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This paper discusses the lives and contributions of five key members of the Management History Division: Arthur G. Bedeian; Alfred A. Bolton; James C. Worthy (now deceased); Charles D. Wrege; and Daniel A. Wren. Each has proved himself a teacher and intellectual leader in matters of fundamental concern to management history.

The purpose of this paper is to interview a senior scholar to get his/her perspectives on the field, it’s history and future.

A semi-structured in-depth interview was conducted.

It is one person’s personal views, albeit, a person with very considerable success in the field of business studies.

The interview reflects the changes in business schools over the interviewee’s decades of experience.

The person being interviewed is a unique individual.

The purpose of this paper is to consider one inaccuracy in the written record of our discipline. That is, how the aphorism “There is nothing as practical as a good theory” came to be regarded as Kurt Lewin’s signature saying.

Primary and secondary sources were used in the research.

By tracing the history of the above-captioned aphorism back through its use by the General Electric Company in the 1920s to Friedrich W. Dörpfeld’s 1873 book Grundlinien einer Theorie des Lehrplans, zunächst der Volks- und Mittelschule, it can confidently be concluded that it did not originate with Lewin.

Those who study history soon become aware that inaccuracies in the written record are commonplace. Indeed, assuring historical accuracy has been a challenge confronted by historians for centuries.

The widespread acceptance of Lewin as the originator of the referenced aphorism underscores the observation that received knowledge is often wrong. It also provides one more illustration that, whatever their origin, once errors of attribution appear in print, they become diffused and amplified, taking on a life of their own as they are transmitted from generation to generation.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the eugenic beliefs of behavioral geneticist Barbara S. Burks and scientific‐management pioneers B. Frank and Lillian M. Moeller Gilbreth.

Drawing on personal communications with the Gilbreths' daughter, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, and archival records, this paper clarifies the relationship between Barbara S. Burks and the Gilbreth family.

This research establishes that the unnamed psychologist described in an unflattering manner in the best‐selling book on the Gilbreth family, Cheaper by the Dozen, was not Barbara S. Burks.

Based on information that only Ernestine Gilbreth Carey could have provided, this paper sets the record straight regarding the Gilbreths' involvement with eugenicist Barbara S. Burks.

Personnel selection and professional satisfaction can be affected by the “goodness of fit” between individual certified public accountants and the size of division in which they work. A US survey of: individual personal characteristics; perceived work environment; and interaction between individual and organisation is reviewed.

Elizabeth Walker is one of today's career women who has received increasing media attention over the last decade.

Lenin advocated “Taylorization” (i.e. scientific management), to rebuild post‐revolutionary Russia's economy. The evidence, however, indicates that Lenin's advocacy caused conflict within the communist party, and scientific management was rarely implemented successfully. Noting a rhetoric‐reality gap, the paper explains the difference between Lenin's advocacy and actual practice. Lenin wished to convey the message that his regime was progressive, using the latest management techniques. Rather than following scientific management precepts, pressure was placed on Soviet workers to increase productivity without improving work methods. The paper's conclusion is that Lenin's advocacy of scientific management was a leader's rhetoric, a political expediency, and it would be misleading to connect scientific management with the practice of management in post‐revolutionary Russia.

One challenge increasingly arising in individuals' personal lives is balancing life style and career to maintain a satisfactory long‐term relationship with a spouse who also has a career. According to the Bureau of Census, there are more than 26 million married women in the workforce. By 1982 over half of all married women were employed outside the home, and fewer than 15 per cent of all US households acknowledged the father as sole wage earner and the mother as full‐time homemaker. The unprecedented increase in the number of dual career families (from 9.3 million in 1950 to over 13.4 million in 1960, and 26.8 million in 1984) suggests a need to know more about the demands facing such households. Relatively few studies have investigated the relationships of work and non‐work factors within the two provider or dual career family context. Moreover, much of the existing research on dual careers is lacking in methodological rigour.

Existing theory is extended to develop a more comprehensive typology of organisational adaptation, from an interactionist perspective. Social learning theory is drawn on to present a reciprocal model stressing the continuous, multi‐directional interaction between strategic choice, environment and an organisation's behaviour.