Business

Management theory’s true believers

|RIFTON, NEW YORK

IN A world in which Pentagon generals benchmark the competition and British prime ministers strike performance contracts with the electorate, it should come as no surprise that fundamentalist religion is no protection against management theory. Even so, the Bruderhof, a Protestant sect loosely related to the Amish, would seem a strange convert. Its 2,600 members live in rural retreats in six settlements in the north-eastern United States and two in Britain, practising “Christian communism”. This involves their denouncing as evil such modernisms as rock music, television, abortion and materialism.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Management theory’s true believers”

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