Introduction

As a Management Trainee for British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), some 40 years ago, my life was transformed by an assignment given at the end of that program. We had to write a paper on the effects of organization and management theory on practice. I am finally finishing that assignment with this book. The book, far from showing a one-way relationship between theory and practice, shows how human intuition and experience can combine, transform, and even transcend both theory and practice. It traces the emergence of a new philosophy, model, and process of organization from the stimulus provided by that first paper.