Editorial

Editorial

With two full volumes of the re-launched Journal of Management History (JMH) now produced, I find there is a certain rhythm to the editorial process, reflected in the notion of scholarly publishing as a means of contributing to the knowledge base through a critical exchange of “communications” (journal articles), facilitated by those individually and collectively responsible for that process. I had reason recently to explore this notion in the context of a short paper for Global Focus, the publication of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), and would like to share some of those thoughts here, as a way of introducing the latest input to scholarly publishing by the contributors to JMH.

Then First Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Joseph Henry (2007, p. 20) once observed that “The worth and importance of the (Smithsonian) Institution are not to be estimated by what it accumulates within the walls of its building, but by what it sends forth to the world.” As Henry's quote suggests, exploring ways in which knowledge might be better organized and disseminated is not just a modern concern. In the area of engineering, for example, Hapke (2005) discusses the efforts of Oscar Lasche early in the twentieth century to “reproduce what is known with highest efficiency and pedagogical fortune and `to permanently keep the productive engineer up-to-date about the most actual achievements with the aim to stimulate his research activity'”. Before we became obsessed with publication as a means to tenure, promotion and business school ratings, with RAEs (UK), RQFs (Australia), PBFMs (New Zealand) and variations on the theme, journals were published ostensibly to provide a medium for exchange of ideas, arguments and research findings among the community of scholars, and any interested practitioners.

A recent presentation by Urs (2007) drew attention to two divergent views about scholarly information and its communication. On the one hand, scholarly information can be viewed as a cultural good to be circulated within communities. On the other, scholarly information is viewed as a commodity, to be circulated as with any other commercial transaction that does not assume ongoing interdependence. These views, which have probably existed since the first scientific journals were published in 1665 (Dibner Library, 2000; The Royal Society, 2007), have taken on new significance since the arrival of the internet revolutionised the production and distribution of scholarly knowledge.

For more than 300 years, scientific journals have been published, more or less regularly, as a medium and means of exchange of ideas, arguments and research findings. Whether or not under the aegis of a scholarly society, the journals, with their editors, editorial advisory boards and panels of reviewers, have provided the (usually discipline based) frameworks for the necessary quality assurance processes that ensure readers would find valid and reliable contributions to knowledge within their pages. This process has been embedded within an essentially linear production model, where authors with something to say submitted their papers to editors who reviewed them and had them revised before them to the publishers who produced the finished products and sent them on to the libraries and readers who were the end-users. The quality of journals, and the research results, arguments and theoretical frameworks they presented, have been judged by a variety of measures, including citation rates and rejection rates, and an assortment of stakeholders has used these measures to make judgements about, for example, submission, institutional ranking and research funding.

Recently though, the knowledge creation, transmission and transformation processes have been changed fundamentally. While the quality assurance processes remain in place, hard-copy journals have been overtaken by the internet as a means of exchange and full-text retrieval data bases have replaced the journals as the medium of exchange. At the same time, the emergence of open access (OA) initiatives such as Wikipedia has meant that the familiar, linear knowledge creation, transmission and transformation process has become more obviously the iterative, organic procedure it probably always has been. No longer are scholars to be found in the bowels of their favourite libraries trawling through journal titles, but in their offices, homes or hotel rooms, “googling” by keyword to find the most relevant articles for their needs. E-journals are no longer the bête noir but the medium by which even the scholarly associations disseminate their publications.

This is a knowledge creation and dissemination process, not embedded in a simple production line, but as part of a complex series of interconnected, molecular relationships with all the stakeholders, via the internet as the linking mechanism. Knowledge creation now is an obviously iterative process, where transmission times are measured in nanoseconds, authors can assess and respond to each other's work synchronously, and the “finished” product can be presented to readers in minutes rather than months. This characterisation applies as much to the management discipline as it does to any other area of scholarly endeavour. My aim in raising this issue in the context of the JMH not simply to find another forum to express these ideas. Rather, it is critical to continue to reinforce the importance of remembering how history does not simply precede the present – it is absorbed into the present and the future, shaping what we are and what we do (Deane, 1996).

Drawing on Boyer's (1990) four-part model of scholarship – the scholarship of discovery, of integration, of application and of representation – I have earlier observed that the scholarship of discovery and integration is the “bread and butter” of traditional academe, while the scholarship of application is the sine qua non of JMH as regards the implications we draw from our traditional scholarship in management history to apply to current management issues (Lamond, 2006). Satisfied that our conceptions of the past are developed in ways that, as far as possible, make them useful in creating our future, we then need to represent those conceptions in a meaningful way to those who wish to learn the lessons – we complete the cycle of scholarship in management history through our efforts to transmit and transform that which we have discovered, integrated and identified as relevant. I believe it is important for scholars and publishers alike to reassert the importance of publication as a medium for exchange within the various communities of interest, rather than as a commoditised means to other ends. And so to the latest issue...

