essay on the study of management

Introductory essay

Written by the educators who created Leading Wisely, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

Understanding management means understanding people. What motivates us to engage deeply and perform powerfully at work? How do we inspire that in teams? What are the best ways to organize ourselves to exploit opportunities and solve problems? These are critical questions for all leaders who share the goal of thriving in a global, digital, fast-paced future.

There are countless ways we can approach those topics, and diverse perspectives to consider—as is evident from the thousands of management manuals, podcasts, executive seminars and more. For example, among the TED Talks included in Leading Wisely, Itay Talgam shares a lyrical metaphor on the style of the great conductors, while Clay Shirky delivers a statistical deconstruction of the power of informal networks. It's precisely this enormous scope and variety that defines the reality of modern management and which makes it so fascinating, and so vital. Modern thinking on management — from teaching and research inside universities to the way the world's most revered businesses organize themselves — has continuously evolved throughout the 20th and early 21st century. What's more, the pace of this evolution is increasing: the TED Talks in this collection cover a number of topics that didn't even exist ten years ago! This means successful managers must learn quickly, forecast trends and execute wisely.

Division of labor and beyond: Management theory is born

Industrialization shaped the work of the first management theorists in the US and Europe, where efforts to perfect new production processes gave management a practical focus and scientific method. Mining engineer Henri Fayol was one of the first to set out clear principles of management, which were formed through experiences organizing labor and machinery to extract coal in the most cost-efficient way. In the early decades of the 20th century Fayol identified six core principles of management: forecasting, planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling. A century later, these key principles still shape our ideas about management, even though we may implement them in more sophisticated ways.

In Fayol's time, managers enacted these six principles through authority and discipline, and the regimentation of that approach created as many problems as it did advantages. For example, perfecting production techniques through the division of labor involved a systematic breaking-down of production into repetitive, individual tasks, or 'piece work'. This formed the foundation of a new mass-production economy and significantly improved the standard of living for many workers and consumers--but the work was often tedious and didn't draw upon the worker's ideas or abilities in any meaningful way.

Fayol's contemporary, Henry Ford, provides the most famous example. In his quest to mass-produce an affordable automobile, Ford identified 84 specific steps required to assemble the Model T and hired Frederick Taylor, the creator of "scientific management," to conduct time and motion studies on the factory floor. In this way, Ford reasoned, he would know exactly how long it should take his workers to complete each of the 84 steps, and he could direct the exact motions each worker should use so that the assembly proceeded with maximum efficiency. Ford also reasoned that he could reduce the time spent on each task if his workers didn't have to move from one assembly to the next. So in 1913, inspired by a grain mill conveyor belt he'd seen, Ford introduced the first moving assembly line for factory production.

Only a year later, Ford surprised everyone when he announced that he would double wages and reduce working hours at his Detroit auto plant. Wall Street investors were dismayed. Media around the world reported Ford's announcement as a philanthropic gesture, or speculated that Ford was trying to create a bigger market for his Model T by creating a new middle-class American workforce. The reality? Ford realized he could lower turnover, and the costs of recruiting and training new employees, by offering better conditions and pay.

Beyond efficiency: Valuing people

When he raised wages and shortened the work day, Ford signaled that employee satisfaction was an essential element of successful management. There was a growing appetite to understand workers in this context and, more than that, to take a sociological or even anthropological viewpoint.

Although sociologists like Emile Durkheim had begun this work in the late 19th century, the backlash against division of labor gained momentum in the 1920s and '30s, when the horrors of the First World War fueled disillusionment with wide-scale mechanization. Many felt that workers were treated as machinery measured by volume of production alone.

In contrast, Elton Mayo highlighted the importance of social ties and a sense of belonging in the workplace. In Mayo's view, managers had to acknowledge these needs and listen to their employees, in order to make workers feel valued.

Mayo's ideas originated in part from his work at the Hawthorne General Electric Plant in Chicago, where he measured the effect of lighting levels on employees at the plant. Mayo found that simply taking an interest in the activities and opinions of staff produced a motivating effect—though when his work concluded and the plant returned to business as usual, productivity dropped.

Although Mayo championed a different kind of dynamic between managers and their subordinates in order to improve conditions and increase output, workers were given no real decision making power. Nevertheless, his work advanced management theory in a significant way, and decades later we can appreciate its influence on the people-oriented, more democratic operation of many modern companies like Semco. Its CEO, TED speaker Ricardo Semler, acknowledges that "it takes a leap of faith about losing control" to reorient a company so that it truly takes care of its people and treats them as its most important asset.

The new leader

As our conception of the workforce changed – from assembly lines of replaceable robots in the era of Fayol and Ford, to individuals with diverse talents to empower (and exploit) today — so has the role of the leader. The command-and-control approach – appropriate and effective in factory-like environments – has given way to newer, more nuanced approaches to leadership that lean more heavily on inspiration and persuasion.

Modern management theorist and TED speaker Simon Sinek believes that great leaders inspire action because they think, act and communicate from 'the inside out'—beginning with and focusing primarily on their core beliefs and values. Sinek suggests that people, whether they're your employees or customers, "don't buy what you do—they buy why you do it." Hiring people who understand and embrace these core beliefs and values, Sinek claims, means they don't work just for a paycheck—they work with "blood and sweat and tears."

When people see their work in this way, the rules and incentives that leaders have leaned on in the past to manage and motivate employees may be unnecessary. In fact, as TED speakers Dan Pink and Barry Schwartz observe, they may actually do harm. Pink shows through a series of surprising experiments that traditional carrot-and-stick motivators like bonuses and pay-for-performance plans can actually decrease creative thinking and employee engagement. What's more, according to Barry Schwartz, these incentives, coupled with an over-reliance on rigid procedures, "cause people to lose morale and the activity to lose morality." Schwartz believes that moral skill, moral will, and practical wisdom are absolutely essential if organizations want to deal with complex challenges in a smart and timely way.

The importance of innovation

Up to now, we've focused on how we organize resources—and in particular, human resources—to complete tasks and meet our goals. However, this alone doesn't equip managers to launch a successful startup to compete in a fast-moving global marketplace, or to keep pace with consumers' changing values, wants and needs. Innovation and marketing are central tenets of modern management, too. How do you harness market knowledge to position yourself as distinctive and essential, and to predict what people will want and use? How can you empower team members to come up with ingenious and elegant ideas?

In an earlier era, innovation often occurred in the first stage of production, which involved creating the product blueprint; innovation may also have altered the production process in order to bring costs down. But today, organizations increasingly aspire toward innovation at all stages, in order to compete and to thrive.

To enable innovation, leaders encourage a diversity of perspectives and empower employees to contribute in unconventional, 'left-field' ways; quite often, this plays out in ways that contradict the chain of command and strict discipline which characterized early management theory. For example, some companies formalize the freedom to experiment with 'left-field' ideas in programs like Google's "20% time" and Apple's "Blue Sky" program; these provide contractual 'free time' for employees to work on their own projects, which the company may later adopt and launch. (It's worth noting that this idea goes as far back as Edison, who encouraged a young Henry Ford to play around with combustion engines in his spare time while Ford worked at Edison's light bulb manufacturing plant.)

Ideas from everywhere: The new "crowd-sourced" workforce and on-call experts

Along with enabling creativity within their teams, in recent years, forward-looking organizations have become more sophisticated in harnessing participation from the public. Through social media platforms, open-source development environments and other collaborative tools, we're increasingly able to amass ideas from around the globe, and from people traditionally considered 'consumers' rather than the 'producers' of our organizations' goods and services.

This signals a profound reversal from Henry Ford's earlier efforts to gather people under one roof around a specific task; rather, as TED speaker Clay Shirky notes, we're now able to take the question or task to the people—who may not be 'employees' as we've traditionally thought of them, and who may never meet us face-to-face in our offices. Shirky predicts that in the coming decades, loosely coordinated groups will be increasingly influential and that "one arena at a time, one institution at a time" more rigidly managed organizations will move towards different and more open methods of management.

The technology that enables crowdsourced solutions also allows leaders to tap 'expert' knowledge from around the world. We have instant access to advice from thought leaders and consultants when we're overwhelmed by the array of information and the pace of innovation in today's world—but then managers must discern what's most helpful to achieve the organization's goals, filtering out what is and isn't useful. What's more, we need to be judicious about when and how we call in the experts: in her TED Talk, Noreena Hertz argues that the constant urge to defer to experts is damaging our ability to think independently and solve our own problems. Indeed, as you make your way through the talks in this TED Study, you'll need to decide for yourself what best applies to you and your team.

All work and no play: The need for balance

Today's technology enables managers and their teams to be connected to the office 24/7, if we want to be, and organizations can draw on workforces from all over the world, at short notice. This creates amazing opportunities and thorny problems for managers. For example, how should a manager interact with employees who may be scattered on several continents, working for multiple employers on several simultaneous projects?

Technology companies developed ways to manage the 'scrum' of work and organize loose networks of employees and stakeholders, in order to coordinate a wide range of activities. Outside the tech sector, these concepts are becoming increasingly central to modern management.

Even in a more standard office environment, the challenges of prioritizing and maintaining efficiency have multiplied. The stereotypical modern open-plan office with its endless meetings and distractions can make the idea of single-minded, creative problem solving seem impossible, as Jason Fried notes in his TED Talk "Why work doesn't happen at work."

It would be difficult to explore the evolution of management without also considering the evolution of work itself. How much work do we actually want to do? And how much are we able to do, before it starts to adversely affect our lives and the organizations we work for?

Striking the right balance between our professional and personal lives is becoming easier and more difficult. For example, our ability to connect to the office 24/7 provides flexibility, but it also means managers and their teams may be tempted—or expected—to put in more hours than ever before. TED speaker Nigel Marsh suggests that workers need to set and enforce their own, individual boundaries, but he doesn't let their employers off the hook: managerial (and organizational) duty of care must come into play. This is a huge societal issue, one that's measured by national governments and critical to our individual health and happiness. But it's not solely an altruistic appeal—for organizations with an eye on productivity, employee engagement and retention, it's simply smart business.

Facebook COO and TED speaker Sheryl Sandberg is particularly interested in the challenges that many women face as they advance in their professions and become wives and mothers. Although many fathers undoubtedly feel these pressures as well, Sandberg notes that by and large it's women who are dropping out of the workforce, and this means that women are all too often conspicuously absent from the top levels of governments, corporations and other organizations. Sandberg asks managers to consider what messages they're sending to the young women in their organizations, and to create ways for all people to engage fully at work so that we benefit from their diverse and valuable perspectives.

Sandberg is candid about her own struggles with work-life balance, and her example is also interesting because it touches on so many of the other issues that we've raised in this introductory essay. Facebook is a company of 7,000 employees working across 15 countries, constantly striving to meet the needs of its more than one billion users and figuring out how to harness the power of that global network. It must continuously innovate to maintain its leadership position as social media proliferate at an amazing rate. Executives like Sandberg must nurture the talent and creative thinking of team members who fuel that innovation—or risk losing them to others who may offer more appealing opportunities.

Get started

Let's begin Leading Wisely with TED speaker Itay Talgam, who uses a musical metaphor to illuminate the evolution of management and describe different leadership styles in "Lead like the great conductors".

Itay Talgam

Lead like the great conductors, relevant talks.

Simon Sinek

How great leaders inspire action.

The puzzle of motivation

Barry Schwartz

Our loss of wisdom.

Noreena Hertz

How to use experts -- and when not to.

Clay Shirky

Institutions vs. collaboration.

Sheryl Sandberg

Why we have too few women leaders.

Nigel Marsh

How to make work-life balance work.

Jason Fried

Why work doesn't happen at work.

Chip Conley

Measuring what makes life worthwhile.

• Subject List
• Take a Tour
• For Authors
• Subscriber Services
• Publications
• African American Studies
• African Studies
• American Literature
• Anthropology
• Architecture Planning and Preservation
• Art History
• Atlantic History
• Biblical Studies
• British and Irish Literature
• Childhood Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Cinema and Media Studies
• Communication
• Criminology
• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Renaissance and Reformation
• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Management History

Introduction, introductory works.

• Reference Resources
• The Importance of History
• Before Common Era
• Early Common Era
• The Fifteenth–Eighteenth Centuries
• The Industrial Revolution
• Scientific Management and Frederick Taylor
• Other Contributors to Scientific Management
• The Human Side
• Organization Theory
• Theory Integration
• Complexity Revealed
• Developments

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• Approaches to Social Responsibility
• Certified B Corporations and Benefit Corporations
• Human Resource Management
• Management In Antiquity
• Management Research during World War II
• Organization Culture
• Organization Development and Change
• Organizational Responsibility
• Research Methods
• Stakeholders

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Corporate Globalization
• Organization Design
• Organizational Learning and Knowledge Transfer
• Find more forthcoming articles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Management History by David D. Van Fleet LAST REVIEWED: 01 March 2023 LAST MODIFIED: 29 June 2015 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846740-0008

Although management and attempts to improve it are as old as civilization, the systematic study of management is only just more than one hundred years old. “Management history” refers primarily to the history of management thought as it has developed during that time, although some work covers the practice of management all the way back to Antiquity. Because the events, organizations, economic and social conditions, and even interested scholars are frequently the same, management history overlaps to some extent with related history fields, most notably business history, economic history, and accounting history. Management history utilizes the tools and methods of traditional historical analysis as well as drawing insights from business disciplines and the social sciences. This article includes, first, initial coverage of source material (introductory works, reference sources, and journals), and then presents reasons why history is important and provides a rough chronological presentation of major works for those interested in learning more about management history, from the early practice of management to the evolution of management thought as it has developed during the past one-hundred-plus years.

Some early management books are available online so that students and other scholars can read them in the original form, including Taylor 2010 (cited under Scientific Management and Frederick Taylor ), Sheldon 1924 (cited under Organization Theory ), and Gilbreth 2010 (cited under Other Contributors to Scientific Management ). Many early articles on management may be found in Miner 1995 and Bedeian 2011 . Wren and Bedeian 2008 is the most important management history book, and it is the one most widely used as a primary source in courses on management history. George 1972 , though an older work, is sometimes also recommended.

Bedeian, Arthur G., ed. The Evolution of Management Thought: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management . 4 vols. London: Routledge, 2011.

More than one hundred articles covering more than a century of management literature; a must-read for any serious student of management history.

George, Claude S., Jr. The History of Management Thought . 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972.

A short, older overview of the development of management thinking that is still useful for the author’s insights.

Miner, John B., ed. Administrative and Management Theory . Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth, 1995.

Numerous articles spanning more than seventy-five years are collected here. Readers get an intimate feel for the evolution of management theory through reading these original articles.

Wren, Daniel A., and Arthur G. Bedeian. The Evolution of Management Thought . 6th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008.

A highly readable summary of major milestones in the development of management thought. Presented within the context of the times, the stories of major figures in the field are told.

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About Management »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• Abusive Supervision
• Adverse Impact and Equal Employment Opportunity Analytics
• Alliance Portfolios
• Alternative Work Arrangements
• Applied Political Risk Analysis
• Assessment Centers: Theory, Practice and Research
• Attributions
• Authentic Leadership
• Bayesian Statistics
• Behavior, Organizational
• Behavioral Approach to Leadership
• Behavioral Theory of the Firm
• Between Organizations, Social Networks in and
• Brokerage in Networks
• Business and Human Rights
• Career Studies
• Career Transitions and Job Mobility
• Charismatic and Innovative Team Leadership By and For Mill...
• Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
• Compensation, Rewards, Remuneration
• Competitive Dynamics
• Competitive Heterogeneity
• Competitive Intensity
• Computational Modeling
• Conditional Reasoning
• Conflict Management
• Considerate Leadership
• Corporate Philanthropy
• Corporate Social Performance
• Corporate Venture Capital
• Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB)
• Cross-Cultural Communication
• Cross-Cultural Management
• Cultural Intelligence
• Culture, Organization
• Data Analytic Methods
• Decision Making
• Dynamic Capabilities
• Emotional Labor
• Employee Aging
• Employee Engagement
• Employee Ownership
• Employee Voice
• Empowerment, Psychological
• Entrepreneurial Firms
• Entrepreneurial Orientation
• Entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurship, Corporate
• Entrepreneurship, Women’s
• Equal Employment Opportunity
• Faking in Personnel Selection
• Family Business, Managing
• Financial Markets in Organization Theory and Economic Soci...
• Findings, Reporting Research
• Firm Bribery
• First-Mover Advantage
• Fit, Person-Environment
• Forecasting
• Founding Teams
• Global Leadership
• Global Talent Management
• Goal Setting
• Grounded Theory
• Hofstedes Cultural Dimensions
• Human Capital Resource Pipelines
• Human Resource Management, Strategic
• Human Resources, Global
• Human Rights
• Humanitarian Work Psychology
• Humility in Management
• Impression Management at Work
• Influence Strategies/Tactics in the Workplace
• Information Economics
• Innovative Behavior
• Intelligence, Emotional
• International Economic Development and SMEs
• International Economic Systems
• International Strategic Alliances
• Job Analysis and Competency Modeling
• Job Crafting
• Job Satisfaction
• Judgment and Decision Making in Teams
• Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration within and across Firm...
• Leader-Member Exchange
• Leadership Development
• Leadership Development and Organizational Change, Coaching...
• Leadership, Ethical
• Leadership, Global and Comparative
• Leadership, Strategic
• Learning by Doing in Organizational Activities
• Management History
• Managerial and Organizational Cognition
• Managerial Discretion
• Meaningful Work
• Multinational Corporations and Emerging Markets
• Neo-institutional Theory
• Neuroscience, Organizational
• New Ventures
• Organization Design, Global
• Organization Research, Ethnography in
• Organizational Adaptation
• Organizational Ambidexterity
• Organizational Behavior, Emotions in
• Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs)
• Organizational Climate
• Organizational Control
• Organizational Corruption
• Organizational Hybridity
• Organizational Identity
• Organizational Justice
• Organizational Legitimacy
• Organizational Networks
• Organizational Paradox
• Organizational Performance, Personality Theory and
• Organizational Surveys, Driving Change Through
• Organizations, Big Data in
• Organizations, Gender in
• Organizations, Identity Work in
• Organizations, Political Ideology in
• Organizations, Social Identity Processes in
• Overqualification
• Paternalistic Leadership
• Pay for Skills, Knowledge, and Competencies
• People Analytics
• Performance Appraisal
• Performance Feedback Theory
• Planning And Goal Setting
• Proactive Work Behavior
• Psychological Contracts
• Psychological Safety
• Real Options Theory
• Recruitment
• Regional Entrepreneurship
• Reputation, Organizational Image and
• Research, Ethics in
• Research, Longitudinal
• Research Methods, Qualitative
• Resource Redeployment
• Resource-Dependence Theory
• Response Surface Analysis, Polynomial Regression and
• Role of Time in Organizational Studies
• Safety, Work Place
• Selection, Applicant Reactions to
• Self-Determination Theory for Work Motivation
• Self-Efficacy
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy In Management
• Self-Management and Personal Agency
• Sensemaking in and around Organizations
• Service Management
• Shared Team Leadership
• Social Cognitive Theory
• Social Evaluation: Status and Reputation
• Social Movement Theory
• Social Ties and Network Structure
• Socialization
• Sports Settings in Management Research
• Status in Organizations
• Strategic Alliances
• Strategic Human Capital
• Strategy and Cognition
• Strategy Implementation
• Structural Contingency Theory/Information Processing Theor...
• Team Composition
• Team Conflict
• Team Design Characteristics
• Team Learning
• Team Mental Models
• Team Newcomers
• Team Performance
• Team Processes
• Teams, Global
• Technology and Innovation Management
• Technology, Organizational Assessment and
• the Workplace, Millennials in
• Theory X and Theory Y
• Time and Motion Studies
• Training and Development
• Training Evaluation
• Trust in Organizational Contexts
• Unobtrusive Measures
• Virtual Teams
• Whistle-Blowing
• Work and Family: An Organizational Science Overview
• Work Contexts, Nonverbal Communication in
• Work, Mindfulness at
• Workplace Aggression and Violence
• Workplace Coaching
• Workplace Commitment
• Workplace Gossip
• Workplace Meetings
• Workplace, Spiritual Leadership in the
• World War II, Management Research during
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [66.249.64.20|195.190.12.77]
• 195.190.12.77

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

2 The History of Management

Learning Objectives

The purpose of this chapter is to:

• 1) Give you an overview of the evolution of management thought and theory.
• 2) Provide an understanding of management in the context of the modern-day world in which we reside.

The History of Management

The concept of management has been around for thousands of years. According to Pindur, Rogers, and Kim (1995), elemental approaches to management go back at least 3000 years before the birth of Christ, a time in which records of business dealings were first recorded by Middle Eastern priests. Socrates, around 400 BC, stated that management was a competency distinctly separate from possessing technical skills and knowledge (Higgins, 1991). The Romans, famous for their legions of warriors led by Centurions, provided accountability through the hierarchy of authority. The Roman Catholic Church was organized along the lines of specific territories, a chain of command, and job descriptions. During the Middle Ages, a 1,000 year period roughly from 476 AD through 1450 AD, guilds, a collection of artisans and merchants provided goods, made by hand, ranging from bread to armor and swords for the Crusades. A hierarchy of control and power, similar to that of the Catholic Church, existed in which authority rested with the masters and trickled down to the journeymen and apprentices. These craftsmen were, in essence, small businesses producing products with varying degrees of quality, low rates of productivity, and little need for managerial control beyond that of the owner or master artisan.

The Industrial Revolution, a time from the late 1700s through the 1800s, was a period of great upheaval and massive change in the way people lived and worked. Before this time, most people made their living farming or working and resided in rural communities. With the invention of the steam engine, numerous innovations occurred, including the automated movement of coal from underground mines, powering factories that now mass-produced goods previously made by hand, and railroad locomotives that could move products and materials across nations in a timely and efficient manner. Factories needed workers who, in turn, required direction and organization. As these facilities became more substantial and productive, the need for managing and coordination became an essential factor. Think of Henry Ford, the man who developed a moving assembly line to produce his automobiles. In the early 1900s, cars were put together by craftsmen who would modify components to fit their product. With the advent of standardized parts in 1908, followed by Ford’s revolutionary assembly line introduced in 1913, the time required to build a Model T fell from days to just a few hours (Klaess, 2020). From a managerial standpoint, skilled craftsmen were no longer necessary to build automobiles. The use of lower-cost labor and the increased production yielded by moving production lines called for the need to guide and manage these massive operations (Wilson, 2015). To take advantage of new technologies, a different approach to organizational structure and management was required.

The Scientific Era – Measuring Human Capital

With the emergence of new technologies came demands for increased productivity and efficiency. The desire to understand how to best conduct business centered on the idea of work processes. That is, managers wanted to study how the work was performed and the impact on productivity. The idea was to optimize the way the work was done. One of the chief architects of measuring human output was Frederick Taylor. Taylor felt that increasing efficiency and reducing costs were the primary objectives of management. Taylor’s theories centered on a formula that calculated the number of units produced in a specific time frame (DiFranceso and Berman, 2000). Taylor conducted time studies to determine how many units could be produced by a worker in so many minutes. He used a stopwatch, weight measurement scale, and tape measure to compute how far materials moved and how many steps workers undertook in the completion of their tasks (Wren and Bedeian, 2009). Examine the image below – one can imagine Frederick Taylor standing nearby, measuring just how many steps were required by each worker to hoist a sheet of metal from the pile, walk it to the machine, perform the task, and repeat, countless times a day.   Beyond Taylor, other management theorists including Frank and Lilian Gilbreth, Harrington Emerson, and others expanded the concept of management reasoning with the goal of efficiency and consistency, all in the name of optimizing output . It made little difference whether the organization manufactured automobiles, mined coal, or made steel, the most efficient use of labor to maximize productivity was the goal.

The necessity to manage not just worker output but to link the entire organization toward a common objective began to emerge. Management, out of necessity, had to organize multiple complex processes for increasingly large industries. Henri Fayol, a Frenchman, is credited with developing the management concepts of planning, organizing, coordination, command, and control (Fayol, 1949), which were the precursors of today’s four basic management principles of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

Employees and the Organization

With the increased demand for production brought about by scientific measurement, conflict between labor and management was inevitable. The personnel department, forerunner of today’s human resources department, emerged as a method to slow down the demand for unions, initiate training programs to reduce employee turnover, and to acknowledge workers’ needs beyond the factory floor. The idea that to increase productivity, management should factor the needs of their employees by developing work that was interesting and rewarding burst on the scene (Nixon, 2003) and began to be part of management thinking. Numerous management theorists were starting to consider the human factor. Two giants credited with moving management thought in the direction of understanding worker needs were Douglas McGregor and Frederick Herzberg. McGregor’s Theory X factor was management’s assumption that workers disliked work, were lazy, lacked self-motivation, and therefore had to be persuaded by threats, punishment, or intimidation to exert the appropriate effort. His Theory Y factor was the opposite. McGregor felt that it was management’s job to develop work that gave the employees a feeling of self-actualization and worth. He argued that with more enlightened management practices, including providing clear goals to the employees and giving them the freedom to achieve those goals, the organization’s objectives and those of the employees could simultaneously be achieved (Koplelman, Prottas, & Davis, 2008).

Frederick Herzberg added considerably to management thinking on employee behavior with his theory of worker motivation. Herzberg contended that most management driven motivational efforts, including increased wages, better benefits, and more vacation time, ultimately failed because while they may reduce certain factors of job dissatisfaction (the things workers disliked about their jobs), they did not increase job satisfaction. Herzberg felt that these were two distinctly different management problems. Job satisfaction flowed from a sense of achievement, the work itself, a feeling of accomplishment, a chance for growth, and additional responsibility (Herzberg, 1968). One enduring outcome of Herzberg’s work was the idea that management could have a positive influence on employee job satisfaction, which, in turn, helped to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives.

The concept behind McGregor, Herzberg, and a host of other management theorists was to achieve managerial effectiveness by utilizing people more effectively. Previous management theories regarding employee motivation (thought to be directly correlated to increased productivity) emphasized control, specialized jobs, and gave little thought to employees’ intrinsic needs. Insights that considered the human factor by utilizing theories from psychology now became part of management thinking. Organizational changes suggested by management thinkers who saw a direct connection between improved work design, self-actualization, and challenging work began to take hold in more enlightened management theory.

The Modern Era

Koontz and O’Donnell (1955) defined management as “the function of getting things done through others (p. 3). One commanding figure stood above all others and is considered the father of modern management (Edersheim, (2007). That individual was Peter Drucker. Drucker, an author, educator, and management consultant is widely credited with developing the concept of Managing By Objective or MBO (Wren & Bedeian, 2009). Management by Objective is the process of defining specific objectives necessary to achieve the organization’s goals. The beauty of the MBO concept was that it provided employees a clear view of their organization’s objectives and defined their individual responsibilities. For example, let’s examine a company’s sales department. One of the firm’s organizational goals might be to grow sales (sometimes referred to as revenue) by 5% the next fiscal year. The first step, in consultation with the appropriate people in the sales department, would be to determine if that 5% goal is realistic and attainable. If so, the 5% sales growth objective is shared with the entire sales department and individuals are assigned specific targets. Let’s assume this is a regional firm that has seven sales representatives. Each sales rep is charged with a specific goal that, when combined with their colleagues, rolls up to the 5% sales increase. The role of management is now to support, monitor, and evaluate performance. Should a problem arise, it is management’s responsibility to take corrective action. If the 5% sales objective is met or exceeded, rewards can be shared. This MBO cycle applies to every department within an organization, large or small, and never-ending.

The MBO Process

Drucker’s contributions to modern management thinking went far beyond the MBO concept. Throughout his long life, Drucker argued that the singular role of business was to create a customer and that marketing and innovation were its two essential functions. Consider the Apple iPhone. From that single innovation came thousands of jobs in manufacturing plants, iPhone sales in stores around the globe, and profits returned to Apple, enabling them to continue the innovation process. Another lasting Drucker observation was that too many businesses failed to ask the question “what business are we in?” (Drucker, 2008, p. 103). On more than one occasion, a company has faltered, even gone out of business, after failing to recognize that their industry was changing or trying to expand into new markets beyond their core competency. Consider the fate of Blockbuster, Kodak, Blackberry, or Yahoo.

Management theories continued to evolve with additional concepts being put forth by other innovative thinkers. Henry Mintzberg is remembered for blowing holes in the idea that managers were iconic individuals lounging in their offices, sitting back and contemplating big-picture ideas. Mintzberg observed that management was hard work. Managers were on the move attending meetings, managing crises, and interacting with internal and external contacts. Further, depending on the exact nature of their role, managers fulfilled multiple duties including that of spokesperson, leader, resource allocator, and negotiator (Mintzberg, 1973). In the 1970s, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman traveled the globe exploring the current best management practices of the time. Their book, In Search of Excellence, spelled out what worked in terms of managing organizations. Perhaps the most relevant finding was their assertion that culture counts. They found that the best managed companies had a culture that promoted transparency, openly shared information, and effectively managed communication up and down the organizational hierarchy (Allison, 2014). The well managed companies Peterson and Waterman found were built in large part on the earlier managerial ideas of McGregor and Herzberg. Top-notch organizations succeeded by providing meaningful work and positive affirmation of their employees’ worth.

Others made lasting contributions to modern management thinking. Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People , Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline , and Jim Collins and Jerry Porras’s Built to Last are among a pantheon of bestselling books on management principles. Among the iconic thinkers of this era was Michael Porter. Porter, a professor at the Harvard Business School, is widely credited with taking the concept of strategic reasoning to another level. Porter tackled the question of how organizations could effectively compete and achieve a long-term competitive advantage. He contended that there were just three ways a firm could gain such advantage: 1) a cost-based leadership – become the lowest cost producer, 2) valued-added leadership – offer a differentiated product or service for which a customer is willing to pay a premium price, and 3) focus – compete in a niche market with laser-like fixation (Dess & Davis, 1984). Name a company that fits these profiles: How about Walmart for low-cost leadership. For value-added leadership, many think of Apple. Focus leadership is a bit more challenging. What about Whole Foods before being acquired by Amazon? Porter’s thinking on competition and competitive advantage has become timeless principles of strategic management still used today. Perhaps Porter’s most significant contribution to modern management thinking is the connection between a firm’s choice of strategy and its financial performance. Should an organization fail to select and properly execute one of the three basic strategies, it faces the grave danger of being stuck in the middle – its prices are too high to compete based on price or its products lack features unique enough to entice customers to pay a premium price. Consider the fate of Sears and Roebuck, J.C. Penny, K-Mart, and Radio Shack, organizations that failed to navigate the evolving nature of their businesses.

The 21st Century

Managers in the 21st century must confront challenges their counterparts of even a few years ago could hardly imagine. The ever-growing wave of technology, the impact of artificial intelligence, the evolving nature of globalization, and the push-pull tug of war between the firm’s stakeholder and shareholder interests are chief among the demands today’s managers will face.

          Much has been written about the exponential growth of technology. It has been reported that today’s iPhone has more than 100,000 times the computing power of the computer that helped land a man on the moon (Kendall, 2019). Management today has to grapple with the explosion of data now available to facilitate business decisions. Data analytics, the examination of data sets, provides information to help managers better understand customer behavior, customer wants and needs, personalize the delivery of marketing messages, and track visits to online web sites. Developing an understanding of how to use data analytics without getting bogged down will be a significant challenge for the 21st century manager. Collecting, organizing, utilizing data in a logical, timely, and cost-effective manner is creating an entirely new paradigm of managerial competence.  In addition to data analytics, cybersecurity, drones, and virtual reality are new, exciting technologies and offer unprecedented change to the way business is conducted. Each of these opportunities requires a new degree of managerial competence which, in turn, creates opportunities for the modern-day manager.

Artificial Intelligence

Will robots replace workers? To be sure, this has already happened to some degree in many industries. However, while some jobs will be lost to AI, a host of others will emerge, requiring a new level of management expertise. AI has the ability to eliminate mundane tasks and free managers to focus on the crux of their job. Human skills such as empathy, teaching and coaching employees, focusing on people development and freeing time for creative thinking will become increasingly important as AI continues to develop as a critically important tool for today’s manager.

Globalization

Globalization has been defined as the interdependence of the world’s economies and has been on a steady march forward since the end of World War II. As markets mature, more countries are moving from the emerging ranks and fostering a growing middle class of consumers. This rising new class has the purchasing power to acquire goods and services previously unattainable, and companies around the globe have expanded outside their national borders to meet those demands. Managing in the era of globalization brought a new set of challenges. Adapting to new cultures, navigating the puzzle of different laws, tariffs, import/export regulations, human resource issues, logistics, marketing messages, supply chain management, currency, foreign investment, and government intervention are among the demands facing the 21st century global manager. Despite these enormous challenges, trade among the world’s nations has grown at an unprecedented rate. World trade jumped from around 20% of world GDP in 1960 to almost 60% in 2017.

