A History of Management Thought

J.-C. Spender

Chapter 82 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Historical Organisation Studies, 2026, pp 303-305 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The second edition of Morgen Witzel's A History of Management Thought (Witzel 2016) is clear, comprehensive and wonderfully informed. But ‘management thought’ is a more contested and problematic notion than it is generally taken to be. Witzel suggests it is more about practical philosophising than data-based decision-making. He could do more to articulate this intuition by, for instance, considering the clash between rigor and relevance. This, and other clashes he notes, show the value of historical and dynamic methods of analysis rather than simplistic evidence-driven methods.

Keywords: Analytic methods; Theory of the firm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035332922
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