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A major part of knowledge management for knowledge-intensive firms such as professional service firms is the increasing focus on thought leadership. Despite being a well-known term, it is poorly defined and analysed in the academic and practitioner literature. The aim of this article is to answer three questions. First, what is thought leadership? Second, what tensions exist when seeking to create thought leadership in knowledge-based organisations? Third, what further research is needed about thought leadership? The authors call for cross-disciplinary and academic–practitioner approaches to understanding the field of thought leadership.

The authors review the academic and practitioner literature on thought leadership to provide a rich oversight of how it is defined and can be understood by separating inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors also draw on qualitative data from 12 in-depth interviews with senior leaders of professional service firms.

Through analysing and building on previous understandings of the concept, the authors redefine thought leadership as follows: “Knowledge from a trusted, eminent and authoritative source that is actionable and provides valuable solutions for stakeholders”. The authors find and explore nine tensions that developing thought leadership creates and propose a framework for understanding how to engage with thought leadership at the industry/macro, organisational/meso and individual/micro levels. The authors propose a research agenda based on testing propositions derived from new theories to explain thought leadership, including leadership, reducing risk, signalling quality and managing social networks, as well as examining the suggested ways to resolve different tensions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to separate out thought leadership from its inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors show new organisational paradoxes within thought leadership and show how they can play out at different levels of analysis when implementing a thought leadership strategy. This work on thought leadership is set in a relatively under-explored context for knowledge management researchers, namely, knowledge-intensive professional service firms.

Management theory and practice are not created in a vacuum nor are they created at the whim of management writers. Contemporary management theory and practice are rooted in the most influential thoughts and values dominant in philosophy and science of about a century ago. Management thoughts that will blossom at the turn of the twenty‐first century are now only tender shoots which are shyly nudging through their stem of current concepts. To anticipate the future bends, turns and shapes of the surviving shoots, we must look at their philosophic and scientific roots and predict the nature of the environment that will nurture their growth during the next two decades. Basic philosophical positions are disseminated into a society through artists, writers and educators who interpret these positions within their individual fields. As new ways of thinking become dominant in a culture, managers must find ways of behaving that are compatible with them. A nineteenth century manager would be totally incapable of contending with the ways of thinking of employees today. Workers who reject traditional principles, values and authority practices will not respond well to the manager who assumes them to be inviolable.

This paper aims to problematize the dominant narrative forms of disciplinary histories of management thought. Specifically, the authors explore the narrative mode of emplotment used in Wren’s (and later Wren and Bedeian’s) 50-year encyclical on the history of management thought, namely, The Evolution of Management Thought (EMT).

The authors propose that management histories operate as powerful narratives that shape our understanding of management thought and, consequently, our disciplinary futures. This paper explores the textual narrative of EMT. Additional data are drawn from other scholars’ observations of this text. This paper is positioned in the debates of management history.

While acknowledging the wealth of historical facts in EMT, the authors argue that the umbrella narrative orders events of the past in such a manner that the historical knowledge follows a form of Darwinian evolutionism. Thus, the narrative leads to problematic representations suffering from progressivism, presentism and universalism.

Disciplinary scholars in management and organization studies need to carefully reflect on how we construct our representations of the past and histories. This will allow us to better craft transparent and reflexive histories.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to propose a remedy, albeit a partial remedy, which we believe is needed to avoid adverse epistemological consequences associated with the use of problematic narratives in management and organizational histories.

The aim of this paper is to seek to reveal the familial roots of modern management thought, largely overlooked by a vast majority of management historians.

Using a hermeneutic approach, the early uses of the word “management” are analyzed, as well as the different literature where it is the most frequently employed.

“Management” does not mean primarily “business management.” Rather, the first meanings of this word refer to the family realm. As such, the development of early management thought is not a matter of technical or scientific innovation, nor is it a matter of institutional size or profit. For a long time, management practices have concerned things more than people. In the twentieth century, the principle of control comes to supersede the principles of care and self‐government.

The paper's findings call for another history of management thought, as against the too narrow histories of modern business management and the too inclusive histories of management as an ancestral and universal practice.

This research sheds light on two forgotten roots of management thought: the principles of care and of self‐government, which management practitioners could bring up‐to‐date. By presenting the family as the first locus of true “management” thought, it is an invitation to draw from domestic ways of governing.

The historical material here analyzed remains largely unknown to management historians. The method, focusing on text analysis rather than on the study of practices, remains rare in the field of management history.

The purpose of this article is to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Evolution of Management Thought (EMT), a critically acclaimed text in management and organizational studies for its value in historicizing the practice of management.

The authors asked Daniel Wren and Arthur Bedeian in their own words to their contribution. In addition, the authors offer commentary and critique of 16 leading management historians who share their reflections on the intellectual significance of Wren and Bedeian, and the punctuation of EMT as a canonical text in the field of management history.

The legacy of Wren and Bedeian can be felt across the academy of historical research on business and organizations. Their work has separately made significant contributions to management studies but together they have forged a fruitful partnership that has given rise to multiple generations of scholars and scholarship that continue to shape the field to this day.

