MANAGEMENT: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

Since the beginning of time, humans have been managing—managing other people, managing organizations, and managing themselves. Management has been dealt with in this publication as a process that is used to accomplish organizational goals. To some, management is thought of as an art; to others, as a science. Each of those perspectives is grounded in the early writings and teaching of a group of managerial pioneers.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

While it can be argued that management began well before the Industrial Revolution, it is often felt that what emerged as contemporary management thought began with the beginning of industrial development. The Industrial Revolution began in the mid-eighteenth century when factories were first built and laborers were employed to work in them. Prior to this period, most workers were active in an agrarian system of maintaining the land.

Adam Smith (1723–1790), the economist who wrote The Wealth of Nations, was an early contributor to management thought during the Industrial Revolution. He was considered a liberal thinker, and his philosophy was the foundation for the laissez-faire management doctrine. His thoughts about division of labor were fundamental to current notions of work simplification and time studies. His emphasis on the relationship between specialization of labor and technology was somewhat similar to the later thinking of Charles Babbage.

Another early pioneer of management thought regarding the factory system was Robert Owen (1771–1858), an entrepreneur who tried to halt the Industrial Revolution because he saw disorder and evil in what was happening. Owen founded his first factory at the age of 18 in Manchester, England. His approach to managing was to observe everything and to maintain order and regularity throughout the industrial facility.

Owen moved on to a venture in Scotland, where he encountered a shortage of qualified laborers for his factory. His approach to handling disciplinary problems with his workers was to appeal to their moral sense, not to use corporal punishment. He used silent monitors, a system whereby he awarded four types of marks to superintendents, who in turn awarded workers. The marks were colorcoded in order of merit. Blocks of wood were painted with the different colors and placed at each workstation. Workers were rated at the end of each day, and the appropriate color was turned to face the aisle so that anyone passing by could see how the worker had performed the previous day. The system was an attempt to motivate laggards to perform better and good workers to maintain high performance.

Charles Babbage (1792–1871) was noted for his application of technological aids to human effort in the manufacturing process. Babbage invented the first computer, in the form of a mechanical calculator, in 1822. Many more modern computers used basic elements of his design. Supervising construction of this invention led Babbage to an interest in management, particularly in the concept of division of labor in the manufacturing process. Babbage invented equipment that could monitor the output of workers, which led to a profit-sharing system in which workers were compensated based on the profits of the company as well as for suggestions that would improve the manufacturing processes in addition to being paid a wage.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

Scientific principles for the management of workers, materials, money, and capital were introduced between 1785 and 1835. Scientific managers made careful and rational decisions, kept orderly and complete books, and were able to react to events quickly and expertly. Some of the men discussed above were important early contributors to the scientific management movement before others came along to solidify the thinking. Scientific management of the twenty-first century was introduced by several more contemporary thinkers.

Frederick Taylor (1856–1915) was an engineer who had an innovative approach to management. His approach was for managers, rather than being taskmasters, to adopt a broader, more comprehensive view of managing and see their job as incorporating the elements of planning, organizing, and controlling. His ideas of management evolved as he worked for different firms. As a result of his experiences as both a worker and a manager, he developed the concept of time and motion studies.

In what became the origin of contemporary scientific management, Taylor set out to scientifically define what workers ought to be able to do with their equipment and resources in a full day of work. In his process of time study, each job was broken into as many simple, elementary movements as possible, and useless movements were discarded. The quickest and best methods for each elementary movement were selected by observing and timing the most skilled workers at each. His system evolved into the piece-rate system.

Frank (1868–1924) and Lillian (1878–1972) Gilbreth refined the field of motion study and laid the foundation for modern applications of job simplification, meaningful work standards, and incentive wage plans. The Gilbreths were interested not only in motion studies

but also in the improvement of the totality of people and the environment, which they believed could be done through training, better work methods, improved environments and tools, and a healthy psychological outlook. Lillian Gilbreth had a background in psychology and management. Frank Gilbreth's fame did not come until after his death in 1924.

BEHAVIORAL MANAGEMENT

The behavioral school of management grew out of the efforts of some to recognize the importance of the human endeavor in an organization. Followers of this school felt that if managers wanted to get things done, it must be through people—the study of workers and their interpersonal relationships.

Henry L. Gantt (1861–1919) was one of the earliest of the behavioral theorists. Although he could be classified in multiple categories, his passionate concern for the worker as an individual and his pleas for a humanitarian approach to management exemplify the behavioral approach. His early writing called for teaching and instructing workers, rather than driving them.

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), although trained in philosophy and political science, shifted her interests to vocational guidance, adult education, and social psychology. These led to her lifetime pursuit of developing a new managerial philosophy that would incorporate an understanding of the motivating desires of the individual and the group. She emphasized that workers on the job were motivated by the same forces that influenced their duties and pleasures away from the job and that the manager's role was to coordinate and facilitate group efforts, not to force and drive workers. Because of her emphasis on the group concept, the words "togetherness" and "group thinking" entered the managerial vocabulary.

Elton Mayo (1880–1949), best known for his Hawthorne experiments, introduced rest pauses in industrial plants and in so doing reduced employee turnover from 250 percent to 5 percent in some cases. He was concerned about human performance and working conditions. The work pauses, better known as breaks, reduced employee pessimism and improved morale and productivity.

MANAGEMENT PROCESS

The father of the management process school of thought was the Frenchman Henri Fayol (1841–1925), a mining engineer. He spent his entire working career with the same company, involved with coal mining and iron production. From his experiences as the managing director of the company, Fayol developed his general principles of administration. He thought that the study, analysis, and teaching of management should all be approached from the perspective of its functions, which he defined as forecasting and planning, organizing, commanding, controlling, and coordinating. He thought that planning was the most important and most difficult of these. Much of contemporary management thought revolves around the functions of management.

James D. Mooney (1884–1957), whose writings and research lent credence to the management process school of thinking, is credited with the notion that all great managers use the same principles of management. He emphasized a tight engineering approach to the manager's job of getting work done through others. He gave little thought to the human element, but instead was exclusively process-oriented. His approach to organizational analysis became classic.

CONCLUSION