(Late) Harold Koontz was active as a business and government executive, university professor, company board chairperson and director, management consultant, lecturer to the top management of organizations worldwide, and an author. From 1950 he was Professor of Management and from 1962 Mead Johnson Professor of Management at UCLA; from 1978 to 1982 he was World Chancellor at the International Academy of Management. He was the author or coauthor of 19 books and 90 journal articles, including this book, which was originally called Principles of Management. His Board of Directors and Effective Management was given the Academy of Management Book Award in 1968.

Heinz Weihrich is Professor of Global Management and Behavioral Sciences at the Dr. H.C. San Martin University, Peru before serving at the University of San Francisco. He received his doctorate from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and an honorary doctorate from San Martin de Porres University of Lima, Peru. He was a visiting scholar at the University of California in Berkeley, Harvard Business School and the KAIST Business School in Seoul. His field of work is management, international management, and behavioral science. Dr Weihrich has taught at Arizona State University, at UCLA, and in countries such as Austria, China (Beijing and Shanghai), Egypt, France (INSEAD), Germany, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan and Thailand. He was also a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Business (GBSA) in Zurich, Switzerland, at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, and at Peking University in Beijing.