fat business theory book there is a thin article wildly signalling to be let out. This is not the first time I have made this observation. But I suppose the books are a response to a perceived need for businessmen to sport these sorts of titles on their shelves, rather than actually to read them. I have started reading another, very different, sort of management theory primer, but that will have to wait until my next post…