The notion that management knowledge is universal, culture-neutral, readily transferable to any country or situation, has come under mounting challenge. In this vein, this volume explores in detail the relations between management knowledge, power and practice in a world where globalization highlights, rather than obscures, the locally specific nature of many management recipes. This volume recognizes the political nature of management knowledge, as a discourse produced from, and reproducing, power processes within and between organizations. This theme underpins discussion of the ways in which management ideas and practices "produce" managers of a particular kind - "man of enterprise", bureaucrat, heroic leader. Critical examinations of certain current management theories - lean production, excellence, entrepreneurship - illuminate the myriad modes in which relations of power intermingle with relations of knowledge. Authors from a variety of different countries address the social and political processes involved in cross-cultural transference of management ideas across the world. They also look to the future, stressing the need for a substantial understanding that is less attuned to the corporate worlds of today and more appropriate for the increasingly diverse organizations likely to emerge in the 21st century.