BACKGROUND TO MODERN MANAGEMENT
Developments in Management Theory 1910 – 2000
The earliest contributors to our understanding of management theory included practicing managers as well as social scientists. More recent theorists have tended to be academics or management consultants. The early theorists can be divided into two main groups – the practicing managers, such as Taylor and Fayol, and the social scientists, such as Mayo and McGregor. The practicing managers tended to reflect upon and theorize about, their personal experiences of management with the object of producing a set of rational principles of management which could be applied universally in order to achieve organizational efficiency. The resultant ‘theories’ of management were concerned primarily with the structuring of work and organizations, rather than with human motivation or organization culture, for example. The label generally ascribed to these theorists is ‘classical’ or ‘Scientific Managers’. Their approaches were generally prescriptive, i.e. they set out what managers ought to do in order to fulfill their leadership function within their organization.
The social scientists were academics whose starting point was research in to human behavior in the work place. At first most of their studies were also linked to concerns about efficiency including effects of physical working conditions on employees.
Subsequent theorists were more interested in the human factor at work, and thus concentrated their attention on issues such as motivation, interpersonal communication and leadership style. Typical labels that have assigned to these early social scientists include ‘Human Relations theories and social psychological school. They were concerned primarily with social relations and individual behavior at work.
Another group of social scientists, whose work was grounded in the idea of organizations as social systems, produced a more comprehensive view of the behavior of people at work at work based on the interaction of a number of variables, such as structure, tasks, technology and the environment. Later theorists of this school were labeled contingency theorists, since their ideas were based on what was appropriate in given circumstances i.e. where the effects of people on one variable was contingent on its relationship with one or more others.
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