This Handbook is the definitive source and reference tool for academics, researchers and graduate students working in the field of Management History. Consisting of eleven sections, they will collectively cover management history's past and present and provide an unparalleled overview of both managerial practice and thought. As a discipline, management history has relatively recently splintered from business history, focusing on the study of organizations and the ways in which work is structured and managed. Initially employing a heavily western perspective and influenced mainly by British and American historians, the discipline has expanded the focus of its studies both temporally and geographically to incorporate pre-19th century forms of organization and extend its scope beyond Western Europe and North America. This important project will be a high level, systematic and comprehensive tool thanks to the range of contributions from leading experts and academics. It is intended to be the first port of call for all research endeavors in the field of management history.

The coronavirus pandemic of 2019-20 and its associated global economic collapse has bluntly revealed that decision makers everywhere are ill-equipped to identify the innovative capacities of modern societies and, in particular, deploy managers to harness such capabilities. Getting the problem of management right is a voyage to the heart of human experience. Indeed, the perennial questions that haunt our existence almost invariably prompt answers that invoke conceptions of work, transformative effort and realisation of ideas. One way or another, all such endeavour requires management. It is often overlooked that more than any other discipline, management history brings into focus humanity’s most pressing questions. At the time of writing, these queries come with a disquieting urgency. What is management? How do its modern methods differ from those in pre-industrial societies? How does the management that emerged in Western Europe and North America in the nineteenth century differ from forms practiced in the twentieth? In what ways do Asian, African and South American societies have distinctive managerial philosophies? Perhaps most importantly, what don’t we know or don’t do very well? It is to these fundamental questions that the Palgrave Handbook of Management History speaks. The work’s 63 chapters – authored by 27 of the world’s leading management and business thinkers – explore virtually every aspect of management globally as well as across millennia. The series explores the theoretical contributions of classical Western business and management scholars (Adam Smith, Frederick Taylor, Elton Mayo, Peter Drucker, Alfred Chandler, etc.) as well as commentaries from critical theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Hayden White. The Handbook is also practical. For example, its content addresses the day to day experience of management in ancient Greece and Rome as well as the contemporary approaches of China, France, South Africa, India, Denmark, Australia, South America, New Zealand and the Middle East. In short, the Palgrave Handbook provides students of economics, management, business theory and practice, and critical studies with a single comprehensive and in-depth point of reference.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview and evaluation of the variety of organizational leadership issues within the Asian region. It highlights the relationship between leaders and their followers, and the complexity of leadership research and practices in Asian transformational economies. Covering a wide range of contexts and perspectives, the chapters are based on empirical studies with evidence-based findings that can be used as case studies for academics and practitioners. The handbook makes significant contributions to leadership theory including practice and assists international researchers, practitioners and students in understanding the influence of the Asian culture and its impact on leadership.

This book has two broad purposes. First, it seeks to determine whether or not there is a “universal” management model through an examination of circumstance in a number of different nations and industries. Second, it brings to a wider audience some of the leading research in the field of management history. In doing so, it highlights the importance of the Management History Division of the Academy of Management in fostering and disseminating new understandings of management and its development. The book indicates that, while there has been much variance in managerial practices across time and space, we can nevertheless speak of a “universal” managerial model. Emerging in association with Britain’s Industrial Revolution, the spread of competitive pressures progressively demanded that enterprises respond in broadly common ways if they were to survive. These broad commonalities can be seen in the diverse industries that this book considers – the beef industry of the Northern Plains of the United States in the nineteenth century, the trading activities of the Dutch East India Company, the United States and Australian railroads, and the manufacturing methods of the Ford Motor Company during the early twentieth century. In each of these circumstances, industries and firms had to constantly adapt to changes in both capital and consumer markets. This is evident even in the case of the Ford Motor Company which, as James Wilson’s chapter indicates, was in its early days “flexible” rather than Fordist, constantly adjusting production and inventories in accordance with consumer demand. Such responses to global markets is also found in the realms of ideas and education, where the book’s study of trends in business education highlights the growing dominance of commercial factors and of intellectual concepts stemming from the United States. The power of management commonalities is also found in the book’s study of Australia and the United States. In Australia, governments long sought to isolate the national economy from global trends so as to boost manufacturing and local employment. Ultimately, however, this proved unsuccessful as Australian production became increasingly uncompetitive. A severe process of economic readjustment, with often adverse social effects, is also found in the book’s chapter on the United States, which highlights the major changes that have occurred since the 1960s. This book also considers how managerial organizations have been forced to adapt and the intellectual debates that have accompanied this. Finally, in Regina Greenwood’s chapter, we have an account of the Management History Division of the Academy of Management, an organization which has provided the fulcrum for the generation and dissemination of management history for the last 3 decades.

This open access handbook, the first of its kind, provides a comprehensive and carefully curated multidisciplinary and genre-spanning view of the state of the field of Critical Menstruation Studies, opening up new directions in research and advocacy. It is animated by the central question: ‘“what new lines of inquiry are possible when we center our attention on menstrual health and politics across the life course?” The chapters—diverse in content, form and perspective—establish Critical Menstruation Studies as a potent lens that reveals, complicates and unpacks inequalities across biological, social, cultural and historical dimensions. This handbook is an unmatched resource for researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and activists new to and already familiar with the field as it rapidly develops and expands.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the practice of sustainability through a diverse range of case studies spanning across varied fields and areas of expertise. It provides a clear indication as to the contemporary state of sustainability in a time faced by issues such as global climate change, challenges of environmental justice, economic globalization and environmental contamination. The Palgrave Handbook of Sustainability explores three broad themes: Environmental Sustainability, Social Sustainability and Economic Sustainability. The authors critically explore these themes and provide insight into their linkages with one another to demonstrate the substantial efforts currently underway to address the sustainability of our planet. This handbook is an important contribution to the best practises on sustainability, drawn from many different examples across the fields of engineering, geology, anthropology, sociology, biology, chemistry and religion.

This book argues that if we are to think differently about management, we must first rewrite management history.