Trade as a Percent of Global GDP

Despite its stupendous growth, globalization has its share of critics. Chief among them is that globalization has heightened the disparity between the haves and the have-nots in society. Opponents of globalization argue that in many cases, jobs have been lost to developing nations with lower prevailing wage rates. Additionally, inequality has worsened with the wealthiest consuming a disproportionate percent of the world’s resources (Collins, 2015). Proponents counter that on the macro level, globalization creates more jobs than are lost, more people are lifted out of poverty, and expansion globally enables companies to become more competitive on the world stage.

Since the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2016 and Great Britain’s decision to exit the European Union, the concept of nationalism has manifested in many nations around the globe. Traditional obstacles to expanding outside one’s home country plus a host of new difficulties such as unplanned trade barriers, blocked acquisitions, and heightened scrutiny from regulators have added to the burdens of managing in the 21st century. The stage has been set for a new generation of managers with the skills to deal with this new, complex business environment. In the 20th century, the old command and control model of management may have worked. However, today, with technology, artificial intelligence, globalization, nationalism, and multiple other hurdles, organizations will continue the move toward a flatter, more agile organizational structure run by managers with the appropriate 21st century skills.

Stakeholder versus Shareholder

What is a stakeholder in a business, and what is a shareholder? The difference is important. Banton (2020) noted that shareholders, by owning even a single share of stock, has a stake in the company. The shareholder first view was put forth by the economist Milton Friedman (1962) who stated that “There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it engages in open and free competition, without deception or fraud” (p. 133). In other words, maximize profits so long as the pursuit of profit is done so legally and ethically. An alternate view is that a stakeholder has a clear interest in how the company performs, and this interest may stem from reasons other than the increase in the value of their share(s) of stock. Edward Freeman (1999), a philosopher and academic advanced his stakeholder theory contending that the idea was the success of an organization relied on its ability to manage a complex web of relationships with several different stakeholders. These stakeholders could be an employee, a customer, an investor, a supplier, the community in which the firm operates, and the government that collects taxes and stipulates the rules and regulations by which the company must operate. Which theory is correct? According to Emiliani (2001), businesses in the United States typically followed the shareholder model, while in other countries, firms tend to follow the stakeholder model. Events in the past decade have created a shift toward the shareholder model in the United States. The financial crisis of 2008/2009, global warming, the debate between globalization and nationalism, the push for green energy, a spate of natural disasters, and the world-wide impact of health crises such as AIDS, Ebola, the SARS virus and the Coronavirus have fostered a move toward a redefinition of the purpose of a corporation. In the coming decades, those companies that thrive and grow will be the ones that invest in their people, society, and the communities in which they operate. The managers of the 21st century must build on the work of those that proceeded them. Managers in the 21st century would do well if they heeded the words famously used by Isaac Newton who said “If I have seen a little further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants” (Harel, 2012).

Critical Thinking Questions

In what way has the role of manager changed in the past twenty years?

With the historical perspective of management in mind, reflect on changes you foresee in the manager’s role in the next 20 years?

Reflect on some of the significant issues you have witnessed in the past few years.  Among thoughts to consider are global warming, green energy, global health crisis, globalization, nationalism, national debt, or an issue of your choosing.  What role do you see business and management playing in effectively dealing with that specific issue?

How to Answer the Critical Thinking Questions

For each of these answers you should provide three elements.

• General Answer.  Give a general response to what the question is asking, or make your argument to what the question is asking.
• Outside Resource.  Provide a quotation from a source outside of this textbook.  This can be an academic article, news story, or popular press.  This should be something that supports your argument.  Use the sandwich technique explained below and cite your source in APA in text and then a list of full text citations at the end of the homework assignment of all three sources used.
• Personal Story.  Provide a personal story that illustrates the point as well.  This should be a personal experience you had, and not a hypothetical.  Talk about a time from your personal, professional, family, or school life.   Use the sandwich technique for this as well, which is explained below.

Use the sandwich technique:

For the outside resource and the personal story you should use the sandwich technique.  Good writing is not just about how to include these materials, but about how to make them flow into what you are saying and really support your argument.  The sandwich technique allows us to do that.  It goes like this:

Step 1:  Provide a sentence that sets up your outside resource by answering who, what, when, or where this source is referring to.

Step 2:  Provide the quoted material or story.

Step 3:  Tell the reader why this is relevant to the argument you are making.

Allison, S. (2014). An essential book for founders and CEOs: In Search of Excellence. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottallison/2014/01/27/an-essential-book-for-founders-and-ceos-in-search-of-excellence/#5a48e7da6c11

Banton, C. (2020). Shareholder vs. stakeholder: An overview. Investopedia. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/difference-between-a-shareholder-and-a-stakeholder.asp

Collins, M. (2015). The pros and cons of globalization. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/05/06/the-pros-and-cons-of-globalization/#609d7a53ccce

Dess, G.G., & Davis, P.S. (1984). Generic strategies as determinants of strategic group membership and organizational performance. The Academy of Management , (27)3, 467-488.

Difrancesco, J.M. & Berman, S.J. (2000). Human productivity: The new American frontier. National Productivity Review. Summer 2000. 29-36.

Drucker, P. F. (2008 ) Management – Revised Edition . New York: Collins Business.

Edersheim, E. (2007). The Definitive Drucker. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Emiliani, M.L. (2001). A mathematical logic approach to the shareholder vs stakeholder debate. Management Decision . (39)8, 618-622.

Fayol, H. (1949). General and Industrial Management . London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons (translated by Constance Storrs).

Freeman, E.R. 91999). Divergent stakeholder theory. The Academy of Management Review , (24)2, pp. 213-236.

Friedman, M, (1962). Capitalism and Freedom , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Harel, D. (2012). Standing on the shoulders of a giant. ICALP (International Colloquium on Automation). 16-22. Retrieved from http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~/dharel/papers/Standing%20on%20Shoulders.pdf

Herzberg, F. (1968). One more time: How do you motivate employees ? Harvard Business Review, January-February. pp 53-62.

Higgins, J.M. (1991). The Management Challenge: An Introduction to Management . New York: Macmillan

Kendall, G. (2019). Your mobile phone vs. Apollo 11’s guidance computer. Real Clear Science. Retrieved from https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2019/07/02/your_mobile_phone_vs_apollo_11s_guidance_computer_111026.html

Klaess, J. (2020). The history and future of the assembly line . Tulip . Retrieved from https://tulip.co/blog/manufacturing/assembly-line-history-future/

Koontz, H., & O’Donnell, C. (1955). Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Functions . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Kopelman, R.E., Prottas, D.J., & Davis, A.l. (2008). Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Y: Toward a construct-valid measure. Journal of Managerial Issues , (XX02, 255-271.

Mintzberg, H. (1973). The Nature of Managerial Work. In S. Crainer (Ed.).  The Ultimate Business Library (pp. 174). West Sussex, UK: Capstone Publishing.

Nixon, L. (2003). Management theories – An historical perspective.  Business Date, (11)4, 5-7.

Pindur, W., Rogers, S.E., & Kim, P.S. (1995). The history of management: a global perspective. Journal of Management History , (1) 1, 59-77.

Wilson J.M. (2015). Ford’s development and use of the assembly line, 1908-1927. In Bowden and Lamond (Eds.), Management History. It’s Global Past and Present (71-92). Charlotte, NC: Information Age, Publishing, Inc.

Wren, D.A., & Bedeian, A.G. (2009). The Evolution of Management Thought. Hoboken, NJ. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hoboken, NJ

The Four Functions of Management Copyright © 2020 by Dr. Robert Lloyd and Dr. Wayne Aho is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• Browse All Articles
• Newsletter Sign-Up

Management →

• 02 Apr 2024
• What Do You Think?

What's Enough to Make Us Happy?

Experts say happiness is often derived by a combination of good health, financial wellbeing, and solid relationships with family and friends. But are we forgetting to take stock of whether we have enough of these things? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• Research & Ideas

Employees Out Sick? Inside One Company's Creative Approach to Staying Productive

Regular absenteeism can hobble output and even bring down a business. But fostering a collaborative culture that brings managers together can help companies weather surges of sick days and no-shows. Research by Jorge Tamayo shows how.

• 12 Mar 2024

Publish or Perish: What the Research Says About Productivity in Academia

Universities tend to evaluate professors based on their research output, but does that measure reflect the realities of higher ed? A study of 4,300 professors by Kyle Myers, Karim Lakhani, and colleagues probes the time demands, risk appetite, and compensation of faculty.

• 29 Feb 2024

Beyond Goals: David Beckham's Playbook for Mobilizing Star Talent

Reach soccer's pinnacle. Become a global brand. Buy a team. Sign Lionel Messi. David Beckham makes success look as easy as his epic free kicks. But leveraging world-class talent takes discipline and deft decision-making, as case studies by Anita Elberse reveal. What could other businesses learn from his ascent?

• 16 Feb 2024

Is Your Workplace Biased Against Introverts?

Extroverts are more likely to express their passion outwardly, giving them a leg up when it comes to raises and promotions, according to research by Jon Jachimowicz. Introverts are just as motivated and excited about their work, but show it differently. How can managers challenge their assumptions?

• 05 Feb 2024

The Middle Manager of the Future: More Coaching, Less Commanding

Skilled middle managers foster collaboration, inspire employees, and link important functions at companies. An analysis of more than 35 million job postings by Letian Zhang paints a counterintuitive picture of today's midlevel manager. Could these roles provide an innovation edge?

• 24 Jan 2024

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

Aggressive cost cutting and rocky leadership changes have eroded the culture at Boeing, a company once admired for its engineering rigor, says Bill George. What will it take to repair the reputational damage wrought by years of crises involving its 737 MAX?

• 16 Jan 2024
• Cold Call Podcast

How SolarWinds Responded to the 2020 SUNBURST Cyberattack

In December of 2020, SolarWinds learned that they had fallen victim to hackers. Unknown actors had inserted malware called SUNBURST into a software update, potentially granting hackers access to thousands of its customers’ data, including government agencies across the globe and the US military. General Counsel Jason Bliss needed to orchestrate the company’s response without knowing how many of its 300,000 customers had been affected, or how severely. What’s more, the existing CEO was scheduled to step down and incoming CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna had yet to come on board. Bliss needed to immediately communicate the company’s action plan with customers and the media. In this episode of Cold Call, Professor Frank Nagle discusses SolarWinds’ response to this supply chain attack in the case, “SolarWinds Confronts SUNBURST.”

• 02 Jan 2024

Do Boomerang CEOs Get a Bad Rap?

Several companies have brought back formerly successful CEOs in hopes of breathing new life into their organizations—with mixed results. But are we even measuring the boomerang CEOs' performance properly? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 12 Dec 2023

COVID Tested Global Supply Chains. Here’s How They’ve Adapted

A global supply chain reshuffling is underway as companies seek to diversify their distribution networks in response to pandemic-related shocks, says research by Laura Alfaro. What do these shifts mean for American businesses and buyers?

• 05 Dec 2023

What Founders Get Wrong about Sales and Marketing

Which sales candidate is a startup’s ideal first hire? What marketing channels are best to invest in? How aggressively should an executive team align sales with customer success? Senior Lecturer Mark Roberge discusses how early-stage founders, sales leaders, and marketing executives can address these challenges as they grow their ventures in the case, “Entrepreneurial Sales and Marketing Vignettes.”

• 31 Oct 2023

Checking Your Ethics: Would You Speak Up in These 3 Sticky Situations?

Would you complain about a client who verbally abuses their staff? Would you admit to cutting corners on your work? The answers aren't always clear, says David Fubini, who tackles tricky scenarios in a series of case studies and offers his advice from the field.

• 12 Sep 2023

Can Remote Surgeries Digitally Transform Operating Rooms?

Launched in 2016, Proximie was a platform that enabled clinicians, proctors, and medical device company personnel to be virtually present in operating rooms, where they would use mixed reality and digital audio and visual tools to communicate with, mentor, assist, and observe those performing medical procedures. The goal was to improve patient outcomes. The company had grown quickly, and its technology had been used in tens of thousands of procedures in more than 50 countries and 500 hospitals. It had raised close to $50 million in equity financing and was now entering strategic partnerships to broaden its reach. Nadine Hachach-Haram, founder and CEO of Proximie, aspired for Proximie to become a platform that powered every operating room in the world, but she had to carefully consider the company’s partnership and data strategies in order to scale. What approach would position the company best for the next stage of growth? Harvard Business School associate professor Ariel Stern discusses creating value in health care through a digital transformation of operating rooms in her case, “Proximie: Using XR Technology to Create Borderless Operating Rooms.”

• 28 Aug 2023

The Clock Is Ticking: 3 Ways to Manage Your Time Better

Life is short. Are you using your time wisely? Leslie Perlow, Arthur Brooks, and DJ DiDonna offer time management advice to help you work smarter and live happier.

• 15 Aug 2023

Ryan Serhant: How to Manage Your Time for Happiness

Real estate entrepreneur, television star, husband, and father Ryan Serhant is incredibly busy and successful. He starts his days at 4:00 am and often doesn’t end them until 11:00 pm. But, it wasn’t always like that. In 2020, just a few months after the US began to shut down in order to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, Serhant had time to reflect on his career as a real estate broker in New York City, wondering if the period of selling real estate at record highs was over. He considered whether he should stay at his current real estate brokerage or launch his own brokerage during a pandemic? Each option had very different implications for his time and flexibility. Professor Ashley Whillans and her co-author Hawken Lord (MBA 2023) discuss Serhant’s time management techniques and consider the lessons we can all learn about making time our most valuable commodity in the case, “Ryan Serhant: Time Management for Repeatable Success.”

• 08 Aug 2023

The Rise of Employee Analytics: Productivity Dream or Micromanagement Nightmare?

"People analytics"—using employee data to make management decisions—could soon transform the workplace and hiring, but implementation will be critical, says Jeffrey Polzer. After all, do managers really need to know about employees' every keystroke?

• 01 Aug 2023

Can Business Transform Primary Health Care Across Africa?

mPharma, headquartered in Ghana, is trying to create the largest pan-African health care company. Their mission is to provide primary care and a reliable and fairly priced supply of drugs in the nine African countries where they operate. Co-founder and CEO Gregory Rockson needs to decide which component of strategy to prioritize in the next three years. His options include launching a telemedicine program, expanding his pharmacies across the continent, and creating a new payment program to cover the cost of common medications. Rockson cares deeply about health equity, but his venture capital-financed company also must be profitable. Which option should he focus on expanding? Harvard Business School Professor Regina Herzlinger and case protagonist Gregory Rockson discuss the important role business plays in improving health care in the case, “mPharma: Scaling Access to Affordable Primary Care in Africa.”

• 05 Jul 2023

How Unilever Is Preparing for the Future of Work

Launched in 2016, Unilever’s Future of Work initiative aimed to accelerate the speed of change throughout the organization and prepare its workforce for a digitalized and highly automated era. But despite its success over the last three years, the program still faces significant challenges in its implementation. How should Unilever, one of the world's largest consumer goods companies, best prepare and upscale its workforce for the future? How should Unilever adapt and accelerate the speed of change throughout the organization? Is it even possible to lead a systematic, agile workforce transformation across several geographies while accounting for local context? Harvard Business School professor and faculty co-chair of the Managing the Future of Work Project William Kerr and Patrick Hull, Unilever’s vice president of global learning and future of work, discuss how rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation are changing the nature of work in the case, “Unilever's Response to the Future of Work.”

How Are Middle Managers Falling Down Most Often on Employee Inclusion?

Companies are struggling to retain employees from underrepresented groups, many of whom don't feel heard in the workplace. What do managers need to do to build truly inclusive teams? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 20 Jun 2023

Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover: Lessons in Strategic Change

In late October 2022, Elon Musk officially took Twitter private and became the company’s majority shareholder, finally ending a months-long acquisition saga. He appointed himself CEO and brought in his own team to clean house. Musk needed to take decisive steps to succeed against the major opposition to his leadership from both inside and outside the company. Twitter employees circulated an open letter protesting expected layoffs, advertising agencies advised their clients to pause spending on Twitter, and EU officials considered a broader Twitter ban. What short-term actions should Musk take to stabilize the situation, and how should he approach long-term strategy to turn around Twitter? Harvard Business School assistant professor Andy Wu and co-author Goran Calic, associate professor at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, discuss Twitter as a microcosm for the future of media and information in their case, “Twitter Turnaround and Elon Musk.”

An Essay about a Philosophical Attitude in Management and Organization Studies Based on Parrhesia

• Open access
• Published: 10 April 2023
• Volume 22 , pages 587–618, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Jesus Rodriguez-Pomeda   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5341-4042 1  

1514 Accesses

2 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Management and organization studies (MOS) scholarship is at a crossroads. The grand challenges (such as the climate emergency) humankind must face today require an improved contribution from all knowledge fields. The number of academics who criticize the lack of influence and social impact of MOS has recently grown. The scientific field structure of MOS is based on its members’ accumulation of symbolic capital. This structure hinders speaking truth to the elite dominating neoliberal society. Our literature review suggested that a deeper interaction between MOS and philosophy could aid in improving the social impact of MOS. Specifically, an attitude by MOS scholars based on parrhesia (παρρησíα, to speak truth to power) could revitalize the field through heterodox approaches and, consequently, allow them to utter sound criticisms of the capitalist system. Parrhesia would lead MOS scholars towards a convergence of ethics and politics. We investigate whether daring to speak inconvenient truths to the powerful (some peers in the field and some individuals and corporations in society) can be a straightforward tool for revitalizing MOS. Boosting a candid philosophy-MOS interaction requires the fulfilment of three objectives: practical dialogue between these fields, reconsideration of the fields’ structures based on symbolic capital, and a post-disciplinary approach to philosophy. That fulfilment implies the delimitation of the MOS-philosophy interaction, a respectful mutual framework, mutual curiosity, and moving from prescriptive theoretical reflection towards more socially useful MOS. Ethical betterment through parrhesia could be the key to surpassing MOS stagnation.

Similar content being viewed by others

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Implementation: A Review and a Research Agenda Towards an Integrative Framework

Tahniyath Fatima & Said Elbanna

A critical analysis of Elon Musk’s leadership in Tesla motors

Md. Rahat Khan

A literature review of the history and evolution of corporate social responsibility

Mauricio Andrés Latapí Agudelo, Lára Jóhannsdóttir & Brynhildur Davídsdóttir

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Management and organization studies (MOS) suffer from a growing disconnection with the great contemporary problems voiced by many authors who advocate a new academic practice for increasing the discipline’s social impact. MOS do not quickly adapt to emerging social needs. Like other disciplines, MOS are structured as a scientific field. Some egocentric academic interests pursue the accumulation of symbolic capital by each academic (Bourdieu 1975 , 1984 ). The field is hierarchized based on the symbolic capital each scholar possesses. Those occupying high positions in the field are legitimized to establish research agendas and distribute resources. The “Matthew effect” (Merton 1968 , 1988 ) reinforces the power of these people, further increasing their symbolic capital.

Therefore, rebalancing the ethical and political approaches of MOS academics would mitigate the centralized control of scientific activity related to the stagnation of MOS. The aim would be “to rebuild an environment in which the selfless search for truth and knowledge is once again enshrined as the central purpose of academic life” (Tourish 2019 : 251). The truth (and its practice) appears at the confluence between ethics and politics. Consequently, parrhesia can contribute to overcoming the limitations representing established practices and ideas in every scientific field (including MOS). Moreover, parrhesia, in deviating from the doxa, can spread innovative ideas. Indeed, parrhesia requires courage to produce ideas that challenge the status quo.

Remarkably, the power exercised by scientific authorities is projected through their control over publications in academic journals. They define the prevalent metrics of symbolic capital (and, consequently, those determining the scientific authority of each academic) based on the number of publications and citations in high-ranked journals. Consequently, the current problem of MOS has an external manifestation (decrease in its social impact compared to other fields in a world defined by the so-called “grand challenges”) and an internal one (scientific sclerotization preventing adequate reaction to external changes). In this essay, we propose a revitalization of MOS by spreading an ethical attitude based on parrhesia among its academics. The aim is to develop an internal dynamic for MOS that guarantees the search for truth, democratizes the field, and allows it to recover lost scientific rigour. Therefore, MOS scholars should reconsider their attitudes and scientific procedures.

Such attitudes and procedures have—on occasion—several flaws, such as “questionable research practices” (QRPs), including data fraud, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, p-hacking (inappropriate null hypothesis analysis), and HARKing (hypothesizing after test results are known) (Tourish 2019 ). Certain consequences of some of these defects have been observed since the late 1950s: greater fragmentation of the field together with an exaggerated emphasis on research methodology involving the exclusion of validity or relevance (Starbuck 2003 : 442).

MOS could thus use the talent of all their members (not only those with the highest scientific authority) to effectively contribute (along with other fields) to overcoming the “grand challenges”. “Grand challenges” are “formulations of global problems that can be plausibly addressed through coordinated and collaborative effort.” (George et al. 2016 : 1880). Considering the huge damaging effects of inadequate treatment of these challenges, it is advisable to adopt a prudent, precautionary approach to them. Additionally, some of those challenges (such as the climate emergency) will affect further generations.Thus, careful ethical considerations by present generations will avoid irreversible effects for newcomers.

Such a contribution requires MOS members to behave outwardly as parrhesiastes; this implies the same courage in defending the truth as they must use inwardly. The reason is clear: the “grand challenges” derive from the neoliberal economic system currently dominating the world and run by an elite (individuals and corporations) acting exclusively in their own interests. Therefore, parrhesia represents a link between the ethics of MOS academics and the political spheres in which they operate (within the scientific field and externally in society overall).

Consequently, revitalizing the philosophical perspective at the origins of MOS (Jones and ten Bos, 2007a ; Mir and Greenwood, 2022 )would allow its scholars to integrate its ethical premises more deeply with the political effects of their work. The philosophical perspective is not new in MOS since these studies have been considering ideas from epistemology or ethics, among other fields. However, ironically, ethics has been considered more as an object of study within organizational activities than as a crucial element in reflecting on the development of the scientific field.

MOS researchers’ freedom and responsibility reinforce the crucial importance of their professional ethics (Tsui and McKiernan 2022 ). A scientific practice based on deeper integration of ethics and politics would improve the contribution of MOS to solving the problems afflicting contemporary societies. Therefore, an ethic of speaking the truth, even if this means confronting the powerful, would help stop any temptation to complacency. Indeed, MOS academics are responsible for criticizing everything that delays the advancement of knowledge, both in an epistemological sense and in social practice.

In addition to the presence of philosophy in the origins of MOS, the need to revitalize the philosophical attitude of MOS academics is explained by two other arguments: all scientific activity has ontological, ethical, and epistemological roots, and, like any activity developed in society, it has political consequences.

In our view, increasing the interaction between MOS and philosophy activities would require—among others—achieving three objectives: exploring a practical dialogue between philosophers and MOS scholars, reconsidering the dynamics of symbolic capital accumulation in both fields, and facilitating the transmission of ideas from the philosophy through its “de-disciplination” (Frodeman 2013 ).

Firstly, through a practical dialogue with contemporary philosophers (especially those concerned with social ontology), MOS authors could benefit from a richer and deeper perspective on contemporary humans and societies. After a short review of the present MOS situation in Sect. 2, we address the four premises for building such a dialogue in the following sections of this essay.

Secondly, overcoming the current dynamics of symbolic capital accumulation in MOS could increase interactions among its scholars (regardless of each other’s symbolic capital) on a more egalitarian and candid basis. This increase (in quantity and quality) in interactions between all types of MOS scholars would probably generate new ideas and scientific approaches. Thus, the relevance and social utility of MOS would grow.

The “de-disciplining” of philosophy concerns philosophers. An interesting effort originates from the so-called “field philosophy”: an engagement with “our common lives” driven by improvisation, non-standard methodologies, working within interdisciplinary teams, focusing on the specificities of actual problems, and adjusting rigour and results to the team partners’ requirements (Brister and Frodeman, eds., 2020 ).

In this regard, for Frodeman ( 2013 : 1935):

Philosophy, and the humanities generally, should never have become disciplines. (…). A merely disciplined philosophy, where philosophers primarily work with and write for other philosophers, is in the end no philosophy at all.

Adopting a philosophical approach in a sufficiently large group of MOS scholars could lead them to use practices such as parrhesia, which externalize ethical reflection towards a political framework.

This call to renew the ethical commitment of MOS scholars also includes recovering and updating the discipline’s philosophical roots since this ethical commitment requires rethinking the discipline’s ontological and epistemological dimensions. Determining what the existing organizations are, how they interact with new societies, and how to understand them is essential in the current critical moment.

The remainder of this article has the following structure: after addressing (in Sect. 2) the present situation of MOS (scholarship, managerialism, standstill, and the relationship of their aims with philosophy), we analyze the previous premises (field of interaction in Sect. 3, mutual respect in Sect. 4, reciprocal curiosity between philosophy and MOS in Sect. 5, and a passage from a prescriptive theoretical reflection on an adequate academic practice in Sect. 6). Subsequently, we assess the contribution of philosophy to overcoming the current MOS impasse. Subsequently, we consider how to advance the social utility of MOS, considering the contributions of philosophy to the social sciences through its “de-disciplination” (in Sect. 7). Organizational scholars’ practice of parrhesia could offer the field internal and external benefits, internally reactivating scientific rigour and democratizing the field. Consequently, in the external dimension, MOS would improve their social impact by uttering truths in analyzing grand challenges (Sect. 8). We conclude (in Sect. 9, before the conclusions offered in Sect. 10) by proposing the adoption by MOS of a philosophical attitude based on the parrhesiastic asceticism of these scholars.

The Present Situation of MOS

Mos scholarship and managerialism.

MOS have accumulated contributions from diverse theoretical origins supporting conceptual ambiguities and contradictory in their methodologies, conclusions, and performance proposals (Clegg et al. 2022 ). MOS have been developed in parallel with the growth of the ‘organizational society’ as the epitome of the modernist ideal based on reason, progress, and justice (Little 2019 ; Reed 2006 ). In 2023, with a world built around the concept of organization, and especially the subset of organizations comprising companies (Chandler Jr 1963 ; Fligstein 2008 ), the prevalence of MOS as a dominant institution is closely related to the current modes of production, cultures, and political and ideological frameworks. A leading mainstream MOS scholar as Drucker ( 1954 :1) defends that prevalence:

The emergence of management as an essential, a distinct and a leading institution is a pivotal event in social history. Rarely, if ever, has a new basic institution, a new leading group, emerged as fast as has management since the turn of this century. (…). Management will remain a basic and dominant institution perhaps as long as Western civilization itself survives.

On the ideological relevance of MOS for actual societies, Ward ( 2012 : 47–48) offers a brilliant statement:

management helped create a moral and rhetorical ordering that defines and ranks people, activities and things in term of their rationality, efficiency, performity and productivity, while simultaneously legitimating the need for a group of specially trained people to oversee all that defining and ranking.

The consequence is the configuration of managerialism as a dominant institution nowadays. In Ward’s words (2012: 48):

[M]anagerialism can be seen both as specific set of ideas and practices that, under the direction of managers, arrange a group’s activities in particular efficiency- and production-minded ways and as a broader societal-level doxa that legitimates and expands the need for this particular type of control in practically all settings.

One of the consequences of management diffusion is the growing number of MOS scholars, and, consequently, of their production. Rigorous research on the current number of MOS scholars worldwide is scarce. Among available information on the issue, Ioannidis ( 2022 ) considered that 164,428 scholars were working in September 2022 on “Economics & Business” of a total of 9,071,122 scientists worldwide (roughly 1.8% of the total number of scientists then covered in the Scopus publication database). Clearly, “Economics & Business” is not the same as “Management and Organization Studies”; however, it appears a useful starting point to estimate the number of MOS scholars. In the absence of undisputed figures regarding how many scholars work in MOS worldwide, the size of this academic community can be realized based on some available data. The first is the number of members of the Academy of Management (AoM), one of the most relevant learned societies in MOS worldwide. The AoM had over 19,000 members in 2022. This number comprises not only faculty but also students and practitioners.

Second is the relative number of documents published by European authors in collaboration that have been indexed in the Scopus and Web of Science databases in the field of strategic management (only one of the areas covered in MOS) over the last quarter-century. With 1993 as the base year (1993 = 100%), the relative number of these documents attained more than 3,000% in 2017 (Kosch and Szarucki 2021 : 57).

Therefore, it could be concluded that scholars working on MOS are a large and rapidly growing scientific community. However, even when MOS has growing steadily in the recent decades, the social impact of their work has not evolved in the same way. Several authors have denounced the lack of connection between scholars and practitioners, as well as the low credibility, replicability and relevance of MOS research (Biggart 2016 ; Co-founders of RRBM (2017, rev. 2020); Haley, 2022 ; Hambrick, 1994 ; Kieser, Nicolai & Seidl, 2015 ; Latusek and Hensel, 2022 ; Pfeffer and Fong, 2002 ; Tourish, 2019 ; Tsui, 2021 ; Wickert et al., 2021 ). MOS suffers a specific crisis in “times [that] have not been kind to academia” (Elangovan and Hoffman 2021 : 68), and when research impact measurement is under high scrutiny (Williams 2020 ). The MOS mainstream approaches to current organizational problems (framed within present day societies) in useful and ethical ways are unsatisfactory (Haley 2022 ; Tourish 2019 ; Wickert et al. 2021 ).

MOS’ Stalemate

Climate emergency, recurrent economic crises, growing inequalities in wealth distribution, inefficiencies in organizations, mismatches in the organizational-, meso-, and macro-economic levels of the global economy, the threat of nuclear war, and poor global governance are some of the huge and connected problems facing civilization today. MOS, within its capabilities, should contribute to find solutions for portions of them (Chomsky and Waterstone 2021 ; Co-founders of RRBM, 2017, revised 2020; Roitman, 2014 ; Scales Avery, 2009 ; Tsui, 2021 ).

Tourish ( 2019 ) underlines the stagnation of MOS based on some of these problems. An alternative approach is necessary. This standstill derives from a lack of coherence between current changes in organizations and MOS research aims and methods (Davis 2015 ). Therefore, MOS has lost its adherence to world affairs, and, consequently, its external mission (Starbuck 2003 ). The main effect is a growing distrust in MOS (Harley 2019 ). Consequently, some conscientious MOS scholars have expressed concerns about the reduced relevance of their work to practice (Haley 2022 ). To address this issue, we examine some points related to the dialogue between MOS and philosophy. A philosophical attitude within MOS could improve the current approaches to 21st -century organizations.

The reason is that an updated philosophical approach implies a “back-to-basics” process within MOS because these studies were, since they began, (i) attentive to philosophical ideas and (ii) concerned with their members’ ethics. As a remarkable illustration of this concern with MOS scholarship ethics, for Tsui ( 2013 : 383), a priority for a socially responsible MOS scholarship is “to seek truth above all other considerations by engaging the literature and the research participants as ethically as possible”.

MOS academic ethics should guide the individual behaviour of the scholars in the field not only towards the external constituencies (e.g., practitioners) but also towards the colleagues and the usual practices existing in this scientific field. Jordan ( 2013 : 252) defines academic ethics as all the “standards of moral behaviour, expressed with reference to ethical theory (e.g., deontology), intended to guide all individuals employed as professionals in or working as staff or students in institutions of education, research, or scholarship”.

However, after a journey of decades, traditional academic values clash with current processes at business schools, universities, and scientific journals (Harley 2019 ). Therefore, MOS suffers “a series of developments, including an apparent lack of practical or academic impact from most published research, a narrowing of focus in the field, increases in unethical behaviour, the downgrading of teaching, and increased pressure in both publishing and teaching.” (Harley 2019 : 286). We believe that, in facing this situation, MOS scholars’ rethinking of ethics and epistemology (as well as politics) is highly advisable.

Harley and Fleming ( 2021 ) offer a vivid illustration of the sluggishness of MOS with their analysis of approximately 5,500 articles published in prestigious journals between 2008 and 2018. They found that only 2.8% of them aimed to address the so-called “grand challenges” (such as inequality, climate change, or severe discrimination behaviours) since the MOS academics who work in universities and business schools develop practices that, interacting with the guidelines for scientific journals, produce a “business school/elite journal gridlock” (Harley and Fleming 2021 : 133).

In sum, philosophy can infuse new ideas into MOS, following a general statement by Starbuck ( 2003 : 449):

scientific disciplines develop social structures and codes of behaviour that, despite their fundamental virtues, can stifle innovation, creativity, and progress. To prevent this drift into sterility, scientific development needs punctuation by extra-disciplinary influences.

These philosophical influences have been present in MOS from its origins, as is now evident.

MOS’ Aim and Philosophy

Since its inception, MOS has offered guidance about people behaviour within organizations. The phenomenon of organization dominates modern society where people are embedded (Krijnen 2015 ). Therefore, the presence of organizations within the world deserves clarification.

