Theories of Management

BOH4M

Theories of Management

• Management may be traced back to 5000 B.C.

• Management was important to the construction of the Egyptian Pyramids, rise of the Roman Empire and the commercial success of the 14th Century.

Classical Approaches to Management

• Assumes that people are rational and driven by economic concerns

• 3 branches:– Scientific management– Administrative principles– Bureaucratic organization

Scientific Method: Frederick Taylor

• Noticed that many workers did their job without clear/uniform expectations

• Believed good management needed to design jobs perfectly using “time studies” to ensure the highest productivity”

Scientific Method: Frederick Taylor

• 4 Guiding Principles:– Every job has a science (tools, motions)– Select workers with right abilities for the job– Train workers and provide incentives– Support workers by carefully planning their

work and streamlining the work process

• In one study, scientific method reduced the number of motions of brick layers and tripled productivity

Administrative Principles: Henry Fayol

• Believed management could be taught using guiding principles– Scalar Chain Principle: clear, unbroken line of

communication from top to bottom of organization– Unity of Command Principle: each person should

receive orders from only one boss– Unity of Direction Principle: one person should be

in charge of all activities with the same performance objectives (ie accounting dept = lowering costs while marketing dept = increasing sales)

Administrative Principles: Henry Fayol

• Identifies five duties of management including:– Foresight– Organization– Command– Coordination– Control

Mary Parker Follett

• Viewed organizations as communities where diverse individuals should labour in harmony without dominance over one another.

• Manager’s job is to help people cooperate and meet their interests.

• Make every employee an owner to create collective responsibility

Bureaucratic Organization: Max Weber

• Believed management needed a rigid, rational organization founded on logic, order and legitimate authority

• Characteristics of a bureaucratic organization are:– Clear division of labour – jobs are well defined so

people become highly productive doing them– Well defined levels of authority which cannot be

overridden– Formal rules and procedures to direct actions and

behaviour of employees– Workers are promoted based strictly on performance

Behavioural Approaches to Management

• In the 1920s, management theorists began to take into account the human side of the workplace. Theories that evolved out of this school of thought were:– The Hawthorne Studies– Maslow’s theory of human needs– Theory X/Theory Y– Personality and organization

The Hawthorne Studies

• “Accidental” experiment• Originally, a scientific management experiment

to determine how various factors (such as lighting) would influence productivity

• Results were inconclusive and researchers blamed “psychological factors” for influencing the outcome

• Subsequent experiments yielded similar results… productivity increased regardless of what changes were made

“The Hawthorne Effect”

• The tendency for people centred out for individual attention to perform as expected.

• People perform differently when they know they are being observed and studied.