(FORTUNE Magazine) – HOW LARGE COMPANIES work has fascinated Walter Kiechel since his days as a student at Harvard Business School. ''I'm impressed by how tough it is to run a big organization,'' he says. ''You can never really rest on your laurels.'' The cover story (page 18) makes that point strongly while exploring a management subject, corporate glamour, that has been much talked about but little examined. That meets the test that Kiechel, the member of the board of editors who oversees our Managing section, sets for Managing stories: ''They must look behind trends, critically examine conventional wisdom, and separate the faddish chaff from the solidly practical.'' In alternate issues Kiechel writes the Office Hours column, which focuses on everyday problems of management. He finds that a ''nifty'' adjunct to the Managing section, often using it to look at topics ''that occur to me in the shower.'' Associate editor Anne Fisher, who wrote the cover story, says that defining corporate glamour, that elusive but real attribute, was the central challenge. One conclusion that emerged from looking at 25 glamorous and formerly glamorous corporations surprised her: an essential ingredient of business glamour is plain, simple fun. ''It's possible,'' she observes, ''to get so solemn about your company that you forget how to motivate people to be creative.'' Fisher was also struck by the candor of the executives she interviewed. Chairman Hicks Waldron of Avon admitted that he was never so frightened in his life as in 1984 when he addressed Avon's 2,600 employees in Carnegie Hall. Jerry Sanders of Advanced Micro Devices said he used to boast that he had never made a major mistake, when in fact he had not anticipated the most recent semiconductor industry slump. ''My lawyers don't like me to say that,'' Sanders cheerfully told Fisher. At glamorous companies, Anne Fisher says, ''The top executives are just less uptight. They're saying, 'We're not afraid to be honest because we know we're really good at what we're doing.' '' As history shows, sometimes they're right.