In a broad sense, it can be considered that philosophy and MOS have consistently been inseparable since acting in the world (and, specifically, in the organizational part of it) requires a philosophical approach (O’Doherty 2007 ). This does not imply that every agent conducts a prior, concurrent, or subsequent philosophical reflection on their action. Conversely, it means that everything surrounding that action is susceptible to philosophical analysis. Several premises must be specified for the relationship between philosophy and MOS to be more intellectually and socially fruitful from their perspectives. First, the field of interaction must be delimited, as we discuss in the following section. That is, it must be determined what aspects of MOS can enable appropriate dialogues. Among such aspects, social science, epistemology, ontology, and ethics are prominent (for both their scholars and readers). Second, a respectful relationship framework must be established, as we see in Sect. 4. This means overcoming, in the philosophical field, supposed intellectual superiorities of certain philosophers. In the field of MOS, this includes the contempt with which some disqualify philosophy as useless. Several authors call for a deep reflection on the philosophical foundations of MOS. For Tsoukas and Chia ( 2011 : 6):

The need for creating a deeper awareness of the ‘unconscious metaphysics’ underpinning our theorizing efforts is particularly acute in OT [Organization Theory].

The distance between philosophy and MOS is explained by Kaulinkfreks (2007: 40) as follows:

[P]hilosophy is of no use for managers and that it should be considered as a useless activity. By use I mean a means to an end. When stating that philosophy may be useless I mean that philosophy is not a means to an end outside the philosophical activity itself.

Finally, on the preconceived opinion about philosophy’s appearance in the sciences, Jackson and Carter ( 2007 : 146) think that.

In an epoch in which knowledge is judged by the dominant criteria of science and utility, this has led to it becoming discredited –the ‘end of philosophy’ argument (see, for example, Baynes et al., 1987)—and perceived as inferior to science, if not actually useless and irrelevant.

After these considerations about some criticisms on the relationship between philosophy and MOS (and sciences in general), we deal in Sect. 5 with the third premise of our proposal for the advance of the relationships between philosophy and MOS. This premise considers that building reciprocal curiosity should be riveting. Finally, the obstacles preventing movement from prescriptive theoretical reflection to a richer and more powerful academic practice must be understood and overcome, as we analyse in Sect. 6.

The Interaction Field between Philosophy and MOS

We now consider the first premise for constructing a worthy dialogue between philosophy and MOS. This premise is the delimitation of their interaction. In configuring the field of interaction, the first question is whether the world is considered an objective or subjective phenomenon. As O’Doherty ( 2007 ) states, this question is posed by Burrell and Morgan ( 1979 : 22) with their famous four possible paradigms for studying organizations (The Sociology of Radical Change: (I) ‘Radical humanist’ (subjective), (II) ‘Radical structuralist’ (objective); The Sociology of Regulation: (III) ‘Interpretive’ (subjective), and (IV) ‘Functionalist’ (objective)). Philosophers continue the debate about the characterization of the world as an objective or a subjective phenomenon. Some of them even question the mere existence of the world, as shown by Gabriel’s ( 2015 ) denial of such a circumstance, in accordance with his meta metaphysical nihilism. Connected with German idealism, Gabriel (a figure of growing influence in continental philosophy) seeks a realism rooted in the Habermasian ‘unity of reason’ that opposes the view of constructivism according to which personal affiliations shape people’s thinking (Gabriel 2015 : xii-xiii). In his words, (Gabriel 2013 : 83)

There is no over-arching structure, no archê governing the whole thing. For one thing, there is no whole thing, no world, but only the frayed plurality of manifold appearing. The world does not exist precisely because everything exists. By not taking place it gives place to everything. And it is even better that the world does not exist, because, things being this way, it is always up to us to negotiate our various decisions as to how to compensate the lack of world—as long as the evanescent flickering of semantic field within nothingness endures.

In MOS, attempts have been made to overcome this ontological pitfall from various theoretical perspectives. As O’Doherty ( 2007 ) highlights, Burrell and Morgan’s ( 1979 ) organizational analysis, influential for decades, incorporates several philosophical connections and derivations. He speaks of the dominance Parsons’ ‘functionalist sociology’ had in the late 1970s. According to O’Doherty, this was based on a conception of the world as a pre-existing and objective entity comprising structures, categories, and dynamics. That is, the objectivity of social phenomena implies the possibility of analyzing them through the methods of natural sciences. By placing Burrell and Morgan ( 1979 ) the mainstream of organizational analysis (especially for those who originated from business schools) in one of the four quadrants of their 2 × 2 matrix, they enabled MOS to be approached with other mentalities, particularly the postmodern ones. This was also a reaction to the then-dominant orthodoxy forgetting ontological and epistemological questions. The expansion and development of ontology (for example, with the work of the most recent decades on social ontology) and epistemology from the philosophical field would allow further extension of these theoretical characterizations of MOS.

Cognitive obstacles could also hamper MOS-philosophy collaborations. These are (MacLeod 2018 : 698).

…the more intellectual and technical cognitive, conceptual and methodological challenges researchers face coordination and integrating background concepts, methods, epistemic standards, and technologies of their respective scientific domains –particularly in the context of collaboration—in order to achieve some benefit for solving specific problems or sets of problems. (…) the domain specific (or ‘disciplinary’) structure of science may play an important role explaining why interdisciplinarity is often so difficult.

The interaction field between MOS and philosophy is related to blurred disciplinary boundaries. Disciplines enact boundaries based on its claims to assert an idea. Other disciplines could want to assess that assertive right. Therefore, interaction between disciplines begins. From a pragmatist’s perspective, both disciplines get involved in a process of reasoning or making inferences. This process allows the claim and its criticism to be contrasted. The consequence is a “warranted assertibility” (Dewey 1938 ) of the initial claim.

Hence, ontological, cognitive, assertive, as well as the social aspects of scientific practice (as the dynamics of symbolic capital) should be considered to create an actionable interaction field between MOS and philosophy.

Mutual Respect between Philosophy and MOS

After cope with the delimitation of the interaction field, the second premise to develop the more socially fruitful relationship between philosophy and MOS we propose is to nurture mutual respect between philosophy and MOS. This mutual respect requires to agree on the scope of collaboration and a duly assessment of the capacity of each group of academics to make relevant contributions. This is a difficult task since it must avoid the desire for superiority. Such a claim requires overcoming existing habits in the respective academic fields since these habits lead – among other things – to the fragmentation of knowledge and a search for the professional prestige of the academic and their affiliation group. Among recent examples of the search for this mutual respect, from the philosophical field, Krijnen recognized that ‘[N]on-philosophical scientific disciplines and philosophy are intrinsically intertwined’ (Krijnen 2015 : 31) and affirmed that ‘[T]he non-philosophical disciplinary attempts at justification of this presupposed meaning and validity of the concept of organization offer no solution’ (Krijnen 2015 : 31). One might think this is a philosophical reaction against the role of under-labourer that some MOS authors conferred on philosophy. As Spoelstra ( 2007 : 55–56) indicates,

[W]e might distinguish between two concepts of a radically different nature: philosophical concepts and social scientific concepts. They cannot be translated into one another, yet they affiliate. (…) organization studies tends to understand philosophy as the under-labourer for the social sciences. Philosophy, thus conceived becomes something located outside of organization studies rather than a positive force within organization studies.

Without a change of attitude in many of the members of both fields (philosophy and MOS), it is difficult to envision the necessary cooperation between them. This does not concern invading other territories, but mutual recognition based on different orientations, objectives, practices, and methods. The subordination of one field to another (or scientific imperialism) should be avoided (Persson et al. 2018 ). MOS-philosophy relationships should attain some integration of knowledge. This integration requires deciding among pluralist and unificationist attitudes to collaboration. For Persson et al. ( 2018 ), the pluralist view focuses on transitory interdisciplinary connections, whereas unificationist scholars believe disciplinary boundaries can be surmounted in the long term. Then, cultivating a philosophical attitude in the field of MOS could build bridges. However, authors such as Krijnen do not consider this feasible (2015 : 31):

The philosophical justification developed in the debate about the foundations of organization studies within organization studies themselves is not a solution either. Critical realism does indeed show that positivism and social constructionism are inadequate. The ontology of critical realism, however, is inadequate as well. In itself there is nothing peculiar about this inadequacy: in all sciences there are after all good and not so good theories.

Philosophy has useful and less useful theoretical systems. Primarily, based on the colossal challenges societies currently face, the most ethical, prudent, and useful option would be to seek cooperation frameworks between philosophy and MOS. Such cooperation will probably require revising the foundations of MOS using philosophy. However, the current social function of these and the developed academic framework must also be appreciated.

The reasons for a renewed ethical rooting in MOS are twofold: scholars’ behaviour and MOS foundations. Regarding MOS scholars’ behaviour, their ethical perspective is accompanied by their responsibility as scientists.

For Tsui and McKiernan ( 2022 : 1613), MOS scholars have four types of responsibility: general ethical (their behaviour as citizens), societal well-being (as advisers to the users of their work), contextual (as members of a stakeholder network), and epistemic (as trained scientific professionals). However, some current practices could erode their ethical compromise. For instance, the biases observed in top-ranked journals towards theory creation and quantitative methods, together with growing pressures on scholars for publication in those outlets, drive the homogenization of research (Harley 2019 : 288). Nevertheless, grand challenges require open-minded, creative, and offbeat research.

Another reason for a deep ethical compromise within the MOS community is the “disturbingly high incidence [of unethical conduct] in our field” (Harley 2019 : 289). Although it is challenging to estimate the diffusion of unethical behaviour in MOS, it appears to have grown in recent years. Alongside some cases of fake research, are the so-called ‘questionable research practices’ (QRP) (Tourish 2019 ). Of the five studies on QRP revised by Tourish ( 2019 ), one of the more interesting is by Bedeian, et al. ( 2010 ). This article, based on the responses of 438 management faculty in 104 US Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accredited business schools, found that almost 73% of the respondents reported knowledge of faculty engaging in QRP within the previous year.

Considering MOS foundations, ethics has been involved in different management and organizational areas since the field’s inception, including decision-making and individual and organizational models of action (Griseri 2013 ). Therefore, reinforcement of ethics reflection by MOS scholars would prevent some undesirable behaviours.

Thus, MOS scholars’ behaviour, epistemological evolution of MOS, and the study of arising phenomena (such as artificial intelligence) promote wide reconsideration of the interaction of philosophical developments on ethics, epistemology, or ontology with MOS. Rabetino, Kohtamäki and Federico ( 2016 ) offer an absorbing reflection on this reconsideration related to the foundations of the strategic management field.

That is, it is not a question of rewriting what was elaborated in MOS but reordering its theoretical and practical developments starting from more robust philosophical bases. These bases could originate from social metaphysics, a field still in its infancy (Epstein 2015 : 9). However, contemporary philosophical literature collects relevant contributions such as those of Searle ( 1995 , 2010 ), Toumela ( 2002 , 2007 ), Gilbert ( 1989 ), Bratman ( 1993 ), Pettit ( 1993 ), List and Pettit ( 2011 ), Little ( 2016 ), Lawson ( 2019 ), Patomäki ( 2020 ), and Archer ( 2013 , 2017 ), in some cases specifically aimed at social ontology. As is evident, also from MOS, it would be advisable to assess the elaboration of an open, humble, and collaborative vision towards philosophy. The field of MOS must discard contempt related to the supposed uselessness of philosophy. It must recognize that, like M. Jourdain, MOS speaks a language linking certain concepts within ideological frameworks typical of philosophical reflection.

A successful and relevant research line explores the relationships between philosophy and MOS (Griffin et al. 2015 ; Hassard 1999 ; Koslowski (ed.), 2010 ), even when MOS sometimes “seems a bit shy to embrace a philosophical orientation” (Mir and Greenwood 2022 : 17).

Erkal and Vandekerkhove ( 2021 ) offer an interesting analysis of the meta-theoretical discussions on philosophy of management. From that analysis, some trends appear: philosophy of management should adopt an analytic and prescriptive perspective (Laurie and Cherry 2001 ), need to understand properly systems thinking (Dearey 2002 ), should be a process philosophy (based on dialogue between philosophers and managers) (Platts and Harris 2011 ), and should question what management is (Blok 2020 ).

This article tries to adopt a synoptic view (Gare and Neesham 2022 ; Broad 1947 ) of the assimilation of parrhesia within MOS. The aim is to look for some inter-actions between MOS and philosophy considering several complexities present in organizational phenomena. These complexities are boosted by the increasing roughness of current societal challenges. A respectful relationship between MOS and philosophy is the premise to develop an actionable inter-action to tackle with those challenges.

Nevertheless –as academic fields— philosophy and MOS show dynamics pointed towards a symbolic capital accumulation that can thwart the blossom of parrhesia in academia. Parrhesia should be the key to overcome hesitations observed in MOS when dealing with current challenges.

Another trend within MOS –especially within authors oriented towards consultancy for practitioners— is to appreciate philosophical ideas, but to approximate them in a superficial way. It seems that those authors draw upon philosophy just to garnish their mental framework. So, they disguise that framework (focused only on the business’ bottom line) with intellectually prestigious references. An example of this behaviour is Iñiguez ( 2020 ).

Finally, as we have said in the introduction, to attain a more relevant inter-action between philosophy and MOS requires thirdly –in our view— the implementation of a reciprocal curiosity amidst both fields. We deal with this issue in the following section.

Building Reciprocal Curiosity between Philosophy and MOS

Curiosity for other fields’ novelties is a powerful source of renewal in any discipline. Indeed, “questioning out of curiosity can build new dialogue and open up new methodological avenues” (Kelemen et al., 2019: 3). Questioning is a premise for critique, dialogue, and progress in any knowledge area. Therefore, if MOS and philosophy are concerned with each other’s developments, new forms of questioning will arise. Another thought-provoking aftermath of the MOS-philosophy mutual curiosity could be improved concern for societal issues through new methodologies. For Kelemen et al. (2015: 25) “new methodologies could be promoted that not only ensure the co-production of knowledge, but also can engender a ‘giving back to the community’ sensibility.” Philosophy’s openness to new methodologies and topics (especially applied topics) will boost its development and social engagement (Brake 2017 ; Hicks and Holbrook, 2019).

Regarding reciprocal curiosity between philosophy and MOS, the distance that initially appears insurmountable between both fields could be addressed based on the study of specific actions of organizations (which MOS academics observe and analyze). An example is the actions of managers in current organizations and their inability to face problems of a higher order than the organization (like climate change). Such directive action unfolds within a specific paradigm. This dominant paradigm in managing organizations presents limits preventing them from solving that problem; this cannot be disputed because it is incommensurate with other alternative paradigms.

Resulting from the co-evolution of organizations and societies, organizational objectives nowadays are sharply connected with wider issues that –in contrast with the modernist view of the organization—are beyond the mere organizational borders. A clear, interesting and relevant example is ‘open innovation’ (OI). OI has evolved recently as a useful tool to tackle simultaneously with business and societal challenges, as McGahan et al. ( 2021 : 49) say:

…[I]deas, concepts, theory, and practice on open innovation that were developed primarily for business are deeply relevant to address the grand challenges of social impact that now loom as the most important management problems of this century.

Therefore, concrete organizational problems and pending challenges will guide the reciprocal curiosity between philosophy and MOS. However, there is a risk of considering as concrete only that clothed with an adequate appearance of reality. This is the society of the spectacle (Debord 1967 /2014: 14, 19):

The society based on modern industry is not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle –the visual reflection on the ruling economic order—goals are nothing, development is everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself. (…) The spectacle inherits the weakness of the Western philosophical project, which attempted to understand activity by means of the categories of vision , and it is based on the relentless development of the particular technical rationality that grew out of that form of thought. The spectacle does not realize philosophy, it philosophizes reality, reducing everyone’s concrete life to a universe of speculation.

Precisely, the consideration of how the knowledge of what is considered real is obtained points again to the epistemologies applied in MOS, specifically, social constructionism. As Böhm indicates, it is typical of social constructionism to consider that conflicts between communities of practice must be resolved at the local level through politics understood as ‘dialogue, “language” and conflict management techniques’ (Böhm 2006 : 129). Referring to the social framework and appealing to the concepts of ‘non-synthesis’ by Benjamin ( 1996 ) and of ‘impossibility’ by Laclau and Mouffe ( 1985 ), he considers that the final integration of the parties in conflict is impossible. The conflict is linked to wide-ranging social and historical elaborations, and ‘it cannot simply be solved by establishing dialogue between oppositional parties. Resolving social conflict, that is, bringing about a final synthesis, is impossible’ (Böhm 2006 : 129). His analysis of Gergen’s work ( 1995 ) helps Böhm to conclude that his emphasis on the importance of dialogue (2006: 115–116),

[H]ighlights that, in his view, reality is always embedded in conversations and social interactions within communities rather that a pre-existing entity. (…) For these social constructionists, then, language does not reflect reality; instead, it constitutes it. That is, reality is constructed (inter-)subjectively through the communal construction of language, or ‘languaging’.

Finally, Böhm ( 2006 ) offers a critique from the perspective of the Frankfurt School, based on Adorno’s (1967) attack on Mannheim’s psychologism ( 1951 ), of the discourses of social constructionism. This criticism extends to the approaches of Berger and Luckman ( 1966 ), Weick ( 1995 ), and Hatch ( 1997 ), considering that (Böhm 2006 : 121),

Reality is seen as something that is produced by individuals reaching consensus and shared understanding through dialogue. (…) I argued that such views are based on a certain psychologism, which remains blind towards those social structures that endure over time and space and traverse local communities. One of these social structures is, for example, capital that always already shapes reality in specific ways and produces subjectivities along specific lines.

A possible escape from the limit psychologism establishes for the reciprocal questioning between philosophy and MOS could also originate from hermeneutics. In the 20th century, hermeneutics had relevance in some areas of organizations, such as culture, sensemaking, identity, and learning. In this sense, Barrett, Powley, and Pearce ( 2011 : 205) point out that.

With interpretation as a focal point of dialogue and deliberation, forms of dialogue shape meaning systems and action and thereby influence social actors’ action with and toward others. Practically speaking, dialogue becomes an actionable strategy by which organizational actors may influence, engage, enable, empower, or whatever suits them.

This dialogue implies an openness towards the other as well as proceeding to a mental openness from the awareness of prejudices (believing that one is alien to prejudices is the greatest of these) held as part of the experience (Gadamer 1960 ). Can this open-mindedness and overcoming of prejudices enable dialogue between philosophy and MOS in the short term? This would require awareness that, as Spoelstra states, ‘A meeting between philosophy and social science is never common sense’ (Spoesltra, 2007: 65).

It would be also useful to build and develop adequate platforms for dialogue: journals (such as Philosophy of Management ), scientific conferences to discuss issues of common interest for philosophers and MOS scholars and learned societies. Improved interactions with philosophers imply rethinking of what it means to be a MOS scholar: through a reflexive process, it becomes evident that approaches questioning the mainstream can revivify this academic field. MOS scholars should not absorb any philosophy study programme but should work from a critical perspective that enables them to overcome the scholastic practices that have sclerotized the field by focusing all efforts on accumulating symbolic capital, that is, gaining positions within the field hierarchy.

This essay addresses a special study of applied ethics related to MOS scholarship; thus, it could be framed within moral philosophy. The main ideas considered here come from Western tradition, as the parrhesia (arising from ancient Greece since c. V BC). However, the main authors in MOS thought could be related to several relevant themes in the Western tradition (heroism, rationalism, positivism, romanticism, existentialism and postmodernism), making its understanding advisable for MOS scholars (Joullié 2016 ).

A highly remarkable example of dialogue between philosophers and management and organization scholars is the study of parrhesia in MOS. Since the reception in MOS of Foucault’s ideas on the knowledge/power bond, different authors within the field have studied the so-called Foucault’s third period to consider parrhesia within organizations (Vandekerckhove and Langenberg 2012 ). Raffnsøe, Mennicken, & Miller ( 2019 ) situate parrhesia within Foucault’s fourth wave alongside his analysis on subjectivity.

In parrhesia, the subject assumes an active role in the event of the utterance of truth. The relationship between the subject and truth is one of the main axes of Western culture, as Vandekerckhove and Langenberg ( 2012 ) explain, offering an interesting reflection on truth and critique within organizations (Vandekerckhove and Langenberg 2012 : 35):

Foucault clarified his position towards modern, western analyses of truth through an elaboration of the concept of critique. In practicing resistance towards a dominating truth, a personal truth emerges. Any utterance of critique is speaking a personal truth (hence the acknowledgement of the subject) but this is done in an organizational context which is a relational and communicative reality. Thus critique in organizations appears as an interactive truth. (…) In foucauldian parlance, an interactive truth appears through the critical judgements which are part of a power game embedded in the organizational praxis.

In the Western philosophical tradition, the presence of truth in organizational activities can be studied from different perspectives, such as German idealism or critical realism, among others (Krijnen 2015 ). Truth in organizations is a hot issue, with a growing number of applications (authored by MOS scholars, regulators, and practitioners) concerning phenomena like whistleblowing, raising concerns, or the ethical dimension of organizational life (Vandekerckhove and Langenberg 2012 ). Several academics (Rodriguez-Pomeda and Casani 2022 ; Skinner 2011 ; Weiskopf and Willmott 2013 ) have applied the available knowledge to the study of parrhesia and critique within specific organizational situations, tracing links to not only Foucault but to the different parrhesiastic processes in the ancient Athenian democracies. These works illustrate how MOS scholars and philosophers can obtain mutual benefit from their interactions on parrhesia.

From Prescriptive Theoretical Reflection to Richer and more Powerful Academic Practice

In the introduction, we proposed that the collaboration between philosophy and MOS should deal with four aspects. Firstly, the delimitation of the interaction field. Secondly, the building of a respectful relationship. Thirdly, the implementation of useful modes for enhancing their reciprocal curiosity. The fourth and final aspect of the interaction we propose between philosophy and MOS refers to the passage from prescriptive theoretical reflection to an academic performance consistent with the times. As social fields, both philosophy and MOS reflect the features and behaviours of Bourdieu’s accurate analysis of academia ( 1975 : 19).

The “pure” universe of even the “purest” science is a social field like any other, with its distribution of power and its monopolies, its struggles and strategies, interests and profits, but it is a field in which all these invariants take on specific forms.

The academic field and the practices developed in it (such as communication and scientific publication or exchanging ideas and dialogues between people and groups) consistently reflect power relationships that must be analyzed contextually (Paasi 2017 ). The context in which these relationships develop has been characterized as ‘academic capitalism’ (Slaughter and Leslie 1997). This term includes a market mentality (behaviours, attitudes, values) assumed by both academics and the universities and research centres in which they work. This mentality is reflected in the competition for financing from external private sources (companies, foundations, and students). Success in attracting external funds – and the results of scientific publication and the generation of patents – is among the main determinants of academic evaluation. This evaluation sanctions the results of the struggle for control of symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1975 , 1984).

Specific mechanisms (like mixed conferences) are examples of a useful dialogue between MOS and philosophy scholars. That dialogue, together with Bourdieu’s lucid vision concerning the dynamics of academic fields, and recent developments in the sociology of science, widens the understanding of MOS as an academic field.

From Merton’s traditional approach (Merton, 1957, 1973) regarding ‘Mode 1’ of knowledge production, other authors have studied the new contexts in which scientific activity occurs. Thus, concepts such as ‘post-academic science’ (Ziman 2000 ), ‘Mode 2’ (Gibbons et al. 1994 ), and the ‘n-tuples helix’ (Carayannis et al. 2018 ; Park 2014 ) appear. That is, the literature registers a heterogeneous evolution from modern to postmodern approaches to academic activity. Not all fields of knowledge observe their practices transform at the same speed, even when all are inserted in a social context that presses for a change guided by neoliberal ideology. This change is reflected in the passage from the ethos of modern science (determined by four institutional imperatives: communism, universalism, disinterestedness, organized scepticism – CUDOS –; Merton, 1973: 270) to the postmodern ‘industrial science’ (proprietary, local, authoritarian, commissioned, and expert, PLACE, Ziman 1995 ). However, that post-academic or industrial science is also subjected to the attacks of anti-scientific movements that question the role of academics as experts (Porter and Wollenweber 2018 ).

Post-academic science is ‘postmodern in its philosophy’ (Ziman 1996 : 77), and it has several essential characteristics. Among them are the following: it multiplies the places of knowledge production, opens scientific knowledge to public scrutiny, privatizes academic knowledge, facilitates interdisciplinary research, increases specialization, reinforces the link between science and social needs, and weakens the relationship between curiosity and science (Kellog 2006). The coexistence of areas where academic and industrial or post-academic science predominate makes the hybridization of both possible in a framework of mutual relationships dominated by economic, political, cultural, and social (communicative) factors. Thus, fractures and discontinuities are produced by fields of knowledge, supranational regions, and countries affecting the dialogue and interaction of academics. With different levels of acceptance of the academy-industry overlap, the literature registers emerging concepts concerning their social context, such as ‘open science’, which affects scientific communication, currently dominated by an editorial oligopoly (Larivière et al. 2015 ), or ‘open innovation’ (Smart et al. 2019 ). The interaction between academic fields may be driven by another new concept, such as that of ‘post-academic disciplinarity’ (Hellström et al. 2003 ). Overcoming disciplinary boundaries (and the limitations of any order they entail) is a necessity, according to Böhm ( 2007 : 112), that.

The relationship between philosophy and organization cannot be a linear one, as ‘philosophy’ and ‘organization’ themselves are not given constructs. That is, before we can even problematize this relationship, we have to first envisage the destruction of philosophy and organization.

Previously, we argued about the four premises needed –in our view—to construct a relationship amid philosophy and MOS that enhance their social contribution and boost MOS scholarship. Those premises are –regarding both disciplines— the delimitation of their inter-action field, the enablement of a respectful relationship framework, the development of reciprocal curiosity, and, finally, the movement from a prescriptive theoretical reflection to a more powerful academic practice.

Confluences and interchanges between disciplines are a central issue for interdisciplinary studies. Authors like Mäki ( 2016 ) have proposed the development of a new branch of philosophy of science called “philosophy of interdisciplinarity (PhID)”. That philosophy considers that one objective of PhID is to analyze “contactual information” (why disciplines contact others and the specific outcomes of these contacts). This huge work requires the collaboration—among other fields—of social epistemology, social philosophy, and social ontology with philosophy of science. Mäki ( 2016 ) believes that this “heavily collective” effort towards the understanding of interdisciplinarity from a philosophical lens should have two initial objectives. The first is to develop a systematic research agenda and the second to publish work jointly authored by philosophers, other scholars, and practitioners. These two objectives are also applicable to interdisciplinary collaborations between philosophy and MOS.

However, if philosophers want to develop interdisciplinary work with other disciplines, the characterization of philosophy should be modified. As Hoffman et al. ( 2013 : 1858) write.

interdisciplinarity can be perceived as a more fundamental challenge to philosophy itself; that is, as a challenge to the self-understanding and self-conceptualization of philosophy as an academic discipline, including its forms of institutionalization with funding procedures, academic careers, course programs, and teaching methods. (…). Philosophy ‘as’ interdisciplinarity calls for intensive and explicit philosophical engagement with ‘the world out there.’

As with all knowledge fields, philosophy has crystalized practices derived from the accumulation of symbolic capital over the years. For Frodeman ( 2013 : 1018), “twentieth century philosophy has been unhealthily insular”, so he calls for “the de-disciplining of philosophy.” Thus, philosophers should actively engage with ongoing problems (and the associated scientific debates). He considers that “[p]hilosophers need to get out of the study, and into the field.” (Frodeman 2013 : 1018).

All these proposals could widen the interaction opportunities between philosophy and MOS. Therefore, philosophy could facilitate compromising with MOS. So, although philosophy and MOS have had relevant connections throughout history, the future deepening of their links remains uncertain. We explain below how such a deepening could strongly benefit the advancement of MOS from their present situation.

Interaction with Philosophy as a Means to Overcome the Stagnation of MOS: Dedisciplinizing the Philosophy

The interest of the argument by O’Doherty on the philosophical connections of Burrell and Morgan ( 1979 ) (discussed in Sect. 3) illustrates a key question: should MOS be infused with philosophical premises? To answer affirmatively would imply supposing that MOS and philosophy are on the same plane of intellectual work. That is, a fruitful interaction between the two could be considered despite their considerable differences in objectives, approaches, and practices. This aporia could be overcome by specifying the level of interaction to be achieved between MOS and philosophy. On a radical level, both work on the human, their links with themself and other human beings, and what contextualizes them. By sharing this radical concern, it has been possible to develop collaborations in different areas, such as ethics or ontology. However, at a more superficial level (that on which MOS and philosophy meet due to their respective academic development), the differences become larger, hindering interaction.

As a social science, MOS have different methodological and teleological horizons from philosophy. Regarding philosophers, the freedom to elaborate new approaches is apparently broader (Laplane et al. 2019 ), even when each is framed in a certain philosophical tradition. They appear authorized to unlimitedly expand the tradition they ascribe to, which usually means departing (fighting fiercely at times) from other traditions. For social scientists who cultivate MOS, the degrees of freedom appear smaller since their mental frames are more clearly or apparently more rigidly defined. That is, the epistemological limits of action are expressly proclaimed and would be accepted more submissively.

Both fields (philosophy and MOS) are subject to the institutional (academic) context in which they are cultivated. Therefore, they share the obstacles to freedom of thought typical of their political dynamics (Bourdieu 1975 ). However, both are losing their real impact on societies as technoscientific change promotes historical transformations. Some philosophers advocate more intense participation in social debates (Epstein 2015 ), which would require dedisciplinizing the philosophy (Frodeman 2013 ) and extending their collaborations with other fields of knowledge (Hoffman et al. 2013 ). That is, their lack of social projection is mainly due to the disciplinary framework despite their strong capacity to open new paths of thought. The dedisciplinizing of philosophy should also regard the nature of the discussions within the field, and its links to reality in a broad sense, as Norrie ( 2018 : 647) says.

[T]he most plausible attempt at a non-partisan, umbrella philosophy has probably been the view that philosophy aims at a theory of the most general features of reality, over and above the particular theoretical domains of the sciences.

On the side of organizational scholars, the debate on the lack of relevance has a long history, which has intensified since the 1980s (Palmer et al. 2009 ).

This growing lack of relevance relates to, firstly, the definition of the social groups towards which the results of MOS scholars are directed. An important literature current considers that the main group is the managers (Palmer et al. 2009 ). Second, it relates to generating useful knowledge for managers and its transmission to them (Shapiro et al. 2007 ). Finally, it relates to the balance between rigour, relevance, and institutional structure (Bennis and O’Toole 2005 ; Gulati 2007 ). It should also be noted that the managers’ training needs, and the results of MOS research that could be useful to them, are also changing. Proof of this is the Rethinking the MBA project undertaken at the Harvard Business School in 2008, one century after its foundation. Such a project, among the imperatives for change in training MBA students, includes concerns for ‘research lacks relevance’, as well as on “the need for broader research approaches” (Datar et al. 2010 ).

This essay has a worry for the MOS social impact. A more fruitful inter-action amidst philosophy and MOS could pave the way for a higher social impact. This improved inter-action could get over the MOS impasse facing the mammoth challenges of this time. In the following section we discuss this issue.

Towards more Useful MOS: Philosophy and Social Sciences

The social impact of mos.

One of the symptoms of the crisis afflicting MOS is the growing debate concerning the utility or social impact of their products. Several works have recently addressed this issue, focusing on aspects such as the contributions of organizational development (OD) to organizational change (Cummings and Cummings 2020 ); the refocusing of the debate on relevance from a more rigorous elaboration of the theory (Kieser et al. 2015 ); a more complete characterization of the concept of impact, considering its scholarly, practical, societal, policy, and educational dimensions (Wickert et al. 2021 ); the role of consultants as intermediaries between management science and management practice (Bouwmeester, Heusinkveld and Tjemes, 2021); and a more comprehensive conceptualization of the theory from a typology of the same that includes explaining, comprehending, ordering, enacting, and provoking (Sandberg and Alvesson 2021 ).

An inextricable relationship exists between academic activities of education and research in MOS, whose impact on societies plagued by injustice, environmental disasters, and scandalous business ethics should be analyzed reflexively (Cunliffe 2020 ). This educational and research resource comprises criticizing and questioning the premises and practices conventionally assumed in organizations.

One must be careful not to fall into the reductionisms that abound when attempting to extrapolate critical theory to MOS. Thus, with the main reference to the works of Adorno ( 1998 ) and Benjamin ( 1996 ), it is noteworthy that all criticism, to be so, must be immanent. That is, it must be embedded in the social and political context of the historical moment in which it occurs. In the words of Böhm ( 2007 : 109),

‘Immanent critique’ asks how a phenomenon – for example, a phenomenon of organization – stands in relation to the antagonisms of society, and whether there are any techniques to confront and overcome these antagonisms. Only if one is immanently involved with these antagonisms one can speculate about a way beyond them.

