The passion of words in management

In a recent Harvard Business Review article that we read for Management class, Gary Hamel (2009) urges us to humanize the language and practice of business. "To create organizations that are almost human in their capacity to adapt, innovate, and engage, management pioneers must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals...These timeless virtues have long inspired human beings to extraordinary accomplishment and can no longer be relegated to the fringes of management."

Hamel claims that the discipline of management relies too much on words like "focus," "advantage," "superiority," "differentiation," and "value." He claims that these words are far less likely to invoke an emotional response than words like "love," "beauty," "truth," "honor," and "justice."

I decided to perform an empirical test of this claim. With the help of our 49 CIMBA students in Intro to Management, I asked them to assign a value of 1 to 5 (completely disagree - completely agree) to indicate the extent to which each of these words inspired feelings of passion. The results? Hamel is correct, at least in this sample population. Nearly all of the corporate word - emotional word pairings proved to be different in statistically significant ways. The only exceptions were some pairings with the word "value," which indicates that this word has far more depth and complexity in interpretation than differentiation, superiority, focus or advantage.

You can view the results yourself by clicking here. Send me your comments!

Hamel, G. 2009. Moon shots for management. Harvard Business Review, 87(2): 91-98.