MANAGEMENT

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Prepared for BAM 1 and BBA 1
By: Babilas Chiyembekezo NDALAMA
Learning Outline
• Explain why studying management history is important.
• Describe some early evidences of management practice.
• Scientific Management
• Describe the important contributions made by Fredrick W. Taylor and
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth.
• Explain how today’s managers use scientific management.
Learning Outline (cont’d…)
• General Administrative Theory
• Discuss Fayol’s contributions to management theory
• Describe Max Weber’s contribution to management theory
• Explain how today’s managers use general administrative theory.
• Quantitative Approach
• Explain what the quantitative approach has contributed to the field of
management.
• Discuss how today’s managers use the quantitative approach.
L E A R N I N G O U T L I N E (cont’d)
• Toward Understanding Organizational Behavior
• Describe the contributions of the early advocates of OB
• Explain the contributions of the Hawthorne Studies to the field of
management
• Discuss how today’s managers use the behavioral approach.
• The Systems Approach
• Describe an organization using the systems approach.
• Discuss how the systems approach helps us manage.
L E A R N I N G O U T L I N E (cont’d)
• The Contingency Approach
• Explain how the contingency approach differs from the early theories of
management.
• Discuss how the contingency approach helps us understand management
• Current Issues and Trends
• Explain why we need to look at the current trends and issues facing managers
• Describe the current trends and issues facing managers.
Historical Background of Management
• Ancient Management
• Egypt (pyramids) and China (Great Wall)
• Venetians (floating warship assembly lines)
• Adam Smith Published “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776
• Advocated the division of labor (job specialization) to increase the
productivity of workers
• Industrial Revolution
• Substituted machine power for human labor
• Created large organizations in need of management
Major Approaches to Management
• Scientific Management
• General Administrative Theory
• Quantitative Management
• Organizational Behavior
• Systems Approach
• Contingency Approach
Scientific Management
• Fredrick Winslow Taylor
• Is considered the “father” of scientific management
• Published Principles of Scientific Management (1911)
• The theory of scientific management entails using
scientific methods to define the “one best way” for a job
to be done:
• Putting the right person on the job with the correct tools and
equipment (to ensure efficiency and effectiveness)
• Having a standardized method of doing the job (organized)
• Providing an economic incentives to the worker (motivation)
Taylor’s Four Principles of Management
• Develop a science for each element of an individual’s work,
which will replace the old rule-of-thumb method
• Scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop the
worker.
• 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
• Divide work and responsibility almost equally between
management and workers.
• Management takes over all work for which it is better fitted than
the workers.
Scientific Management (cont’d) •
• Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
• Focused on increasing worker productivity through the
reduction of wasted motion
• Developed the microchronometer for timing worker
motions and optimize work performance

