Management Theories and Styles

The concentrated study of management as a separate and distinct field of endeavor is a product of the last century. Most writers agree that the origin of this young discipline was the work performed by Frederick W. Taylor (1911) and Frank Gilbreth (1912) during the scientific movement that developed just after 1900. The essence of scientific management was in four general areas (Massie, 1979):

1. The discovery, through use of the scientific method, of basic elements of man's work to replace rules of thumb.

2. The identification of management's function of planning work, instead of allowing workmen to choose their own methods.

3. The selection and training of workers and the development of cooperation, instead of encouraging individualistic efforts by employees.

4. The division of work between management and workers so that each would perform those duties for which he was best fitted, with the resultant increase in efficiency (p. 16).

By 1924, when the first International Management Congress was held in Prague, scientific management had become international in scope. Henri Fayol (1949) had previously led a French movement in the improvement of work at the administrative level of organization, and was the first to propose

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to offer answers to problems dealing with the future. Modern developments in management have promised help to the manager in still another area, namely how to handle uncertainty. The maturing of the field of statistics proved to be of great help. With the advent of computers, managers can now deal with theoretical problems in a more rigorous and definite manner. Other developments in quantitative analysis led to the creation of a new analytical profession called operations research. The limits of operations research are ill-defined, because its applications are constantly breaking out of previously conceived frameworks. Management science is a term of more recent origin and refers more specifically to the application of quantitative techniques to management problems. The trend in the 1970s has focused on organizational behavior (built on the behavioral approach) as almost synonymous with management, while in the last decade, increasing attention has been given to what has been referred to as a "contingency theory" of management. This theory recognizes and makes use of the contribution of all approaches to the study of management. Its basic assumption is that the organization is so complex--in technology and market env
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Approximate Word count = 1475
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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