Introduction

A sense of the past . . . is essential to anyone who is trying to understand the here-and-now of industrial organisation. What is happening now is part of a continuing development.

(Tom Burns)

Any history of management thought needs perforce to begin by defining what is meant by ‘management thought’, and then explain what it is about the history of management thought that makes it important and worthy of study. There are two ways of defining ‘management thought’: we can take it to mean coherent theories or systems of management, or we can broaden the scope of the term and refer more generally to ‘thinking about management’, ideas about the meaning, purpose, function and tasks of management which are important and relevant but do not necessarily amount to a coherent overall theory.