Editorial

Journal of Management History

ISSN: 1751-1348

Article publication date: 28 September 2010

1406

Citation

Lamond, D. (2010), "Editorial", Journal of Management History, Vol. 16 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmh.2010.15816daa.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2010, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Management History, Volume 16, Issue 4

This issue completes the 16th volume of the Journal of Management History (JMH) and is constituted by a series of papers and reflections on a selection of managements pioneer contributors, brought together by Guest Editor, Joyce Thompson Heames, whose paper with co-author Jacob W. Breland introduce the issue and frame the subsequent presentations. Heames and Breland’s (2010) paper reports on a replication study of an earlier work by Wren and Hay (1977) and the resultant “Top 10” list of management thinkers, which was the basis for the subsequent call for papers that fashioned this issue. The five papers and four commentaries that follow Heames and Breland (2010) are in their order according to their top ten (noting there are two papers on Barnard in this issue, JMH volume 15 issue 4 was a special issue on Drucker, and Henry L. Ford did not attract a submission).

A little over three decades ago, Wren and Hay (1977) undertook a review that identified a top 20 list of pioneer contributors to management thought, with the top ten (in order) listed as Frederick Taylor, Chester I. Barnard, Frank Gilbreth, Elton Mayo, Lillian Gilbreth, Alfred P. Sloan Jr, Mary Parker Follett, Henry L. Ford, Abraham Maslow and Henry L. Gantt. In this opening paper to the issue, Heames and Breland (2010) report on the extent to which these pioneers of management thought have remained in the memory of contemporary scholars, by the way of reference to them in a selection of academic journals over the succeeding three decades. Heames and Breland (2010) find that, while management scholars actively reference the works of these pioneers, the number of papers about them is quite limited, and concentrated on a small subgroup. One is tempted to suggest that, while contemporary scholars are ready to cite the earlier works of the pioneers in order to demonstrate the bona fides of their own literature reviews, there is much less interest in an extended examination and critique of the pioneers and contributions, that would be reflected in a greater number of focussed papers.

In the second half of their paper, a replication of Wren and Hay’s (1977) study, Heames and Breland (2010) identify a new “Top 10” with seven replacements appearing in the 2010 version, being (in order) Frederick W. Taylor, Max Weber, Chester I. Barnard, Peter Drucker, Henri Fayol, Adam Smith, Herbert Simon, Alfred Chandler, Joseph Schumpeter and Henry L. Ford. The latest list is a natural extension of Wren and Hay’s (1977) work, not limited by the earlier study’s restriction to only American scholars as part of the list. Nonetheless, one is reminded of Abrahamson’s (1991) work on fads and fashions in management and innovation, reflecting the propensity of the wider management profession for adopting and abandoning the fads promulgated by its gurus (Micklethwaite and Wooldridge, 1996; Parker and Ritson, 2005). This observation is given some weight when it is noted that, while Henry L. Ford appears in both “Top 10” lists 30 years apart, and there were more papers written about Ford and his contributions than any other of the pioneers in the intervening period (Heames and Breland, 2010), the call for papers for this issue did not attract a submission about Ford.

Against the tradition of the “Top 10 countdown” we begin the pioneer papers with the number one, Frederick Winslow Taylor, who has been the subject of regular contributions to JMH over the course of its 16 volumes (Wrege, 1995; Nyland, 2000; Parayitam et al., 2002; Simha and Lemak, 2010). Schachter’s (2010) focus is on Taylor’s role in the rise of management as a field of academic study and the work he did in the university context to encourage the systematic study of management issues, albeit initially he was a reluctant conscript to the idea. A combination of Taylor’s own lecturing and the development of a literature based on those lectures and the work of Taylor’s colleagues, contributed to curriculum at a time when higher education was coming to be seen as necessary for effective managers and management.

