The Canadian academic, Henry Mintzberg, synthesised organisational design literature into five ideal organisational forms or configurations that do not exist in the real world, but provide consultants and managers a framework to understand and design organisational structures. Mintzberg defined organisational structure as "the sum...

Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian professor of Sociology, was best known for popularising views on the effect of the new communication technologies of television and radio on a society's culture. He saw culture as a derivative of technological change rather than an independent factor. He introduced the public to such terms as the 'global village' and...

In 1898, the American advertising and sales pioneer, E. St. Elmo Lewis developed a practical sales tool using the latest Scientific Management insights. He created his AIDA funnel model on customer studies in the US life insurance market to explain the mechanisms of personal selling. Lewis held that the most successful salespeople followed a hierarchical,...

In the early 1990's, the American marketing professor Thomas Ingram, co-developed the ADAPT questioning system to support relationship-based selling that requires a long term focus and spans multiple sales meetings. The method aimed first to identify the wider, organisational situation, then discover and explore customer needs. ADAPT is most effective for...