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NOTES ON MANAGEMENT PART 1 of 5 PARTS

THEORY OF MANAGEMENT

Musbri MohamedDIL; ADIL ( ITM )MBL ( UKM )

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NOTES ON MANAGEMENT

The first ever-recorded project management by mankind was Noah’s Ark in the Bible and the Quran. Noah Ark’s was therefore not only the first ever-recorded project but was perhaps the first successful one.

Since then, projects all over the world have one thing in common in that they always go wrong. To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer.

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Management is the process of getting things done through other people.

Some individuals carry the title of manager but are not managers in the true sense of the word. They may have people reporting to them, but they tend to work alone, seeming to manage their subordinates as an afterthought. Such individuals are basically entrepreneurs, and it is likely that they will find themselves unable to cope with the dynamic changes now confronting modern organizations.

The Challenge of Management

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Industrialism began in the early eighteenth century. Standardization, specialization, synchronization, concentration, maximization and centralization characterized this period.

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Today there are even more dramatic changes and challenges.

Some of the major factors which affect the modern manager’s job are changes in the technological environment, of information technology, new employee demands in the world of work, a decline in organizational loyalty, the evaluation of adaptive organizational structures, a redefinition of organizational purpose, communications, intrapreneurship, multinationals and globalization.

The impact of these events on the modern manager will be studied with attention directed toward explaining how these changes can be handled. A past, present and future framework will be used.

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Management is not a new concept.

It has been employed for thousands of years, as seen in the practices of the Sumerians, the Romans, the Islam and the Roman Catholic Church. However, the emergence of the factory system presented management with a new challenge. With industrialization it became necessary to develop rational, scientific principles for handling workers, materials, money and machinery. The scientific managers played a major role in helping attain this objective.

The Evaluation of Management Thought

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The primary goal of these managers was that of achieving the highest productivity possible by devising efficient work methods and encouraging employees to take advantage of these new techniques.

In the United States, people such as Frederick W. Taylor made scientific management famous. His experiments at Bethlehem Steel illustrated the importance of time-and-motion study, and his differential piece-rate system provides students an insight into the types of wage incentive payments plans used during this period.

Another important scientific manager of the day was Frank Gilbreth, renowned for his work in time-and-motion study and for large body of work in management in which he collaborated with Lillian Gilbreth.

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The success of the scientific managers brought about changes in the worker-manager ratio and moved the focus of attention further up the hierarchy. The result was two distinct levels of inquiry about management. The first sought to identify generally the purview of management. The second thought to examine both individual and group behavior in organizations.

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The most famous of the early management theorists was Henri Fayol. Fayol’s outstanding contribution was the conceptual framework he provided for analyzing the management process. In the behavioral area, Elton Mayo studied group behavior in organizations. The Hawthorne studies, however, had an even greater impact on the field, and they became the single most important foundation for the behavioral approach to management. Meanwhile, Chester Barnard, whose acceptance theory of authority is still regarded as a major landmark in the development of management theory, made the most memorable contribution to early behavioral knowledge.

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In perspective all three groups – the scientific managers, the classical theorists and the human relations – had shortcomings. Yet it must also be realized that they complemented each other, helping to form the basis for modern management theory and practice.

The efficiency goals of the scientific managers and classical theorists led to the human relations philosophy of treating people well,which in turn has been replaced , by a human resources philosophy of using people well.

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Modern management theory is currently in the schools phase. Three schools of management thought are the management process, the quantitative and the behavioral schools.

Modern School of Management Thought

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The management process or classical, school traces its ancestry to Fayol. One of its major tenets is that by analyzing management along functional lines, a framework can be constructed into which all new management concepts can be placed. This framework consists of a process of interrelated functions such as planning, organizing and controlling.

Another belief of the process school is that management principles can be derived through an analysis of managerial functions. A third tenet is that all managers, regardless of enterprise; activity or hierarchical level performs the basic management functions. Additionally, the process school stresses the development of a management philosophy.

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The quantitative, or management science, school consists of theorists who see management as a system of mathematical models and processes.

Relying heavily on the application of scientific analysis to managerial problems, economic effectiveness criteria, and the use of computers, adherents of this school have promoted understanding of the need for goal formulation and the measurement of performance.

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The behavioral school consists of two branches: interpersonal behavior and group behavior. The former is heavily psychological in orientation; the latter is heavily sociological.

While this school lacks the type of framework used by management process advocates, it does not lack structure. However, there is a major difference in method. Instead of working from functions to activities and principles, as the management process advocates do, the behaviorists work in the opposite direction. They start with human behavior research and build up to topics or functions.

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Today there is no unified theory of management. Several reasons can be cited, among them semantics, differing definitions of management and lack of research.

Advocates of each school claim that the others have serious flaws.

The process school is seen as being too static; the quantitative school is seen as a series of useful tools but not a school; the behaviorists are attacked as failing to see the total picture.

IT IS STILL UNCLEAR WHEATHER THE THREE SCHOOLS WILL EVER BE SYNTHESIZED.

Thank you.