Management Theory – Evolution

The Historical Roots of Contemporary Management Practices

We’ll introduce you to the origins of many contemporary management concepts and show how their evolution reflected the changing needs of organizations and society as a whole.

1. The Pre-Modern Era (Adam Smith) – Division of Lever – The breakdown of jobs into narrow, repetitive tasks.
2. Classical Contribution – The term used to describe the hypotheses of the scientific management theorists and general administrative theorists. (Frederick Taylor – Scientific Management / Henry Fayol – Administrative Management Theory / Max Weber – Bureaucracy Theory)
3. Human Resource Approach –
4. The Quantitative Approach
5. Contingency Approach:

The Pre-Modern Era (Adam Smith)

Division of Lever – The breakdown of jobs into narrow, repetitive tasks. Smith concluded that division of labor increased productivity by increasing each worker’s skill and dexterity, by saving time that is commonly lost in changing tasks, and by the creation of labor-saving inventions and machinery. Today the general popularity of job specialization-in service jobs such as teaching and medicine as well as on assembly lines in automobile plants-is undoubtedly due to the economic advantages cited more than 200 years ago by Adam Smith.

Classical Contribution

The term is used to describe the hypotheses of the scientific management theorists and general administrative theorists.

• Frederick Taylor – Scientific Management

  Taylors Four Principles of Management:

  Taylor sought to create a mental revolution among both the workers and management by creating clear guidelines for improving production efficiency. He defined four principles

  1. Develop a science for each element of an individual’s work, which replaces the old rule-of-thumb method.
  2. Scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop the worker. (Previously, workers chose their own work and trained themselves as best they could.)
  3. Heartily cooperate with the workers so as to ensure that all work is done in accordance with the principles of the science that has been developed.
  4. Divide work and responsibility almost equally between management and workers. Management takes over all work for which it is better fitted than the workers. (Previously. almost all the work and the greater part of the responsibility were thrown upon the workers.)
• Henry Fayol – Administrative Management Theory
• Max Weber – Bureaucracy Theory

Contingency Approach:

The contingency approach (sometimes called the situational approach) has been used to replace simplistic principles of management and to integrate much of management theory. A contingency approach to the study of management is logical. Because organizations are diverse in size, objectives, tasks being done, and the like-it would simp be surprising to find universally applicable principles that would work in all situations.