The contribution of the authors in this article is to mark the significant milestone of EMT’s five-decade success by hearing from the authors themselves about their longstanding success as well as giving space to critique about the past, present and future of our collective historical scholarship shaped by Wren and Bedeian’s legacy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what qualities contributed to the durability of The Evolution of Management Thought (EMT) as a classic that provided scholars a grand narrative of management history for half a century. Specifically, this paper aspires to reveal how the EMT has overcome the boundedness of time over the past 50 years by being both timeless (signaling continuity/permanence) and historical (signaling change/contingency).

The authors analyze both the metaphorical (i.e. universal) and the historical (i.e. particular) meanings that the EMT authors have communicated over eight editions of the classic.

The authors found that Wren and Bedeian have managed to balance temporality and referentiality in the EMT by writing it as the “practical past” of management. The authors also found that the authors ensured the ongoing renewal of their classic by innovating it as an everlasting contemporary text.

This paper provides an original analysis of the EMT explaining why it is a “classic” of management history. The analysis presented in this paper reveals why this timeless work has been a singular touchstone that exemplifies the history of management discipline.

To describe six management thoughts that evolved during the past century in the USA and to link them to the concept of cybernetic‐scanning management (CSM) and to vaguely explore the extent it is practiced in today's organizations.

Employed MBA students were asked to rate the extent their corporations, as they perceive it, practice the CSM framework. The framework was fully discussed in class prior to the ratings. Students were asked to prepare a term paper describing the rationality for their ratings.

Today's organizations pay a lot of attention to the external environment, their organizational structures are still too tall, and the Theory X managerial mindset is still more prevalent than the Theory Y mindset.

The study involved only MBA students enrolled in the writer's management and organization course in the school of business at Montclair State University. Therefore, the study's findings cannot be generalized.

Organizations need to establish a system where there is more internal communication, cooperation and collaboration among their subunits (e.g. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina).

The study tells us how the past influences the present and the future.

The aim of this paper is to examine the development of the social responsibility (SR) of business concept and related management philosophies through the history‐of‐management‐thought perspective.

The history‐of‐management‐thought approach to social responsibility (SR) is grounded in the paradigm of continuing progress exemplified by the contributions of great management thinkers (e.g. Fayol, Taylor, Follett, Barnard). A historical evolution of the SR concept is provided, together with tracing the development of stakeholder theory in its attempt to depict the relationship between stakeholder management and SR.

Three management philosophies (recognition of the external environment, a need for collaboration, and a need for a shared understanding) emerge from both classical and modern management thinkers. Recent conceptualizations have added depth by clarifying the meaning of social responsibility and in addition, detailing the nature of firm‐stakeholder relationships. Despite voluminous literature, achieving collaborative integration between firms and stakeholders in practice appears elusive.

These management philosophies can help organizations navigate the intertwined relationship between business and society. Business leaders need to consider the vital role of trust in building more collaborative relationships.

The unique contribution of this paper is to provide the first history‐of‐management‐thought perspective on the social responsibility of business by tracing changes in the conceptualization of this concept, including the related stakeholder paradigm, to their roots in the works of renowned management thinkers.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit Igor Ansoff's work and how it interfaces with the various schools of strategic management.

Ansoff's work of 40 years is reviewed and related to other schools of thought in strategic management.

Ansoff's work is much more comprehensive than the literature suggests. His later work (after 1990) is largely unnoticed by academics, nevertheless, it is the empirical findings of his theoretical postulations. Moreover, his work interfaces with virtually all schools of thought in strategic management.

It will provide a broader view of Ansoff's work and perhaps trigger additional research as a result of his later work. Most researchers continue to associate Ansoff with his early thoughts.

Ansoff's work has found wide applications in a variety of industries. His work was mostly with industries that used his propositions in order to better strategies.

Ansoff's later research and empirical findings could provide a launchpad for re‐examining the method by which organizations assess their environment, strategic behaviour, and internal capability. Therefore, organizations may have an alternative method to develop strategy.

This is the first attempt to provide a historical view of Ansoff's work and perhaps his timeliness. The recent economic crisis only further supports Ansoff's basic position that companies must create custom strategies to fit their environment, culture, and capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and critique Lyndall Urwick's long‐term advocacy of scientific management and its influence upon management thought.

An analysis and critique of Urwick's published writings across 60 years, on the subject of scientific management and organizations, particularly linking his work and arguments to the influence of Frederick Taylor, also positioning him relative to the thinking of leading thinkers such as Henri Fayol.

This paper argues that the key to understanding his legacy lies in his unique and changing definition of “scientific management”. This was broader than the definition applied by most of his contemporaries and inspired his integrationist project of assimilating Taylorist scientific management into a raft of developing schools of management thought.

Urwick's legacy included a lifetime campaign to reconcile scientific management with succeeding schools of thought, today's management literature stereotyping of some of his contemporary thinkers, and a contribution to management literature's predilection for the labelling of theories and principles.

The paper argues for returning to original sources to accurately understand the intentions and arguments of early founders of many aspects of today's management practice. It also alerts us to the proclivity of management theory and practice to opt for convenient labels that may represent a variety of historical and contemporary meanings.

The paper offers a critical reflection and assessment of the longest standing advocate of scientific management in the management literature.