The Puritan Gift

is the title of an excellent book by Kenneth and William Hopper. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

For a century and a half, historians have been asking themselves the chicken-and-egg question: which came first: Puritanism or Capitalism?

A system is a set of connected things or parts, bound together to a purpose.

No enemy is more terrible than money, and no friend is more trustworthy.

At the heart of the system lies mutual trust.

Given's approach was avowedly descriptive rather than prescriptive.

In spite of appearances, good decision-making is essentially the same in all walks of life.

A belief that life was not merely best understood, but also best experienced, as a struggle.

You do not own a dog and bark.

Statistics are a wonderful servant and an appalling master.

The Cult of the (so-called) Expert would severely damage the great tradition of 'generalist', 'hands-on' management.

No greater damage could be done to our economy or to our society than to attempt to 'professionalize' management by 'licensing' managers, for example, or by limiting access to management to people with a special academic degree [Peter Drucker, 1954].

I absolutely loathe the idea of professional management [Jeff Immelt, 2004].