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This article describes a judgemental process used for planning and analysis. This process, called “collective judgement”, involves extensive search of diverse sources and points of view, followed by a synthesis of such information for learning. The discussion which follows provides examples of such judgements, contrasts collective judgement with common task or group dimensions outside its domain and, finally, identifies elements in the process.

Ask a manager what she/he does. She/he will probably tell you about functions or processes such as planning, organising, budgeting, and controlling (Fayol 1949).

Few thoughtful men or women will deny, as we enter the last two decades of the twentieth century, that ours is truly an Age of Anxiety. Even in an America still uniquely stable and prosperous relative to much of the rest of the world, the general mood is no longer an optimistic one. For many of us the future appears clouded at best, perhaps laden with catastrophes. Clearly all of us are witnesses to, and in some cases participants in, a great turning point in human affairs. We thus find ourselves living in the end of one epoch while at the same time the rough outlines of a new civilisation come into view. Such momentous transformations of the social structure, economy and political landscape are invariably accompanied by, and often preceded by, major shifts of intellectual commitment. In other words, as our world has changed drastically in the twentieth century, basic patterns of thought and philosophical orientation have either reflected, or in some cases even helped to initiate, these changes. In the brief space allotted to us, we will attempt to present a sketch of the most important of these shifts in thought, always keeping in mind that because of the fact that we find ourselves in media res, these observations can be little more than fragmentary perceptions of a reality that has itself not yet been finalised.

Findings of research on behavior of school principals in four developing countries are summarized to shed light on the question of university of certain patterns of leader behavior. Certain similarities in the way leaders behave in different cultures lead, at least in a tentative way, to the conclusion that extra‐organizational (i.e. cultural) variables seem to be of little importance in the study of leadership. Implications of the findings are discussed, especially in regard to development of theory in administration.