What are the Principles of “Principles of Management”?

Abstract

In this article the authors examine how the principals of management are taught in business schools and discuss what the central ideas of these principals should be. They note that principals in any subject area are determined by what the authors of textbooks say they are and that courses are designed by organizing themes around the topics deemed most important. To determine what is considered most important the authors examined how frequently a topic was brought up in textbooks as well as how many pages were devoted to the topic. They discuss the results of their findings, noting that topics such as environment, planning, organization principals, organization theories and leadership all appeared frequently. They provide charts of their findings and discuss areas of future research.