ABSTRACT
Chester Barnard was a business practitioner and at the same time a theoretician who stressed the human side of enterprise. Barnard became known as the “amateur scholar” in the history of management and organization studies. Barnard stressed the importance of common goals in the organization, i.e. goals that are shared by all people at all levels in the organization. This made him a forerunner in the field of organizational culture. Interestingly enough, Barnard thought that material, financial inducements were only a part of the whole package that would make employees feel happy at work; in fact, economic incentives were consistently played down. Since Barnard passed away, there have been numerous developments in the study of leadership, particularly in the Western hemisphere. Barnard’s emphasis on creating common purposes in order to generate coherent action in business organizations, is no less applicable to the military.