In discussing a post-war dispute in Great Britain about whether supervisors were or were not part of “The Management” Urwick (1949, p. xiv) stated that:

...[this] barren controversy will continue as long as the word management is used not in one meaning, to denote the subject or an activity or a rank, but alternatively in all these different connotations.

Urwick (1949, p. xiii) called for the confusion in the use of the terms to be cleaned up, so that each word has only a single meaning and precise communication can be achieved. As he further noted:

... if the words used are to have an exact and single meaning it is imperative that the same word should not be used to describe status and function. Human beings are incapable of any objective discussion of the correct distribution of functions if, owing to the terms used, the problem becomes confused in their minds with their status as individuals, that is to say with their personal dignity, prospects of advancement, and desire for emoluments.

The confusion to which Urwick (1949) referred remains to this day, and now envelops a cluster of words that refers to “management” and its various derivatives. The ambiguous use in academic writing of the terms “managerial behaviour” “managerial jobs” and “managerial work” (Stewart, 1994, p. 2; Hales, 1993) has added to the confusion, such that even management as an academic discipline and a program of study is notoriously difficult to define (Australian Research Council, 1997). At the same time, even a cursory perusal of different business schools' websites reveals the variability in the curricula of “management” education programs, from a series of financial and operational tools and techniques to a fulsome consideration of the political, economic, social and technological context within which the responsibilities of the managerial cadre are enacted.

With this in mind, the editorial scoped of the JMH has been designed to encompass a broad church of ideas, including examination of established historical management concepts; the historical and continuing role of the behavioural sciences in the development of management practices; historical analysis of management philosophies; methodologies for dealing with historical management materials; the importance of the historical perspective in understanding contemporary management; and historical aspects of such workplace features as quality control, cultures, and occupational health and safety.

The preceding paragraphs have constituted a rather lengthy introduction to the first of this issue's articles, by Bátiz-Lazo et al. (2008), which considers the future of Rhineland capitalism across the Polish-German border. Bátiz-Lazo et al. (2008) examine the Rhenish capitalist governance model in the context of the transformation processes of Central-Eastern European economies and, in doing so, ascertain the presence of German management traditions as opposed to Anglo-American approaches to management in retail bank markets in a border region of the European Union. I have chosen to include this paper in the JMH because it is a thoughtful and well constructed commentary on the influence of context and tradition on different management styles and is very much in keeping with the scholarly tradition promoted by the journal.

The current and continuing interest in the industrial subcontracting (or outsourcing) that was once considered a unique feature of Japan's economic activity but is now globally ubiquitous, is contrasted by the decline in this form of linkage between companies large and small in Japan since about 1981 (Subrahmanya, 2008). Subrahmanya's (2008) paper on the evolution of industrial subcontracting in Japan, and the transition from constant growth post-World War I until the 1980s to the subsequent decline, invites the reader to consider the lessons from the Japanese experience for those engaged in the promulgation and management of contemporary subcontracting/outsourcing initiatives.

Subrahmanya (2008) presents a series of industry-based trends of subcontracting, together with an analysis of the performance of the small, medium and large enterprises involved. The findings include evidence of integration and mutual coordination among small, medium and large enterprises across industries, together with improved labour productivity among the small and medium enterprises. Subrahmanya (2008) argues that small and medium enterprises have benefited from the system of subcontracting in Japanese manufacturing and suggests that the competitiveness of local SMEs, particularly in industrializing countries like India, would be enhanced by this form of multi-layered industrial subcontracting. Again, the reader is offered the opportunity to consider the impact of context on managerial decision making.

In a move from the macro-to micro-considerations, D'Intino et al. (2008) examine the history of the Boeing Company in terms of executive and board of director decision making and the contribution of what they (D'Intino et al., 2008) conclude is the visionary entrepreneurial leadership of those executives and board members to the education of twenty-first century business executives and board directors. By bringing visionary leadership theory to bear on the presentation and analysis of four specific cases of aircraft design and development decisions in the Boeing company, D'Intino et al. (2008) derive examples of the Boeing executives' and board directors' vision and leadership in making a series of risky decisions that, if the prototype literately “crashed and burned” could bankrupt the company. Considering the implications of their findings in light of the plethora of modern-day companies that have failed their fiduciary and ethical responsibilities, D'Intino et al. (2008) suggest a focus in future research on firm executives and boards of directors' decisions and how these decisions influence industry-wide innovation and development.

The paper by D'Intino et al. (2008) provides an appropriate “prologue” to Marens (2008) whose focus is on the transformation of the study of corporate social responsibility (CSR) over the last 50 years. Marens' (2008) analysis, in turn, suggests a fascinating frame for further consideration as to the political, economic, social and technological context within which Boeing has been embedded throughout the twentieth century. Marens (2008) study shows that the early CSR research, focused on economic fairness and the independence of governments from interest group pressures, was largely a product of the labour conflicts of the 1930s and the uneasy peace that followed. The more recent emphases on the ethics of executive decision making also reflect the context of the researchers, where institutional support for what we might call the “Boeing” perspective seems to have disappeared. At the same time, as Marens (2008) points out, with the re-emergence of concern with economic fairness and the independence of governments in this era of globalisation, the works of CSR's early scholars could provide valuable insights.

