Talk:In Search of Excellence/Archives/2013

another book parodying the title

A recent slashdot review of In Search of Stupidity made an interesting remark:

"In Search of Stupidity gets its title from the classic, albeit infamous business book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies, by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. In Search of Excellence quickly became a best-seller when it came out in 1988 and launched a new era of management consultants and business books. But in 2001, Peters admitted that he falsified the underlying data. Librarians have been slow to move the book to the fiction section."

If someone familiar with the book can address this, it might be an interesting addition to the article. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

It was already in the article before a revert by Wookiepedian. I posted a comment about the current version of this story here. MaxEnt 20:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

fast company's story out of context?

"Tom Peters did not admit to "faking the data" in any substantive way. He poked a sharp pin into self-importance of business consulting (and by implication their purportedly yet rarely-in-practice objective data-driven metholodogy) that the editor of Fast Company then spun for cheap thrills and effect." http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207914&cid=16957330

This references says Peters admittedly faked the data.

• "The Real Confessions of Tom Peters - Did In Search of Excellence fake data? A magazine suggests it did", by John A. Byrne, in Businessweek, December 3, 2001

But the article takes back what the headline promises. Actually, Peters said that he did not fake the data and was "pissed" at the magazine (for using the misleading headline).

Wikipedia should not propagate the error. --Uncle Ed 03:59, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I had to read this stupid book in college. Going by my gut, I didn't trust the damn thing one bit. It seemed like nothing more than a pamphlet-sized book to be purchased and lightly skimmed by executives, a quick way to make a buck while doing no real research, no real work. They did not really get to know the companies profiled, did not do a rigorous analysis of the numbers, they just took the word of other people who said it was a great company and ran with it. If this book were written just before Enron and Worldcom hit the rocks, both of those companies would have been among the top contenders. Just look at the articles written in that time period, nobody saw through the smoke and mirrors, they were just repeating and building upon the myths spun by the rock star CEO's. The criticism section should be expanded. --Gmuir (talk) 16:47, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Huh. I hadn't seen this before I added this material, which apparently has been in the article before. I don't know what happened in December 2007, but if Peters himself uses the words "we faked the data," that's highly relevant and completely fair to include. The passage I included is a long one and uses Peters' own words to describe what he did. Basically he and his coauthor pretended to have done something which they didn't do. They pretended to have done objective research when they really were using anecdote and water-cooler talk. If there is a BusinessWeek article about this article, and if it has Peters taking back what he said, fine, include that too.

I am also flabbergasted by Peters' remark that comments such as "If these companies are so excellent, Peters, then why are they doing so badly now?" "pretty much misses the point." Off to find the Business Week article. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:18, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I think I've made a fair summary of what the BusinessWeek article says.

I think the material should stand. If Peters allowed the material to be published under his byline, then he ought to stand by it. If he didn't want to, he should simply have insisted that Webber, not Peters, be credited as author. If Peters allowed himself to be interviewed for six hours and was given an opportunity to review the article prior to publication, it was at the very least inexplicably careless of him not to go over the "confessions" point by point. Without access to a transcript of the actual interview, I don't see how anyone can tell whether or not Fast Company distorted the gist of what Peters actually said to Webber. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is Tom Peters' response. And here is an article from Forbes tracking the performance of the companies mentioned in In Search of Excellence.--Spectaculate (talk) 16:07, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 13:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality and sources

I'm going to tag this article as POV because it seems written from the authors' point of view and one doesn't get the sense that the book is widely regarded as debunked. Following the further reading links and refs from the The Halo Effect (business book) article, you'll find several unfavourable reviews and comments on In Search of Excellence which aren't mentioned here. Conversely, it has been hard to find negative reviews or comments on The Halo Effect, so it would be worth editing in some content to that article if you have it, e.g. Peters' response. MartinPoulter (talk) 10:58, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why an article about a book shouldn't present the author's point of view. That's what a book like this is. But as it is, the criticism and faking data sections accounut for roughly 50% of the article - so it's hard to see how it suffers from the author's point of view. I wouldn't be so quick to write off the book based other points of view. In my opinion, the article fairly represents the contents. For the record I worked for a company profiled in the follow-on A Passion for Excellence. I was able to watch this profile before joining the company and was a true skeptic. But after a year I was a total convert. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.192.20.5 (talk) 19:58, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Formatted by Rumiton (talk) 07:53, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 04:24, 27 June 2013 (UTC)