Improving the Practice of Management — Then and Now

In October 1922, the very first essay in volume 1, number 1 of Harvard Business Review laid out the purpose of the brand-new journal. “It is pertinent to inquire how the representative practises [sic] of business men generally may be made available…and how a proper theory of business is to be obtained,” wrote Harvard Business School dean Wallace B. Donham. Without such a theory, “business will continue unsystematic, haphazard, and for many men a pathetic gamble.” To remedy that situation, HBR would seek to provide “a better theoretical basis for executive action.”