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As I just commented recently on another story here, I am reading "Good to Great" and I tend to agree somewhat. Social science is different from real science, though, and there may be a valid research approach behind Mr. Collins and his team. Its just not clear. And seeing Fannie Mae on the list of "great" companies is just laughable.

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I agree that social science is different from the physical sciences, but that's not an excuse for the cargo cult science that dominates the field. Read Historians' Fallacies for a view of how the social sciences should approach their work. (http://www.amazon.com/Historians-Fallacies-Toward-Historical...).

Social sciences have well-developed methodologies for dealing with fallacies. http://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Quasi-Experimental-Design... is the bible, and is mostly taught to doctoral students. But chances are Mr. Collins has never heard of it, since he's in business faculty. But he might have, and might actually have a solid research design. Just that its hard to tell from the book.

The practice of management in the real world is full of imperfections, because its about people, and people are imperfect.

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