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During the twentieth century, much of the discussion about managerial behaviour centred on the difference between management functions and manager roles, with much of the debate centring on “Who is right, Mintzberg or Fayol?” Reports on a study, involving 523 Australian managers, which suggests both are right – Fayol gave us management as we would like it to be and Mintzberg gave us management as it is. In doing so, promulgates a set of new constructions of managerial behaviour – preferred managerial style (management as we would like it to be) and enacted managerial style (management as it is). Taken together, we now have available to us a more integrated theoretical base for research on management and managerial behaviour, and a measure that can be used to progress the required research.

Fayol's theories were the original foundation for management as a discipline and as a profession. Also Fayol was the first to advocate management education. Yet he has critics who revile him (or at least disparage his work) as well as followers who respect and revere him. This paper intends to enlighten today's practitioners and academicians about the relevance and value of Fayol's theories today.

The paper addresses Fayol's contributions as well as the disparagement and the reverence. It compares Fayol's work with that of Follett, Mintzberg, Taylor, and Porter. In addition, it demonstrates the original and current interpretation and application of his theories. Finally, it indicates the alignment of Fayol's theories with strategic leadership and management.

Fayol's theories are valuable and relevant for organizational leaders because Fayol was a practitioner who documented theories that worked best for him and his co‐workers. While there are those who criticize Fayol's theories, there are many others who respect them and find them useful as academicians and as practitioners. The theory of management functions aligns well with strategic leadership and management models and theories.

The paper is the first to integrate Fayol's theories with a strategic leadership model.

The purpose of this paper is to identify critical challenges to public leaders in troubled times, based on the experience and thoughts of an accomplished and world-renowned academic in the field of strategy and leadership. The authors have also included it on the original paper, which is attached.

A semi-structured interview was conducted based on a series of questions that are considered pertinent to the challenges facing public leaders.

The key findings suggest that individualism and egos are too dominant, that there is an absence of effective ethical leadership which, together, overshadows the need for community action.

This summary of the short interview provides a unique insight into the challenges facing public leadership.

The management profession has a long and well‐documented history adopting and abandoning “fads” promulgated by a series of thinkers, practitioners, and opinion leaders who enjoy a “guru” like status. The purpose of this paper shows that stereotyping contributes to the existence of this guru‐fad phenomenon.

The paper examines the characteristics of both management fads and the phenomenon of stereotyping with reference to two leading historical management practitioners and thinkers, Henri Fayol and Mary Parker Follett.

Drawing on the examples of Mary Parker Follett and Henri Fayol, it argues that the influence exerted by other management gurus and fads, such as Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific Management and Elton Mayo's Human Relations Movement, gave rise to a stereotyped view of both Follett and Fayol's work that prevented an accurate appraisal of their ideas.

In addition, this paper notes that, while Follett and Fayol exhibited an extraordinary capacity to identify the very issues that have spawned many subsequent management fads, the contemporary management discipline's approach to both thinkers is quite different. While Follett has escaped her earlier stereotypes, allowing management thinkers a new opportunity to re‐assess her work and value its contemporary relevance, Fayol remains misclassified as a European Taylorist who has little to offer the contemporary management practitioner.

This paper provides an interesting insight into the characteristics of both management fads and the phenomenon of stereotyping.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of Fayol's ideas on both British management thought and practice.

The paper presents a schematic which seeks to illustrate the links between the various strands of scientific management theory, especially that of Fayol, in Britain between the 1920s and the 1960s/1970s and, for the same period, the links between the theory and practice of scientific management. The links indicated in the schematic are assessed first through an examination of the development of British management thought, in particular the exemplification of Fayol's ideas by Lyndall Fownes Urwick and the British neoclassical school. Using archival evidence from a small number of engineering companies, the impact on practice of the ideas of Fayol and other aspects of scientific management is then examined.

The paper concludes that, while Fayol's theoretical influence has stood the test of time, his impact on practice was much more limited.

By focusing on the historical impact on practice of management theory, this paper not only provides a basis for future research by business and management historians, but also throws light on the relevance for practice of theory, an issue of relevance for all theoreticians and management practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the value of management history as a contributor to the development of the theory and practice of management and, to the extent that it is necessary to absorb the past in order to understand the present and inform the future, consider what happens to the knowledge base when the surviving “contributions” to the knowledge base are partial and, indeed, erroneous.

The articles that constitute this special issue form the launching‐pad for this discussion, with the ideas presented here combined with previous research and commentaries on the issues raised.

In The Life of Reason, Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Managers looking for the “next big thing”, without being able to incorporate it effectively into their experience, and the experience of those who are long gone, are condemned to repeat not just the past, but also the mistakes of the past. Accordingly, it is also critical for management scholars to both recognise and take advantage of earlier thinking and empirical work to inform their contemporary musings and research if they are to provide meaningful frameworks for practitioners.

Drawing on the themes presented in the articles of this special issue, the paper demonstrates the value of knowing accurately the history of management thought to scholars and practitioners alike.

This paper examines the potential relationship between the history of American generations and the development of American management thought. The paper reviews the recently developed generational theory of American history, along with the generational concept itself. Then, the leading thinkers in the history of the management discipline are classified according to their generational membership. The potential theoretical and research implications of the interplay of managerial and historical generations are then discussed.

A review of the literature defining managerial skill draws the conclusion that the key to future management development lies in identifying the competencies required for individual managers' jobs and developing programmes to meet these, within the context of organisational goals and politics. Female managers face special stresses in addition to those identified for male counterparts. An attempt is under way to abstract key components of the self‐assessment programme for use in longitudinal research and development activities.