Purpose – Management is a “hot field” in China, yet little has been written in English about the history of management in China. Contrary to contemporary management literature, the paper aims to show that Chinese entrepreneurs and managers were exposed to modern management ideas from the...

Purpose – Management history is written for various reasons, such as describing company developments and the growth of the theories of management, and is part of the generic historical approach. There are, however, some specific problems associated with the writing of management history and...

Purpose – This paper has been written to promote a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary approach to the themes of management and business, especially in the exploration of the history of management and business. Design/methodology/approach – This paper incorporates a critical, comparative...

Purpose – This piece is a republished autobiography of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Design/methodology/approach – Chandler reflects on his life and career as a management historian. Findings – Chandler reflects on his life and career, in particular how he came to write Strategy and Structure...

Purpose – Alfred D. Chandler was the most important business historian of the twentieth century, who described and analyzed how large industrial firms are organized and managed in the USA from the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a...

Purpose – This paper analyzes Chandler's biography of Henry Varnum Poor to assess Chandler's contribution to management history as a biographer. Design/methodology/approach – Using Winter's content thematic analysis, measure Poor's motivational needs for achievement, affiliation‐intimacy,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze Alfred Chandler's ideological shift from American exceptionalism to transnational history in research assumptions to identify significant corollaries for the study of management history. Design/methodology/approach – Using the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to commemorate Alfred Chandler, a truly outstanding business historian, through the unique lens of his revisionists. Design/methodology/approach – By developing a classifying framework, Chandler's revisionists is analyzed based on the extent to which...

Purpose – Examining aspects of organizational identity, this paper revisits McLuhan's media theory in connection with W.R. Scott's insight that organizations themselves are the medium. The purpose of this paper is to consider the history of the Tokyo‐based urban developer/media organization...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: to report the number of articles in the business academic literature that have been written about the pioneers depicted in a 1977 Daniel Wren and Robert Hay study; and to report the findings from a replication and extension of that study....