Management Books - Gurus or what??

I've been reading a couple of articles looking at the concept of management gurus and came across this story which is either outrageous or really clever and I'm still not sure which.

In 1995, management gurus Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema secretly purchased 50,000 copies of their business strategy book The Discipline of Market Leaders from stores across the nation. The stores they purchased from just happened to be the ones whose sales are monitored to select books for the New York Times bestseller list. Despite mediocre reviews, their book made the bestseller list. Subsequently, the book sold well enough to continue as a bestseller without further demand intervention by the authors
Bikhchandani, S., Hirshleifer, D., & Welch, I. (1998). Learning from the behavior of others: Conformity, fads, and informational cascades. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(3), 151-170. 
The central question for me is just where should we (managers, strategists, leaders etc) be getting advice and education from regarding what is and what isn't best practice?  What is and isn't backed up by credible research?  What we should and shouldn't be doing?

It seems like the management guru (and publishing) industries are taking over from the traditional academic communities and on the whole this doesn't appear to be a good thing.  I remember starting (well done to those who finished it) to read Jack Welch's biography and my recollection of it was a collection of stories about making decisions on Americas most expensive golf courses.  Is this what we should be aspiring to????

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