ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the subject of careers in management with voluminous disagreement. Students of various backgrounds and interests have made questionnaire surveys of high-level executives; explored biographical dictionaries as far back as the 1870's in search of data to reveal career patterns. They also recorded the anonymous remarks of executives called to research conferences for group discussion of their world and its activities, with psychologists and psychiatrists present to put questions and to assess exchanges made around the circle; built on other studies and brought them up-to-date in the search for backgrounds as career-shaping forces. Most intimates, from the work level, to near the divisional level, strongly denied that promotions were subject to any formal system, or that such a plan would be followed if it did exist. The cases of Jackson and Revere point up both the complexities of career motivation and the play of personal relations in planned organizations.
