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The Kennedy tapes of the meetings on the Cuban missile crisis are evidence of the strategy formulation process. Analysis of the interventions in these meetings reveals that President Kennedy had adopted a questioning, Socratic approach. Conclusions are drawn on President Kennedy's leadership style. The methods employed in 1962 are compared with ideas from strategic management: positioning; resource‐based view; top‐down or bottom‐up; deliberate or emergent; and rational or generative. The author deduces from this evidence: the collective strategy process cannot truly begin until a collective aim has been decided; the strategy process is best led by a facilitator, rather than an authoritarian; both positioning resources need to be considered; strategy formulation is an art, guided by whatever science can be brought to bear.

The purpose of this paper is to review the 11 lessons propounded by Robert McNamara in the film The Fog of War and to consider them in the context of theories of strategic management, particularly the formulation of strategy.

The film is taken as a case study and the evidence is considered against the background of Mr McNamara's career and contemporary events, triangulated wherever possible by additional accounts so that bias is avoided as much as possible.

The paper finds that, despite a lifelong rational, empirical approach, Mr McNamara has discovered that there are limits to these methods. The importance of values, morals and ethics emerges. The importance of these messages is that the business strategist should acknowledge the limits of rationality and the importance of intangible factors, not least the vagaries of human nature.

The paper is a part of a continuing study by the author of the parallels between military/grand strategy formulation and the similar activity in business.

The purpose of this paper is to draw conclusions on strategy formulation from an analysis of the “Alanbrooke” diaries. The approach is comparative, and uses the information in the diary and the forms of business strategies devised by Mintzberg et al., and with ideas on business alliances. The paper finds that the logical, planned approach of Alanbrooke is contrasted with the more entrepreneurial attitude of Churchill, but the combination of these contrasting traits led to effective strategy formulation. The difference in character of them and the resulting controversies were essential to make the right choices, and Churchill deliberately chose someone who was likely to oppose him. The research is limited by the possibility of bias in the diary. A practical implication is that leaders can benefit from choosing a strong, talented colleague, even though the stormy interactions can be wearisome. The value in this analysis is in the light it sheds on the way strategy is developed in a real situation and is also an indication of the value of the comparative approach to the study of strategy process.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the strategy formulation process recorded as being used during the Battle of Britain with concepts from current management theory.

The approach to the topic is through the medium of a case study. An account is given of the events in the battle, based on a variety of sources, and various management theories are then used in comparison.

The paper concludes that it was the strategic thought, or lack of it, that was the root cause of the German failure. The theories of strategic thinking; strategy formation; strategic change; and business level strategy are considered in turn in the context of the German side of the battle. The dominance of Hitler in the strategy formulation process is considered a disadvantage. Although the Luftwaffe had superior resources, the manner of their use was at fault. The strategy emerged over the period of the battle, but the results lacked consistency, coherence and a clearly defined aim.

Comparison of military and business strategy formulation processes is a valuable means of considering the validity of strategic management theory. Caution has to be exercised, however, when considering events 65 years ago and in making military business comparisons, which though indicative are never completely exact.

It is hoped that this comparative case study will be of value both to practising managers and to those researchers who can see value in this methodology. Military strategists should find value in the use of strategic management theories in their field.

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 this paper aims to address both general historiography and the particular application of management history.

The paper adopts the metaphor of crafting, as in the potter at his wheel, to emphasise the need for empathy with material from the past and the skill required for converting that raw data into and analytical and meaningful account. Various factors to be considered in this process are discussed.

The paper finds that, the metaphor can be sustained and is a valuable concept for those embarking on management historiography.

The need for sympathy with the period in question and for the material to hand is suggested as a necessary outlook for the management historian. Their task is not scientific, in that laws are unlikely to emerge in this complex and multi‐faceted field, but painstaking crafting is an art that will lead to the writing of better management histories.

The paper collects general advice from eminent historians and suggests a particular approach for the management historian. The aim is to encourage the writing of management histories that can contribute to our knowledge of the past but also can form the basis for further hypotheses and insights in the field of management.

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate thought on the management of business alliances by considering the mismanagement of relationships between the allies, particularly France and Great Britain, in World War I.

The paper is not intended to be a work of history, although such works are used extensively, but, given the limitations of such a paper, an exhaustive analysis of the events in World War I is infeasible. Errors in selection of data are the responsibility of the paper's author.

The war did not develop as expected and the physical stalemate on the Western Front proved intractable to the routine thinking of the generals. The war involved the total economy of the nations involved in a way never before encountered and the steps the politicians had to take to gear up their nations brought them into conflict with the military. Although the nations opposing the Central Powers were allied, there was no single strategy, rather a series of national initiatives that were barely co‐ordinated with their partners. Unity of military command was achieved in the final months of the war and led to a greater effectiveness of the Entente armies. Firms that ally themselves need to overcome this tendency to concentrate on their own operations and be prepared to appoint an “alliance manager” with the power to make the partners work effectively as a team. The absence of clear thinking in strategy formulation and effective joint command in 1914‐1918 resulted in a Pyrrhic victory and terrible casualties and vast expenditure. Firms cannot afford such a “victory”.

The case is a warning to those forming business alliances that their aims must be harmonised with those of their partners, that the strategy is for the benefit of all partners, and some “sovereignty” must be sacrificed in the wider interests o the alliance.

This approach aims to cast an unusual perspective on alliances from which the value of existing theory is reinforced.

To provide a concise briefing on the most topical issues and relevant implications from the top 400 management publications in the world.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the argument in context.

Feldman's detailed study reviews the decision‐making processes – and the influences which were brought to bear on those processes – in the years before the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986. He demonstrates – with a carefully‐constructed view of the culture of objectivity, of how decisions are made and what knowledge is brought to bear on those decisions – how misunderstandings of flight risk resulted. Robert F. Gratton analyses President Kennedy's style of leadership and decision making during the crucial days of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. He reveals that Kennedy adopted a questioning, Socratic approach and concludes that the collective strategy process can not truly begin until a collective aim has been decided. In addition, the strategy process is best led by a facilitator than an authoritarian, and strategy formulation is an art, guided by whatever science can be brought to bear. Howard Hills demonstrates the benefits of collaborative decision making. He identifies symptoms of teams that fail to make collaborative decisions, and offers actions a team leader may take to enable effective collaborative decisions to be made. He asserts the value of mutual respect, learning from mistakes and welcoming feedback.

Provides implementable strategies and practical thinking that has influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

This paper aims to reflect on some aspects of pedagogy in management history, using Boyer's model of scholarship as a framework for consideration.

Drawing on Boyer's model of scholarship, this paper considers how one might apply the notion of the “scholarship of representation” to one's teaching efforts in management history.

Satisfied that one's conceptions of the past are developed in ways that, as far as possible, make them useful in creating one's future, one then needs to represent those conceptions in a meaningful way. This paper considers some of the issues of which those seeking to represent those conceptions must be cognisant.

Learning from the lessons of management history depends, at least in part, on the quality of the scholarship of representation, which should be a combination of transmission and transformation.

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.

This paper incorporates a critical, comparative review of papers related to the scholarly communications in the Journal of Management History that have been published in other discipline‐based journals.

This paper demonstrates that, when it comes to scholarly consideration the subject matter can and indeed must be examined from multiple perspectives. This is not a new finding but one that reaffirms the importance of the multidisciplinary engagement and interactivity of business and management scholars, including when history is that subject matter.

Rather than being focussed on examining articles published within what might be called the “management history” literature, this paper has sought relevant articles outside that mainstream literature base, as a way of better understanding the interconnectedness of these different considerations.