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. 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 US Army by Elihu Root, Teddy Roosevelt's secretary of war. Today, surely, there is as much management outside of business as there is in business, maybe more. In Japan, Shibusawa Eiichi, who had left a promising government career in the 1870s to construct a modern Japan through building businesses, also saw in the business enterprise something quite new and distinctly challenging. Everyplace else, the new business enterprise was equally seem as a radical and dangerous innovation. The identification of management with business can thus no longer be maintained. For modern society has become a 'society of organizations'.