Without losing sight of the immanent criticism, Cunliffe relates reflexivity to foresight and imagination to break the growing reductionism in MOS academic activity through Ingold’s ( 2011 ) metaphor of “wayfaring” (Cunliffe 2018 ). It is interesting to note the echoes existing between Ingold’s wayfaring and Heidegger’s erring: ‘[M]an’s flight from the mystery towards what is readily available, onwards from one current thing to the next, passing the mystery by –this is erring’ (Heidegger 1978 : 133).

Both concepts allude to the loss people suffer when wandering, which causes concealment of the truth. In a sense, this tendency towards failure characterizes philosophical activity (Kaulingfreks 2007 : 43):

Philosophy is in this sense opposed to science. It is a discipline of failure and is directed to not knowing. Philosophy is the discipline that knows that it does not know. Nicholas of Cusanas explained this paradoxical situation as docta ignorantia. (…) Wisdom is to see the borders of our knowledge.

From the viewpoint of scientific research in MOS, it would be necessary to avoid the danger of being irrelevant in the debates that, in society as a whole and all types of organizations, develop concerning the historical challenges humanity faces. If it is considered that the ethical and effective response to these grand challenges implies overcoming a neoliberal mentality, it may be agreed that a new MOS model integrating philosophy is not only convenient but necessary. In effect, philosophy is a useless activity within the dominant ideological framework, considering that useful activities serve to achieve a certain economic end (Kaulingfreks 2007 ).

Common Sense in the Social Sciences

While the social sciences operate with concepts based on common sense, philosophy analyzes how that common sense is presumed (Spoelstra 2007 ). What is commonly understood as reality and people’s relationship with it would be the caesura between social sciences and philosophy. Now, this caesura could exist only at the level of demand established socially towards the practices and results of social science. If contemporary social science is required to achieve nothing more than a series of developments with more or less relation to reality – as is generally assumed – no philosophical reflection is necessary. However, when the researcher, or certain social groups, are dissatisfied with the socially sanctioned image of reality (that is, when the status quo is questioned), that first level of scientific relationship with reality is insufficient. It is necessary to analyze the overlaps between the different levels of social activity. So, the social scientist should realize a series of acts based on their ethical principles. As explained below, the concept of parrhesia combines these ethical and political dimensions.

The convergence point of our rationale is parrhesia. Academic parrhesia is a powerful tool to renew fields that (as MOS) show a growing social impact depletion. One reason is that to speak truth to the people driving academic fields can be, sometimes, the only way to infuse fresh ideas in the scholastic debates. Another one is to prevent that academic capitalism (through its symbolic capital accumulation) can impose a MOS research agenda focused only on the interests of some agents, like big corporations.

Parrhesia, as an ascetical practice rooted in the ethical betterment of the parrhesiastic (παρρησíαστες, who exercises parrhesia), is built on longstanding philosophical workings. But also has a transformative potential on the parrhesiastic’s community. The parrhesiastic can serve as a role model for their peers fearful to say what they really think. In times of profound crises (as the ones we are living now in MOS and, more generally, in society as a whole), parrhesia could be the beacon that shed light on new paths. Paths guided by a social members’ clear ethical compromise. As Foucault say (1999: 7/67), considering the relationships between parrhesia and politics as them appear in Euripides plays,

…[ P ] arrhesia is an essential characteristic of Athenian democracy. (…) parrhesia was a guideline for democracy as well as an ethical and personal attitude characteristic of the good citizen.

Parrhesia, then, is a mighty lever to revitalize ethical compromises within communities (as MOS scholarship) as well as societies laid at critical crossroads. In the next section we examine this topic.

In ancient Greece, from c. V BC until c. V AD, the concept of parrhesia developed as an interaction between ethics and the political performance of the individual (Foucault 1999 ). The parrhesiastic assumes a risk (even death) by telling the truth to the powerful, be it the sovereign or society. Therefore, the behaviour of parrhesiastic links the personal dimension of caring for oneself with the collective dimension of caring for others. The long tradition of studying parrhesia was brilliantly continued by Foucault ( 1999 ) as part of his interest in the links between power and truth (Cooper, Ezzamel & Willmott, 2008 : 680). The parrhesiastic speaks when and how they deem appropriate, animated by a desire that others act virtuously, in the sense of living their life in accordance with the truth. Starting from this principle of conduct (telling the truth and ensuring others do the same), they adopt a political position without calculating what effects their proclamation will have. They do not harbour rhetorical concerns but honestly and completely state all their thoughts about an issue. With this, they consistently face the established order, whose survival is based on hypocrisy, silence, or flattery. Therefore, they are subversive.

Parrhesia, whose etymological meaning is ‘to say everything’ (Foucault 2004 : 36), implies accepting the risk of the reaction of power to reconsider what one can be at each moment. The person who practices parrhesia must ask themself what they want to be and what they are willing to do to achieve it. It is an act of ethical coherence that requires courage towards oneself and others since, according to Foucault ( 1999 : 2),

In parrhesía the speaker emphasizes the fact that he is both the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the enunciandum –that he himself is the subject of the opinion to which he refers. The specific ‘speech activity’ of the parrhesíastic enunciation thus takes the form: ‘I am the one who thinks this and that.’

Telling the truth is the essence of parrhesia, and how does a parrhesiastic know that they speak the truth? (Foucault 1999 : 3)

To my mind, the parrhesíastes says what is true because he knows that it is true; and he knows that it is true because it is really true. The parrhesíastes is not only sincere and says what is his opinion, but his opinion is also the truth. He says what he knows to be true (…) there is always an exact coincidence between belief and truth.

Thus, the parrhesiastic tells the truth, puts themselves in danger by doing so, and tells the listener (or listeners) how to behave. That is, they criticize the thinking or actions of another (generally, someone powerful, be it the sovereign or the people). Depending on who this other is, several types of parrhesia can be distinguished: citizen (which only Athenian citizens could exercise publicly), democratic (telling the assembly, gathered in the agora, what they do not want to hear), autocratic (telling the truth to the prince, who, if he does not want to appear a tyrant, is forbidden to ignore or punish the parrhesiastic), Socratic (when Socrates shows the ignorance or bad faith of his interlocutor) and ‘Hellenistic’ (the teacher covertly exposes the truth to their disciple) (Gros 2015 : XXX).

Based on the above, it can be deduced that practising parrhesia on the part of the faculty within and from the neoliberal university could be advisable (Rodriguez-Pomeda and Casani 2022 ). Firstly, it expresses a personal commitment to the inseparable truth of the teaching function. Secondly, it provokes a political action that aims to modify the behaviour of others to make it consistent with the truth. In a broader sense, the academic field harbours conflicts originating from the quest for power. Those who hold power exercise it to increase the cultural or symbolic capital they treasure (and can transform into other types of capital), prevent other people and groups from taking power from them, and perpetuate it through the co-option of their disciples (Bourdieu 1975 ).

If, together with these political dynamics, it is considered that the university (and, by extension, the academic field) also shows the characteristics of organizational hypocrisy – dissociation between the triple discourse of the dominant elites, that in which the organizational objectives are proclaimed, that corresponding to the decision-making, and that expressing the execution of the decisions (Brunsson 2002 ) –, the parrhesia can be a useful action of resistance.

In this context, parrhesia has a special meaning in the field of post-academic research (Hellström et al. 2003 ; Kellogg 2006 ; Ziman 2000 ). In this, the dominant economic agents set the objectives and lines of research deserving finance, seeking their benefit. Once objectives and lines have been established, the academic inner circles manage the research process. They do this by fixing the admissible methods, establishing the working conditions and, especially, controlling who can publish in scientific journals (which, to a large extent, are in the hands of an editorial syndicate (Larivière et al. 2015 )), which people and groups have access to the financing of their research activity, and who can hold positions in universities and research centres. The power of these academic inner circles is manifested in the determination of the mechanisms governing the accumulation of academic prestige and the consequent access to the advantages associated with it (however, this prestige as externalization of cultural capital is interchangeable for other types of capital).

Disciplinary knowledge appears to be among the social problems of modernity and postmodernity. The critical theory derived from the Frankfurt School is useful for the understanding of “the literary production of academic discipline.” (Agger 2013 : 3). As this author shows, the commodification of knowledge in contemporary universities requires an academic discourse intertwined with the organization of academic disciplines. The scholars dominating a scientific field shape its academic discourse (mainly published in scientific journals). Thus, they can enforce discipline within the field through some specific discourses constituting disciplinary knowledge (Agger 2013 ).

Disciplinary knowledge is the cornerstone of any scientific field, that is configurated (Bourdieu 1975 : 19, 25),

As a system of objective relations between positions already won (in previous struggles), the scientific field is the locus of a competitive struggle, in which the specific issue at stake in the monopoly of scientific authority , defined inseparably as technical capacity and social power, or, to put it another way, the monopoly of scientific competence , in the sense of a particular agent’s socially recognised capacity to speak and act legitimately (i.e. in authorised and authoritative way) in scientific matters. (…) Scientific authority is thus a particular kind of capital, which can be accumulated, transmitted, and even reconverted into other kinds of capital under certain conditions.

Academic publishing is at the core of disciplinary knowledge and, consequently, is key for hegemony within a scientific field (Weiner 1998 ). Therefore, the structure of academic fields, as well as technological changes in academic publishing, call for rethinking of academic publishing, as does the so-called “philosophy of academic publishing” (Peters et al. 2016 ).

That is the context in which the contemporary academic super-competitive atmosphere unfolds, revolving around anglophone hegemony articulated on a geopolitics/economy of knowledge, uneven writing spaces, and a publishing industrial complex, all within a framework defined by the following key dimensions: global(ization) political/knowledge economy, the state policy transfer (e.g. the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD), neoliberal rationality, globalization of academia, universities’ academic capitalism, claims for internationalization, English as lingua franca, ranking, evaluation and citation culture, entrepreneurial subjectivity, struggle over symbolic capital, and ISI journals’ visibility (Paasi, 2015: 518).

Twenty-first-century organizations are jeopardized by an increasingly intractable environment. MOS responses do not fit with that environment. Thus, a renewal of MOS is needed to build actionable ideas for current organizations and societies. Criticism has been a powerful renewal tool in all scientific fields. Following Foucault, Vandekerckhove & Langenberg ( 2012 : 35) consider that criticism is the lever of an interactive truth within organizational power games.

As power games also characterize scientific fields (including MOS), if conscientious academics (as discussed in Sects. 8 and 9) practise parrhesia as an ethical mandate facing disciplinary knowledge (Agger 2013 ), disorganization of the MOS dynamic occurs. Seeking truth is the epistemic responsibility of MOS academics (Tsui and McKiernan 2022 ), and seeking truth (“understood as a linguistic act driven by moral impulse, elicited by a critical perception and formed into a personal judgement”, Vandekerckhove and Langenberg, 2012 : 38)) requires differentiating between parrhesia and the institutionalized critique within MOS. Institutionalized critique provokes no substantial change in the academic field. However, parrhesia originates from sources differing from that institutionalized critique and has no intended effects (Vandekerckhove and Langenberg 2012 : 38 and 40):

The parrhesiastes has no agenda. Her critique is sudden and is one of ‘not this way, without alternatives, without foundation.’ (…) [p]arrhesia in organizations leads to a disorganization of the organizational dynamic, on the condition that others in the organization are prepared to hear the parrhesiastic truth-speaking (…). [i]f the organization is to continue to exist, disorganization is succeeded by a re-organization.

Therefore, if MOS are losing the ability to offer prompt responses to running organizational challenges (Starbuck 2003 ), parrhesia (linking academics telling and hearing the truth) could launch a much-needed reorganization process in the field. Parrhesia’s moral call resonates in the proposal by Mir, Willmott, and Greenwood ( 2016 : 6 and 10):

[i]t is incumbent on us all to resist continuity and to enact other forms of organizing and organization. Philosophy then becomes a dual act of disruption and creation, leading us back to life itself. (…) [a]n approach to organizational studies and research that decentres the taken-for-granted assumptions populating the ‘common sense’ of our field (…) invite a more reflective, inclusive and politically sensitive understanding of the working life and its challenges.

Performing parrhesia in the academic field where the academic super-competitive atmosphere occurs implies, as it must, certain risks for parrhesiastics. An illustration of such risks has been offered by Steele ( 2010 ) in the ​​international relations academic community. Considering these risks (along with other factors) should explain the growing deterioration of the role of teachers as examples for their students of seekers of freedom, as well as the gradual abandonment of teachers of the practice of speaking and acting together in countries such as the United Kingdom (Tamboukou 2012 ).

Parrhesia is a disposition to act based on truth to complete this proposal of academic conduct at the intersection between ethics and politics. This proposal is rooted in philosophical thoughts prior to the twelfth century. The separation between theory and practice, between thought and action, occurred much earlier than the relatively recent marketization of academic life and began with scholasticism (Case 2007 ). There is a longstanding tradition, increased after Enlightenment, of moral improvement through practising (Sloterdijk 2013 ). The integration between thought and action has already been proposed by various ancient philosophical schools, such as Stoicism (Hadot 1995 ). Briefly, as Case ( 2007 : 98) states, it would involve emphasizing ‘the importance of leading a virtuous life based on reasoned moral principles’.

Our proposal is not limited to defending a certain philosophical turn in MOS but approaching MOS from a philosophical attitude. The philosophical approach adopted so far in some areas of MOS has focused on discussing theories and concepts, the debate on the meaning and elaboration of knowledge, and, finally, studying ethics in organizations. One current also analyzes the political function of MOS, studying, and expanding, the concept of their social impact. The gigantic challenges facing contemporary societies require a clearer and broader contribution from MOS to maintain their legitimacy. Specifically, the philosophical attitude in MOS would start from the concept that, although they belong to an intellectual dimension other than philosophy, they can share some premises. Above its many differences, any rigorous perspective in the fields of MOS and philosophy should consider that both share the elaboration of abstract statements about some conceptual relationships. In philosophy, that elaboration develop specific modes of problematisation about the human (Norrie 2018 ). In MOS, that elaboration should consider empirical practices of some kinds (Clegg et al. 2022 ). The best efforts in philosophy and MOS throughout history has invited humankind to defy established ideas and to reflect on the unknown.

These include a radical critical sense that does not hesitate to question (overcome) the existing mental frameworks. Another premise is the search for the surprise that appears when approaching organizations from viewpoints other than the traditional ones (both theoretically and methodologically). The surprise is permanently hidden in the ineffable. Briefly, it is a willingness to advance in the territory of knowledge without fear of stumbling upon aporias (rather, looking for them) (Jones and ten Bos 2007b ).

To benefit from a new philosophical attitude within MOS it is worth to adopt a synoptic view. Philosophical thinking develops on three basic operations: analysis, synopsis, and synthesis (Broad 1947 ). This author considers that synopsis is “the deliberate viewing together of aspects of human experience which are generally viewed apart, and the endeavour to see how they are inter-related.” (Broad 1947 : 4). Synopsis prepares for the creative integration of some experiences’ aspects through synthesis. Notwithstanding analysis dominates actually the main part of the MOS. Gare and Neesham ( 2022 : 3) consider that “organization, as process and outcome of human action, is a complex phenomenon that requires synoptic investigation across disciplines.”

In our proposal, the idea of parrhesia has a leading role. Parrhesia is a key concept, situated between the Cynics, the Stoics, and the Epicureans (Aubert-Baillot 2015 ).

In The Porch, parrhesia appears (in texts from Zeno of Citium (after Stobaeus, Ecl. 3.14.4; 469.9–10 W. (= SVF 1.237), Marcus Aurelius, and Aristo of Chios (after Stobaeus, Ecl. 3.13.40; 462.2-4 W. (= SVF 1.383)) as a preparatory to philosophy, a must to become a sage (Aubert-Baillot 2015 : 73).

From these premises, the philosophical attitude would open new paths in the fields of knowledge and ethics in MOS. Regarding knowledge, its orderly advance requires confronting the structure and dynamics existing in the academic field of MOS. The results of the dialectic between those who treasure and defend their symbolic capital and those who wish to access it will determine the effective social contribution of those who participate in this academic field. The question is whether – among other things – our work helps solve contemporary challenges or continues to be mainly a product of self-consumption within the field oriented towards personal prestige within the current rules of the game.

Regarding ethics, it would be initially necessary to unmask the banal use of philosophy made by a significant part of the mainstream MOS and management since this use neutralizes the potential of philosophy, prevents fruitful dialogue between MOS and philosophy, and, ultimately, only seeks to reinforce the mainstream through its adornment with philosophical trifles.

Secondly, scholars must exercise themselves in the parrhesiastics’ model. The institutionalization of the academic field of MOS has led to the suppression of the individual and the collective practice of telling the truth to the powerful (those inside and outside the field, knowing that the former serves the latter). That is, our ascesis of parrhesia involves being aware that the successive compromises between ethics and politics it requires will remain imperfect since they will require accepting limitations in applying personal values.

We base our action proposal on a practice of parrhesia within MOS that starts with the fearless speech of the individual scholar and follows with a growing number of scholars doing the same.

The possible implementation this proposal should deal with the parrhesia’s political dimension that affects the organizational decision-making (as Skinner ( 2011 ) illustrates analysing parrhesia in a self-managed community devoted to organic farming), as well as with some technical problems. Among these problems, two of them are more relevant: to break down the individual’s resistance to recognize the truth, and to attain the apathetic mood that drives to self-sufficiency.

Dealing with those “technical problems” derived from the practice of parrhesia, Foucault ( 1999 : 52 ff.) studies Plutarch’s Moralia , which contains a text titled “How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend.” The friend that acts as a parrhesiastic help us to overcome our philautia (or “self-love”). This would be the first benefit that the human collectivities obtains from the practice of parrhesia. The second one, after Foucault’s reading of Plutarch, is to reinforce the steadiness of mind developed by the late Stoics (Foucault 1999 : 53). In fact, “destroying self-delusion and acquiring and maintaining continuity of mind are two ethico-moral activities which are linked to one another.” (Foucault 1999 : 53).

In the last part of Foucault ( 1999 ) appears the so-called “techniques of the parrhesiastic games.” These techniques are related to the labelled “technologies of the self”, which constitutes a relevant part of Foucault’s work (Besley 2005 ; Foucault 1988 ). To develop those parrhesiastic games technologies, there are three requirements: courage to see the truth about oneself, practice ( askesis ) of parrhesia, and situate the practice within a blurred spiritual exercises’ framework. A Stoic philosopher like Seneca (in De ira and De tranquillitate animi ) proposes self-examination as one of the main parrhesiastic exercises (Foucault 1999 : 56). Another one, Epictetus, advocates for a constant scrutiny of our representations. For him, the representations (and not the things represented) are the real perturbators of the human mind.

Foucault ( 1999 ) is a contribution “to construct a genealogy of the critical attitude in the Western philosophy” by analysing the problematization (this is, “how and why certain things (behaviour, phenomena, processes) became a problem”) of parrhesia (Foucault 1999 : 66). His analysis deals with (Foucault 1999 : 66).

These four questions about truth-telling as an activity –who is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relation to power—seem to have emerged as philosophical problems towards the end of the Fifth Century around Socrates, especially through his confrontations with the Sophists about politics, rhetorics, and ethics.

Any parrhesiastic activity involves risk because the individual must assume negative consequences. For the academic parrhesiastic tenure and promotion are two high risk areas when they speak freely (Huckaby 2007 ).

In sum, we are proposing a philosophical attitude within MOS. This attitude could be extremely interesting not only for MOS scholarship, but also for managers (Ledoux 2012 ).

Sloterdijk ( 2013 ) and Hadot ( 1995 ) could contribute to design detailed links between philosophy and parrhesia as moral practice. The implementation of parrhesia is relevant for this essay’s aim because an ethical renewal of MOS scholarship is urgently needed to deal with the grand challenges from the organizational point of view. Business-as-usual is no longer an acceptable behaviour for a stagnant academic field as MOS is nowadays.

Adopting the proposed philosophical attitude through the asceticism of parrhesia would contribute to solving the question posed initially in the abstract (To dare to say the inconvenient truths to the peers (especially, to those of them with high influence on the field) can be a straightforward tool to revitalize MOS nowadays?) by finding a field of interaction between philosophy and MOS framed in respectful relationships that improve their mutual curiosity to achieve an academic practice of the richest and most powerful MOS. This path is arduous but full of meaning for those seeking the truth.

Academy of Management. 2022. Membership. https://aom.org/membership . Accessed 19 November 2022.

Adorno, T.W. 1967. Prisms . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Adorno, T. W. 1998. ‘Why still philosophy’. In Critical models, trans. H. W. Pickford . New York: Columbia University Press.

Google Scholar  

Agger, B. 2013. A critical theory of Public Life: knowledge, discourse and politics in an age of decline. Abingdon, Oxon . UK: Routledge.

Book   Google Scholar  

Archer, M. S., ed. 2013. Social morphogenesis . New York: Springer.

Archer, M. S., ed. 2017. Morphogenesis and the Crisis of Normativity . New York: Springer.

Aubert-Baillot, S. 2015. Un cas particulier de franc-parler (παρρησία): le parler droit (ευθυρρηµοσυνη) des Stoïciens. Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 33 (1): 71–96. https://doi.org/10.1525/RH.2015.33.1.71 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Barrett, F. J., E. H. Powley, and B. Pearce. 2011. Hermeneutic Philosophy and Organizational Theory. In Philosophy and Organization Theory , eds. Haridimos Tsoukas, and Robert Chia, 181–214. Bingley, UK: Emerald: Wagon Lane.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Bedeian, A. G., S. G. Taylor, and A. N. Miller. 2010. Management Science on the credibility bubble: Cardinal Sins and various misdemeanors. Academy of Management Learning & Education 9 (4): 715–725.

Benjamin, W. 1996. On the Program of the Coming Philosophy. In Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913–1926 , edited by Marcus Bullock & Michael W. Jennings (pp.100–110). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.

Bennis, W. G., and J. O’Toole. 2005. May). How business schools lost their way. Harvard Business Review, 1–9.

Berger, P. L., and T. Luckman. 1966. The Social Construction of reality . Hardmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Besley, T. 2005. Foucault, truth telling and technologies of the self in schools. Journal of Educational Inquiry 6 (1): 76–89.

Böhm, S. 2006. Repositioning Organization Theory. Impossibilities and strategies. Basingstoke . Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Böhm, S. 2007. Reading critical theory. In Campbell Jones & René. ten Bos, (Eds.), Philosophy and Organization (pp. 101–115). Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Biggart, N. W. 2016. Biggart’s lament, or getting out of the theory cave. Journal of Management Studies 53 (8): 1381–1387.

Blok, V. 2020. What is (business) management? Laying the ground for a philosophy of management. Philosophy of Management 19: 173–189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-019-00126-9 .

Bourdieu, P. 1975. The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason. Social Science Information 14 (6): 19–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/053901847501400602 .

Bourdieu, P. 1984. Homo Academicus Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Bouwmeester, O, Heusinkveld, S, & Tjemkes, B (2021). Intermediaries in the relevance-gap debate: A systematic review of consulting roles. International Journal of Management Reviews https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12267 .

Brake, E. 2017. Making philosophical progress: the big questions, applied philosophy, and the profession. Social Philosophy and Policy 34 (2): 23–45.

Bratman, M. E. 1993. Shared Intention. Ethics 104 (1): 97–113.

Brister, E., and R. Frodeman, eds. 2020. A guide to field philosophy: case studies and practical strategies . New York: Routledge.

Broad, C. D. 1947. Some Methods of Speculative Philosophy. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 21 , 1–32.

Brunsson, N. 2002. The Organization of Hypocrisy. Talk, decisions and actions in Organizations . Copenhagen: Abstrakt-Liber/Copenhaguen Business School Press.

Burrell, G., and G. Morgan. 1979. Sociological paradigms and Organisational Analysis: elements of the sociology of corporate life . London: Heinemann.

Carayannis, E. G., E. Grigoroudis, D. F. Campbell, D. Meissner, and D. Stamati. 2018. The ecosystem as helix: an exploratory theory-building study of regional co-opetitive entrepreneurial ecosystems as Quadruple/Quintuple Helix Innovation Models. R&D Management 48 (1): 148–162.

Case, P. 2007. Ask not what philosophy can do for critical management studies. In Philosophy and Organization , eds. Campbell Jones, and R. René ten Bos, 85–100. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Chandler, A. D. Jr. 1963. Strategy and Structure. Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise, 2nd printing Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Chomsky, N., and M. Waterstone. 2021. Consequences of capitalism. Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance . London: Hamish Hamilton.

Clegg, S., M. P. E. Cunha, and M. Berti. 2022. Research movements and theorizing dynamics in management and organization studies. Academy of Management Review 47 (3): 382–401. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2018.0466 .

Co-founders of RRBM (Responsible Research in Business and Management). 2017. revised 2020). A vision for responsible research in business and management: Striving for useful and credible knowledge. Position Paper. www.rrbm.network. Accessed 20 November 2022.

Cooper, D. J., M. Ezzamel, and H. Willmott. 2008. Examining ‘Institutionalization’: A Critical Theoretic Perspective. In Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Kerstin Sahlin & Roy Suddaby (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (pp. 673–701). London: Sage.

Cummings, T. G., and C. Cummings. 2020. The relevance challenge in management and Organization Studies: bringing Organizational Development Back in. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 56 (4): 521–546. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886320961855 .

Cunliffe, A. L. 2018. Wayfaring: a scholarship of possibilities or let’s not get drunk on abstraction. M@n@gement 21 (4): 1429–1439.

Cunliffe, A. L. 2020. Reflexivity in Teaching and researching Organizational Studies. RAE-Revista de Administraçao de Empresas (Journal of Business Management) 60 (1): 64–69. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0034-759020200108 .

Datar, S. M., D. A. Garvin, P. G. Cullen, and P. Cullen. 2010. Rethinking the MBA: business education at a crossroads . Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

Davis, G. F. 2015. Editorial essay: what is organizational research for? Administrative Science Quarterly 60: 179–188.

Dearey, P. 2002. Systems thinking: a philosophy of management. Philosophy of Management 2: 73–82. https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20022316 .

Debord, G. 1967/2014. The Society of Spectacle (annotated translation by K. Knabb) Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets.

Dewey, J. 1938. Logic: the theory of inquiry . New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Drucker, P. 1954. The practice of management . New York: Harper.

Elangovan, A. R., and A. J. Hoffman. 2021. The pursuit of Success in Academia: Plato’s ghost asks “What then?”. Journal of Management Inquiry 30 (1): 68–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492619836729 .

Epstein, B. 2015. The ant trap. Rebuilding the Foundations of Social Science . New York: Oxford University Press.

Erkal, H., and W. Vandekerckhove. 2021. Twenty Years of Philosophy of Management. How has it Shaped the Field? Philosophy of Management . https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-021-00185-x .

Fligstein, N. 2008. Chandler and the sociology of Organizations. Business History Review 82 (2): 241–250.

Foucault, M. 1988. Technologies of the self. In Technologies of the self , eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, 16–49. London: Tavistock Publications.

Foucault, M. 1999. Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia (six lectures given by Michel Foucault at Berkeley, Oct.-Nov. 1983) https://foucault.info/downloads/discourseandtruth.doc . Accessed 20 February 2020.

Foucault, M. 2004. Discurso y verdad en la antigua Grecia . Paidós: Barcelona.

Frodeman, R. 2013. Philosophy dedisciplined. Synthese, 190 : 1917–1936. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-012-0181-0 .

Gabriel, M. 2013. The Meaning of ‘Existence’ and the Contingence of Sense. Speculations IV , 74–83. Brooklyn, NY: punctum books.

Gabriel, M. 2015. Fields of sense: a new realist ontology . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Gadamer, H.-G. 1960. Truth and Method . New York: Continuum.

Gare, A., and C. Neesham. 2022. Reviving Methods of Speculative Philosophy. Towards a New Enlightenment in Organization Studies. In Cristina Neesham, Markus Reihlen, and Dennis Schoeneborn (Eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Management Cham, CH: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48352-8 .

George, G., J. Howard-Grenville, A. Joshi, and L. Tihanyi. 2016. Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of Management Journal 59 (6): 1880–1895. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.4007 .

Gergen, K. J. 1995. Social Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/kenneth-gergen/Social%20Construction_and_the_Transformation.pdf . Accessed 13 July 2022.

Gibbons, M., C. Limoges, H. Nowotny, S. Schwartzman, P. Scott, and M. Trow. 1994. The New production of knowledge: the Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies . London: Sage.

Gilbert, M. 1989. On social facts . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Griffin, M., M. Learmonth, and C. Elliott. 2015. “Non-domination, contestation and freedom: the contribution of Philip Pettit to learning and democracy in organisations”. Management learning 46 (3): 317–336.

Griseri, P. 2013. An introduction to the philosophy of management . London: SAGE.

Gros, F. 2015. Introduction. In M. Foucault, Œuvres , Vol. I, (pp. I-XXXIII). Paris: Bibliothèque de La Pléiade-Gallimard.

Gulati, R. 2007. Tent poles, tribalism, and boundary spanning: the rigor-relevance debate in management research. Academy of Management Journal 50: 775–782.

Hadot, P. 1995. Philosophy as a way of life, ed. A. Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell.

Haley, U. C. V. 2022. Impact and the management researcher . Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Hambrick, D. C. 1994. What if the academy actually mattered? Academy of Management Review 19: 11–16.

Harley, B. 2019. Confronting the crisis of confidence in management studies: why senior scholars need to stop setting a bad example. Academy of Management Learning & Education 18 (2): 286–297. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2018.0107 .

Harley, B., and P. Fleming. 2021. Not even trying to change the World: why do Elite Management Journals ignore the major problems facing humanity? The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 57 (2): 133–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886321997189 .

Hassard, J. 1999. Postmodernism, philosophy and management: concepts and controversies. International Journal of Management Reviews 1: 171–195. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2370.00011 .

Hatch, M. J. 1997. Jazzing up the theory of organizational improvisation. Advances in Strategic Management 14: 181–191.

Heidegger, M. 1978. On the essence of truth. In Basic Writings , ed. D. F. Krell, London: Routledge.

Hellström, T., M. Jacob, and S. G. Wenneberg. 2003. The ‘discipline’ of post-academic science: reconstructing the paradigmatic foundations of a virtual research institute. Science and Public Policy 30 (4): 251–260.

Hoffman, M. H. G., J. C. Schmidt, and N. J. Nersessian. 2013. Philosophy of and as Interdisciplinarity. Synthese 190 (11): 1857–1975. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-012-0214-8 .

Huckaby, M. F. 2007. A conversation on practices of the self within relations of power: for scholars who speak dangerous truths. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 20 (5): 513–529.

Iñiguez, S. 2020. In an Ideal Business. How the Ideas of 10 female philosophers bring Value into the Workplace . Cham, CH: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ingold, T. 2011. Being alive. Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Abingdon, Oxon. UK: Routledge.

Ioannidis, John P.A. 2022. “September 2022 data-update for “Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators"”, Mendeley Data, V5, https://doi.org/10.17632/btchxktzyw.5 .

Jackson, N., and P. Carter. 2007. Workers of the world… relax! Introducing a philosophy of idleness to organization studies. In Campbell Jones and René ten Bos (eds.), Philosophy and Organization , 143–156. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Jones, C., and R. ten Bos, eds. 2007a. Philosophy and Organization. Abingdon, Oxon. UK: Routledge.

Jones, C., and R. ten Bos. 2007b. Introduction. In Campbell Jones and René ten Bos (Eds.), Philosophy and Organization , 1–17). Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Jordan, S. R. 2013. Conceptual clarification and the Task of improving Research on Academic Ethics. Journal of Academic Ethics 11: 243–256. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-013-9190-y .

Joullié, J.-E. 2016. The philosophical foundations of Management Thought. Academy of Management Learning & Education 5 (1): 157–179. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2012.0393 .

Kaulingfreks, R. 2007. The useleness of philosophy. In Campbell Jones & René ten Bos, (Eds.), Philosophy and Organization (pp. 39–54). Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Kellogg, D. 2006. Toward a post-academic Science Policy: Scientific Communication and the collapse of the Mertonian norms. International Journal of Communications Law & Policy, Autumn, 1–29.

Kieser, A., A. Nicolai, and D. Seidl. 2015. The practical relevance of Management Research: turning the debate on relevance into a Rigorous Scientific Research Program. The Academy of Management Annals 9 (1): 143–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2015.1011853 .

Kosch, O., and M. Szarucki. 2021. An overview of 25 years of european scientific collaboration in the field of strategic management: a bibliometric analysis. European Management Review 18 (1): 51–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12401 .

Koslowski, P., ed. 2010. Elements of a philosophy of management and Organization . Berlin: Springer.

