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.”
At the time, the business world had reason for optimism. The First World War had ended just a few years before. The Spanish flu pandemic had subsided. The economy had weathered a brief depression, and the outlook was decidedly improving. In that first issue, writing about the taxation of capital gains, accountant George O. May said as much, noting that, in the U.S. at least, business was getting “back to more normal conditions.”
But the normality May saw in 1922 proved to be fleeting. In just a few years, the stock market would crash, followed by the Great Depression and another world war. If a proper theory of business was desirable in optimistic times, surely the tumult that marked so much of the century would make it all the more essential. The need to understand how business and organizations function, to learn from the experience of others, and to detect patterns in seeming chaos has only gotten stronger.
100 Years of HBR:
Series reprint
So, what can we learn from the past 100 years of management thinking?
For this Big Idea series, we asked experts to look back — and forward — to help us understand what good leadership should look like, how successful organizations are structured, what qualities make up a job people love, and what needs to change to improve business’s relationship with the rest of society.
We also admit that management advice hasn’t always gotten things right, and that what worked for one era may not for another. So we asked an array of researchers which management practices should be retired for the next 100 years. Their answers point to the impact of increasingly fluid organizational structures, the need for more-proactive retention efforts, and why union busting must end, among other ideas.
Finally, our contributors dug into our archive to gain insight into what occupied us over the past 100 years and why. Tejas Ramdas, Raffaella Sadun, and Nicholas Bloom created a visual representation of how our topic mix — and the issues that are most pressing for managers — has changed. Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg analyzed when, and how, HBR has covered women over the decades. And our audience engagement editor, Kelsey Gripenstraw, compiled a list of our most popular articles. The variety might surprise you!
This package shows us how the world that HBR covers has evolved. Our readers still care about balance sheets and operations, but their scope of responsibility has expanded to include issues far beyond the strict purview of their businesses and rarely — if at all — considered in 1922: urgent social issues involving race, gender, and other dimensions of diversity; political polarization; and the existential threat of climate change. And while readers from HBR’s early decades would witness the emergence of such marvels as jet engines, transistors, lasers — and space exploration, computers, and the internet not long after — they weren’t yet imagining the promise of artificial intelligence or the challenge of the Great Resignation.
Explore HBR’s First Issue
Download and read the full 1922 debut edition of HBR.
Just as the concerns of our readers have evolved, so has our understanding of leadership. Most obviously, the white, male, U.S.-centric perspective of HBR in 1922 has expanded to include people of every race, gender, and background. We have also shifted away from assuming that companies should be hierarchical and leaders all-knowing authorities, and toward embracing flatter, more networked structures that demand a more humble and open-minded approach — one that requires great leaders to motivate their teams rather than issue edicts.
Organizations have gotten more complicated, as has the challenge of running them. They need leadership at all levels, not just at the top. They need managers who can think not just about the bottom line but about the culture they help shape. Leaders must learn how to bring out the best in their teams, their organizations, their partners, and their communities. They must understand that to accomplish anything substantial — internally or externally — they have to reach across the boundaries of functions, business units, organizations, and even sectors.
In 1922 leadership was the province of the few. In 2022 we believe that anyone who wants to become a good leader can do so with the right kind of guidance. Perhaps what we’re still talking about is the “better theoretical basis for executive action” that Wallace B. Donham envisioned 100 years ago. Providing that essential insight is still what drives us. And we hope it continues to inspire you.