German sociologist Max Weber’s second place in the top ten is consistent with his having been described as “the greatest social scientist of [the 20th] century” (Secher, 1962, p. 23), but does his notion of authority have currency in the twenty-first century? This is the question Houghton (2010) seeks to answer in the next paper of the issue. Houghton argues that Weber’s writings on charismatic authority continue to shape research and debate in modern leadership theory, especially in light of today’s rapidly changing organisational environments. Weber’s writings are notoriously convoluted and opaque (Lamond, 1990) but what is understood from his work is that Weber saw his types of authority as bases of appeal to legitimacy for the use of power – whether traditional, rational/legal or charismatic. Houghton’s (2010) work is an insightful view of charismatic authority, especially in light of its understanding in terms of claims to legitimacy.

Indeed, one is moved to extend the analysis and wonder whether, in the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, we have been witness to the progressive failure of managerial claims to legitimacy – traditional (ownership), rational-legal (competence) and charismatic (leadership) – such that, from the time when the “myth” of workplace bullying was questioned (Rayner and Cooper, 1997), the incidence of bullying in the workplace has grown (or at least has been exposed) to the extent it now appears to be a pervasive phenomenon in the twenty-first century, and is no longer what McAvoy and Murtagh (2003) called the “silent epidemic”. When managerial leaders are no longer able to claim the exercise of power as legitimate because of tradition or competence, and charisma is exposed as a false basis for most, since they do not possess the “extraordinary personal characteristics” (Houghton, 2010) to support such a claim, management by walking around, (MBWA) could become management by pushing around (MBPA) as the “just do it” dictum is employed in the leader-led relationship.

In light of the last point, it is appropriate to turn to Chester Barnard (1938) and the insights provided by The Functions of the Executive, considering the papers of Malcolm and Hartley (2010) and Fernández (2010), respectively. Malcolm and Hartley’s (2010) examination of The Functions of the Executive concentrates on Barnard’s understanding of the integral connections between moral persuasion, authenticity, trust, and personal responsibility, proffered in turn by them as an alternate basis for leadership in the twenty-first century (dare one suggest a notion of “charisma” based on ordinary personal characteristics?). Following a brief biographical consideration, Malcolm and Hartley (2010) focus on Barnard’s acceptance view of authority – followers will accept the legitimacy of the orders they receive to the extent that perceive the giver of the orders to be competent, moral and trustworthy.

Fernández (2010) also believes that re-discovering Barnard is necessary in what she describes as “an age of organizational disappointment” characterized as it is by moral irresponsible, inefficient and ineffective leadership. Her focus though, is on appreciating Barnard’s insights regarding leadership through the prism of Ramey’s (1991) framework. For Ramey (1991, p. 10) the heart of leadership is the “challenge to create a more humane yet productive social order” met by developing the quality of our lives, our work and of society in general (Ramey, 1991, p. 1). The interconnectedness of Ramey’s (1991) approach is mirrored in the kind of interconnectedness that Barnard (1938) recognised in organisations – between the leaders and the led, between the various functional areas – with cooperation as the natural corollary and, indeed, pre-requisite to successful individual and organisational performance.

As a scholar with a long term interest in Fayol (Lamond, 2003, 2004), readers could be forgiven for thinking “well he would say that” as I write approvingly about the next paper in the issue, by Pryor and Taneja (2010). Pryor and Taneja (2010) summarise Fayol’s key contributions to management thinking, comparing his work with that of Mary Parker Follett, Henry Mintzberg, Frederick Taylor and Michael Porter, and seeking to demonstrate why his work was, and is still, a significant contribution to understanding management. As I have previously noted (Lamond, 2004) one of the reasons why Fayol’s (1949) work is not given due recognition is may be found in Wren et al. (2002) observation that there is an increasing gap between the thoughts of early management writers and contemporary accounts of how these pioneers developed their ideas. Rather than reading General and Industrial Management (Fayol, 1949), latter day discussants appear to rely on secondary sources, like Mintzberg (1973, 1975, 1989), for their appreciation.

