THE METAKNOWLEDGE ADVANTAGE: The Key to Success in the New Economy

The title may sound futuristic, but the advice couldn't be more old-fashioned. Promising a "foundation for management in the twenty-first century," Aguayo recycles everything from quality control to personality testing, with chaos theory, multiple intelligences and ethics thrown in for good measure. The plodding, didactic tone certainly doesn't add any freshness, despite the repetitive trumpeting of this allegedly new paradigm's transformative powers. (And with the insistence on the precise capitalization of "MetaKnowledge," one constantly expects to see trademark signs establishing the author's proprietary stake.) The rationale for MetaKnowledge and its components is often flimsy, as in the declaration that theories from life sciences are applicable because "business is a branch of life." Aguayo relies heavily upon the original developers of his various pet theories, adding little in the way of original thought beyond juxtaposing them. The sections dealing with quality control, for example, retrace the ideas of past masters Walter Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming, the subject of Aguayo's previous book and an obvious touchstone of his thinking. The pattern holds steady through the other chapters. Some assertions, like assigning Myers-Briggs personality types to people who never took the tests, are dubious at best, while other passages are stunningly obvious: proclaiming that "there is no dichotomy between good business and ethics," Aguayo names Nelson Mandela as "a model for all of us." Readers expecting a radical "metaphysics for management" will be disappointed in MetaKnowledge, an old bill of goods in not-so-shiny new packaging. (Jan.)