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Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds a chaired professorship as the Class of 1960 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Specializing in business strategy, innovation, and the management of strategic and organizational change, Professor Kanter also advises major corporations and governments worldwide. Here, she speaks to Sarah Powell about the challenges of leadership and the importance of nurturing talent.

This interview is drawn from highlights of Dr. Kanter's outstanding keynote presentation at the 1997 International Strategic Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C.

Uses Rosabeth Moss Kanter's 15 principles and 8 I's (initial letters of the successful word areas) to argue consistently that inter‐company relationships cannot be run on purely rational lines and must come from not just excellent performance but also from strong relationships. States Kanter's research for ‘When Giants Learn to Dance’ involved 37 companies from 11 different countries, conducted with over 500 interviews on multiple visits to well‐known large, as well as less prominent smaller, organizations from both manufacturing and service industries.

This paper aims to bring to the fore the importance of feminist epistemologies in the history of the organization of management studies since the 1980s by following various intellectual moves in the development of feminist theorizing as they cross over to organization studies, including their analytical possibilities for reclaiming historically the voices of major women scholars, especially in doctoral seminars. The paper narrates these epistemological activities by mobilizing and reconsidering from the past to the present, the notions of “unmuting,” “mutating” and “mutiny.” It ends in a reflection addressing the state of business schools at present and why the field of organization and management studies needs “mutiny” now.

The paper adopts a narrative approach in which the voices of its authors appear to be central as they consider and reconsider over time their understanding of “unmuting,” “mutation” and “mutiny” as notions with analytical potential. This approach is influenced by Foucault’s “history of the present” but with contingencies brought about by feminist interpretations. The application of these notions is demonstrated by reclaiming and clarifying the epistemological underpinning in the works of three major women scholars as included in a doctoral seminar: Mary Parker Follett, Edith Penrose and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. These notions are further redeployed for their potential in institutional applications.

At present, the findings are discursive – if they can be called so, but the main motivation behind this writing is to go beyond discourse in the written sense, and to mobilize other activities, still in the realm of epistemological and scholarly work. These activities would legitimize actual interventions for changing business schools from their current situation as neoliberal entities, which mute understanding of major problems in the world, as well as the voices of most humans and non-humans paying for the foibles of neoliberalism.

The paper demonstrates the necessity of developing approaches for interventions in knowledge producing institutions increasingly limited by neoliberal premises in what can be said and done as legitimate knowledge. In doing this, the paper articulates the importance of keeping history alive to avoid the increasing “forgetfulness” neoliberalization brings about. The paper, in its present form, represents an active act of “remembering”.

Espouses the phrase “business strategy” and goes on to explain what the understanding of business strategy is not in a long bulleted list (20). Gives examples of what good business strategy is, citing Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Louis Gerstner (the saviour of IBM). Does not, though, agree fully with Gerstner’s ideas in entirety, but stresses the end was the main aim and not the road there.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevant sayings and stories of the ancient Chinese sages in relation to the style of Chinese human resource management (HRM).

Related texts generated from the quotations and stories from four Chinese sages, Guanzi, Hanfeizi, Xunzi and Yanzi, were translated and analyzed and their thinking regarding ruling the state and managing the people was discussed in line with the thoughts from the mainstream and modern Western management gurus such as Warren Bennis, Peter Drucker, Mary Parker Follett, Douglas McGregor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Elton Mayo and Jeffrey Pfeffer.

It was found that there were striking similarities in thoughts and call for actions to address key issues in HRM by both old and contemporary, east and west thinkers across 2,500 years. The main concerns are to select the right leaders and managers and recruit the right people; create attractive organisational culture and environments that promote a participative management approach to encourage, empower and engage employees to achieve desirable outcomes; uphold the people‐centred management principles; and focus on designing reward schemes that emphasise service and contribution instead of position and profits.

