CHAPTER-2(Two)

HISTORY AND THEORY OF MANAGEMENT

Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management:Frederick Winslow Taylor(1856-1915) gave

up going to college and started out as an apprentice pattern maker and machinist in 1875, joined the Midvale Steel Company in Philadelphia as a machinist in 1878, and rose to the position of chief engineer after earning a degree in engineering through evening study. He invented high-speed steel-cutting tools and spent most of his life as a consulting engineer.

Taylor is generally acknowledged as the father of scientific management. Probably no other person has had a greater impact on the early development of management.

His experiences as an apprentice, a common laborer, a foreman, a master mechanic, and then the chief engineer of a steel company gave Taylor ample opportunity to great possibilities for improving the quality of management.

Taylor’s famous work “Principles of Scientific Management” was publish in 1911. The fundamental principles that Taylor saw underlying the scientific approach to management are as follows:

• Replacing rules of thumb with science.• Obtaining harmony, rather than

discord, in group action.

• Achieving cooperation of human being, rather than chaotic individualism.

• Working for maximum output rather than restricted output.

• Developing all workers to the fullest extent possible for their own and their company's highest prosperity.

You will notice that these basic precepts of Taylor’s are not far from the fundamental beliefs of the modern manager.

Modern Management Theory:

• The real father of modern management theory is the French industrialist Henri Fayol. His famous book “Administration, industrielle et general” published in 1916.He recognized a widespread need for principles and management teaching. Consequently, he identified 14 such principles, noting that they are flexible, not absolute, and must be usable regardless of changing conditions. Principles are-

1. Division of work.2.Authority and responsibility.3. Discipline4. Unity of command.5. Unity of direction.6. Subordination of individual to general

interest.7. Remuneration.8. Centralization.

9. Scalar chain.10. Order.11.Equity.12.Stability of tenure.13. Initiative.14.Esprit de corps.

Fayol found that activities of an industrial undertaking could be divided into six groups, is shown as below :

1.Technical(productivity).2.Commercial(Buying, selling, and

Exchanging).3.Financial(optimaluse of capital)4. Security (Protection of property and

persons).

5.Accounting(including statistics),6. Managerial (planning, organization,

command, co-ordination, and control).Fayol observed that the first five were

well known, and consequently he devoted most of his book to an analysis of the sixth.

Fayol explained these five elements of management as follows:

1. To forecast and plan: examining the future and drawing up the plan of action.

2. To organize: building up the structure, material and human of the undertaking.

3. To command: maintaining activity among personnel.

4. To coordinate: finding together unifying and harmonizing all activity and effort.

5. To control: Seeing that everything occurs in conformity with established rule and expressed command

The Hawthorne Studies:

These studies were conducted during 1924-1932. The initial objective was to study the effects of illumination on output. This research project was sponsored by the national Research Council and was initiated in November 1924 at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company. There were four major phases of this study-

• The illumination Experiments• Relay Assembly Test Room,• Massive Interviewing Programme,

and• Bank Wiring Observation Room.

The most significant discovery of these Experiments was in finding out the existence of informal organizations in all organizations. The experiments amply indicate that stable social relationships in the work situation are most impotant to individuals.

Elton Mayo has been rightly called the father of industrial sociology as well as Human Relations Movement. Roethlisberge, while analysing the contributions of Elton Mayo, has opined: “The manager is neither managing man nor managing work, he is administering a social system.” For administering a social system, sophisticated social skills are needed.

Recent Contributors to Management thought

Peter F. Drucker has written on a variety of general management topics. Keith Davis helped us understand the informal organization. The late W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran, two Americans did much to improve the quality of Japanese products.

William Ouchi, Who wrote the best- selling book Theory Z, Showed how selected Japanese management practices may be adapted in the United States. Finally, Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman discussed characteristics of excellent companies.

A Management Theory Jungle:

The variety of approaches to management analysis, the amount of research, and the great number of differing views have resulted in much confusion as to what management is, what management theory and science is, and how managerial events should be analyzed. As a matter of fact, Harold Koontz many years ago called this situation “the management theory jungle.”

• Since that time, the vegetation in this jungle has changed somewhat new approaches have developed and older approaches have taken on some new meaning with some new words attached, but the developments of management science and theory still have the characteristics of a jungle.