7 Alternatives
Emergence and Expansion of Critical Views
Introduction
During the first two decades after World War II, there had already been some critical studies on the history of management thought, in particular by Bendix (1956) and Child (1969) (see Chapter 5, this volume). They questioned not only the—largely implicit—ontological assumptions of the extant literature and its functionalist assertions in terms of management ideas purportedly responding to managerial “needs”. They also challenged the progressive aspirations underlying the evolution or stage models prevalent in most of the writings on management history. And they adopted a more comparative and international outlook by moving beyond the geographic scope of the “classic” or ...