• A microchronometer for measuring

human motions
How Do Today’s Managers Use Scientific
Management?
•Use time and motion studies to increase
productivity
•Hire the best qualified employees
•Design incentive systems based on output
General Administrative Theory
Is an approach to management that focuses on describing what managers
do and what constitutes good management practice
Henri Fayol
• Believed that the practice of management was distinct from other
organizational functions
• Developed fourteen principles of management that applied to all
organizational situations
Max Weber
• Developed a theory of authority based on an ideal type of organization
(bureaucracy)
• Emphasized rationality, predictability, impersonality, technical
competence, and authoritarianism
General Administrative Theory: Critical
Reflection and Concept Review
• Bureaucracies have been used as a safe haven by managers when
they want to hide from responsibility and do not want to be held
accountable for errors of judgement or problems they created or
failed to solve.
• Managers hide behind following the rules and principles; and get
solace from the same and eventually use this as a façade for their
failures!
• Critical review and reflection: it is difficult to envisage how large-
scale organisations, especially within the public sector, could
function effectively without exhibiting at least some of the features
of a bureaucracy. To what extent could this be true?
General Administrative Theory: Critical
Reflection and Concept Review
• Whenever a big organization gets into trouble – and especially if it
has been successful for many years – people tend to blame this
failure on sluggishness, complacency, arrogance, and to a large
extent, mammoth bureaucracies.
• To what extent do you concur with this assertion?
• How would YOU attempt to justify the benefits of bureaucratic
structures?
• To what extent would YOU be comfortable working in a bureaucratic
organisation?
Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management
1. Division of work
2. Authority.
3. Discipline.
4. Unity of command
5. Unity of direction
6. Subordination of individual interests to the general
interest/common goal of the organization
Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management (cont’d…)
7. Remuneration
8. Centralization
9. Scalar chain
10. Order
11. Equity
12 Stability of tenure of personnel
13. Initiative
14. Esprit de corps/team spirit
Weber’s Ideal Bureaucracy
Quantitative Approach to Management
• Quantitative Approach
• Also called operations research or management science
• Evolved from mathematical and statistical methods
developed to solve WWII military logistics and quality
control problems
• Focuses on improving managerial decision making by
applying:
• Statistics, optimization models, information models, and
computer simulations
Understanding Organizational Behavior
• Organizational Behavior (OB)
• The study of the actions of people at work; people are the
most important asset of an organization
• Early OB Advocates:
• Robert Owen
• Hugo Munsterberg
• Mary Parker Follett
• Chester Barnard
The Hawthorne Studies
• A series of productivity experiments conducted at Western
Electric from 1927 to 1932.
• Experimental findings:
• Productivity unexpectedly increased under imposed adverse working
conditions
• The effect of incentive plans was less than expected
• Research conclusion
• Social norms, group standards and attitudes more strongly influence
individual output and work behavior than do monetary incentives.
The Systems Approach
• System Defined:
• A set of interrelated and interdependent parts arranged in a
manner that produces a unified whole, could be a finished
product or service.
• Basic Types of Systems
• Closed systems: Are not influenced by and do not interact
with their environment (all system input and output is
internal)
• Open systems: Dynamically interact with their environments
by taking in inputs and transforming them into outputs that
are distributed into their environments.
Implications of the Systems Approach
• Coordination of the organization’s parts is essential for proper
functioning of the entire organization.
• Decisions and actions taken in one area of the organization will have
an effect in other areas of the organization.
• Organizations are not self-contained and, therefore, must adapt to
changes in their external environment.
The Contingency Approach
• Also sometimes called the situational approach
• Recognizes organizations as different, as such, they face different
situations (contingencies) that require different approaches of managing
them.
• There is no one universally applicable set of management principles
(rules) by which to manage organizations. i.e. there is no such a thing as
the best management approach for all occasions!
• Organizations are individually different, face different situations
(contingency variables), and require different ways of managing.
• A preferred approach to managing an organization is therefore
contingent upon the context of the organization in question.
Popular Contingency Variables
• Factors on which differences between organisations rest)
include:
• Variable Organization Size
• As size increases, so do, the problems of coordination. For in- stance, the
type of organization structure appropriate for an organization of 50,000
employees is more likely to be inefficient for an organization of 50
employees.
Popular Contingency Variables (cont’d…)
• Routineness of Task Technology.
• To achieve its purpose, an organization uses
technology.
• Routine technologies versus non routine/customized.
• Routine technologies require organizational structures,
leadership styles, and control systems that differ from
those required by customized or nonroutine
technologies.
Popular Contingency Variables (cont’d…)
• Environmental Uncertainty.
• The degree of uncertainty caused by environmental
changes influences the management process.
• What works best in a stable and predictable
environment may be totally inappropriate in a
rapidly changing and unpredictable environment.
Popular Contingency Variables (cont’d…)
• Individual Differences.
• Individuals differ in terms of their desire for growth,
autonomy, tolerance of ambiguity, and expectations.
• These and other individual differences are particularly
important when managers select motivation
techniques, leadership styles, and job designs.
Current Trends and Issues
• Globalization
• Ethics
• Workforce Diversity
• Entrepreneurship
• E-business
• Knowledge Management
• Learning Organizations
• Quality Management
Current Trends and Issues (cont’d…)
• Globalization:
• Management in international organizations
• Political and cultural challenges of operating in a global market
• Working with people from different cultures
• Coping with anti-capitalist backlash
• Movement of jobs to countries with low-cost labor
• Ethics:
• Increased emphasis on ethics education in college curriculums
• Increased creation and use of codes of ethics by businesses
Current Trends and Issues
• A Process for Addressing Ethical Dilemmas
• Step 1: What is the ethical dilemma?
• Step 2: Who are the affected stakeholders?
• Step 3: What personal, organizational, and external factors are important to
my decision?
• Step 4: What are possible alternatives?
• Step 5: Make a decision and act on it.
Current Trends and Issues (cont’d)
• Entrepreneurship Defined:
• The process of starting new businesses, generally in
response to opportunities.
• Entrepreneurship processes
• Pursuit of opportunities
• Innovation in products, services, or business
methods
• Desire for continual growth of the organization
Current Trends and Issues (cont’d)
• E-Business (Electronic Business):
• The work performed by an organization using electronic linkages to its key
constituencies
• E-commerce: the sales and marketing aspect of an e- business
• Categories of E-Businesses
• E-business enhanced organization
• E-business enabled organization
• Total e-business organization
Current Trends and Issues (cont’d)
• Learning Organization:
• An organization that has developed the capacity to
continuously learn, adapt, and change.
• Knowledge Management:
• The cultivation of a learning culture where
organizational members systematically gather and
share knowledge with others in order to achieve
better performance.
Trends and Issues (cont’d)
• Quality Management:
• A philosophy of management driven by continual
improvement in the quality of work processes and
responding to customer needs and expectations
• Inspired by the total quality management (TQM) ideas of
Deming and Juran
• Quality is not directly related to cost
• Poor quality results in lower productivity
What is Quality Management?
• Intense focus on the customer
• Quality is defined from the perspective of a customer
• Quality lies in the eyes of the customer!
• Quality is therefore, a subjective concept
• Concern for continual improvement
• Process-focused.
• Improvement in the quality of everything.
• Accurate measurement; remember, “you cannot manage what
you cannot measure!”
• Empowerment of employees.