ABSTRACT
The same list was included in books by Copeman (1962) and Hunt (1979) and is still drawn on by some of today’s popular management writers. The classical writers did not form a close-knit, consensual ‘school’ but they did tend to share certain assumptions about the nature of management and management knowledge. First, they held a firm belief in the existence of general principles or rules which could and should be applied to the management of organizations. Their orientation was deliberately ‘managerial’ in that they wrote chiefly for, and usually as, practising managers and aimed to provide them with useful guidance.
