"Frequent topics of Mr. Adams's satire are the ever-changing, ever-trendy new management theories -- each with its own buzzwords and euphemisms like 're-engineering' and 'rightsizing' -- adopted by his and his E-mail correspondents' companies. Mr. Adams has his own theories as to why they fail. 'First, all of that stuff like 'total quality" and 'worker empowerment' are things that make a lot of sense -- and smart people will implement them in a few specific areas where they work,' he said. 'But then the theory becomes a religion. People try to implement it everywhere because, well, you gotta get on board. So it gets misapplied."Secondly, there aren't that many smart people. So the guy who wrote the book would know how to do it, but he doesn't work at your company. So I think it's just people being dolts, basically. And there's no idea that's so good you can't ruin it with a few well-placed idiots."