Purpose This paper takes a managerial look at Attar Neyshaburi’s 12th-century Persian literary epic, “The Conference of the Birds,” to explore the nexus of leadership and management. The narrative portrays a group of birds, led by a Hoopoe, on an arduous journey through seven valleys in pursuit of a glorious kingdom and its mythical sovereign, Simorgh. Treating the flock as an organization and reaching Simorgh as its overarching goal, this study aims to analyze Hoopoe’s leadership and management style in light of contemporary theories, with a focus on the overlap between visionary leadership and managerial coordination. Design/methodology/approach A historical-literary and comparative methodology is used. This includes close readings and examinations of the Persian text and authoritative English translations, complemented by secondary sources that contextualize the sociocultural environment of the period and situate the epic within debates on the history of management and leadership thought. Salient characters and events are assessed, and textual quotations are provided to derive leadership and managerial insights, subsequently aligned with current theoretical frameworks. Findings The Hoopoe demonstrates personalized situational motivation, individualized leader–member exchanges and realistic previews of risks and rewards. This leadership style maintains commitment, brings together diverse personalities and sustains organizational synergy. The seven valleys mentioned in the narrative symbolize training stages that organization members undergo to improve their professional capabilities to achieve their common purpose, and in the process, become knowledgeable leaders. The authors demonstrate that Attar’s implicit leadership and management theories exhibit parallels with current conceptualizations articulated across different schools of management thought and, at the same time, challenge rigid distinctions that separate the “leader” from the “manager.” Originality/value By bringing Attar’s epic into dialogue with contemporary leadership and management frameworks, this research highlights how historical literary sources can enrich the discipline’s intellectual lineage, broaden management historiography’s chronological, geographical and evidentiary scope, and open avenues for cross-cultural, context-sensitive inquiry. It theorizes a style of management in which visionary and managerial functions are unified in a single leader–manager role. addressing an area that has received comparatively little explicit attention in leadership and management scholarship.
Safaei et al. (Wed,) studied this question.