ABSTRACT
The best-kept secret in management is that the first systematic applications of management theory and management principles did not take place in business enterprise. They occurred in the public sector. The first systematic and deliberate application of management principles in the United States—undertaken with full consciousness of its being an application of management—was the reorganization of the U.S. Army by Elihu Root, Teddy Roosevelt's secretary of war. Only a few years later, in 1908, came the first “city manager” (in Staunton, Virginia), the result of a conscious application of such then-brand-new management principles as the separation of “policy” (lodged in an elected and politically accountable city council) from “management” (lodged in a nonpolitical professional, accountable managerially). The city manager, by the way, was the first senior executive anyplace called a manager; in business, this title was still quite unknown. Frederick W. Taylor, for instance, in his famous 1911 testimony before the U.S. Congress never used the term but spoke of “the owners 168and their helpers.” And when Taylor was asked to name an organization that truly practiced “Scientific Management,” he did not name a business but the Mayo Clinic.