There is much to be learned from the past to address the present people management issues among modern organisations both inside China and perhaps from other parts of the world. It was as difficult to take seriously the principles‐based ruling and management approaches in ancient times as it is today. However, if these principles had been put into practice, the world would have had fewer of the corporate corruption scandals and less of the mischievous behaviour in the state that are manifested in today's society, but more productive population, effective organisations, ethical governments and harmonious environment; hence less global human suffering.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter once captured the imagination of the management world by drawing an analogy between corporate behemoths needing to be nimble in order to compete and giants learning to dance. Well ballroom dancing is making a comeback, and even the most ill‐informed executive knows the difference between their rumba and their cha‐cha‐cha. Microsoft is the latest to take up the challenge of metaphorical classes in salsa. The spectacle is not unlike retired heavy weight boxing champion George Foreman packing away his ubiquitous grill and seeking to sway a younger more savvy crowd with a stylish pas de deux. It may not be for the purists, but it is a far from impossible dream.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

The political philosophy of American federalism was a critical influence on the work of Peter Drucker. Drucker drew on federalist ideas to devise ways to distribute and check power within organizations, curbing the darker side of human nature. In this article, the authors aim to discuss the history of federalism, and to demonstrate how Drucker used that philosophy to shape his own management theories. The article also seeks to provide suggestions for applying federalist principles to today's organizations.

Drucker's own writings, as well as historical primary sources, are analyzed to illustrate the influence of federalism. The authors use specific examples from Drucker's own work, including his study of General Motors and his concept of management by objectives, to illustrate how federalism informed Drucker's vision for a functioning society of institutions.

Although Drucker has been criticized as a utopian, he, like the federalists and their philosophical forefathers, grappled with the role and nature of virtue in society, the balance between individual liberty and the greater good, and the need for checks and balances on power. As evidenced by Drucker's work, federalism offers a potential solution to today's organizations for managing complex networks and alliances, as well as creating an effective top‐management team.

Future research into the applicability of federalism to contemporary organizations is suggested.

This paper provides an in‐depth analysis of the impact of federalist principles on Drucker's work, and offers specific suggestions for applying federalism to managing organizations today. It provides an important connection between the discipline of management and the liberal arts.

In the history of business management thought, six idea families have predominated during the last eighty or so years — bureaucracy (Max Weber), scientific management (Frederick Winslow Taylor), classical management (Henri Fayol), human relations (Elton Mayo), neo‐human relations (Abraham Maslow). To these one can add the more recent contributions of different writers under the heading of guru theory. The first five idea families are well known, but the sixth requires explanation. Gury theory achieved prominence during the 1980s. While not yet featuring extensively in management textbooks it has received widespread attention in the financial and business press (Lorenz, 1986; Dixon, 1986; Clutterbuck and Crainer, 1988; Pierce and Newstrom, 1988; Heller, 1990). Guru theory consists of the diverse and unrelated writings of well‐known company chief executives such as Lee lacocca (Chrysler), Harold Geneen (ITT), John Harvey‐Jones (ICI) and John Sculley (Apple Computer); of management consultants like Tom Peters and Philip Crosby; and of business school academics like Michael Porter, Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Henry Mintzberg. Since their contributions are so heterogeneous, and as the writings draw so much of their authority from the individual authors themselves, the adopted label is felt to be appropriate.

The purpose of this article is to explain why economists have neglected the corporation in their theorising. Adam Smith is the founder of mainstream economic theory. In Smith's eighteenth‐century world most things were produced by individuals or by family firms. Smith naturally took the individual entrepreneur as his theoretical unit of analysis, and Smith's theory was at least adequate for the times. But even though the economies of the English‐speaking world have evolved beyond the free enterprise of competing individual capitalists to the current system of corporate capitalism, economic theory has remained much the same. While the American economy is now composed mainly of huge corporate units of production, mainstream economic theory is still referring to “individual” producers. Other social sciences focus a great deal of attention on organisational and individual behaviour within the corporate form of organising economic activity. The work of sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter and of psychologist Michael Maccoby are excellent recent examples. Yet economics, at least the mainstream of the discipline, focuses upon the behaviour of individual entrepreneurs rather than corporate managers. In short, orthodox economic theory lacks a serious treatment of the corporation.