Krijnen, C. 2015. The very idea of Organization. Social Ontology today: Kantian and Hegelian Reconsiderations . Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Laclau, E., and C. Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy . London: Verso.

Laplane, L., P. Mantovani, R. Adolphs, H. Chang, A. Mantovani, M. McFall-Ngai, C. Rovelli, E. Sober, and T. Pradeu. 2019. Why science needs philosophy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (10), 3948–3952. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900357116 .

Larivière, V., S. Haustein, and P. Mongeon. 2015. The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital era. Plos One 10 (6): e0127502. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502 .

Latusek, D &, and P. G. Hensel. 2022. Can they trust us? The relevance debate and the perceived trustworthiness of the management scholarly community. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 38 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2021.101193 .

Laurie, N., and C. Cherry. 2001. Wanted: philosophy of management. Philosophy of Management 1: 3–12. https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20011122 .

Lawson, T. 2019. The nature of social reality. Issues in Social Ontology . Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Ledoux, L. 2012. Philosophy: today’s manager’s best friend? Philosophy of Management 11 (3): 11–26.

List, C., and P. Pettit. 2011. Group Agency: the possibility, design, and Status of Corporate Agents . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Little, D. 2016. New directions in the philosophy of Social Science . London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Little, D. 2019. Theorizing about organizations https://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2019/05/theorizing-about-organizations.html . Accessed 27 July 2022.

MacLeod, M. 2018. What makes interdisciplinarity difficult? Some consequences of domain specificity in interdisciplinary practice. Synthese 195: 697–720. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1236-4 .

Mannheim, K. 1951. Ideology and Utopia . New York: Harcourt Brace.

McGahan, A. M., M. L. A. M. Bogers, H. Chesbrough, and M. Holgersson. 2021. Tackling Societal Challenges with Open Innovation. California Management Review 63 (2): 49–61.

Merton, R.K. 1957. Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science. American Sociological Review, 22(6): 635-659.

Merton, R. K. 1968. The Matthew Effect in Science. Science 159 (3810): 56–63.

Merton, R.K. 1973. The Sociology of Science. Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Merton, R. K. 1988. The Matthew Effect in Science, II. Cumulative advantage and the symbolism of intellectual property. Isis 79 (4): 606–623.

Mir, R &, and M. Greenwood. 2022. Philosophy and Management Studies. A Research Overview. Abingdon, Oxon . UK: Routledge.

Mir, R., H. Willmott, and M. Greenwood. 2016. Introduction: philosophy in organization studies. Life, knowledge and disruption. In Raza Mir, Hugh Willmott, and Michelle Greenwood, eds., The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies , 1–12. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Mäki, U. 2016. Philosophy of interdisciplinarity. What? Why? How? European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6: 327–342. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-016-0162-0 .

Norrie, S. J. E. 2018. What is Philosophy? Prolegomena to a sociological metaphilosophy. Metaphilosophy 49 (5): 646–673.

O’Doherty, D. 2007. Organization: recovering philosophy. In Campbell Jones & René ten Bos (Eds.), Philosophy and Organization (pp. 21–38). Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Paasi, A. 2017. Academic capitalism and the geopolitics of knowledge. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Geography , eds. John Agnew, Virginie Mamadouh, Anna J. Secor, and Joanne Sharp, 509–523. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Palmer, D., B. Dick, and N. Freiburger. 2009. Rigor and relevance in Organization Studies. Journal of Management Inquiry 18 (4): 265–272. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492609343491 .

Park, H. W. . Carayannis, and F. J. David, and Campbell. 2014. Transition from the Triple Helix to N-Tuple helices? An interview with Elias G. Scientometrics 99: 203–207. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1124-3 .

Patomäki, H. 2020. On the historicity of social ontology. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 50 (4): 439–461. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12254 .

Persson, J., A. Hornborg, L. Olsson, and H. Thorén. 2018. Toward an alternative dialogue between the social and natural sciences. Ecology and Society 23 (4): 14–26. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10498-230414 .

Peters, M. A., P. Jandrić, R. Irwin, K. Locke, N. Devine, R. Heraud, A. Gibbons, T. Besley, J. White, D. Forster, L. Jackson, E. Grierson, C. Mika, G. Stewart, M. Tesar, S. Brighouse, S. Arndt, G. Lazaroiu, R. Mihaila, C. Legg, and L. Benade. 2016. Towards a philosophy of academic publishing. Educational Philosophy and Theory 48 (14): 1401–1425. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.1240987 .

Pettit, P. 1993. The common mind . New York: Oxford University Press.

Pfeffer, J., and C. Fong. 2002. The end of business schools? Less success than meets the eye. Academy of Management Learning and Education 1: 78–95.

Platts, J., and H. Harris. 2011. The place of Philosophy in Management. Philosophy of Management 10: 19–39. https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20111023 .

Porter, J. R., and B. Wollenweber. 2018. Science in an age of (non) reason. In Progress in Science, Progress in Society , ed. Alain Tressaud, 59–70. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Rabetino, R., M. Kohtamäki, and J. S. Federico. 2016. A (re)view of the philosophical foundations of Strategic Management. International Journal of Management Reviews 23: 151–190. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12244 .

Raffnsøe, S., A. Mennicken, and P. Miller. 2019. The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies. Organization Studies 40 (2): 155–182. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617745110 .

Reed, M. 2006. Organizational theorizing: a historically contested terrain. In The sage handbook of organization studies , eds. R. Stewart, Cynthia Clegg, Thomas B. Hardy, Lawrence, and Walter R. Nord, 2nd ed., 19–54. London: SAGE.

Rodriguez-Pomeda, J., and F. Casani. 2022. The Contemporary University: some ontological and empirical aspects. TRAMES A Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 26 (3): 251–272.

Roitman, J. 2014. Anti-crisis . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Sandberg, J., and M. Alvesson. 2021. Meanings of theory: clarifying through Typification. Journal of Management Studies 58 (2): 487–451. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12587 .

Scales Avery, J. 2009. Crisis 21. Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century https://www.johnavery.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Crisis-21-by-John-Avery.pdf . Accessed 7 August 2022.

Searle, J. R. 1995. The construction of social reality . New York: The Free Press.

Searle, J. R. 2010. Making the Social World: the structure of human civilization . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shapiro, D. L., B. L. Kirkman, and H. G. Courtney. 2007. From the editors: perceived causes and solutions of the translation problem in management research. Academy of Management Journal 50: 249–266.

Skinner, D. 2011. Fearless speech: practising parrhesia in a self-managing community. Ephemera theory & politics in organization 11 (2): 157–175.

Slaughter, S., and Leslie, L.L. 1997. Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Sloterdijk, P. 2013. You must change your life. On Anthropotechnics . Cambridge: Polity Press.

Smart, P., S. Holmes, F. Lettice, F. H. Pitts, J. B. Zwiegelaar, G. Schwartz, and S. Evans. 2019. Open Science and Open Innovation in a socio-political context: knowledge production for societal impact in an age of post-truth populism. R&D Management 49 (3): 279–297.

Spoelstra, S. 2007. What is philosophy of organization? In Campbell Jones & René ten Bos (Eds.), Philosophy and Organization (pp. 55–67). Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.

Starbuck, W. H. 2003. Shouldn’t Organization Theory Emerge from Adolescence? Organization 10 (3): 439–452.

Steele, B. J. 2010. Of ‘witch’s brews and scholarly communities: the dangers and promise of academic parrhesia. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 23 (1): 49–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557570903548170 .

Tamboukou, M. 2012. Truth telling in Foucault and Arendt: parrhesia , the pariah and academics in dark times. Journal of Education Policy 27 (6): 849–865. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2012.694482 .

Tourish, D. 2019. Management Studies in Crisis. Fraud, Deception and Meaningless Research . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tsoukas, H., and R. Chia. 2011. Introduction: Why Philosophy Matters to Organization Theory. In Haridimos Tsoukas and Robert Chia, Philosophy and Organization Theory. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 32 . Bingley, UK: Emerald, 1–22.

Tsui, A. S. 2013. The Spirit of Science and socially responsible scholarship. Management and Organization Review 9 (3): 375–394. https://doi.org/10.1111/more.12035 .

Tsui, A. S. 2021. Responsible research and responsible leadership studies. Academy of Management Discoveries 7 (2): 166–170. https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2019.0244 .

Tsui, A. S., and P. McKiernan. 2022. Understanding Scientific Freedom and Scientific responsibility in business and Management Research. Journal of Management Studies 59 (6): 1604–1627. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12816 .

Tuomela, R. 2002. The philosophy of Social Practices: a collective Acceptance View . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tuomela, R. 2007. The philosophy of sociality: the Shared Point of View . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vandekerckhove, W., and S. Langenberg. 2012. Can we organize courage? Implications of Foucault’s parrhesia. Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies 17 (2): 35–44.

Ward, S. C. 2012. Neoliberalism and the Global Restructuring of Knowledge and Education . New York: Routledge.

Weick, K. E. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations . London: Sage.

Weiner, G. 1998, September. Scholarship, disciplinary hegemony, and power in academic publishing. In European Conference for Educational Research, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia , Vol. 20, p. 2005.

Weiskopf, R., and H. Willmott (2013). Ethics as Critical Practice: The “Pentagon Papers”, Deciding Responsibly, Truth-telling, and the Unsettling of Organizational Morality, Organization Studies, 34(4) : 469–493. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840612470256 .

Wickert, C., C. Post, J. P. Doh, J. D. Prescott, and A. Prencipe. 2021. Management Research that makes a difference broadening the meaning of Impact. Journal of Management Studies 58 (2): 297–320. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12666 .

Williams, K. 2020. Playing the fields: theorizing research impact and its assessment. Research Evaluation 29 (2): 191–202. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvaa001 .

Ziman, J. M. 1995. Of one mind: the collectivization of Science . Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics.

Ziman, J. M. 1996. “Postacademic Science”: constructing knowledge with networks and norms. Science Studies 9 (1): 67–80.

Ziman, J. M. 2000. Real Science: what it is, and what it means . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Download references

Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Dept. of Business Organization, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Autonomous University of Madrid), Room E-8-310, 5, Francisco Tomas y Valiente St., Madrid, 28049, Spain

Jesus Rodriguez-Pomeda

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jesus Rodriguez-Pomeda .

Ethics declarations

No funds, grants, or other support was received. The author has no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary Material 1

Rights and permissions.

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Rodriguez-Pomeda, J. An Essay about a Philosophical Attitude in Management and Organization Studies Based on Parrhesia. Philosophy of Management 22 , 587–618 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-023-00232-9

Download citation

Received : 21 April 2022

Accepted : 09 March 2023

Published : 10 April 2023

Issue Date : December 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-023-00232-9

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Organization studies
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• USF Research
• USF Libraries

Digital Commons @ USF > Muma College of Business > Management > Theses and Dissertations

Management and Organization Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

For Love or Money: Investor Motivations in Equity-Based Crowdfunding , Jason C. Cherubini

The Great Resignation: An Exploration of Strategies to Combat School Bus Driver Shortages in the Post-COVID-19 Era , James E. Cole Jr.

An Empirical Analysis of Sentiment and Confidence Regarding Interest Rates in Disclosures of Public Firms in the U.S. Fintech Sector , James J. Farley

Motivations for Planning: Uncovering the Inhibitors to the Adoption of Comprehensive Financial Planning for Business Owners , Daniel R. Gilham

An Examination of Reward-Based Crowdfunding Performance and Success , Matthew Alan Grace

All Quiet on The Digital Front: The Unseen Psychological Impacts on Cybersecurity First Responders , Tammie R. Hollis

Commitment to Change Dimensions: The Influence of Innovative Work Behavior and Organizational Environments , Michael Holmes

Turmoil in the Workforce: Introduction of the Nomadic Employee , Catrina Hopkins

Attention-Grabbing Tactics on Social Media , Arjun Kadian

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Building a Mentor-Mentee Maturity Model , Leroy A. Alexander

Do Auditors Respond to Changes in Clients’ Analyst Coverage? Evidence from a Natural Experiment , Mohammad Alkhamees

Designing a Messaging Strategy to Improve Information Security Policy Compliance , Federico Giovannetti

Are all pictures worth 1,000 words? An Investigation of Fit Between Graph Type and Performance on Accounting Data Analytics Tasks , Shawn Paul Granitto

An Enterprise Risk Management Framework to Design Pro-Ethical AI Solutions , Quintin P. McGrath

Deceptive Appeals and Cognitive Influences Used in Fraudulent Scheme Sales Pitches , Rafael J. Toledo

Using Online Reviews to Identify How Hotels Can Satisfy Travelers With Pets While Making Money , Sonia Weinhaus

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

The IS Social Continuance Model: Using Conversational Agents to Support Co-creation , Naif Alawi

The Use of Data Analytic Visualizations to Inform the Audit Risk Assessment: The Impact of Initial Visualization Form and Documentation Focus , Rebecca N. Baaske (Becca)

Identification of Entrepreneurial Competencies in I-Corps Site Teams at the University of South Florida , Mark A. Giddarie

Understanding Nonprofit Boards: An Exploratory Study of the Governance Practices of Regional Nonprofits , Susan Ryan Goodman

Strengthening the Entrepreneurial Support Community , Andrew J. Hafer

Who to Choose? Rating Broker Best Practices in the Medicare Advantage Industry , Darwin R. Hale

Bridging the Innovatino Gap at SOCOM , Gregory J. Ingram

Improving Environmental Protection: One Imagined Touch at a Time , Luke Ingalls Liska

Residential Curbside Recycle Context Analysis , Ntchanang Mpafe

Fighting Mass Diffusion of Fake News on Social Media , Abdallah Musmar

Managing Incomplete Data in the Patient Discharge Summary to Support Correct Hospital Reimbursements , Fadi Naser Eddin

GAO Bid Protests by Small Business: Analysis of Perceived and Reported Outcomes in Federal Contracting , David M. Snyder

Engagement and Meaningfulness as Determinants of Employee Retention: A Longitudinal Case Study , Calvin Williams

Public Budgeting as Moral Dilemma , Ben Wroblewski

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Improving Engagement: The Moderating Effect of Leadership Style on the Relationship Between Psychological Capital and Employee Engagement , Scott Beatrice

Physician Self-Efficacy and Risk-Taking Attitudes as Determinants of Upcoding and Downcoding Errors: An Empirical Investigation , Samantha J. Champagnie

Digital Identity: A Human-Centered Risk Awareness Study , Toufic N. Chebib

Clarifying the Relationship of Design Thinking to the Military Decision-Making Process , Thomas S. Fisher

Essays on the Disposition Effect , Matthew Henriksson

Analysis of Malicious Behavior on Social Media Platforms Using Agent-Based Modeling , Agnieszka Anna Onuchowska

Who Rises to the Top: An Investigation of the Essential Skills Necessary for Partners of Non-Big 4 Public Accounting Firms , Amanda K. Thompson-Abbott

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

The Financial and Nonfinancial Performance Measures That Drive Utility Abandonments and Transfers in the State of Florida , Daniel Acheampong

Locating a New Collegiate Entrepreneurship Program, a Framework for a University Campus , Douglas H. Carter

Understanding Employee Engagement: An Examination of Millennial Employees and Perceived Human Resource Management Practices , Danielle J. Clark

The Potential Impact Radius of a Natural Gas Transmission Line and Real Estate Valuations: A Behavioral Analysis , Charles M. Hilterbrand Jr.

Introducing a Mobile Health Care Platform in an Underserved Rural Population: Reducing Assimilations Gaps on Adoption and Use via Nudges , Joseph Hodges

Controlling Turnover in an Inside Sales Organization: What are the Contributing Factors , Dennis H. Kimerer

An Emergent Theory of Executive Leadership Selection: Leveraging Grounded Theory to Study the U.S. Military's Special Forces Assessment and Selection Process , Darryl J. Lavender

Essays on Migration Flows and Finance , Suin Lee

The Underutilized Tool of Project Management - Emotional Intelligence , Gerald C. Lowe

Increasing the Supply of the Missing Middle Housing Types in Walkable Urban Core Neighborhoods: Risk, Risk Reduction and Capital , Shrimatee Ojah Maharaj

Playing Darts in the Dark: How are Chamber of Commerce Leaders Aligned for Greater Effectiveness? , Robert J. Rohrlack Jr.

Are Transfer Pricing Disclosures Related to Tax Reporting Transparency? The Impact of Auditor-Provided Transfer Pricing Services , Stephanie Y. Walton

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Price Transparency in the United States Healthcare System , Gurlivleen (Minnie) Ahuja

How to Build a Climate of Quality in a Small to Medium Enterprise: An Action Research Project , Desmond M. Bishop III

Banking on Blockchain: A Grounded Theory Study of the Innovation Evaluation Process , Priya D. Dozier

Enhancing the Design of a Cybersecurity Risk Management Solution for Communities of Trust , James E. Fulford Jr.

An Examination of the Progressive and Regressive Factors that Business Owners Consider When Choosing Whether or Not to Implement an Exit Strategy , David C. Pickard

The Relationship between Ambient Lighting Color and Hotel Bar Customer Purchase Behavior and Satisfaction , Kunal Shah

The Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) Industry and the Business Impacts of the Evolution of the Federal Regulatory Environment , Darren W. Spencer

Intercultural Communication Between International Military Organizations; How Do You Turn a ‘No’ Into a ‘Yes’? , Douglas A. Straka

Essential Leadership Skills for Frontline Managers in a Multicultural Organization , Janelle Ward

Moffitt Cancer Center: Leadership, Culture and Transformation , W. James Wilson

Two Essays on String of Earnings Benchmarks , Yiyang Zhang

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Multi-Step Tokenization of Automated Clearing House Payment Transactions , Privin Alexander

The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility Investment and Disclosure on Cooperation in Business Collaborations , Sukari Farrington

What Factors during the Genesis of a Startup are Causal to Survival? , Gilbert T. Gonzalez

The Great Recession of 2007 and the Housing Market Crash: Why Did So Many Builders Fail? , Mohamad Ali Hasbini

The Effect of Expanded Audit Report Disclosures on Users’ Confidence in the Audit and the Financial Statements , Peter Kipp

An Examination of Innovation Idea Selection Factors in Large Organizations , Troy A. Montgomery

Essays on Sales Coaching , Carlin A. Nguyen

Vital Signs of U.S. Osteopathic Medical Residency Programs Pivoting to Single Accreditation Standards , Timothy S. Novak

Leaders Who Learn: The Intersection of Behavioral Science, Adult Learning and Leadership , Natalya I. Sabga

Toward a Systemic Model for Governance and Strategic Management: Evaluating Stakeholder Theory Versus Shareholder Theory Approaches , James A. Stikeleather

A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Cognitive Awareness Training on Transaction Processing Accuracy: An Introduction to the ACE Theoretical Construct , John Townsend

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

The Effect of Presentation Format on Investor Judgments and Decisions: Does the Effect Differ for Varying Task Demands? , Kevin Agnew

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Multi-Task Setting Involving Simple and Complex Tasks: An Exploratory Study of Employee Motivation , Maia Jivkova Farkas

Essays on Mergers and Acquisitions , Marcin Krolikowski

Do Social Biases Impede Auditor Reliance on Specialists? Toward a Theory of Social Similarity , Rina Maxine Limor

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Psychological Distance: The Relation Between Construals, Mindsets, and Professional Skepticism , Jason Rasso

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Combining Natural Language Processing and Statistical Text Mining: A Study of Specialized Versus Common Languages , Jay Jarman

An Empirical Investigation of Decision Aids to Improve Auditor Effectiveness in Analytical Review , Robert N. Marley

The Effects of Item Complexity and the Method Used to Present a Complex Item on the Face of a Financial Statement on Nonprofessional Investors` Judgments , Linda Gale Ragland

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Two Essays on Information Ambiguity and Informed Traders’ Trade-Size Choice , Ziwei Xu

Theses/Dissertations from 2008 2008

Two Essays on the Conflict of Interests within the Financial Services Industry-- Financial Industry Consolidation: The Motivations and Consequences of the Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) and “Down but Not Out” Mutual Fund Manager Turnover within Fund Families , Lonnie Lashawn Bryant

Two Essays on Multiple Directorships , Chia-wei Chen

Two Essays on Financial Condition of Firms , Sanjay Kudrimoti

A Study of Cross-Border Takeovers: Examining the Impact of National Culture on Internalization Benefits, and the Implications of Early Versus Late-Mover Status for Bidders and Their Rivals , Tanja Steigner

Two Essays on Corporate Governance⎯Are Local Directors Better Monitors, and Directors Incentives and Earnings Management , Hong Wan

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

The Role of Ethnic Compatibility in Attitude Formation: Marketing to America’s Diverse Consumers , Cynthia Rodriguez Cano

Two Essays on Venture Capital: What Drives the Underpricing of Venture CapitalBacked IPOs and Do Venture Capitalists Provide Anything More than Money? , Donald Flagg

Two essays on market efficiency: Tests of idiosyncratic risk: informed trading versus noise and arbitrage risk, and agency costs and the underlying causes of mispricing: information asymmetry versus conflict of interests , Jung Chul Park

The impact of management's tone on the perception of management's credibility in forecasting , Robert D. Slater

Uncertainty in the information supply chain: Integrating multiple health care data sources , Monica Chiarini Tremblay

Theses/Dissertations from 2006 2006

Adolescent alcohol use and educational outcomes , Wesley A. Austin

Certificate of need regulation in the nursing home industry: Has it outlived its usefulness? , Barbara J. Caldwell

The impacts of the handoffs on software development: A cost estimation model , Michael Jay Douglas

Using emergent outcome controls to manage dynamic software development , Michael Loyd Harris

The information technology professional's psychological contract viewed through their employment arrangement and the relationship to organizational behaviors , Sandra Kay Newton

The causal effect of alcohol consumption on employment status , Chanvuth Sangchai

The effect of transportation subsidies on urban sprawl , Qing Su

The effects of in-group bias and decision aids on auditors' evidence evaluation , Eileen Zalkin Taylor

The single market and pharmaceutical industry in the European Union: Is there any evidence of price convergence? , Aysegul Timur

A structural approach to the study of intra-organizational coalitions , Dean T. Walsh

Advanced Search

• Email Notifications and RSS
• All Collections
• USF Faculty Publications
• Open Access Journals
• Conferences and Events
• Theses and Dissertations
• Textbooks Collection

Useful Links

• Rights Information
• SelectedWorks
• Submit Research

Home | About | Help | My Account | Accessibility Statement | Language and Diversity Statements

Privacy Copyright

Essay on Management: Top 9 Essays

Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Management’ for class 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraph, long and short essays on ‘Management’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay on Management

Essay Contents:

• Essay on the Importance of Management

1. Essay on the Introduction to Management :

Management is a vital aspect of the economic life of man, which is an organised group activity. It is considered as the indispensable institution in the modern social organisation marked by scientific thought and technological innovations. One or the other form of management is essential wherever human efforts are to be undertaken collectively to satisfy wants through some productive activity, occupation or profession.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

It is management that regulates man’s productive activities through co-ordinated use of material resources. Without the leadership provided by management, “the resources of production remain resources and never become production”.

In the words of Drucker manager is the life-giving dynamic element in every business. Productive resources-men, money, materials-are entrusted to the organising skill, administrative ability and enterprising initiative of the management.

Modern business is the complex scene of forces of change constantly at work. The size, strategy, structure, motivation of modern enterprises underline the need of creative touch in successfully piloting their affairs. New products, new methods and techniques appear day-after-day to cater to the ever-changing trends of consumers’ tastes and needs. The ceaseless competitive drive to capture markets necessitates intellectual handling of refined requirements of consumers.

Management today is not just an exercise of blind authority or bossism but it implies scientific thinking, accurate planning and meticulous control to ensure quick and better results. Management has become a profession in view of the modern business becoming more sophisticated.

As ownership gets divorced from management, specialisation in business operations becomes more marked. Proprietors, shareholders and even their directors remain comparatively in the background and experts specialising in delicate and intricate matters of industrial techniques play increasingly positive and prominent role in running the business. Professional experts like engineer, scientist, market surveyor, trained executive, researcher, technician, occupy important place in running the affairs of an enterprise today.

Management now a days, therefore, consists of cadre of experts who performs a profitable job to build-up the competitive strength of the firm and they strive to “develop and expand the assets and profits” of the proprietors. According to Drucker, “Management, which is the organ of society specially charged with making resources productive, that is, with the responsibility for organised economic advance, therefore, reflects the basic spirit of the modern age.”

2. Essay on the Meaning and Definition of Management:

It is not an easy job to give the exact meaning of management.

Different writers have used the term “Management” in different senses, which will be clear from the following discussion:

Management as a Process :

In the words of George R. Terry, “Management is a distinct process consisting of planning, organising actuating and controlling performed to determine and accomplish objectives by the use of human beings and other resources.” The elements of management are: planning, organising, actuating (directing) and controlling.

These are also called the functions of management. It is through the performance of these functions that management is able to effectively utilise manpower and physical resources such as capital, machines, material, etc. to produce goods and services required by the society.

This has been shown in Fig. 1:

Henri Fayol has defined management as a process consisting of five functions: “To manage is to forecast and plan, to organise, to command, to coordinate and to control.”

However, modern authors do not view coordination as a separate function of management. They consider it as the essence of managing. Koontz and O’Donnell have classified the functions of management as follows: planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. These functions are inter-dependent and interrelated. There is no fixed sequence of their performance. They are performed more or less simultaneously.

Management is regarded a process because it involves a series of functions as shown in:

It starts with planning and ends with controlling. But it does not mean that managerial functions are followed in a specific sequence. A manager performs all the managerial functions simultaneously. Moreover, Management is a never-ending process.

There are three features of management as a process:

(i) Management is a social process as it deals with human beings.

(ii) Management is an integrating process as it organises human resources for the efficient use of other resources like capital, materials, technology, machines, etc.

(iii) Management is a continuous process. It is always involved in identifying the organisation problems and solving them.

“Management is the technique of getting things done.”

“Management is the art of getting things done.”

Marry Parker Follet defined management as “an art of getting things done through others”. This is a traditional definition of management. It emphasises that management directs the workers for getting results from them and supervises their performance. The workers are treated merely as a factor of production like materials, machines and capital.

This definition is insufficient in the modern world because of the following reasons:

(i) The above definition is incomplete because workers are treated as a mere means to organisational goals.

(ii) The management tries to manipulate the behaviour of the workers.

(iii) The needs and aspirations of the workers are not considered.

People are not mere cogs in the wheel and so they should not be treated as commodity or mere means to certain ends. Needs and aspirations of the people working in an organisation should not be overlooked. They must be satisfied so as to obtain sustained and consistent effort towards organisational objectives.

Management may be defined as a technique of getting things done through others by satisfying their needs and providing them opportunity for growth and development. According to Harold Koontz, “Management is the art of getting things done through and with people in formally organised groups. It is the art of creating environment in which people can perform as individuals and yet cooperate towards attainment of group goals.”

In order to accomplish results, management must create opportunities, and encourage growth and development of employees and provide guidance and assistance, wherever necessary. All this demands skillful application of the basic principles of the science of management. Managers must have conceptual, technical and social skills in translating the abstract organisational philosophy into concrete action.

Management is the dynamic life-giving element in every organisation. It is the activating element that gets things done through people. It provides the force necessary to transform the resources of a business organisation into desired goods and services. The primary job of management is to convert the disorganised resources of men, machines and materials into a productive organisation.

Management as a Group :

In the words of sociologists, management is a group or a class who together carry out various managerial activities.” Thus, management refers to the group of people in an enterprise who are carrying out management functions.

In other words, all individuals occupying managerial positions are collectively known as management. A manager is a person who performs the managerial functions of planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling.

Since a manager performs the managerial functions, he is a member of the management of the organisation. Used in this sense, management includes all those who manage the affairs of an organisation. But in practice, the term ‘management’ is used to indicate the top management consisting of chairman, managing director or chief executive and Board of Directors.

Management as a Discipline :

As a discipline, management refers to the body of knowledge and a separate field of study. Management is an organised body of knowledge which can be learnt through instructions and teaching. It entails the principles, practices, techniques and skills of management which help in achieving organisational objectives. This discipline is taught widely in schools and colleges in most of the countries of the world.

Management has acquired the status of a discipline because of the following two reasons:

(i) A lot of research is being carried out by the scholars in the field of management. The results of research will be useful for future managers.

(ii) It is a specialised body of knowledge, which is studied and practised in management institutions.

Management as an Activity :

Management is an activity concerned with getting things done through people and directing the efforts of individuals towards a common objective. In the words of Harold Koontz, “Management is the art of getting things done through and with people in formally organised groups.”

Management gets results from the people by satisfying their needs, and expectations, and providing them opportunity for their personal growth. Management is a distinct activity in any organisation which is necessary for the achievement of its objectives.

According to another functional classification management activities are classified as:

Classification of Management Activities

1. Informational Activities:

Management has to act as a communicative link between subordinates and superiors. On one hand management receives, requests explanations, statements and suggestions from their subordinates and on the other hand it also receives orders and instructions from superiors. In their informational role as managers the requisite information is passed on to both subordinates and superiors.

2. Decisional Activities:

Management being both administrative and executory has to take routine and strategic decisions regarding various operational activities so that the organisation work is executed smoothly. In their decisional role as managers, management can also be termed as innovators, resource allocators, negotiators and crisis managers.

3. Inter personal Activities:

Management being a team work and group activity requires cooperation, coordination and harmonious relationship between individuals and departments. In order to integrate and charrelise best efforts of individuals to attain predetermined objectives of the enterprise, managers in their interpersonal role act as a figure head of the enterprise, as a leader and as a liason.

Other Definitions of Management:

Various writers have given various definitions of the management.

The following are some of the important definition:

According to E.F.L. Brech, “Management is the process of planning and regulating the activities of an enterprise.”

According to Lawrence A. Appley, “Management is the development of people and not the direction of things management is personnel administration.”

According to Koontz and O’Donnell, “It is the task of manager to establish and maintain an internal environment in which people working together in groups can perform effectively and efficiently towards the attainment of group goals.”

According to Kimball and Kimball, “Management embraces all duties and functions that pertain to the initiation of an enterprise, its financing, the establishment of all major policies, the provision of all necessary equipment, the outlining of the general form of organisation under which the enterprise is to operate and the selection of the principal officers. The group of officials in primary control of an enterprise is referred to as “the management.”

According to William Spriegel, “Management is that function of an enterprise, which concerns itself with the direction and control of the various activities to attain the business objectives.”

According to Keith and Gubellini, “Management is the force that integrates men and physical plant into an effective operating unit.”

According to S. George, “Management consists of getting things done through others. Manager is one who accomplishes the objectives by directing the efforts of others.”

According to Newman, Summer, Warren, “The job of management is to make cooperative endeavour to function properly. A manager is one who gets things done by working with people and other resources in order to reach an objective.”

3. Essay on the Characteristics of Management:

The main characteristics of management are as follows:

(i) It is Goal-Oriented:

The important goal of all management activities to achieve the objectives of a business concern. The objectives of the business may be economic, social and humane.

(ii) It is a Process:

When it is used in the sense of a process, it refers to what management does. In other words, it refers to the process of managing, planning, organising, staffing, guiding, directing supervising and controlling.

(iii) It is a Group Activity:

For the success of a business, it is necessary that all human and physical resources are co-ordinated to achieve the maximum levels of productivity. We all know that the combined productivity of various resources will always be higher than the total productivity of each resources.

(iv) Management is Universal:

It is required in all types of organisations, e.g., family, club, university, government, army, business. The basic principles of management are applicable in business as well as in other organisations. However, these principles are flexible and they can be modified to suit different situations.

(v) It is an Art and Science:

It consists of both the elements of science and art. The science of management gives a body of principles or laws for guidance in the solution of specific management problems and objective evaluation of results. The management as an art consists of this use of skill and effort for producing desirable results or situations in specific cases.

(vi) It is a Factor of Production:

Not only the land, labour and capital are of effective use for the production of goods and services but the managerial skills are also used effectively for this purpose.

(vii) Management is Dynamic:

Management denotes is an ever-changing environment, It involves adoption of an organisation to changes in its environment, and modifying the environment for the benefit of the organisation. Therefore, management is a constantly growing process.

(viii) Management is a Profession:

Management is considered to be a profession as it possesses all the attributes of profession as:

(i) A systematic corpus of knowledge,

(ii) A period of apprenticeship, and

(iii) A code of conduct.

(ix) Management is an Important Organ of Society:

Management has become an important organ of society. Management of large scale undertakings influence the economic, social, moral, religious, political and institutional behaviour of the members of the society.

(x) It is a System of Authority:

In every organised group supreme authority must rest somewhere. There should be a clear line of authority from the supreme authority to every individual in the group.

4. Essay on the Nature of Management:

A study of literature of management often gives rise to a question as to whether management is a science or an art. The brief discussion which follows leads us to the conclusion that it is both a science and an art.

