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THE NATION has been sold a new catch‐phrase — ‘the Modernisation of Britain’. Spurred on by the heady wine of a forthcoming general election, our leaders are pouring forth such a spate of expensive plans that a state of near‐chaos is arising.

It is a familiar enough concept in the teaching of management that the business organisation is an open system, operating in an environment susceptible of analysis. The same logic can be applied to the business schools which thus teach. I accordingly have attempted to review in this article what have seemed to be the most critical pieces of public or environmental advices coming our way. Members of the advising environmental community have ranged from the National Economic Development Council and Lord Franks in the early sixties to Nancy Foy and the European Foundation for Management and Development in the late seventies. In between there have been a million suggestions by users, be they company management development advisers or programme participants. Finally, of course, there have been competitive activities by schools other than the one in which we find ourselves. They do not offer verbal advice; rather they demonstrate, should we care to observe carefully, how goals similar if not always identical to our own might be achieved. Accordingly, this discussion will not examine what we have done at Cranfield but only what I believe we can perceive other schools doing elsewhere.

Explains the increased company embedment (ICE) model for unfreezing an organization and creating a climate in which learning flourishes. By taking a holistic approach, an environment is created where ICE is replaced by initiative, commitment and enterprise, allowing people in their own time and at their own pace to absorb what is in the organization. Describes an application of the technique to a small company, Appleyard, a motor franchise business.

Explores the reasons why Britain has invested relatively little in management education and training compared with its major competitors. Reviews initiatives to improve the provision and take‐up of management education, and considers the role of business schools in this context. Identifies six issues that will determine whether or not their potential contribution to management development will be realized.

More people are preferring advisory to executive roles, and organisations are beginning to suffer from a lack of candidates for what is increasingly seen as the thankless task of management. This trend is being encouraged by mistaken management development practices and views of the managerial role, low salaries and status, the rise of the professional “guru”, and career blockage in organisations. A revised approach to management development is suggested, with fostering of managerial talent from an early age and increasing the value placed on “general management” as a career.

BUSINESS SCHOOL GRAFFITI is a highly personal and revealing account of the first ten years (1965–1975) at Britain’s University Business Schools. The progress achieved is documented in a whimsical fashion that makes it highly readable. Gordon Wills has been on the inside throughout the decade and has played a leading role in two of the major Schools. Rather than presuming to present anything as pompous as a complete history of what has happened, he recalls his reactions to problems, issues and events as they confronted him and his colleagues. Lord Franks lit a fuse which set a score of Universities and even more Polytechnics alight. There was to be a bold attempt to produce the management talent that the pundits of the mid‐sixties so clearly felt was needed. Buildings, books, teachers who could teach it all, and students to listen and learn were all required for the boom to happen. The decade saw great progress, but also a rapid decline in the relevancy ethic. It saw a rapid withering of interest by many businessmen more accustomed to and certainly desirous of quick results. University Vice Chancellors, theologians and engineers all had to learn to live with the new and often wealthier if less scholarly faculty members who arrived on campus. The Research Councils had to decide how much cake to allow the Business Schools to eat. Most importantly, the author describes the process of search he went through as an individual in evolving a definition of his own subject and how it can best be forwarded in a University environment. It was a process that carried him from Technical College student in Slough to a position as one of the authorities on his subject today.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce management historians to the long‐forgotten work of Frank George Woollard (1883‐1957), who in the mid‐1920s established flow production in the British motor industry, and its remarkable similarity to current‐day production principles and practices used by Toyota Motor Corporation, also known as lean production.

Overview of Frank Woollard's life and work obtained from newly discovered journal papers, his 1954 book, Principles of Mass and Flow Production, newly discovered archives, and new first‐hand testimony from a close friend and from a long‐time family friend.

Frank Woollard was a pioneer in the establishment of flow production in the British motor industry in the mid‐1920s and the principal developer of automatic transfer machinery. His accomplishments are comparable to Taiichi Ohno, regarded as the architect of Toyota's production system.

Woollard's accomplishments in flow production are a fruitful area for future research given the speed and completeness with which flow production was established at Morris Motors Ltd, Engines Branch. Newly discovered papers describing his flow production system have yet to be studied in detail by academics.

Woollard's application of flow production beginning in 1923 means that timelines for discoveries and attributions of key accomplishments in lean management must be reexamined and revised.

Woollard's work fills important gaps in the literature on the history of flow production generally and in the British motor industry in particular. His work constitutes an early application of current‐day lean principles and practices, and is therefore noteworthy and relevant to management historians and the operations and production management community. It is hoped that this paper will inspire management historians to study Woollard's work and place him in the context of other early twentieth‐century pioneers in industrial management and flow production.