The Evolution Of Management Theory

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Management and organizations are products of their historical and social times and places. Thus, we can understand the evolution of management theory in terms of how people have wrestled with matters of relationships at particular times in history. One of the central lessons of this chapter, and of this book as a whole, is that we can learn from the trials and tribulations of those who have preceded us in steering the fortunes of formal organizations.

The Scientific Management School
Scientific Management theory arose in part from the need to increase productivity. In the United States especially, skilled labor was in short supply at the beginning of the twentieth century. The only way to expand productivity was to raise Omega Replica the efficiency of workers. Therefore, Frederick W. Taylor, Henry L. Gantt, and Frank and Lillian Gilbert devised the body of principles known as scientific management theory.

Frederick W. Taylor. Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915) rested his philosophy on four basic principles:
The development ...
... of a true science of management, so that the best method for performing
each task could be determined.
The scientific selection of workers, so that each worker would be given responsibility for the task for which he or she was best suited.
The scientific education and development of the worker.
Intimate, friendly cooperation between management and labor.

Taylor contended that the success of these principles required "a complete mental revolution" on the part of management and labor. Rather than quarrel over profits, both sides should try to increase production; by so doing, he believed, profits would rise to such an extent that labor and management would no longer have to fight over them. In short, Taylor believed that management and labor had a common interest in increasing productivity.

Taylor based his management system on production-line time studies. Instead of relying on traditional work methods, he analyzed and timed steel workers' movements on a series of jobs. Using time study as his base, he broke each job down into its components and designed the quickest and best methods of performing each component. In this way he established how much workers should be able to do with the equipment and materials at hand. He also encouraged employers to pay more productive workers at a higher rate than others, using a "scientifically correct" rate that would benefit both company and worker. Thus, workers were urged to surpass their previous performance standards to earn more pay. Taylor called his plan the differential rate system.

Henry L. Gantt. Henry L. Gantt (1861-1919) worked with Taylor on several projects. But when he went out on his own as a consulting industrial engineer, Gantt began to reconsider Taylor's incentive system.

Abandoning the differential rate system as having too little motivational impact, Gantt came up with a new idea. Every worker who finished a day's assigned workload would win a 50-cent bonus. Then he added a second motivation. The supervisor Omega Speedmaster Replica would earn a bonus for each worker who reached the daily standard, plus an extra bonus if all the workers reached it. This, Gantt reasoned, would spur supervisor's tQ train their workers to do a better job.

Every worker's progress was rated publicly and recorded on individual bar charts -- n black on days the worker made the standard, in red when he or she fell below it. Going beyond this, Gantt originated a charting system for production scheduling; the "Gantt chart" is still in use today.
The Gilbreths. Frank B. and Lillian M. Gilbreth (1868-1924 and 1878-1972) made their contribution to the scientific management movement as a husband-and-wife team. Lillian and Frank collaborated on fatigue and motion studies and focused on ways of promoting the individual worker's welfare. To them, the ultimate aim of scientific management was to help workers reach their full potential as human beings.

In their conception, motion and fatigue were intertwined -- every motion that was eliminated reduced fatigue. Using motion picture cameras, they tried to find the most economical motions for each task in order to upgrade performance and reduce fatigue. The Gilbreths argued that motion study would raise worker morale because of its obvious physical benefits and because it demonstrated management's concern for the worker.

Classical Organization Theory School
Scientific management was concerned with increasing the productivity of the shop and the individual worker. Classical organization theory grew out of the need to find guidelines for managing such complex organizations as factories.

Henri Fayol. Henri Fayol (1841-1925) is generally hailed as the founder of the classical management school -- not because he was the first to investigate managerial behavior, but because he was the first to systematize it. Fayol believed that sound management practice falls into certain patterns that can be identified and analyzed. From this basic insight, he drew up a blueprint for a cohesive doctrine of management, one that Omega Replica Watches retains much of its force to this day.

With his faith in scientific methods, Fayol was like Taylor, his contemporary. While Taylor was basically concerned with organizational functions, however, Fayol was interested in the total organization and focused on management, which he felt had been the most neglected of business operations.