Adam Smith (Crowley and Sobel, 2010) is the first of two economists to appear in the management pioneers list, and readers might question the “purity” of a management pioneers list accordingly. When discussing curriculum matters however, I have been known to argue that a degree cannot be considered a business/management qualification if it does not include the theory of the firm and an appreciation of the economic contexts within which the firm operates. I anticipate that Crowley and Sobel (2010) would nod in agreement at this point, their own work highlighting that Smith was the first to identify specialization and the division of labour as key drivers of productivity. The other half of Crowley and Sobel’s (2010) paper explores Smith’s contribution in regard to the “invisible hand” which remains the subject of much discussion in the scholarly literature as well as the popular press. In this regard, I would encourage readers to explore a fascinating debate between Gavin Kennedy, Professor Emeritus at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland (Kennedy, 2009a, b) and Daniel Klein, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and chief editor of Econ Journal Watch, in which the debate is played out (Klein, 2009). They seek to determine the extent to which contemporary interpretations and uses of the “invisible hand” are reconcilable with Smith’s intended use. My own, perhaps more parsimonious, interpretation is that Smith’s notion of “self-interest” is to be understood in the context of his moral philosophy (Smith, 1790, 1976) that assumes a fundamental ethical dimension, such that the self-interest that underlies decision-making is neither absolute nor untrammelled.

Another management scholar interested in decision making is Herbert Simon, who is the subject of Kalantari’s (2010) paper. Like some of the other papers in this issue, the first section of Kalantari’s (2010) is devoted to a biographical summary, as a prelude to the paper’s focus, which is on Simon’s contribution to thinking about managerial decision making and, in particular, his bounded rationality model. There is a neat intersection between Simon’s thinking and an earlier contribution from Barnard (1938) when it comes to the issue of intuition in decision-making (Simon, 1987). Here we see an excellent example of a later scholar seeking to be informed by earlier works, standing on the shoulders of Newton’s giants, as Simon (1987) draws on Barnard’s (1938) insights on intuition to draw the distinction between and extend the theoretical frameworks underpinning notions of logical decision making, non-logical (intuitive) decision making and illogical decision making.

In their consideration of the contributions of Chandler to management thinking and practice, Smothers et al. (2010) seek to present their ideas, not only as “historiographers but also as memorialists that reenact, reconstruct, and recreate management traditions as constructors of collective memory” (Novicevic et al., 2009, p. 315). Their interest is in developing a framework to organize Chandler’s contributions along the dimensions of historical impact and historical scope. Unlike recent revisionists, who have suggested that the increasing dominance of service provision over the production of goods, the globalisation of the world’s economies and the increasing intrusion of governance and financial intermediary mechanisms have made much of what Chandler had to say irrelevant, Smothers et al. (2010) share Lipartito’s (2008, p. 432) view Chandler’s body of work is “so rich that it can be approached again and again with fresh eyes and new questions”.

Joseph Schumpeter, the second of the two economists in the top ten list, is the subject of the final paper, which examines his insights on innovation and entrepreneurship and the extent to which he was influenced by the Austrian School of Economics in the formation of his views (Harvey et al., 2010). Harvey et al. (2010) paper highlights Schumpeter’s insights regarding innovation as a key process in economic change and the central role of the entrepreneur as innovator, insights that remain relevant in the current context of increasing global competition. They also note Schumpeter’s insistence that, in addition to their primary discipline, economists should also study law, sociology, history and even literature, as a way of overcoming the narrowness of the assumptions that mathematical economics often hold constant – for example, the ceteris paribus assumption of all other things being equal.

Two final comments need to be made in regard to this issue. First, it is disappointing to note the absence of Lillian Gilbreth and Mary Parker Follett from Heames and Breland’s (2010) new “Top 10” (indeed, the Gilbreths drop out of the top 20 list altogether). Given the long and widely acknowledged significance of their respective contributions to the development of management thought, their absence is to be regretted. It would appear to be time to remind our colleagues of the contribution to management thinking made by women over the last century, perhaps by way of a special issue of JMH devoted to this purpose. In closing, let me thank Joyce Heames for the work she has done as guest editor to bring together the papers that constitute this issue – she should take a well deserved bow for her own contribution to management thinking.

David Lamond

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