Management as a Science :

Science is by definition a body of knowledge gathered by experimentation and observation, artificially tested and expressed in the form of general principles.

Following are the essential features of science:-

1. Systematised Body of Knowledge:

Science being ‘systematic’ is based on cause and effect relationship. It consists of theories and principles which have the capacity to give reasons for past happenings and at the same time, can be used to predict the result of specification in future.

2. Scientific Methods being used:

Personal opinions and individual likes and dislikes don’t influence scientific principles. They are obtained through scientific investigation and reasoning. They are critically tested and can be scientifically proved at any time.

3. Principles based on Experiments:

Observation and testing the validity and truth through experimentation makes a statement, a principle.

4. Universally applicable:

Scientific princAples may be applied in all situations and at all times, exceptions though may be logically explained. These principles, under required given conditions never fail at any place or point of time.

The debate about whether or not managing is a science continues. The answer to this question depends largely on the degree to which the scientific method is used to determine managing principles and solve managing problems.

Management satisfies many of the scientific principles, for e.g.:

1. Management is a systematised body of knowledge. Its principles explaining cause and effect relationship between various variables, e.g., Principle of Unity of Command if not followed leads to inefficiency, confusion and duplication of work.

2. Management principles are evolved on the basis of observation and repeated experimentation. For instance, it is being observed through experiments that if stability in tenure of an employee is not there, his working efficiency decreases.

But, at the same time, there exists many scientific features which do not coincide with those of management.

Briefly, the method of science consists of the following steps:

1. Facts or data are collected in an objective manner.

2. These facts are classified in some way, usually on the basis of similarities or dissimilarities, in an attempt to make the data more meaningful.

3. From the classifications, hypotheses are formulated establishing cause and effect relationships between various given factors.

4. The hypotheses are then tested to determine their reliability and validity.

5. After the hypotheses are verified and if they stand the test of time, they then have interpretive or predictive value when applied to similar phenomena.

In referring to the hope of dream that a true science of management may someday be achieved. Professor Mee states, “This hope probably will be realized in another chapter in another book in another century.” Perhaps the best that can be said is that a science of management is just beginning to emerge.

It has often been stated that even when management attempts to use the method of science (from which managing principles are also derived), management is neither as precise nor as comprehensive as the natural and social sciences.

There are several reasons why this is true:

1. The rational approach and the application of the method of science are relatively new in business and industry. As a result, managing has not developed the comprehensiveness found in other disciplines that have used the scientific approach for a much longer time.

In fact, one of the more significant developments in the last seventy-five years in the field of management has been the tendency toward using the rational approach in solving management problems.

2. Relatively few managers are trained or experienced in using the method of science. Those who are trained may find it too time-consuming and, because of this as well as other limiting factors, seek other ways to reach decisions and to solve problems.

3. Precision measuring instruments and tools are not always available in management. A manager is forced to use relative measurement where absolute measurement is not possible or feasible. To evaluate the performance of a group of supervisors, for example, he may have to use a relative measuring device such as a carefully prepared rating scale. For his purposes, however, the relative measuring technique is just as useful and effective.

4. In the physical sciences, the researcher works with a single variable, holding all other factors constant. Managers can seldom do this. They almost always deal with people, the human element with all its weaknesses. The human element can never be treated as a constant; hence precision is less than in the physical sciences, though equal to that of the social sciences. Businessmen are always dealing with the unpredictable: people, governments and nature.

5. Most importantly, managerial decision-making, unlike problem solving in the sciences, stresses action rather than truth. A manager’s decisions must have practical application. Managers strive for reasonable results under uncertain conditions rather than for perfection. A method, technique, or device only has to be “good enough” to get the job done.

Management as an Art :

Art refers to the skill to put into action a systematized body of knowledge for the achievement of a given task. To get mastery in any skill it is necessary to have the thorough knowledge of the principles of doing the particular task. At the same time it is necessary to possess the tact, the care to be taken, the discretion and proper judgement in applying the principles involved.

Presence of mind, promptness to react to the given situation and correct response demanded by the prevailing condition are all essential to perform skillfully the task undertaken.

Experiences and judgement add to this skill. Management is also an art as it is necessary to apply the principles of management in planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling the whole series of activities all through the managerial process.

Throughout the stages of the process of decision-making and execution of these decisions all the individuals occupying various positions at different levels of management need all the skills involved.

Briefly, these skills are called the planning skills, the organising skills, the staffing skills, the directing skills (how to motivate, to communicate, and to lead) and the controlling skills. Sometimes it is said that a good manager is born and not made. But it has been now established and accepted that it is through learning and training process that skilled managers are developed.

As Koontz and O’Donnell have rightly pointed out the work of managing a business or any group activity is an art. But for this the organised body of knowledge is required. It is certainly a science. Thus art and science are not exclusive terms but complementary ones.

Management as an art has the following features:

(a) Personal Skill:

Human beings apart, there are other factors which vary in their effect and role in the achievement of the managerial tasks. Managers have to apply their skill to deal with them.

(b) Practical Knowledge:

Business enterprises involve risks. Only those who have experience can deal effectively with such risks.

(c) Result Oriented Approach:

Management as an process aims at achieving concrete goals. It aims at utilising available resources optimally by creating a congenial atmosphere.

(d) Personal Judgement:

No doubt there are useful principles of management, but it needs individual judgement to apply them properly and at appropriate time. It means art is necessary.

(e) Continuous Practice:

The art of management is much older than the science of management which as an organised body of knowledge is hardly about ninety to hundred years old.

Management: Both Science and Art :

Management is a combination of an organised body of knowledge and skillful application of this knowledge. According to Brech, “A systematic body of knowledge underlies the competent practice of management”.

Much of this knowledge are to be found in various academic disciplines. Competent performance of various management functions necessarily needs an adequate basis of knowledge and a mature scientific approach.

Thus management is both a science and an art. It is a science because it uses certain principles. It is an art because it requires continuous practice to ensure the best possible result. Thus science and art in management are not mutually exclusive. Both of them exist together in every function of management.

Management as a Profession:

Profession is defined as a composite of intellectual and executive qualities applied to carry out successfully the specified activities for the benefit of others. It is an intellectual field. One enters into it to work without any expectation of a direct share in the profits earned out of the activities to carry out which one might be contributing his specialist knowledge or intellect.

According to George, “Profession is that which has a well-defined body of knowledge, which is learned, intellectual and organised, to which entry is restricted by examination, or education and which is primarily concerned with service to others above self-award.”

Features of Profession:

The above statement makes the following features of profession clear:

1. Existence of a body of knowledge, techniques, skills and specialised knowledge.

2. Formalised methods of acquired training and experience.

3. The establishment of a representative organisation with professionlisation as its goal.

4. The formation of an ethical code for the guidance of its conduct.

5. The charging of fees based on the nature of service extended.

In the light of what has been said above management can be said to be a profession.

The arguments in favour of this statement are given below:

1. Body of knowledge:

All over the world there is marked growth of an organised systematic body of knowledge about management as a process.

2. Formal methods of teaching:

The establishment of professional schools of management in which management as a body of knowledge can be taught is seen everywhere. India is no exception to it as is clear from the establishment of Indian Institutes of Management at Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Bangalore, Lucknow and Post­graduate Departments of Management as well as Institutes/Colleges of Management being established in different parts of the country.

3. Fee as remuneration:

The number of management consultants is increasing Even a large number of well reputed firms are establishing their consultancy agencies.

4. Existence of ethical code:

There is growing emphasis on the ethical basis of management behaviour.

5. Establishment of representative organizations:

Both at the national and international levels management associations have been formed with their membership rules, codes of conduct, etc. All India Management Association, New Delhi.

National Institute of Personnel Management, Calcutta, Institute of Marketing and Management, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, New Delhi, Institute of Costs and Works Accountants of India, Calcutta are the well established associations in India. And many more organisations in the specialised fields/ branches of management are being organised.

Management as Profession: A Controversy :

However, there is no agreement on this point. Questions are asked: Is management a profession? Is it becoming a profession? As it is well known, a large number of business units are operating as sole traders and single entrepreneurship enterprises. By definition and in practice they are managed by proprietor-managers. So is the case with partnership firms and joint Hindu family firms.

But company form of business enterprises in India and corporate organisations in USA and other countries are even by definition the enterprises in which ownership is divorced from management. Even then question remains if all of them are managed by professional managers. As things stand, under law it is the shareholders who elect the Board of Directors from amongst themselves.

Thus the topmost group at the top level management of a company or corporate body are not professional managers. But all the big companies operating on large scale do appoint executives and managers on salary-cum-perks basis. Thus they are the professional managers.

In large companies even the Vice Presidents of marketing, finance, etc. who are on the Board of Directors are the professional managers. So are all those working at the middle level and lower level of management. In case of public undertakings management is in effect with the professional managers. Exceptions to it are Departmental Undertakings such as Railways. Posts & Telegraphs etc. which are controlled by the various departments of the Government.

But there also other than the Minister-in-charge all those looking after the management are professionals. A new trend is becoming more and more marked. Proprietary managers are becoming more interested in acquiring the latest knowledge and technique of management. They are sending their own sons, daughters and other close relatives abroad to acquire degrees and diplomas in management.

Others are joining short- term courses in management run by organisations like Administrative Staff College, Hyderabad. All India Management Association etc. Such persons are now occupying positions at the topmost layers of the managerial hierarchy.

Are these persons to be regarded as proprietary managers or professional managers ? No doubt all the features of profession are not applicable to them. But they do possess other features.

In conclusion, it may be said that all the requirements of profession are not satisfied by managers at the top. But management is, by and large, becoming professionalised, it is more so in the developed nations. But even in India large number of managerial cadres are getting professionalised.

This is applicable to both the public and private sectors. Even the case of smaller enterprises, which are run by proprietary managers, assistance of professionals such as chartered accountants, cost accountants and lawyers are being utilised to a great extent.

5. Essay on the Objectives of Management:

Objectives can be divided into three categories: Individual, Social and Organisational. Recognising the three categories and reacting appropriately to each is a challenge for all modern managers.

(I) Individual Objectives :

Individual objectives are the personal goals each organisation member would like to reach through activity within the organisation. These objectives might include high salary, personal growth and development, peer recognition, and societal recognition.

(II) Social Objectives :

Social objectives deal with the goals of an organisation toward society. Included are obligations to abide by requirements established by the community, such as those pertaining to health, safety, labour practices and price regulation.

Further, they include goals intended to further social and physical improvement of the community and to contribute to desirable civic activities.

It should be noted that most business houses in achieving their primary goals also contribute to their respective communities by creating needed economic wealth, employment and financial support to the community.

(III) Organisational Objectives:

Drucker indicates that the very survival of management may be endangered if managers emphasize only a profit objective. This single-objective emphasis encourages managers to take action that will make money today with little regard for how a profit will be made tomorrow.

In practice, managers should strive to develop and attain variety of objectives in all management areas where activity is critical to the operation and success of the system. Following are the eight key areas in which Drucker advises managers to set management objectives.

1. Market Standing:

Management should set objectives indicating where it would like to b£ in relation to its competitors.

2. Innovation:

Management should set objectives outlining its commitment to the development of new methods of operation.

3. Productivity:

Management should set objectives outlining the target levels of production.

4. Physical and Financial Resources:

Management should set objectives with regard to the use, acquisition and maintenance of capital and monetary resources.

5. Profitability:

Management should set objectives that specify the profit the company would like to generate.

6. Management Performance and Development:

Management should set objectives that specify rates and levels of managerial productivity and growth.

7. Worker Performance and Attitude:

Management should set objectives that specify rates of worker productivity as well as the attitudes workers possess.

8. Public Responsibility:

Management should set objectives that indicate the company’s responsibilities to its customers and society and the extent to which the company intends to live up to those responsibilities.

6. Essay on the Levels of Management:

More of the authors have conceived of three levels of management in any fairly-sized business undertaking.

These are as follows:

1. Top Level Management

2. Middle Level Management

3. Lower level Management

Management is considered as a Three-tier activity. The top tier centres round the determination .of objectives and policies, the middle tier concerned with implementation of policies through the assistance of lower tier of the organisation.

The various tasks in a business enterprise “become structured somewhat like a pyramid, with the highest level of management centred at its apex”.

The managerial set-up of any undertaking, therefore consists of three levels – Top Management, Middle Management and Operating Management or Lower Level Management.

The following chart illustrates Levels of Management in a company form of enterprise of fairly large size:

This gradation of level of management is not a watertight arrangement but represents a hierarchy of authority and responsibility designed to secure a systematic sequence of operations. Each level is blended into another through its functions and all the layers of authority constitute an integrated arrangement.

The demarcation of the levels is only to analyse the range of responsibility and span of control and it underlines the principle of specialisation in administrative executive processes.

A. Top Level Management:

Top level management is made up of Board of Directors, its Chairman, Managing Director or General Manager and other key officers responsible for smooth and systematic conduct of the affairs of the enterprise.

The top level management is a concept of functions concerning the manner in which the enterprise should be shaped.

In view of large size of modern companies, the key functions cannot be performed by a single person, and hence a compact group of elected office-bearers, experts and executives form the top management level of enterprises these days. Board of Directors is assisted by Managing Director, General Manger etc. in directing the company’s operations.

Top level management’s work is a creative process and it also involves commitments of high order of responsibility. As Allen observes “top-management work is a work which must be performed at the apex of the organisational pyramid because it cannot be carried out effectively at lower levels.”

Top management is also described “as the policy-making group responsible for the overall direction and success of all company activities.” It is a chief custodian of the property of the enterprise. It is the main mobiliser of resources in men and materials essential for the inception, maintenance, operations and expansion of the undertaking.

It is more basically a panel of planning the company’s operations and in due course shall develop into an evaluating and controlling medium for securing the maximum possible performance. It is concerned with the problems and policies of the entire enterprise.

The functions of top management include:

“Identifying key factors for the survival and growth of the company and devising basic objectives, policies and programmes for dealing with these factors: being sensitive to the inter-dependence of the numerous actions and maintaining a strategic balance in these actions; and keeping an eye on how current activities of the company will cutting with predicted changes-social, political, technological and competitive-and adopting company plans to the anticipated environment.”

Functions of the Managers at the Top Level Management :

The fundamental functions of mangers of the top management may be classified into the following categories:

(1) Determining the objectives.

(2) Framing the policies and making plans to carry out the objectives and policies.

(3) Setting up an organisational framework to conduct the operations as per plans.

(4) Assembling the resources needed to put the plans into operation.

(5) Controlling the operations through organisation.

1. Determining the Objectives :

Objectives are goals which every enterprise seeks to achieve. Most of the companies describe in detail the nature of their activities in the objects clause of their Memoranda of Association. But by and large the general objectives which top management should aim at are survival, profit, business growth, prestige or status and social acceptance.

Production of particular product of specific quality, satisfaction of customer’s needs, earning of profit by production and sales, looking out for expansion and diversification of business, building up an image or reputation of the company in the eyes or estimation of the society are the broad objectives set up by top management.

Objectives also may be specific. They relate to types of activities. Specialty in workmanship, competitive pricing, marketing method, widening the area of sales abroad, relations with the workers, customers, public, government, etc.

2. Framing of Policies :

The objectives are realised through policies framed by the management. Policies signify the decisions taken by the management on different strategic aspects of company’s operations or activities.

Production policy indicates the schedules of production to meet the market demand.

Product policy lays down the standards, specifications, size, design, colour shapes etc. of the product.

Marketing policy describes the channels of selling the product (direct sale or dealership, agency etc.), advertising and sales promotions techniques to be adopted, the sales targets to be attained etc.

Pricing policy emphasises the quality aspect of the product as well as the comparative competitive nature of the rates quoted, discounts allowed etc.

Personnel policy deals with recruitment, placement, training, remuneration, promotion, rewarding and regulating the productivity of the personnel.

Financial policy is concerned with procuring funds required for investment in fixed assets or required to be held over for working capital needs, sources of finance, e.g., borrowing, self-financing, issuing additional capital etc.

Top management has also to devise plans and schemes for precise execution of policies within a given time. Plans set out the course along which operations in different departments are to be conducted as per the criteria laid down in the respective policies.

production schedule, sales campaign, financial arrangements, personnel motivation have to be drawn as to focus and guide the activities of the company in the direction of the realisation of the basic objectives.

3. Organising:

Organisation means division of functions, allocation of duties to the personnel, fixation of range of their responsibility and the scope of their authority and co­ordination of the activities of the departments of the undertaking. Standardisation of administrative procedures is the main task of organising the enterprise.

Systems and procedures are the methods intended to govern the departmental activities of a company. Organisation ensures smooth flow of work from one stage to another, or from one department to another, so that the whole undertaking is enabled to achieve the targets to the benefit of the company and satisfaction of customers.

4. Assembling the Resources:

Prior to the launching of the plans, the resources of money, men and materials have to be assembled. Executives and operatives are appointed after careful selection on the basis of their merits and the nature of jobs to be handled.

Money capital has to be raised through issue of shares, debentures, etc. and arrangement for working capital has to be made through reserves, bank advance etc.

Then the physical resources-machinery, tools, furniture, buildings, water supply, power, other ancillary equipment-have to be collected as per estimated needs. The management has to find out the sources of finance for implementing the plans and programmes.

5. Controlling :

Top level management does not directly execute work. But the Chief Executive in the top management has the responsibility of exercising supervision over all the departments to make sure that the middle and lower managements are functioning as per the plans.

By controlling we mean instituting checks or comparisons of actual results with the planned targets. It implies evaluation or measurement of the work turned out in each section or department with reference to the goals envisaged in the basic plans and policies of the company.

The top level management lays down the standards of performance for the purpose of comparison of the actual results with the planned performance. Standard cost per unit, sales quotas, net profit per unit of sales are some of the reliable criteria for comparison.

Top level management finds out to what extent the performance has been upto the mark and identifies in the course the sources of strength and weakness in the different phases of organisation and operations.

Top level management has to act as coordinator and regulator of the activities of the undertaking in its different dimensions. It will call for reports, statistical data, special studies, accounting records to know the position of performance and to apply regulatory checks wherever and whenever necessary.

B. Middle Level Management:

Middle level management is concerned with the task of implementing the policies and plans chalked out by the top management. Middle management comprises departmental heads and other executive officers attached to different departments.

These departmental managers and officers are expected to take concrete steps for actual realisation of the objectives and operational results visualised in the plans finalised by the top officers of the organisation. “This group is responsible for the execution and interpretation of policies throughout the organisation and for the successful operation of assigned division or departments.”

Managers at the middle level management level exercise the usual functions of management in respect of their own departments. They have to plan the operations, issue instructions to their assistants, collect the resources required and control the work of the men under them and evaluate the results achieved by their department with reference to the plans formulated by the top management.

If the top management is endowed with the authority of policy-making, middle management is entrusted with the programming of efforts essential for implementing the basic pre-determined policies.

Functions of Managers at the Middle Level Management :

The functions of the managers at the middle level management can be broadly summarised as follows:

(i) Interpretation of policies framed by top level management.

(ii) Preparing the organisational set-up in their departments for fulfilling the objective implied in various business policies.

(iii) Finding out the suitable personnel and assigning duties and responsibilities to them for the execution of the plans of the concerned departments.

(iv) Compiling detailed instructions regarding operations and issuing them to the assistants and operatives to focus and guide their efforts accordingly.

(v) Motivating the personnel for higher productivity and rewarding them for their merit, capacity or calibre.

(vi) Cooperating with other departments so as to evolve a smoothly functioning organisation.

(vii) Collecting reports, statistical information and other records about the work turned out in respective departments and forwarding the same with their observations to the top level management.

(viii) Recommending to the top management, new or revised policies for their departments to secure better performance.

Middle level management managers are responsible for all the leading functions within each department. They provide “the guidance and the structure for a purposeful enterprise”.

The top management’s plans and ambitious expectations cannot be fruitfully realised without the key officers at the middle level management.

Managerial Structure at the Middle Level Management :

Generally the following functions at the middle level management are performed through the various departments under the departmental managers or heads.

1. Production department headed by works manager is concerned with the following functions:

(i) To collect the work orders and issue them to concerned sections.

(ii) To guide the foremen, and prescribe methods and process to be followed in execution of the work allotted.

(iii) To devise a system of inspection of factory functioning, the components, semi-finished and finished products.

(iv) Assembling the tools, equipment, plant, qualified personnel etc. to execute the production’s plan.

(v) Controlling the factory expenses.

2. Engineering Department headed by chief engineer has to perform the following functions:

(i) Production-planning, routing, scheduling.

(ii) Plant layout suited to the execution of production plans.

(iii) Designing the products, their specifications, standards, quality, workmanship etc.

(iv) Research in methodology of production for improving technical efficiency.

(v) Plant and tools maintenance and development of the full capacity of production.

(vi) Economy in production costs and resource consumption.

3. Personnel Department:

It is headed by the chief personnel officer, labour officer. He has to devise selection procedure and training schemes: he has to maintain service records of the staff and formulate methods of remuneration in conformity with the productivity and cost of living. He has to assure wholesome working conditions to the personnel and look after their social and economic security and welfare.

4. Stores Department headed by stores manager is concerned with systematic organisation of purchasing raw materials, stores articles, tools, equipment, spare parts, etc. and proper custody of the materials with the responsibility of issuing them to the requisitioning departments.

He has to sort and arrange neatly the stockpile of materials etc. and keep an up to date record of materials, stores, tools, etc. received, issued, consumed, balance held in stock, etc.

5. Office Manager is in-charge of secretarial work of correspondence, filing, indexing, use of office appliances, maintenance of records and reports pertaining to the different departments.

6. Accounts Department:

The chief Accountant is responsible for maintaining up-to-date accounts of financial transactions and recording sales, purchases, receipts and payments.

He is also required to compile periodically the Trading Account, Profit and Loss Account and Balance sheet of the firm.

He should ensure that monthly financial statements indicating the position of the firm are placed before the Board and other top management officials.

7. Costing Department:

In bigger enterprises a separate department for costing is constituted and cost accountant is appointed to administer the functions of the section.

Costing department is entrusted with the main functions of ascertaining the prime and supplementary costs and submission of cost-sheets to the top level management for appraisal.

Costing department keeps detailed records of costs of completed jobs in progress, costs of materials, labour, factory overhead costs and sales on cost. It helps the management to find out the disparity between estimated costs and actual costs and the reason thereof so that remedial measures can be adopted.

8. Sales Department:

This section is the life-blood of the enterprise because the sales are the barometer of business profits and reputations of the firm. The work of the department is to create demand for the goods for promoting maximum possible sales at quick pace in wider markets.

The vital functions of the department are as follows:

(i) Market research to find out the needs, tastes and buying habits of the consumers.

(ii) Looking out for new markets for the goods.

(iii) Organising advertisement campaigns and other sales promotion activities for creating, maintaining and expanding the demand.

(iv) Collecting orders from the customers through agents, dealers or salesmen.

(v) Executing the orders by timely despatch of goods.

(vi) Supervision of salesmen’s efforts, training and stimulation of salesmen.

(vii) Organising after-sale service and similar sales promotion efforts.

(viii) Looking after proper warehousing, packing and despatch of goods.

(ix) Attending to customers’ complaints and suggestions.

C. Lower Level Management (Operating Management) :

It is described as the lowest level in the administrative framework and actual operations are the responsibility of the rank and file constituting this level of management.

Foremen, supervisors and sub-departmental executives assisted by a number of workers, clerks etc. carry out the actual operations as per schedule. Their authority and responsibility is limited and they have to follow the lines drawn by the higher levels of management.

The plans and policies of the top level management will fail if the foremen and operatives do not fully realise the spirit of sustained work. The quality of the workmanship and quantity of output will depend on the hard labour, discipline and loyalty of the operating personnel. The foremen or supervisors are responsible for executing the work orders allotted to their respective sections.

They pass on the instructions of middle level management to the working force, procure the materials, tools etc. required for the jobs, assign specific duties to individual workmen and guide them in acting upon the instructions and handling the job on hand with ability and accuracy.

They seek to maintain precise standards of quality, prevent wastage of materials by negligent workmen, look to the safety of machines and equipment and ensure steady flow of output as per plans and programmes prescribed by the top level and middle level managements.

They are also responsible for maintaining discipline among the respective batches of workers, preserving and boosting their morale and fostering the team spirit in them.

7. Essay on Theo Haimann’s Three Notions about Management:

According to Theo Haimann management is used in three different senses:

(i) It is used as a noun. It refers to the group of managerial personnel of an enterprise.

(ii) It refers to the processes of managing, planning, organising, staffing, guiding, directing, supervising and controlling.

(iii) It is used apart from the above two—personnel and activity- but it describes the subject, the body of knowledge and the whole practice, the discipline.

I. Management is an art of getting things done through other people :

It is a process of activity consisting of some basic techniques for getting the objective of an enterprise fulfilled through the efforts of people. It is the activating element in any concern for getting things done through people. But today it is thought to be against humanity. At present: “It is the art of getting things done through and with the people informally organized groups.”

The job of management is to give active leadership that unites the productive but passive resources into a fruitful organization.

As per E. Peterson and E.G. Plowman:

“It is a technique by means of which the purposes and objectives of a particular human group are determined, clarified and effectuated.”

As per E.F.L. Breach it has been said as:

“A social process entailing responsibility for the effective of efficient planning and regulation of the operations of an enterprise, such responsibility involving a judgement and decision in determining plan and using data to control performances and progress against plans. The guidance, integration, inspiration and supervision of the personnel comprising enterprise and carrying out its operations.”

Breach signifies that it is not possible to take management in relation to things or mechanical operations of machines but only in relation to the people who are employed to operate or use such things.

As per Prof. Harold Koontz it is:

“The art of getting things done through and with people informally organized groups. It is the art of creating an environment in which people can perform as individuals and yet co-operate towards attainment of groups’ goals. It is art of removing blocks to such performance, a way of optimizing efficiency in reaching goals.”

II. Management is what management does:

The three functions of management are:

(i) Planning,

(ii) Implementing, and

(iii) Controlling.

Planning includes formation of policy and its translation into plans. Implementing includes the execution. Controlling means exercising administrative control over the plans.

In the words of Dr. James Lundy:

“Management is principally a task of planning, co-ordinating, motivating and controlling the efforts of others towards a specific objective. It involves the combining of the traditional factors of production (land, labour and capital) in an optimum manner, paying dues attention, of course, to the particular goals of the organization.”

This definition includes three major management activities of:

(1) Planning is the ascertainment of the course or objectives of a business, division or department to attain maximum profit effectiveness, the establishment of policies and continuous seeking and finding out new and better ways to do things.

(2) Implementing seeks to the doing phases, after preparation of plans, personnel attend their jobs with training of motivation not do rightly. Activities must run to the planning, supervision and direction of the subordinates and at the same time groups efforts are coordinated.

(3) Lastly, controlling seeks to evaluate acts of those who are responsible for executing the plans agreed upon. It consists of: (a) Controlling adherence to plans (b) appraising performance.

III. Management is the development of the people:

Business is not the management of things. As Appley Lowrence puts it: “The development of people and not the direction of things.” It is the selection, training supervision and development of people. These days most of the large as well as medium-sized enterprises are managed by the professional managers i.e., the managers who have got either little or no share in the ownership of the enterprise. They take management as a career.

Mcforland has noted following characteristics of a profession:

1. A body of principles, techniques, skills and specialised knowledge.

2. Formal methods of acquiring training.

3. Laying down of certain ethical codes of guidance of conduct.

4. Charging of fees according to the nature of services rendered.

And management is truly a profession in the sense that it fulfills all these conditions. Management these days is very much a systematised body of knowledge (science) and is an identifiable discipline. It has also developed a number of its tools and techniques.

In India, now there are a number of management institutes and university departments imparting formal management training. But management still, at last so in our country, does not fulfill the last time requirements of being a profession. There is, for example, still no unified ethical code of conduct for the managers as is there for the doctors and lawyers.

8. Essay on the Functions of Management:

Various authors have given various functions of management according to the time and development of the management science.

All these can be classified into the following categories:

(i) Planning

(ii) Organisation

(iii) Direction

(iv) Co-ordination

(v) Control.

These functions of management have been discussed in detail in the following paragraphs:

(i) Planning:

It is deciding in advance what is to be done, how it is to be done and when it is to be done. Planning involves projecting the future course of action for the business as a whole and also for the different sections within it. It helps in bridging the gap between the present and the future.

Planning is possible whenever there is a question of choosing and planning process is possible only when alternatives are there. In fact planning is an intellectual process. It signifies use of rational approach to the solution of problems. The important aspects of planning process are defining and establishing objectives, policies, procedures methods, rules, budgets, programmes and strategies.

(ii) Organisation:

Organisation is the structural relationship in an enterprise between the various factors i.e., men, material and management which combine to achieve the objectives set by the enterprise. In a dynamic society like ours, the organisation is not fixed. If it does not promote the objectives of the enterprise, it must be modified.

(iii) Direction:

Direction consists of command, execution, control, supervision and motivation i.e., achieving the good results. It is concerned with to use Lawrence H. Appley’s maxim “that management is essentially getting things done through the efforts of other people.”

It needs the personal touch. A good manager has to see that his orders are properly carried out and have achieved the desired results. It will need proper supervision by him and control of all the levels below him.

Moreover, his order must always create motivation among subordinates. It is only possible when his orders are of the right type and at the right moment. For it, more of initiative, sincere and tact is required than aggressiveness. A good executive must always be a good leader.

(iv) Co-Ordination:

Co-operation permeates all operating organisations and makes their entire structure more effective by harmonizing and property timing the various activities. It means synchronising the activities of all persons and functions in the enterprise and rooting out personal prestige and vested interests.

Proper co-ordination presupposes a number of conditions which can be summed up as:

(i) Fixed responsibility

(ii) Adequate authority at each executive level

(iii) Organisational structure facilitating

(iv) Co-ordination.

(v) Control:

This includes the setting of the targets or standards and comparing the actuals with standards in order to know the deviations, analysis and probing the reasons for such deviations, fixing of responsibility in terms of persons responsible for negative deviation, and correction of employees performance so that group goals, and plans devised to achieve them are accomplished.

9. Essay on the Importance of Management:

Management is absolutely essential if human efforts are to be effective to meet all round development of the society through productive activity, occupation or profession. It is essential in all organisations and at all levels of organisation in an enterprise. Without the enlightened guidance and leadership made available by management “the productive resources will remain resources and shall never become production”.

Management is a dynamic element which gives life to a business enterprise. The productive resources such as materials, men, and money are entrusted to the administrative ability, enterprising initiative and organising skill of management.

In short, management is important for the following reasons:

(i) Provides Effectiveness to Human Efforts:

It helps achieve better equipment, plants, offices, products, services, human relations. It keeps abreast of changing conditions, and it supplies foresight and imagination. Improvement and progress are its constant watch-words.

(ii) Critical Ingredient in Nation’s Growth:

An underdeveloped nation usually lacks adequate managerial know-how. National development is not solely one of transferring capital, technology, and education to citizens of an undeveloped nations. It is also supplying or developing management which provides the generation and direction of effective human energies. Management know-how utilizes the available resources effectively toward achievement of basic needs.

(iii) Brings Order to Endeavours:

By means of management, apparently isolated events or factual information or beliefs are brought together and significant relationships discerned. These relationships bear on the immediate problem, point out future hurdles to be overcome, and assist in determining a solution to the problem.

(iv) Provides Judgement and Courage:

To determine worthwhile goals, carefully select and utilize resources efficiently by means of applying planning, organising, directing and controlling require a high degree of judgement and the exercise of great courage.

From time to time, gadgets and aids are offered to replace management, but actually at best they assist and do not represent management. Serious consideration of such devices usually points out the need for more management judgement and courage to be used. Nothing takes the place of management.

(v) Helps in Achieving Group Goals:

Management touches and influences the life of nearly every human being. Management makes us aware of our potentials, shows the way toward better accomplishment, reduces obstacles, and causes us to achieve goals that we probably would not otherwise attain.

Related Articles:

• Essay on Management: Top 5 Essays
• Essay on Manpower Planning: Top 5 Essays | Process | Personnel Management
• Essay on Management: Top 7 Essays
• Essay on Strategic Management: Top 7 Essays

We use cookies

Privacy overview.

Why Study Management?

Management is a critical component of business operations. It is needed in every industry and nearly every corner of companies, in order to be productive and profitable. As a result, management is an important topic for students to learn in college—no matter their professional goals. Management is a versatile subject that teaches students how to understand organizational behavior, motivate and influence others, as well as become a leader in the modern business world. In a competitive job market filled with qualified candidates, leadership and management skills can be exactly what sets you apart.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, have spent time in the workforce, or are just starting out in college, you may be wondering the benefits of studying management. If you are considering a management-related degree, you may be assessing how this will improve your job prospects down the road.