Sidani's (2008) paper offers an interesting contrast to that of D'Intino et al. (2008). Perhaps, not surprisingly, given its genesis, D'Intino et al.'s (2008) paper relies on Nanus' (1992) definition of visionary leadership as one in which “visionary leadership provides clear and compelling directions for an organization, in a sense providing both strategy and culture to communicate to everyone what to do and why”. Not long after Nanus (1992) was providing this sort of description, Micklethwait and Wooldridge (1996, p. 246) were observing that, in relation to Japanese management at least, “[t]he art of leadership is to divine the will of the group, not to electrify the organization with one's charisma”. Sidani (2008) offers a similar view of managerial leadership in a different time and place, presenting the works of a early contributor to sociological theory, North African Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), specifically pertaining to his conceptualization of leadership and the role of asabiya (group feeling) in leadership emergence.

Like Humphreys and his colleagues (Humphreys et al., 2007), Sidani (2008) questions the universality of modern Western leadership theories and looks to a much earlier model of leadership and its emergence through the lens of the Muqadimmah, which contains Khaldun's most important views. Sidani (2008) suggests that many of Ibn Khaldun's leadership propositions have particular significance for several non Western societies especially in the Middle East and North Africa and argues that leadership research could benefit from the contributions of Ibn Khaldun in developing models that take different cultures into perspective.

Spector (2008) proffers a very different approach to understanding how popular culture in general, and movies in particular, both reflected and shaped public attitudes to newly emerging corporate giants in the 1950s (which would, of course, include Boeing). He does this by way of a content analysis of 11 “corporate” films released in the USA between 1954 and 1960 to demonstrate how that view was itself shaped by the political context and prevailing American ideology. As Spector (2008) comments, these 1950s corporate movies reflected Cold War realities: the constraints imposed by an anti-Communist blacklist, and the belief that capitalist corporations would stand as a bulwark against the alien ideology of Communism. Notwithstanding, the obvious limitations of the study – the films studied were all made in the USA – his work also highlights the salience of understanding the political/cultural context of management history.

In concluding my introduction to this issue, I take one further opportunity to engage in some linking among past, present and future. This relates to the to the last two papers, by Sidani and Spector, which I comment on in reverse order, for reasons that will become clear in the exposition.

Spector's (2008) paper was quite literally brought to life for me as I sat in the audience at the Academy of Management conference in Philadelphia last August to hear Bert present an earlier conference version of the paper interspersed with a series of excerpts from the movies that constituted his research material. Given that next year's Academy conference is in Anaheim (Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood), I hope there is something of a reprise, perhaps in the form of an analysis of the movies not included in the current study.

Sadly, Sidani's (2008) paper, which was to be presented at the 2006 Atlanta Academy conference in the session I was chairing, was not brought to life, because Yusuf was not able to attend. Instead, I had received an e-mail from him, which contained the following excerpt:

I am stuck in Beirut – Lebanon – where, as you know, we are witnessing an ongoing war. I was hoping to be able to make it to this year's conference. I was hoping things will get better but they did not. The airport is still closed and travel using other routes is not feasible. I am disappointed but I hope things will get better soon.

At the risk of being simplistic, perhaps if there had been more attention paid to some of the insights of Ibn Khaldun on all sides, and across the range of conflicts, instead of some of the other historical influences, Yusuf would have been able to join us and share his thoughts in person. Like Yusuf, we can still hope things will get better.

David Lamond

(The) Royal Society (2007), The Royal Society Digital Journal, available at: www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/index.cfm?page=1373 (accessed 30 August 2007).

Sidani, Y. (2008), “Ibn Khaldun of North Africa: A 1377 A.D. theory of leadership”, Journal of Management History, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 73-86.

Spector, B. (2008), “The man in the gray flannel suit in the executive suite: American corporate movies in the 1950s”, Journal of Management History, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 87-104.

Stewart, R. (1994), Managerial Behaviour, Management Research Papers 94/1, Templeton College, Oxford.

Subrahmanya, M.H.B. (2008), “Industrial subcontracting and structure in Japan: evolution and recent trends”, Journal of Management History, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 23-38.

Urs, S. (2007), “Scholarly communication: the unsettled (unsettling?) landscape”, paper presented at the Emerald Connections Seminar, Bangalore, 31 August.

Urwick, L.F. (1949), “Foreword”, in Fayol, H. (Ed.), General and Industrial Management, Pitman, London, (trans. by C. Storrs).

Note

Congratulations to Charles Booth of Bristol Business School, UK, the winner of the Best Paper Prize in Management and Business History at the 2007 British Academy of Management, for his paper “Antenna politics: the theramin and the cold war”. The award was sponsored by the Journal of Management History.