SOONER OR LATER WILL LESSONS BE LEARNED?

“Sooner or later, it will be discovered that the old models are inefficient and that workers will not choose to work in firms which allow no participation and rely on ineffectual or authoritarian leadership”. So said J. A. C. Brown in The Social Psychology of Industry (1954). I doubt he imagined that over 60 years later the lesson is still to be learned by many businesses.

Also in 1954 he also wrote, "The efficiency if industry cannot be measured solely in terms of the amount of goods it produces or its financial profits; we must also consider at what cost of health and happiness the goods were produced". To this he might today add cost to the environment too. 

In research for The Sages of Strategic Management, to be published by Wiley nest year, I am discovering many such pearls of wisdom.

The books I am reading date back to the late 19th century and were written by people representing many of the social sciences. Management was only just emerging as a discipline.

Soon I will launch a website for The Sages of Strategic Management. I will share some of the insights I am discovering, and others that I get from the interviews I will be conducting with leading management thinkers and senior business leaders. They include: Henry Mintzberg, Charles Handy, Philip Kotler, Arie de Geus, Roger Martin, Colin Price, Margaret Haffernan, Dominic Barton, Ron Adner, Don Tapscott, Mary Gentile and others.

The aim of the book is not to focus on the thinking that made these people famous, but to know what their current thoughts are. I will identify common threads which are likely to include razor sharp insights of great value to current business leaders.

If you would like to know when the website is launched please email me: [email protected]