There are many reasons to study management and to pursue a management-focused major. The study of management will provide you with the tools and skills needed to land leadership positions, head up your own company, as well as manage teams, individuals, and organizations effectively. Studying management will also position you for outstanding earning potential.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest data , the average annual wage of managers—across all industries—is currently $109,760 per year . Certain fields, such as human resources, marketing, sales, and finance, have even higher salary potential.

With earnings so high, it’s clear that managers are valued in every field and organization. Good managers are what makes a company thrive. However, good managers are not just born. They are trained. Those managers lacking experience and training can be what brings a failing company to the ground, which is why education is so important. Studying management and leadership enables managers to succeed.

If you are interested in learning more about the perks of studying management, read on. Below, we outline the top six reasons why aspiring leaders should study management and consider pursuing a business leadership degree .

The Top Reasons to Study Management

1. Advance Your Current Career

One of the top reasons that students choose to study management and leadership is career advancement. Some work in an organization they love, but have no upward mobility with their current education and experience. Some feel stuck in their current job and wish to take on a more challenging and gratifying role. A business degree , involving management focused courses, can be their ticket to climbing the ranks and achieving the managerial position of their dreams.

If you are looking to advance in your current career or qualify for new, higher-up opportunities, a management or leadership degree can get you there. Before taking this next step, however, it’s important to ask yourself which degree will set you apart. There are bachelor’s degree programs in business and management, as well as master’s degrees focused on leadership. Both cover topics of strategy, theory, and business planning and development—valuable assets for any managerial career. Therefore, it’s important to ask yourself which degree will position you for the utmost success ahead.

2. Qualify for a Variety of High-Paying, In-Demand Careers

The business arena today is highly-competitive, and its job market is no exception. To land a career in management, you will need to hold a specialized degree that has prepared you to effectively lead a business.

A business administration degree , for example, covers key management topics like budgeting and planning, entrepreneurship, marketing, finance, e-business, and non-profit management. A Master’s in Organizational Leadership (MSOL), meanwhile, covers advanced topics like negotiation, conflict response, performance management, executive decision-making, and more.

All in all, studying management and leadership at the undergraduate or graduate level will prepare you for a range of high-paying, in-demand career opportunities that span multiple industries. Examples of leadership careers you can pursue with a management-focused degree include:

• Human Resources Officer
• Training and Development Manager
• Sales Manager
• Public Relations Manager
• Higher Education Administrator
• Medical and Health Services Manager
• Industrial Production Manager
• Advertising or Marketing Manager
• C-Level Executive (Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Financial Officer, etc.)

3. Start Your Own Business

Perhaps the above management titles do not appeal to you because, at heart, you are an entrepreneur. You may have a business idea (or many!) in mind and simply need the education to bring it to fruition. You may dream of being your own boss, working your own hours, and heading up your own company. This is reason enough to study management—so that you gain the skills needed to bring your ideas to life, to market your business successfully, and to run your business efficiently.

Many of the students at Goodwin University are self-driven innovators and entrepreneurs. Many enter our business administration programs equipped with an idea for a product or business concept. What they leave with, however, is a strong skillset, business foundation, and knowledge of today’s growing corporate arena.

In the beginning, you may not have an idea of where you want to take your ideas or plant your seed. You may not know how to build the right connections, look for expansion opportunities, or foster a community among your team. This is where college-level business classes can help. At Goodwin University, the bachelor’s degree curriculum is focused on the concept of entrepreneurship and the development of small business ownership. We will help connect you with a network of knowledgeable professionals who will support and mentor you throughout your entrepreneurial journey. You’ll learn not only how to start a business, but also how to run, and manage your own business for years to come.

4. Make Professional Connections

Just as communication is the cornerstone of all good business relationships, relationships are the cornerstone of great business success. But how do you build these relationships from the ground up? How do you make connections and network in such a competitive business arena?

The study of management goes much beyond the information that you obtain. A major reason why so many leaders choose to study management is for the connections and the network they can build within the program. In a business administration or leadership degree program, you consistently have the opportunity to collaborate with your peers, gain insights from fellow students, and work out any challenges or questions you may have through the program’s educators. At Goodwin, we have strong connections with businesses throughout Connecticut, putting our students at a great advantage for networking. Here, we believe building connections is a major component of management study.

5. Gain Transferable Skills that Employers are Seeking

One of the greatest benefits of studying management is skills development. Through career-focused business courses, you will be given the opportunity to develop a valuable, transferable set of skills that employers are looking for in all job candidates today.

In the current job market, employers desire managers who have dipped their toes into all aspects of business – from business operations to effective communication processes, from organizational ethics to strategy and statistics. They often seek out applicants holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

The business programs at Goodwin University take all of this into account when training our students for long-term careers. Through specialized training, we teach students to manage innovation, facilitate change, and develop talent as well as their interpersonal skills. Students gain versatile and valuable skills that can be applied to any career, including:

• Communication
• Employee Development
• Business Ethics
• Facilitating Change
• Decision-Making
• Supervision

6. It’s Easier than Ever to Earn a Business Degree

If you are still looking for a reason to study management and leadership, consider this: It is easier than ever to pursue a degree, with the array of flexible programs available to you. Today, there are business administration and organizational leadership programs that offer adaptable course schedules that can be tailored to your needs. If you are already working in a business or have other obligations at home, a degree is still possible for you.

Goodwin University offers a variety of career-focused, flexible business programs with management courses available. The Master’s in Organizational Leadership program, for example, is offered entirely online – meaning you can take classes from just about anywhere with an internet connection. Business administration classes are also offered on days, weekends, and evenings, so you can find courses that within your schedule. And if you are looking to finish your degree quickly, there are accelerated options .

Rather than asking yourself, “Why study management?”, ask yourself, “Why not?”

Whether you dream of starting your own company, moving up the ladder into an advanced managerial position, or diving head-on into the corporate world, there is no reason for you not to consider earning a management degree.

The benefits of studying management are endless. Take the next step in your career and become a leader. Visit us online to learn more .

Goodwin University is a nonprofit institution of higher education and is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), formerly known as the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). Goodwin University was founded in 1999, with the goal of serving a diverse student population with career-focused degree programs that lead to strong employment outcomes.

Essay on the History of Management

Organizational management has evolved over a lengthy period. It is possible to travel back over a century to trace the origins of management. In order to guide a company ahead, it is critical for each manager to have a firm grasp of management history.

Managers need to know where management came from and how it’s evolved to get to where it is now. The term “a nation of insane people” is more appropriate if a country had a memory, which it does not. Management that lacks memory might be referred to as “management for insane people” when applied to the business world (Smith, 2007).

History is not a popular subject among academics. Students are more interested in learning how to manage than the origins of management and its development. As a result, managers with little or no management experience are created (Daft & Marcic, 2013).

The past of management is also not given much attention by most training schools nowadays. Though the word “management” has been around for a while, it’s still crucial to know where it came from. Why should managers and management students learn about management’s history? This article explains. A thorough understanding of management’s past is essential for today’s managers and future management trainees.

The significance of researching management’s history

Trainees confront several difficulties while taking them on tour through the history of management methods. Modern pupils seem to have a limited perspective on the world. To make matters much more complex, managers have to explain anything that goes against what pupils have learned about reality in the classroom (Waddell, Jones & George, 2011).

Consequently, management students are missing out on a lot of the background they need to grasp the art of managing. Students cannot see the relevance of previous theories and practices in today’s world. In order to be clear, the present hypothesis is a development of previous ones.

If people don’t know how ideas develop, they may not appreciate the context they are being used. For managers to compare current practices in the company with historical theories, they must first understand previous ideas.

A better understanding of where and why managers and management students go awry will help them improve their performance. Even though the economic climate has changed, previous ideas have been continually refined to keep them current. Therefore, if managers are aware of these notions, they may avoid inconsistent activities. Consequently, managers are better equipped to carry out their responsibilities in a way that advances the business (Wren, 1987).

As per Smith (2007), the background of management is a valuable addition to the management education curriculum. There are several advantages to management training and education if more time is spent examining and studying the history of management.

Studies have shown that most undergraduates have a limited appreciation for historical developments in management theory and practice. If learners were asked to describe their profession’s history, instructors should ask themselves how well they would do. There are many of these young people and even some of their teachers who cannot interpret that history.

Disregarding management theory misses an essential aspect. An important issue that was overlooked is that “the growth of any idea must be seen in its time” (Smith, 2007: 12). Consequently, students of management are at risk of missing out on important information because they lack historical context.

In other words, if students aren’t taught management correctly, they won’t be prepared to do their jobs properly once they are in management positions. Managers tend to take the company on the wrong path when in charge. Managers who cannot establish the proper plans for their organizations may find it challenging to make sound decisions. In the absence of success, their management will be of little use.

Learning about management’s past is like gaining knowledge. Having wisdom is the only way to increase your knowledge. The achievement of learning is linked to the expansion of knowledge. As a result, the only way to develop one’s managerial skills is to study the field’s history.

Having a solid foundation of historical knowledge is essential for furthering one’s education. A person’s decision-making abilities increase significantly as a result of this process. Frederick Winslow Taylor’s ideas to “The Principles of Scientific Management” have gained relevance today. Today, Taylor is known as the father of contemporary management. Although he made significant contributions in the early twentieth century, his work is still relevant today.

If you don’t comprehend Taylor’s contribution to management concepts, you may not have a good grasp of modern management methods. Taylor’s theories remain dominant in management literature today, as per Giannantonio & Hurley-Hanson (2011). Taylor’s 1911 book, “The Principles of Scientific Management,” is still relevant today because of the points he presented in it.

Debating a subject about which you have no background knowledge is pointless. In order to participate in a discussion, one must know the origin of the topic at hand. You can’t just jump into the midst of a debate and start contributing.

Managers must know how these concepts have evolved since they were initially proposed in 1911 to make a meaningful addition to Taylor’s discussion. That managers and students of management should know and comprehend the history of management is much more critical (Giannantonio & Hurley- Hanson, 2011).

Researchers believe that managers who spend far more time learning about previous generations of economists and managers may have a favorable impact on how business is conducted now (Waddell, Jones & George, 2011). Students may learn a lot about history in this course, and that information can be quite helpful in today’s corporate world. In this regard, Fordism serves as a useful illustration.

Since Henry Ford originally proposed Fordism in 1914, the automotive industry has relied on it (Shioni, 1995). It is more difficult for students to gain these abilities without studying the history of management. Studying management history enables students to learn from previous errors to avoid them in the present and the future. In addition, these students and managers can develop recommendations for improving on those faults.

For students to grasp the present management techniques, they must first learn how the art of management has evolved through time. For example, Max Weber’s work on bureaucracy in companies was a flop, as most workers were uninspired by it.

A student who appreciates Max Weber’s ideas may correct bureaucratic processes in the business, allowing them to attain the achievement that bureaucratic managers have failed to reach. Additionally, the student can come up with new and creative approaches to running the business. Not only is there a shortage of qualified instructors to present the history of management, but there is a paucity of excellent teaching resources that can assist them (Cummings & Bridgman, 2011).

Management history is also worth studying since management is rooted in the past. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that “management” was coined. In the beginning, no one had any notion of what managing was. According to a recent study, it is noteworthy to highlight those managerial practices predate the 20th century.

The word “management” was not coined until an engineer from France named Henri Fayol, who lived from 1841 to 1925. Today’s definition substantially borrows from Fayol’s original, which has stood the test of time.

Studying Fayol’s contribution helps students better comprehend the concept of management and how it is applied (Crainer, 2003). Organization, planning, and coordination are tasks that a manager must do. Fayol came up with this idea. “Planning, controlling, coordinating, organizing, and staffing” are all included in the concept of management.

Everything we have now has its roots in the things here before. As a result, organizations and the world as a whole cannot exist today if there was no prior history. Bedeian (2004) asserts that a scarcity of educational institutions dedicated to teaching the background of management has resulted in a crop of managers with doctorates who are uneducated in the field.

According to Bedeian (2004), all of today’s management ideas, models, and approaches have roots in the past. Because they don’t understand Isaac Newton’s adage from 1676, which states that “each successive generation stands on the shoulders of the giants that have gone before it,” today’s management students are failing miserably (Bedeian, 2004: 21). This suggests that it is impossible to start from scratch and succeed in any endeavor.

One must study the achievements of those who came before and then construct their success from it. Students and managers today are being urged to have a better understanding of management’s past via this initiative. Only those familiar with how management has worked in the past will be able to succeed in their current role. As a result, management will learn from their failures and use the strengths of their predecessors’ ideas.

The present position may be determined by a manager who has a thorough knowledge of its history. As a result, they can identify whether current company events are connected to those from its historical management history.

Managers will be more equipped to identify and fix problems inside their organizations if they can do so. As a general rule, learning about management history may assist future managers and business leaders make more successful decisions by fusing their prior knowledge with the most recent research (Wren, 1987).

Management is both an art and a science that has developed throughout human history. The present management has a lot to do with the previous management’s legacy. Consequently, to have a thorough grasp of management, one must first examine its history. This will provide them with a solid basis to grow and learn.

Indirectly/directly, some of the ideas and beliefs put forward decades ago still hold today. Contemporary management ideas were also built on previous theories. The history of management should be studied from a critical viewpoint by managers and students of management.

Bedeian, AG 2004 ‘The gift of professional maturity,  Academy of Management Learning & Education,  vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 92-98

Crainer, C 2003 ‘One hundred years of management,’  Business Strategy Review,  vol. 14, issue 2, pp. 41-49

Cummings, S & Bridgman, T 2011 ‘The relevant past: Why the history of management should be critical for our future,’  Academy of Management Learning & Education,  vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 77-93.

Daft, RL & Marcic, D 2013  Understanding management,  Australia: South-Western Cengage Learning.

Giannantonio, CM & Hurley-Hanson, AE 2011 ‘Frederick Winslow Taylor: Reflections on the relevance of the principles of scientific management 100 years later’,  Journal of Business and Management,  vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 7-10.

Shioni, H 1995,  Fordism transformed: The development of production: Methods in the automobile industry,  New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Smith, GE 2007 ‘Management history and historical context: Potential benefits of its inclusion in the management curriculum,’  Academy of Management Learning & Education,  vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 522-533.

Waddell, D, Jones, GR, George, JM 2011  Contemporary management, 2 nd edn , McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Limited, Sydney

Wren, DA 1987 ‘Management history: Issues and ideas for teaching and research,  Journal of Management,  vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 339-350.

Cite This Work

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Related Essays

Samsung business strategy, uber passenger transportation service, allied sanitation company and e-commerce, importance and methods of job evaluation for organizational effectiveness, strategic analysis of walmart, strategic alternatives and recommended strategy, popular essay topics.

• American Dream
• Artificial Intelligence
• Black Lives Matter
• Bullying Essay
• Career Goals Essay
• Causes of the Civil War
• Child Abusing
• Civil Rights Movement
• Community Service
• Cultural Identity
• Cyber Bullying
• Death Penalty
• Depression Essay
• Domestic Violence
• Freedom of Speech
• Global Warming
• Gun Control
• Human Trafficking
• I Believe Essay
• Immigration
• Importance of Education
• Israel and Palestine Conflict
• Leadership Essay
• Legalizing Marijuanas
• Mental Health
• National Honor Society
• Police Brutality
• Pollution Essay
• Racism Essay
• Romeo and Juliet
• Same Sex Marriages
• Social Media
• The Great Gatsby
• The Yellow Wallpaper
• Time Management
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Violent Video Games
• What Makes You Unique
• Why I Want to Be a Nurse
• Send us an e-mail

25,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

Essay on Time Management

• Updated on  
• Aug 27, 2022

“Time isn’t the main thing, it’s the only thing”- Mile Davis.

Time management is a prestigious topic for budding subconscious minds. It is one of the most crucial skills that you must inculcate from early on. This skill has vital importance when you move into a professional setting. It is extremely important to manage time efficiently as not managing time can create many problems in your day-to-day life. It is also a common essay topic in the school curriculum and various academic and competitive exams like IELTS , TOEFL , SAT , UPSC , etc. This blog brings you samples of essays on time management with tips & tricks on how to write an essay.

Essay on Time Management in 200 words

Time stops for none and is equal for all. Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day but some people make better use of time than others. This is one of the most important reasons some people are experts in what they do. Therefore, time management plays a vital role in both personal as well as professional lives.

Time management is basically an effort made consciously to spend a certain amount of time performing a task efficiently. Furthermore, it is estimated that to have better results, one needs to do productive work. Thus, productivity is the key focus here. Moreover, maintaining a careful balance between professional life, social life, and any other hobbies or activities is a great example of efficient time management.

Time management is also crucial for students from an academic perspective as students require to cover many subjects. Thus, efficiently managing time is an important skill in everyone’s life.  Around the world, there are two views for time management – linear time view and multi-active time view. The linear time view is predominant in America, Germany and England, and it aims at completing one task at a time. Whereas a multi-active view aims at completing a number at once and is predominant in India and Spain. Nevertheless, time management is one of the important traits of a successful individual, students are advised to follow whichever is convenient for them.

Essay on Time Management in 300 Words

Time Management is a key skill for job opportunities as employers recruit candidates who have this efficient skill. Thus, it is advised to initiate inculcating this vital skill as soon as possible. In the academic setting, time management plays a vital role and helps in the accomplishment of tasks efficiently and effectively.

Time management is the process of planning and performing pre-scheduled activities with the aim of increasing productivity, effectiveness and efficiency. Different cultures hold different views on Time Management. However, a multi-active time view and a linear time view are the two predominant views. In a linear time view, the aim is set to complete one particular task at a time whereas, in a multi-active view, the focus is on completing a greater number of tasks at once. Emphasis is given on productivity and effectiveness, but students are free to choose their own view of time management.

Time management is crucial as it is helpful in setting a timeline for achieving a particular goal. Moreover, it also increases the efficiency of the tasks at hand. It becomes necessary for working professionals as they need to balance their personal and professional life. Thus, they do not have time to dwell on each and every detail in every task. In such cases, a multi-active view is one of the helpful methods. Time management works best when a goal or target is set. For instance, a student becomes far more effective at learning when they decide to assign 2 hours for learning a particular concept. This is effectively a method of benchmarking progress. So, every time the activity is performed, one can measure themselves and improve upon various aspects of their tasks.The clear conclusion is that time management is a crucial skill for students and working professionals. Thus, everyone must practise time management to improve productivity and efficiency of tasks.

Tips for Writing an Essay on Time Management

To write an impactful and scoring essay here are some tips on how to manage time and write a good essay:

• The initial step is to write an introduction or background information about the topic
• You are required to use the formal style of writing and avoid using slang language.
• To make an essay more impactful, write dates, quotations, and names to provide a better understanding
• You can use jargon wherever it is necessary as it sometimes makes an essay complicated
• To make an essay more creative you can also add information in bulleted points wherever possible
• Always remember to add a conclusion where you need to summarise crucial points
• Once you are done read through the lines and check spelling and grammar mistakes before submission

Check Out Popular Essay Topics

• Essay on Population Explosion
• Essay on My Hobby
• Essay on Human Rights
• Essay On Sikkim
• Essay on Disaster Management
• Essay on Democracy
• Essay on Child Labour
• Essay on Global Warming
• Essay on Women Empowerment
• Essay on My Aim in Life
• Essay on India
• Essay on Education System

Lastly, we hope this blog has helped you in structuring a terrific essay on time management. Planning to ace your IELTS, get expert tips from coaches at Leverage Live by Leverage Edu .

Sonal is a creative, enthusiastic writer and editor who has worked extensively for the Study Abroad domain. She splits her time between shooting fun insta reels and learning new tools for content marketing. If she is missing from her desk, you can find her with a group of people cracking silly jokes or petting neighbourhood dogs.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Leaving already?

8 Universities with higher ROI than IITs and IIMs

Grab this one-time opportunity to download this ebook

Connect With Us

25,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

September 2024

January 2025

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

The Role of Management in organization Essay

Introduction, the role of management, management role by other writers.

The main role of management is categorized into four functions, i.e. Controlling, Leading, Organizing and planning. Many textbooks depict these functions as the simple, clear and unchanging guidelines to perfect management. However, the role of management is more than just following simple rules of procedure.

These functions looks very ideal to work with and they lay out a god framework through which managers should work with, but they do not represent the day-to-day challenges that face a manager. This essay analyses various textbooks and how each of them depict the role of management.

Role of management as depicted by the study book

The text book paints the role of management as a rational and technical function. F.W. Taylor, for example, believed that “the way to create the most efficient division of labor could best be determined by scientific management techniques rather than intuitive of informal rule-of-thumb knowledge,” (Waddell et al 2007, P. 43).

He further four principles of management as “developing a for each job element, scientifically selecting an training workers, formulating science principles to be followed and equal division of work and responsibilities between workers and management,” (Waddell et al 2007, P.44). This may be conclusively said to be his idea of management’s role of planning, leading, organizing, and controlling.

The Gilbreth’s too, in “their goal to achieve maximum efficiency, undertook to develop efficiency principle of management to be applied in all areas,” (Waddell et al 2007, P. 47). To increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the administrative function, Max Weber developed “formalized rules, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and norms,” (Waddell et al 2007, P. 49), popularly known as principles of bureaucracy.

To him bureaucracy was the gateway to achieving organizational goals by enabling effective directing and control of workers. Henri Fayol too believed that the only way “to achieve efficiency of management is by the use of some standard principles which he came up with, to be used by managers in their management role which he identified as planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling” (Waddell et al 2007, P. 52), which equate to the modern management functions as POLC.

This stand was challenged by Parker Follet who disagreed with flow of authority from top to bottom and viewed that workers too should be included in the decision making, but Fayol’s principles have stood the test of time and are still very applicable to date.

Jackall maintains that scientific principles of management are crucial to management process when it comes to middle-managers. Well formulated principles outlines what a manager needs to do when and thus removes the constant fear that such managers feel of “being found not measuring up to the expectations in their social world,” (Jackall, 1988, P. 79).

Tasks are broken into smaller portions and also knowledge conferred and required by each piece. However, he admits that scientific principles will not be helpful to a senior manager who need to make, what he calls, ‘gut decisions’ which are complex and involve large amounts of capital outlay.

According to him, “numeric measures and other seemingly sophisticated analytical tools can only be “guideposts” in making such decisions,” (Jackall 1988, P.81). But Parker was of the opinion that management cannot be a rational and technical role. He states that management must conform to industrial changes and social progress. In his own words, “it would make no sense to disentangle…‘management’ from the everyday skills through which life was lived,” (Parker 2002, P. 5).

He views management, though, as an art that once learnt becomes universally applicable to all situations. Roberts views scientific methods of management as essential sources of techniques that managers can use to effectively manage their entities. On the other hand, “such techniques are inadequate to the task that is set for them and, only by acknowledging the moral character of their practice, will managers be able to become truly effective,” (Roberts 1984 P. 288).

Thus, managers are morally neutral characters in their ways of controlling others. Others like Knight and Roberts believe that management power does not only rest with the managers but also the subordinates, (Knight & Roberts, 1928). Managers draw their power from the people they manage and therefore this cannot be rational and technical as in scientific management.

Terkel, in his narration of his job in the executive says that, he can’t tell “of any situation in the corporate world where an executive is completely free and sure of his job from moment to moment,” (Terkel 1974, 335). This is because they are constantly under pressure from both within, e.g., shareholders and outside the organization. Thus, management role cannot be rational and technical.

The study book by Waddell et al, 2007, holds a rigid position on the role of management. Most of the theories of management discussed hold that from management to be effective, managers must follow some preset standards and procedures. According to them, failure to adhere to such principles would lead to total failure of the management.

Their principles have been applied over a long stretch of time and even now some of their principles have trickled down to modern management. Some writers still believe that scientific methods help managers to reduce uncertainty found in management and makes performance of tasks relatively easy since they are well broken down and defined, (Jackall, 1988).

But modern writers have realized that management is more than being technical and rational. It involves the ability to cope with the industrial developments and social progress, (Parker 2002). Others believe that both methods are intertwined and it is hard to separate the two from each other. Simply put, none can survive without the other.

The most logical line of argument is that the two methods are paramount to success of an organization since as much as management is about dealing with day to day life, lack of clear guidelines to indicate what is to be done, when and by who may result to a state of chaos and conflicts. On the other hand religious adherence to some rational and technical guidelines will be a hindrance to creativity and innovation and it may take long adapting to change.

This in effect will lead to slow development of the entire organization. Therefore managers should adopt methods of management that are a combination of both methods. The laid down policies and procedures should not be too rigid as to make it hard to adapt to new circumstances. On the other hand, they should be such as to enable one to know his authority and scope of duty.

Jackall, R. (1988) Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers . Chapter 4, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Knights, D & Roberts, J. (1928) The Power of Organization or the Organization of Power? Department of Management Science, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester, England.

Parker, M. (2002) Against Management: Management and its Discontents , Cambridge, Polity

Roberts, J. (1948) The Moral Character of Management Practice . Journal of Management Studies, 21, 3. Department of Accounting and Business Finance, University of Manchester

Terkel, S. (1974) Working . Middlesex. ND Penguin.

Waddell, et al. (2007) Contemporary management. McGraw Hill: Australia pty limited.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, November 28). The Role of Management in organization. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-management-in-organization/

"The Role of Management in organization." IvyPanda , 28 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-management-in-organization/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Role of Management in organization'. 28 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The Role of Management in organization." November 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-management-in-organization/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Role of Management in organization." November 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-management-in-organization/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Role of Management in organization." November 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-management-in-organization/.

• Fayol’s Management Theory
• Henri Fayol and the Relevance of Fayol's Principles of Management Today
• Fayol’s Management Theories
• Fayol's Management Principles in Contemporary Companies
• Literature Review - Henri Fayol
• Fayol’s Theory of Management
• Fayol’s Management Solutions through the Prism of Time: 14 Postulates in the XXI Century
• Henri Fayol’s Contributions to Management Today
• Henri Fayol’s Management Theories
• Fayol’s and Stauffacher Management Principles
• Decision making Tools in the organization
• Managing Recourses in IT Industry
• The Management Systems Related to Internal and External Environment
• Strategic Planning and Using Market Information Systems
• The Importance of Management Theories (Critical Writing)

• Study Guides
• Homework Questions

Essay lesson 5 mgt210

AI Index Report

The AI Index Report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data related to artificial intelligence. Our mission is to provide unbiased, rigorously vetted, broadly sourced data in order for policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists, and the general public to develop a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the complex field of AI. The report aims to be the world’s most credible and authoritative source for data and insights about AI.

Read the 2023 AI Index Report

Coming Soon: 2024 AI Index Report!

The 2024 AI Index Report will be out April 15! Sign up for our mailing list to receive it in your inbox.

Steering Committee Co-Directors

Ray Perrault

Steering committee members.

Erik Brynjolfsson

John Etchemendy

Katrina Ligett

Terah Lyons

James Manyika

Juan Carlos Niebles

Vanessa Parli

Yoav Shoham

Russell Wald

Staff members.

Loredana Fattorini

Nestor Maslej

Letter from the co-directors.

AI has moved into its era of deployment; throughout 2022 and the beginning of 2023, new large-scale AI models have been released every month. These models, such as ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Whisper, and DALL-E 2, are capable of an increasingly broad range of tasks, from text manipulation and analysis, to image generation, to unprecedentedly good speech recognition. These systems demonstrate capabilities in question answering, and the generation of text, image, and code unimagined a decade ago, and they outperform the state of the art on many benchmarks, old and new. However, they are prone to hallucination, routinely biased, and can be tricked into serving nefarious aims, highlighting the complicated ethical challenges associated with their deployment.

Although 2022 was the first year in a decade where private AI investment decreased, AI is still a topic of great interest to policymakers, industry leaders, researchers, and the public. Policymakers are talking about AI more than ever before. Industry leaders that have integrated AI into their businesses are seeing tangible cost and revenue benefits. The number of AI publications and collaborations continues to increase. And the public is forming sharper opinions about AI and which elements they like or dislike.

AI will continue to improve and, as such, become a greater part of all our lives. Given the increased presence of this technology and its potential for massive disruption, we should all begin thinking more critically about how exactly we want AI to be developed and deployed. We should also ask questions about who is deploying it—as our analysis shows, AI is increasingly defined by the actions of a small set of private sector actors, rather than a broader range of societal actors. This year’s AI Index paints a picture of where we are so far with AI, in order to highlight what might await us in the future.

- Jack Clark and Ray Perrault

Our Supporting Partners

Analytics & Research Partners

Stay up to date on the AI Index by subscribing to the  Stanford HAI newsletter.

• All Publications
• Priorities Magazine Spring 2018
• The Next Plague and How Science Will Stop It
• Priorities Magazine Winter 2018
• Priorities Magazine Fall 2017
• Little Black Book of Junk Science
• Priorities Magazine Winter 2017
• Should You Worry About Artificial Flavors Or Colors?
• Should You Worry About Artificial Sweeteners?
• Summer Health and Safety Tips
• How Toxic Terrorists Scare You With Science Terms
• Adult Immunization: The Need for Enhanced Utilization
• Should You Worry About Salt?
• Priorities Magazine Spring 2016
• IARC Diesel Exhaust & Lung Cancer: An Analysis
• Teflon and Human Health: Do the Charges Stick?
• Helping Smokers Quit: The Science Behind Tobacco Harm Reduction
• Irradiated Foods
• Foods Are Not Cigarettes: Why Tobacco Lawsuits Are Not a Model for Obesity Lawsuits
• The Prevention and Treatment of Osteoporosis: A Review
• Are "Low Dose" Health Effects of Chemicals Real?
• The Effects of Nicotine on Human Health
• Traditional Holiday Dinner Replete with Natural Carcinogens - Even Organic Thanksgiving Dinners
• A Primer On Dental Care: Quality and Quackery
• Nuclear Energy and Health And the Benefits of Low-Dose Radiation Hormesis
• Priorities in Caring for Your Children: A Primer for Parents
• Endocrine Disrupters: A Scientific Perspective
• Good Stories, Bad Science: A Guide for Journalists to the Health Claims of "Consumer Activist" Groups
• A Comparison of the Health Effects of Alcohol Consumption and Tobacco Use in America
• Moderate Alcohol Consumption and Health
• Irradiated Foods Fifth Edition
• Media/Contact
• Write For Us

The War on Drugs is Also a War on Pain Patients

Related articles.

In a recent New York Times essay, a professor of anesthesia and pain management recently protested the Drug Enforcement Administration's opioid manufacturing quotas and micromanagement of doctors treating their patients' pain. At a time when DEA S.W.A.T. teams frequently raid doctors' offices for "inappropriate" prescribing, the professor's essay demonstrated boldness. Unfortunately, the professor's reform proposals were much less bold.

In a March 22 opinion  column  in the  New York Times  entitled “The DEA Needs to Stay Out of Medicine,” Vanderbilt University Medical Center associate professor of anesthesiology and pain management Shravani Durbhakula, MD, documents powerfully how patients suffering from severe pain—many of them terminal cancer patients—have become collateral casualties in the government’s war on drugs.

Decrying the Drug Enforcement Administration’s progressive tightening of opioid manufacturing quotas, Dr. Durbhakula writes:

In theory, fewer opioids sold means fewer inappropriate scripts filled, which should curb the  diversion of prescription opioids for illicit purposes  and decrease overdose deaths — right? I can tell you from the front lines that that’s not quite right. Prescription opioids once drove the opioid crisis. But in recent years opioid prescriptions have significantly fallen, while overdose deaths have been at a record high. America’s  new wave  of fatalities is largely a result of the illicit market, specifically  illicit fentanyl . And as production cuts contribute to the reduction of the already strained supply of legal, regulated prescription opioids, drug shortages stand to affect the more than  50 million people  suffering from chronic pain in more ways than at the pharmacy counter.

Dr. Durbhakula provides stories of patients having to travel long distances to see their doctors in person due to DEA requirements about opioid prescriptions. However, despite their efforts, they find that many of the pharmacies do not have the opioids they require because of quotas. She writes:

Health care professionals and pharmacies in this country are chained by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Our patients’ stress is the result not of an orchestrated set of practice guidelines or a comprehensive clinical policy but rather of one government agency’s crude, broad‐​stroke technique to mitigate a public health crisis through manufacturing limits — the gradual and repeated rationing of how much opioids can be produced by legitimate entities.

In the essay, Dr.Durbhakula does not question or challenge the  false narrative  that the overdose crisis originated with doctors “overprescribing” opioids to their pain patients.

Unfortunately, Dr. Durbhakula’s proposed policy recommendations would do little to advance patient and physician autonomy. She would merely transfer control over doctors treating pain from the cops to federal health bureaucracies and let those agencies set opioid production quotas. For instance, she claims, “It’s incumbent on us [doctors] to hand the reins of authority over to public health institutions better suited to the task.”

No. The “reins of authority” belong in the hands of patients and doctors.

