The Gift of Professional Maturity

Abstract

The article provides a personal perspective on the importance of understanding and learning management history. There are many reasons why those training for careers as management scholars should be acquainted with the history of the discipline of management. Among the lessons to be learned from the historical study of management thinking is that ideas are always a product of their own time and place. Another profitable lesson that doctoral students will gain from studying the history of management thought is the advantage of being an informed consumer of received knowledge. Another lesson doctoral students will learn from the studying history of management is the danger inherent in relying on secondary source materials. Historical illiteracy may explain another lesson of historical scholarship. Widely accepted facts are often wrong. Also, doctoral students studying the history of management will learn a lesson dubbed as a special advantage of the past, that is, it allows association with superior minds. For the author, an understanding of the historical development of the discipline of management is the whole that binds that various specialties that compose modern management.