Question
Should the TV Show "The Office" be taught in universities?
Answer
Well.... first, thanks :)
Second, I admit I myself am a bit of a skeptic here. Most of the people who have resonated strongly with the GP series have liked it because it helped them make sense of their *past* career, and understand specific people and interpersonal histories, with 20/20 hindsight. Without data from your personal career to validate the general ideas/conjectures, I think both the show and my posts would be a lot less compelling/useful. I suspect for most people, any truth in the show/my series is only recognizable with hindsight.
That said, I've met a few people who claim it has helped them avoid having to learn things the hard way. Whether they actually learned anything, or are merely romanticizing things...only time will tell. I am not very old... only 35, but some of the excited "I wanna be a sociopath" comments I get from 22 year-olds make me feel old and tired. If you could become one simply by deciding to become one...I'd be very surprised. My own material is decidedly (and deliberately) non-prescriptive. I think people underestimate the effort it takes to turn this into a prescription. First, you need to make 7 horcruxes...
Lastly: you should be aware that the GP series is very unorthodox at a philosophical level. American management education in particular is based on deep foundations of optimism, positive thinking and humanist values. It doesn't show up in very obvious ways, but it seeps into students heads via osmosis. By contrast, management students from nearly anywhere else in the world manage to absorb at least a small and robust sense of pessimism and skepticism. In some ways, there is nothing very new in the show or in my writing. Nietzsche covered it pretty well in the 19th century. And he isn't exactly the most popular philosopher in America. They mangle his ideas into the optimistic dreck that is Ayn Rand.
Actually, it would be interesting to see if any management professor would be willing to introduce a course called "philosophy of management" with Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" as one of the key texts... I am betting not.
Venkat
Second, I admit I myself am a bit of a skeptic here. Most of the people who have resonated strongly with the GP series have liked it because it helped them make sense of their *past* career, and understand specific people and interpersonal histories, with 20/20 hindsight. Without data from your personal career to validate the general ideas/conjectures, I think both the show and my posts would be a lot less compelling/useful. I suspect for most people, any truth in the show/my series is only recognizable with hindsight.
That said, I've met a few people who claim it has helped them avoid having to learn things the hard way. Whether they actually learned anything, or are merely romanticizing things...only time will tell. I am not very old... only 35, but some of the excited "I wanna be a sociopath" comments I get from 22 year-olds make me feel old and tired. If you could become one simply by deciding to become one...I'd be very surprised. My own material is decidedly (and deliberately) non-prescriptive. I think people underestimate the effort it takes to turn this into a prescription. First, you need to make 7 horcruxes...
Lastly: you should be aware that the GP series is very unorthodox at a philosophical level. American management education in particular is based on deep foundations of optimism, positive thinking and humanist values. It doesn't show up in very obvious ways, but it seeps into students heads via osmosis. By contrast, management students from nearly anywhere else in the world manage to absorb at least a small and robust sense of pessimism and skepticism. In some ways, there is nothing very new in the show or in my writing. Nietzsche covered it pretty well in the 19th century. And he isn't exactly the most popular philosopher in America. They mangle his ideas into the optimistic dreck that is Ayn Rand.
Actually, it would be interesting to see if any management professor would be willing to introduce a course called "philosophy of management" with Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" as one of the key texts... I am betting not.
Venkat