The Role of Management in Economic Development

Abstract

May I begin by congratulating the organizers of this Conference both upon their subject and their meeting place. They have chosen a subject which, if I am not mistaken, is of quite pivotal importance in any consideration of economic development — a subject of the most vivid contemporary interest. And they have brought it about that we are to discuss it in this splendid setting in the context of a great civilization whose glory and continuity stretches back to the beginnings of recorded history. I suspect that problems of administration were receiving orderly discussion in this ancient state when the inhabitants of most western countries were still roaming the woods and hills in a condition of naked barbarism.

An address to the International Conference on Management in a Developing Economy, held at Teheran from the 24th to the 27th of April 1965