Dr. Durbhakula suggests that “instead of defining medical aptness, the DEA should pass the baton to our nation’s public health agencies” and proposes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration “collaborate” to “place controls on individual prescribing and respond to inappropriate prescribing.” She elides the fact that these public health agencies will “respond” to doctors or patients who don’t comply with their regulations by calling the cops.

To be sure, Dr. Durbhakula has good intentions. But replacing actual cops—the DEA—with federal health agencies that can order those cops to arrest non‐​compliant doctors and patients is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. True, her proposed new pain management overlords would have greater medical expertise, but they would still reign over doctors and patients and assault their autonomy. And, as we  learned  during the COVID-19 pandemic, they will not be immune to political pressures and  groupthink .

While her policy prescriptions may be flawed, Dr. Durbhakula deserves praise for having the courage to point out that the war on drugs is also a war on pain patients. Alas, courageous doctors are in short supply these days. Most doctors keep their heads down and follow the cops’ instructions.

After I read her essay, I wrote the following (unpublished) letter to the editor of the  New York Times :

Dear Editor— Kudos to Dr. Durhakula for speaking out against the Drug Enforcement Administration’s intruding on doctors’ pain treatment (“ The DEA Needs to Stay Out of Medicine ,” March 22, 2024). As my colleague and I explained in our 2022 Cato Institute white paper, “ Cops Practicing Medicine ,” for more than 100 years, law enforcement has been increasingly surveilling and regulating pain management. The DEA maintains a schedule of substances it controls, and it categorizes them based on what the agency determines to be their safety and addictive potential. The DEA even presumes to know how many and what kind of controlled substances—from stimulants like Adderall to narcotics like oxycodone—the entire US population will need in future years, setting quotas on how many each pharmaceutical manufacturer may annually produce. The DEA restricts pain management based on the flawed assumption that what they consider to be “overtreatment” caused the overdose crisis. However, as my colleagues and I showed, there is  no correlation  between the opioid prescription rate and the rate of non‐​medical opioid use or opioid addiction. And, of course, as fear of DEA reprisal has caused the prescription rate to drop precipitously in the last dozen years, overdose deaths have soared as the black market provided non‐​medical users of “diverted” prescription pain pills first with more dangerous heroin and later with fentanyl. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health found that overdose fatalities have been rising  exponentially  since at least the late 1970s, with different drugs predominating during various periods. Complex sociocultural, psychosocial, and socioeconomic forces are at the root of the overdose crisis, requiring serious investigation. Yet policymakers have chosen the lazy answer by blaming the overdose crisis on doctors treating pain. When cops practice medicine, overdoses increase, drug cartels get richer, and patients suffer. Sincerely, Jeffrey A. Singer, MD, FACS Senior Fellow, Cato Institute

When cops practice medicine, overdoses increase, drug cartels get richer, and patients suffer.

Reprinted with permission. Dr. Singer's original piece can be found here on the Cato Institute website

View the discussion thread.

By Jeffrey Singer

Jeffrey A. Singer, MD received his BA from Brooklyn College and his MD from New York Medical College. After completing his surgical residency and receiving Board Certification he began a private practice as a general surgeon in Phoenix, Arizona and became a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, serving in the Department of Health Policy Studies. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, AZ. His principal areas of scholarship are health care policy, drug policy, drug prohibition, and harm reduction. Dr. Singer has been practicing medicine for more than 30 years.

Latest from Jeffrey Singer :

Disclaimer » Advertising

• HealthyChildren.org

• Previous Article
• Next Article

Selection Criteria

Search strategy, data extraction, risk of bias and applicability, data synthesis and analysis, parent ratings, teacher ratings, youth self-reports, combined rating scales, additional clinician tools, neuropsychological tests, biospecimen, neuroimaging, variation in diagnostic accuracy with clinical setting or patient subgroup, measures for diagnostic performance, available tools, importance of the comparator sample, clinical implications, future research, conclusions, acknowledgments, tools for the diagnosis of adhd in children and adolescents: a systematic review.

• Split-Screen
• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data
• Peer Review
• CME Quiz Close Quiz
• Open the PDF for in another window
• Get Permissions
• Cite Icon Cite
• Search Site

Bradley S. Peterson , Joey Trampush , Morah Brown , Margaret Maglione , Maria Bolshakova , Mary Rozelle , Jeremy Miles , Sheila Pakdaman , Sachi Yagyu , Aneesa Motala , Susanne Hempel; Tools for the Diagnosis of ADHD in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review. Pediatrics April 2024; 153 (4): e2024065854. 10.1542/peds.2024-065854

Download citation file:

• Ris (Zotero)
• Reference Manager

Correct diagnosis is essential for the appropriate clinical management of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents.

This systematic review provides an overview of the available diagnostic tools.

We identified diagnostic accuracy studies in 12 databases published from 1980 through June 2023.

Any ADHD tool evaluation for the diagnosis of ADHD, requiring a reference standard of a clinical diagnosis by a mental health specialist.

Data were abstracted and critically appraised by 1 reviewer and checked by a methodologist. Strength of evidence and applicability assessments followed Evidence-based Practice Center standards.

In total, 231 studies met eligibility criteria. Studies evaluated parental ratings, teacher ratings, youth self-reports, clinician tools, neuropsychological tests, biospecimen, EEG, and neuroimaging. Multiple tools showed promising diagnostic performance, but estimates varied considerably across studies, with a generally low strength of evidence. Performance depended on whether ADHD youth were being differentiated from neurotypically developing children or from clinically referred children.

Studies used different components of available tools and did not report sufficient data for meta-analytic models.

A valid and reliable diagnosis of ADHD requires the judgment of a clinician who is experienced in the evaluation of youth with and without ADHD, along with the aid of standardized rating scales and input from multiple informants across multiple settings, including parents, teachers, and youth themselves.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent neurodevelopmental conditions in youth. Its prevalence has remained constant at ∼5.3% worldwide over the years, and diagnostic criteria have remained constant when based on rigorous diagnostic procedures. 1   Clinical diagnoses, however, have increased steadily over time, 2   and currently, ∼10% of US children receive an ADHD diagnosis. 3   Higher rates of clinical compared with research-based diagnoses are because of an increasing clinician recognition of youth who have ADHD symptoms that are functionally impairing but do not fully meet formal diagnostic criteria. 4   The higher diagnostic rates over time in clinical samples also results from youth receiving a diagnosis incorrectly. Some youth, for example, are misdiagnosed as having ADHD when they have symptoms of other disorders that overlap with ADHD symptoms, such as difficulty concentrating, which occurs in many other conditions. 5   Moreover, ADHD is more than twice as likely to be diagnosed in boys than in girls, 3   in lower-income families, 6   and in white compared with nonwhite youth 7   ; differences that derive at least in part from diagnostic and cultural biases. 8   – 11  

Improving clinical diagnostic accuracy is essential to ensure that youth who truly have ADHD benefit from receiving treatment without delay. Similarly, youth who do not have ADHD should not be diagnosed since an incorrect diagnosis risks exposing them to unbeneficial treatments. 12 , 13   Clinician judgement alone, however, especially by nonspecialist clinicians, is poor in diagnosing ADHD 14   compared with expert, research-grade diagnoses made by mental health clinicians. 15   Accurately diagnosing ADHD is difficult because diagnoses are often made using subjective clinical impressions, and putative diagnostic tools have a confusing, diverse, and poorly described evidence base that is not widely accessible. The availability of valid diagnostic tools would especially help to reduce misdiagnoses from cultural biases and symptom overlap with ADHD. 12 , 16   – 19  

This review summarizes evidence for the performance of tools for children and adolescents with ADHD. We did not restrict to a set of known diagnostic tools but instead explored the range of available diagnostic tools, including machine-learning assisted and virtual reality-based tools. The review aimed to assess how diagnostic performance varies by clinical setting and patient characteristics.

The review aims were developed in consultation with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the topic nominator American Academy of Pediatrics, key informants, a technical expert panel (TEP), and public input. The TEP reviewed the protocol and advised on key outcomes. Subgroup analyses and key outcomes were prespecified. The review is registered in PROSPERO (CRD42022312656) and the protocol is available on the AHRQ Web site as part of a larger evidence report on ADHD. The systematic review followed Methods of the (AHRQ) Evidence-based Practice Center Program. 20  

Population: age <18 years.

Interventions: any ADHD tool for the diagnosis of ADHD.

Comparators: diagnosis by a mental health specialist, such as a psychologist, psychiatrist, or other provider, who often used published scales or semistructured diagnostic interviews to ensure a reliable DSM-based diagnosis of ADHD.

Key outcomes: diagnostic accuracy (eg, sensitivity, specificity, area under the curve).

Setting: any.

Study design: diagnostic accuracy studies.

Other: English language, published from 1980 to June 2023.

We searched PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, ERIC, and ClinicalTrials.gov. We identified reviews for reference-mining through PubMed, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Campbell Collaboration, What Works in Education, PROSPERO, ECRI Guidelines Trust, G-I-N, and ClinicalKey. The peer reviewed strategy is in the Supplemental Appendix . All citations were screened by trained literature reviewers supported by machine learning ( Fig 1 ). Two independent reviewers assessed full text studies for eligibility. The TEP reviewed studies to ensure all were captured. Publications reporting on the same participants were consolidated into 1 record.

Literature flow diagram.

The data abstraction form included extensive guidance to aid reproducibility and standardization in recording study details, results, risk of bias, and applicability. One reviewer abstracted data and a methodologist checked accuracy and completeness. Data are publicly available in the Systematic Review Data Repository.

We assessed characteristics pertaining to patient selection, index test, reference standard, flow and timing that may have introduced bias, and evaluated applicability of study results, such as whether the test, its conduct, or interpretation differed from how the test is used in clinical practice. 21 , 22  

We differentiated parent, teacher, and youth self-report ratings; tools for clinicians; neuropsychological tests; biospecimens; EEG; and neuroimaging. We organized analyses according to prespecified outcome measures. A narrative overview summarized the range of diagnostic performance for key outcomes. Because lack of reported detail in many individual studies hindered use of meta-analytic models, we created summary figures to document the diagnostic performance reported in each study. We used meta-regressions across studies to assess the effects of age, comorbidities, racial and ethnic composition, and diagnostic setting (differentiating primary care, specialty care, school settings, mixed settings, and not reported) on diagnostic performance. One researcher with experience in use of specified standardized criteria 23   initially assessed the overall strength of evidence (SoE) (see Supplemental Appendix ) for each study, then discussed it with the study team to communicate our confidence in each finding.

We screened 23 139 citations and 7534 publications retrieved as full text against the eligibility criteria. In total, 231 studies reported in 290 publications met the eligibility criteria (see Fig 1 ).

Methodological quality of the studies varied. Selection bias was likely in two-thirds of studies; several were determined to be problematic in terms of reported study flow and timing of assessments (eg, not stating whether diagnosis was known before the results of the index test); and several lacked details on diagnosticians or diagnostic procedures ( Supplemental Fig 1 ). Applicability concerns limited the generalizability of findings ( Supplemental Fig 2 ), usually because youth with comorbidities were excluded. Many different tools were assessed within the broader categories (eg, within neuropsychological tests), and even when reporting on the same diagnostic tool, studies often used different components of the tool (eg, different subscales of rating scales), or they combined components in a variety of ways (eg, across different neuropsychological test parameters).

The evidence table ( Supplemental Table 10 , Supplemental Appendix ) shows each study’s finding. The following highlights key findings across studies.

Fifty-nine studies used parent ratings to diagnose ADHD ( Fig 2 ). The most frequently evaluated tool was the CBCL (Child Behavior Checklist), alone or in combination with other tools, often using different score cutoffs for diagnosis, and evaluating different subscales (most frequently the attention deficit/hyperactivity problems subscale). Sensitivities ranged from 38% (corresponding specificity = 96%) to 100% (specificity = 4% to 92%). 24 , 25  

Diagnostic performance parent and teacher ratings. For a complete list of scales see Supplemental Appendix .

Area under the curve (AUC) for receiver operator characteristic curves ranged widely from 0.55 to 0.95 but 3 CBCL studies reported AUCs of 0.83 to 0.84. 26   – 28   Few studies reported measurement of reliability. SoE was downgraded for study limitation (lack of detailed reporting), imprecision (large performance variability), and inconsistent findings ( Supplemental Table 1 ).

Twenty-three studies used teacher ratings to diagnose ADHD ( Fig 2 ). No 2 studies reported on rater agreement, internal consistency, or test-retest reliability for the same teacher rating scale. The highest sensitivity was 97% (specificity = 26%). 25   The Teacher Report Form, alone or in combination with Conners teacher rating scales, yielded sensitivities of 72% to 79% 29   and specificities of 64% to 76%. 30 , 32   reported AUCs ranged from 0.65 to 0.84. 32   SoE was downgraded to low for imprecision (large performance variability) and inconsistency (results for specific tools not replicated), see Supplemental Table 2 .

Six studies used youth self-reports to diagnose ADHD. No 2 studies used the same instrument. Sensitivities ranged from 53% (specificity = 98%) to 86% (specificity = 70%). 35   AUCs ranged from 0.56 to 0.85. 36   We downgraded SoE for domain inconsistency (only 1 study reported on a given tool and outcome), see Supplemental Table 3 .

Thirteen studies assessed diagnostic performance of ratings combined across informants, often using machine learning for variable selection. Only 1 study compared performance of combined data to performance from single informants, finding negligible improvement (AUC youth = 0.71; parent = 0.85; combined = 0.86). 37   Other studies reported on limited outcome measures and used ad hoc methods to combine information from multiple informants. The best AUC was reported by a machine learning supported study combining parent and teacher ratings (AUC = 0.98). 38  

Twenty-four studies assessed additional tools, such as interview guides, that can be used by clinicians to aid diagnosis of ADHD. Sensitivities varied, ranging from 67% (specificity = 65%) to 98% (specificity = 100%); specificities ranged from 36% (sensitivity = 89%) to 100% (sensitivity = 98%). 39   Some of the tools measured activity levels objectively using an actometer or commercially available activity tracker, either alone or as part of a diagnostic test battery. Reported performance was variable (sensitivity range 25% to 100%, 40   specificity range 66% to 100%, 40   AUCs range 0.75–0.9996 41   ). SoE was downgraded for imprecision (large performance variability) and inconsistency (outcomes and results not replicated), see Supplemental Table 4 .

Seventy-four studies used measures from various neuropsychological tests, including continuous performance tests (CPTs). Four of these included 3- and 4-year-old children. 42   – 44   A large majority used a CPT, which assessed omission errors (reflecting inattention), commission errors (impulsivity), and reaction time SD (response time variability). Studies varied in use of traditional visual CPTs, such as the Test of Variables of Attention, more novel, multifaceted “hybrid” CPT paradigms, and virtual reality CPTs built upon environments designed to emulate real-world classroom distractibility. Studies used idiosyncratic combinations of individual cognitive measures to achieve the best performance, though many reported on CPT attention and impulsivity measures.

Sensitivity for all neuropsychological tests ranged from 22% (specificity = 96%) to 100% (specificity = 100%) 45   ( Fig 3 ), though the latter study reported performance for unique composite measures without replication. Specificities ranged from 22% (sensitivity = 91%) 46   to 100% (sensitivity = 100% to 75%). 45 , 47   AUCs ranged from 0.59 to 0.93. 48   Sensitivity for all CPT studies ranged from 22% ( specificity = 96) to 100% (specificity = 75%). 49   Specificities for CPTs ranged from 22% (sensitivity = 91%) to 100% (sensitivity = 89%) 47   ( Fig 3 ). AUCs ranged from 0.59 to 0.93. 50 , 51   SoE was deemed low for imprecise studies (large performance variability), see Supplemental Table 5.

Diagnostic performance neuropsychological tests, CPTs, activity monitors, biospecimen, EEG.

Seven studies assessed blood or urine biomarkers to diagnose ADHD. These measured erythropoietin or erythropoietin receptor, membrane potential ratio, micro RNA levels, or urine metabolites. Sensitivities ranged from 56% (specificity = 95%) to 100% (specificity = 100% for erythropoietin and erythropoietin receptors levels). 52   Specificities ranged from 25% (sensitivity = 79%) to 100% (sensitivity = 100%). 52   AUCs ranged from 0.68 to 1.00. 52   Little information was provided on reliability of markers or their combinations. SoE was downgraded for inconsistent and imprecise studies ( Supplemental Table 6 ).

Forty-five studies used EEG markers to diagnose ADHD. EEG signals were obtained in a variety of patient states, even during neuropsychological test performance. Two-thirds used machine learning algorithms to select classification parameters. Several combined EEG with demographic variables or rating scales. Sensitivity ranged widely from 46% to 100% (corresponding specificities 74 and 71%). 53 , 54   One study that combined EEG with demographics data supported by machine learning reported perfect sensitivity and specificity. 54   Specificity was also variable and ranged from 38% (sensitivity = 95%) to 100% (specificities = 71% or 100%). 53   – 56   Reported AUCs ranged from 0.63 to 1.0. 57 , 58   SoE was downgraded for study imprecision (large performance variability) and limitations (diagnostic approaches poorly described), see Supplemental Table 7 .

Nineteen studies used neuroimaging for diagnosis. One public data set (ADHD-200) produced several analyses. All but 2 used MRI: some functional MRI (fMRI), some structural, and some in combination, with or without magnetic resonance spectroscopy (2 used near-infrared spectroscopy). Most employed machine learning to detect markers that optimized diagnostic classifications. Some combined imaging measures with demographic or other clinical data in the prediction model. Sensitivities ranged from 42% (specificity = 95%) to 99% (specificity = 100%) using resting state fMRI and a complex machine learning algorithm 56   to differentiate ADHD from neurotypical youth. Specificities ranged from 55% (sensitivity = 95%) to 100% 56   using resting state fMRI data. AUCs ranged from 0.58 to over 0.99, 57   SoE was downgraded for imprecision (large performance variability) and study limitations (diagnostic models are often not well described, and the number and type of predictor variables entering the model were unclear). Studies generally did not validate diagnostic algorithms or assess performance measures in an independent sample ( Supplemental Table 8 ).

Regression analyses indicated that setting was associated with both sensitivity ( P = .03) and accuracy ( P = .006) but not specificity ( P = .68) or AUC ( P = .28), with sensitivities lowest in primary care ( Fig 4 ). Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were also lower when differentiating youth with ADHD from a clinical sample than from typically developing youth (sensitivity P = .04, specificity P < .001, AUC P < .001) ( Fig 4 ), suggesting that clinical population is a source of heterogeneity in diagnostic performance. Findings should be interpreted with caution, however, as they were not obtained in meta-analytic models and, consequently, do not take into account study size or quality.

Diagnostic performance by setting and population.

Supplemental Figs 3–5 in the Supplemental Appendix document effects by age and gender. We did not detect statistically significant associations of age with sensitivity ( P = .54) or specificity ( P = .37), or associations of the proportion of girls with sensitivity ( P = .63), specificity ( P = .80), accuracy ( P = .34), or AUC ( P = .90).

We identified a large number of publications reporting on ADHD diagnostic tools. To our knowledge, no prior review of ADHD diagnostic tools has been as comprehensive in the range of tools, outcomes, participant ages, and publication years. Despite the large number of studies, we deemed the strength of evidence for the reported performance measures across all categories of diagnostic tools to be low because of large performance variability across studies and various limitations within and across studies.

We required that studies report diagnoses when using the tool compared with diagnoses made by expert mental health clinicians. Studies most commonly reported sensitivity (true-positive rate) and specificity (true-negative rate) when a study-specific diagnostic threshold was applied to measures from the tool being assessed. Sensitivity and specificity depend critically on that study-specific threshold, and their values are inherently a trade-off, such that varying the threshold to increase either sensitivity or specificity reduces the other. Interpreting diagnostic performance in terms of sensitivity and specificity, and comparing those performance measures across studies, is therefore challenging. Consequently, researchers more recently often report performance for sensitivity and specificity in terms of receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves, a plot of sensitivity versus specificity across the entire range of possible diagnostic thresholds. The area under this ROC curve (AUC) provides an overall, single index of performance that ranges from 0.5 (indicating that the tool provides no information above chance for classification) to 1.0 (indicating a perfect test that can correctly classify all participants as having ADHD and all non-ADHD participants as not having it). AUC values of 90 to 100 are commonly classified as excellent performance; 80 to 90 as good; 70 to 80 as fair; 60 to 70 as poor; and 50 to 60 failed performance.

Most research is available on parental ratings. Overall, AUCs for parent rating scales ranged widely from “poor” 58   to “excellent.” 59   Analyses restricted to the CBCL, the most commonly evaluated scale, yielded more consistent “good” AUCs for differentiating youth with ADHD from others in clinical samples, but the number of studies contributing data were small. Internal consistency for rating scale items was generally high across most rating scales. Test-retest reliability was good, though only 2 studies reported it. One study reported moderate rater agreement between mothers and fathers for inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity symptoms. Few studies included youth under 7 years of age.

AUCs for teacher rating scales ranged from “failed” 33   to “good.” 34   Internal consistency for scale items was generally high. Teacher ratings demonstrated very low rater agreement with corresponding parent scales, suggesting either a problem with the instruments or a large variability in symptom presentation with environmental context (home or school).

Though data were limited, self-reports from youth seemed to perform less well than corresponding parent and teacher reports, with AUCs ranging from “failed” for CBCL or ASEBA when distinguishing ADHD from other patients 33   to “good” for the SWAN in distinguishing ADHD from neurotypical controls. 36 , 37  

Studies evaluating neuropsychological tests yielded AUCs ranging from “poor” 60 , 61   to “excellent.” 50   Many used idiosyncratic combinations of cognitive measures, which complicates interpretation of the results across studies. Nevertheless, extracting specific, comparable measures of inattention and impulsivity from CPTs yielded diagnostic performance ranging from “poor” to “excellent” in differentiating ADHD youth from neurotypical controls and “fair” in differentiating ADHD youth from other patients. 42 , 60 , 62   No studies provided an independent replication of diagnosis using the same measure.

Blood biomarkers yielded AUCs ranging from “poor” (serum miRNAs) 63   to “excellent” (erythropoietin and erythropoietin receptors levels) 52   in differentiating ADHD from neurotypical youth. None have been independently replicated, and test-retest reliability was not reported. Most EEG studies used machine learning for diagnostic classification. AUCs ranged from “poor” 64   to “excellent” when differentiating ADHD youth from neurotypical controls. 65   Diagnostic performance was not prospectively replicated in any independent samples.

Most neuroimaging studies relied on machine learning to develop diagnostic algorithms. AUCs ranged from “poor” 66   to “excellent” for distinguishing ADHD youth from neurotypically developing controls. 57   Most studies used pre-existing data sets or repositories to retrospectively discriminate youths with ADHD from neurotypical controls, not from other clinical populations and not prospectively, and none assessed test-retest reliability or the independent reproducibility of findings. Reporting of final mathematical models or algorithms for diagnosis was limited. Activity monitors have the advantage of providing inexpensive, objective, easily obtained, and quantified measures that can potentially be widely disseminated and scaled.

Studies of combined approaches, such as integrating diagnostic tools with clinician impressions, were limited. One study reported increased sensitivity and specificity when an initial clinician diagnosis combined EEG indicators (the reference standard was a consensus diagnosis from a panel of ADHD experts). 67   These findings were not independently replicated, however, and no test-retest reliability was reported.

Many studies aimed to distinguish ADHD youth from neurotypical controls, which is a distinction of limited clinical relevance. In clinically referred youth, most parents, teachers, and clinicians are reasonably confident that something is wrong, even if they are unsure whether the cause of their concern is ADHD. To be informed by a tool that the child is not typically developing is not particularly helpful. Moreover, we cannot know whether diagnostic performance for tools that discriminate ADHD youth only from neurotypical controls is determined by the presence of ADHD or by the presence of any other characteristics that accompany clinical “caseness,” such as the presence of comorbid illnesses or symptoms shared or easily confused with those of other conditions, or the effects of chronic stress or current or past treatment. The clinically more relevant and difficult question is, therefore, how well the tool distinguishes youth with ADHD from those who have other emotional and behavioral problems. Consistent with these conceptual considerations that argue for assessing diagnostic performance in differentiating youth with ADHD from those with other clinical conditions, we found significant evidence that, across all studies, sensitivity, specificity, and AUC were all lower when differentiating youth with ADHD from a clinical sample than when differentiating them from neurotypical youth. These findings also suggest that the comparison population was a significant source of heterogeneity in diagnostic performance.

Despite the large number of studies on diagnostic tools, a valid and reliable diagnosis of ADHD ultimately still requires the judgement of a clinician who is experienced in the evaluation of youth with and without ADHD, along with the aid of standardized rating scales and input from multiple informants across multiple settings, including parents, teachers, and youth themselves. Diagnostic tools perform best when the clinical question is whether a youth has ADHD or is healthy and typically developing, rather than when the clinical question is whether a youth has ADHD or another mental health or behavioral problem. Diagnostic tools yield more false-positive and false-negative diagnoses of ADHD when differentiating youth with ADHD from youth with another mental health problem than when differentiating them from neurotypically developing youth.

Scores for rating scales tended to correlate poorly across raters, and ADHD symptoms in the same child varied across settings, indicating that no single informant in a single setting is a gold-standard for diagnosis. Therefore, diagnosis using rating scales will likely benefit from a more complete representation of symptom expression across multiple informants (parents, school personnel, clinicians, and youth) across more than 1 setting (home, school, and clinic) to inform clinical judgement when making a diagnosis, thus, consistent with current guidelines. 68   – 70   Unfortunately, methods for combining scores across raters and settings that improve diagnosis compared with scores from single raters have not been developed or prospectively replicated.

Despite the widespread use of neuropsychological testing to “diagnose” youth with ADHD, often at considerable expense, indirect comparisons of AUCs suggest that performance of neuropsychological test measures in diagnosing ADHD is comparable to the diagnostic performance of ADHD rating scales from a single informant. Moreover, the diagnostic accuracy of parent rating scales is typically better than neuropsychological test measures in head-to-head comparisons. 44 , 71   Furthermore, the overall SoE for estimates of diagnostic performance with neuropsychological testing is low. Use of neuropsychological test measures of executive functioning, such as the CPT, may help inform a clinical diagnosis, but they are not definitive either in ruling in or ruling out a diagnosis of ADHD. The sole use of CPTs and other neuropsychological tests to diagnose ADHD, therefore, cannot be recommended. We note that this conclusion regarding diagnostic value is not relevant to any other clinical utility that testing may have.

No independent replication studies have been conducted to validate EEG, neuroimaging, or biospecimen to diagnose ADHD, and no clinical effectiveness studies have been conducted using these tools to diagnose ADHD in the real world. Thus, these tools do not seem remotely close to being ready for clinical application to aid diagnosis, despite US Food and Drug Administration approval of 1 EEG measure as a purported diagnostic aid. 67 , 72  

All studies of diagnostic tools should report data in more detail (ie, clearly report false-positive and -negative rates, the diagnostic thresholds used, and any data manipulation undertaken to achieve the result) to support meta-analytic methods. Studies should include ROC analyses to support comparisons of test performance across studies that are independent of the diagnostic threshold applied to measures from the tool. They should also include assessment of test-retest reliability to help discern whether variability in measures and test performance is a function of setting or of measurement variability over time. Future studies should address the influence of co-occurring disorders on diagnostic performance and how well the tools distinguish youth with ADHD from youth with other emotional and behavioral problems, not simply from healthy controls. More studies should compare the diagnostic accuracy of different test modalities, head-to-head. Independent, prospective replication of performance measures of diagnostic tools in real-world settings is essential before US Food and Drug Administration approval and before recommendations for widespread clinical use.

Research is needed to identify consensus algorithms that combine rating scale data from multiple informants to improve the clinical diagnosis of ADHD, which at present is often unguided, ad hoc, and suboptimal. Diagnostic studies using EEG, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological tests should report precise operational definitions and measurements of the variable(s) used for diagnosis, any diagnostic algorithm employed, the selected statistical cut-offs, and the number of false-positives and false-negatives the diagnostic tool yields to support future efforts at synthetic analyses.

Objective, quantitative neuropsychological test measures of executive functioning correlate only weakly with the clinical symptoms that define ADHD. 73   Thus, many youth with ADHD have normal executive functioning profiles on neuropsychological testing, and many who have impaired executive functioning on testing do not have ADHD. 74   Future research is needed to understand how test measures of executive functioning and the real-world functional problems that define ADHD map on to one another and how that mapping can be improved.

One of the most important potential uses of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in improving the clinical diagnosis of ADHD and treatment planning would be identification of effect modifiers for the performance of diagnostic tools: determining, for example, whether tools perform better in patients who are younger or older, in ethnic minorities, or those experiencing material hardship, or who have a comorbid illness or specific ADHD presentation. Future studies of ADHD should more systematically address the modifier effects of these patient characteristics. They should make available in public repositories the raw, individual-level data and the algorithms or computer code that will aid future efforts at replication, synthesis, and new discovery for diagnostic tools across data sets and studies.

Finally, no studies meeting our inclusion criteria assessed the consequences of being misdiagnosed or labeled as either having or not having ADHD, the diagnosis of ADHD specifically in preschool-aged children, or the potential adverse consequences of youth being incorrectly diagnosed with or without ADHD. This work is urgently needed.

We thank Cynthia Ramirez, Erin Tokutomi, Jennifer Rivera, Coleman Schaefer, Jerusalem Belay, Anne Onyekwuluje, and Mario Gastelum for help with data acquisition. We thank Kymika Okechukwu, Lauren Pilcher, Joanna King, and Robyn Wheatley from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Jennie Dalton and Paula Eguino Medina from PCORI, Christine Chang and Kim Wittenberg from AHRQ, and Mary Butler from the Minnesota Evidence-based Practice Center. We thank Glendy Burnett, Eugenia Chan, MD, MPH, Matthew J. Gormley, PhD, Laurence Greenhill, MD, Joseph Hagan, Jr, MD, Cecil Reynolds, PhD, Le'Ann Solmonson, PhD, LPC-S, CSC, and Peter Ziemkowski, MD, FAAFP who served as key informants. We thank Angelika Claussen, PhD, Alysa Doyle, PhD, Tiffany Farchione, MD, Matthew J. Gormley, PhD, Laurence Greenhill, MD, Jeffrey M. Halperin, PhD, Marisa Perez-Martin, MS, LMFT, Russell Schachar, MD, Le'Ann Solmonson, PhD, LPC-S, CSC, and James Swanson, PhD who served as a technical expert panel. Finally, we thank Joel Nigg, PhD, and Peter S. Jensen, MD for their peer review of the data.

Drs Peterson and Hempel conceptualized and designed the study, collected data, conducted the analyses, drafted the initial manuscript, and critically reviewed and revised the manuscript; Dr Trampush conducted the critical appraisal; Ms Brown, Ms Maglione, Drs Bolshakova and Padkaman, and Ms Rozelle screened citations and abstracted the data; Dr Miles conducted the analyses; Ms Yagyu designed and executed the search strategy; Ms Motala served as data manager; and all authors provided critical input for the manuscript, approved the final manuscript as submitted, and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

This trial has been registered at PROSPERO (identifier CRD42022312656).

COMPANION PAPER: A companion to this article can be found online at www.pediatrics.org/cgi/doi/10.1542/peds.2024-065787 .

Data Sharing: Data are available in SRDRPlus.

FUNDING: The work is based on research conducted by the Southern California Evidence-based Practice Center under contract to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Rockville, MD (Contract 75Q80120D00009). The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) funded the research (PCORI Publication No. 2023-SR-03). The findings and conclusions in this manuscript are those of the authors, who are responsible for its contents; the findings and conclusions do not necessarily represent the views of AHRQ or PCORI, its Board of Governors, or Methodology Committee. Therefore, no statement in this report should be construed as an official position of PCORI, AHRQ or of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURES: The authors have indicated they have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

area under the curve

Child Behavior Checklist

continuous performance test

functional magnetic resonance imaging

receiver operating characteristics

strength of evidence

technical expert panel

Supplementary data

Advertising Disclaimer »

Citing articles via

Email alerts.

Affiliations

• Editorial Board
• Editorial Policies
• Journal Blogs
• Pediatrics On Call
• Online ISSN 1098-4275
• Print ISSN 0031-4005
• Pediatrics Open Science
• Hospital Pediatrics
• Pediatrics in Review
• AAP Grand Rounds
• Latest News
• Pediatric Care Online
• Red Book Online
• Pediatric Patient Education
• AAP Toolkits
• AAP Pediatric Coding Newsletter

First 1,000 Days Knowledge Center

Institutions/librarians, group practices, licensing/permissions, integrations, advertising.

• Privacy Statement | Accessibility Statement | Terms of Use | Support Center | Contact Us
• © Copyright American Academy of Pediatrics

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account