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Management Thinkers: A Chronology of Contributors
Dr Richard J Varey
BNFL Corporate Communications Unit
The Management School
University of Salford
This paper provides an attempt at a historical perspective on the progression of
thinking in the evolving field of management.
1.
The Early Origins of the Evolving Discipline of Management
People who have managed organisations have been concerned with increasing
productivity, improving performance, and learning new and better ways to accomplish
their objectives. Management practice and research have sought to improve managers'
ability to perform better in their technical, administrative, and institutional
responsibilities. Although the basic principles of management seem simple, they took
centuries to develop. Some of the ideas are based on intuition, whereas others reflect
the experience of successful entrepreneurs, celebrated industrialists, pioneering
workers in organisations, and academics. Until the early 1900s intuition and experience
were the primary sources of management know-how. The development of the concept
of functions of management has allowed research to become an important additional
source of management principles. As factory systems and large organisations spread,
the nature of management responsibilities became an important question.
What are the origins of management theory? A long line of great thinkers have
contributed to its development, and some of the most important are mentioned in this
brief chronology of great thinkers in management.
The ideas we now take for granted as constituting management have their origins in
Sumarian (5000 BC) and Egyptian (2300 BC) history. Evidence has been found of
record-keeping and planning and control methods. The Chinese writer, Mencius,
emphasised the need for a system in business, around 500 BC. The Greeks (350 BC)
and Romans had forms of administration for their vast empires. During the Middle
Ages bookkeeping and accounting methods came to the fore, especially in 14th and
15th Century Italy. Pacioli of Genoa invented double-entry book-keeping, for example.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1525) enunciated leadership qualities, by applying current
military strategy to government.
2. The Industrial Revolution
The concepts of how to control organisations of manual workers by applying the
principle of specialisation can be traced back to Adam Smith (1776), although he is
more famous for his moral philosophy than for ideas that are strictly economic.
Eli Whitney (1799) experimented with interchangeable parts, cost accounting and
quality control as well as the production line and work analysis ideas.
Robert Owen (1810) recognised the need for more humane personnel practices and
applied his ideas in his mill in Scotland, and thought out some basic industrial relations
principles. George Palmer, co-founder of Huntley and Palmer Biscuits, pioneered job
security, sick pay, employee self-development, sales area management, and decorative
packaging! James Montgomery demonstrated that supervision and work organisation
could make a big difference to quality and productivity in his Glasgow cotton mills.
Charles Babbage was a professor of mathematics and inventor of the first mechanical
calculator (1832). He discussed ideas of scientific method including specialisation and
the division of labour, as well as time and motion study and cost accounting. he was
concerned with productivity and cost reduction.
Douglas McCallum, another Scot, contributed ideas of effective supervision and the
organisation chart to factory management. He became a major general during the US
Civil War. Henry Poor built on McCallum's ideas with the basis of what become a
theory of leadership. His ideas included systems management and conflict resolution.
Although some attention was given during the industrial revolution to the development
of management techniques, it was not until about 1870 that technical periodicals and
journals began to carry articles on production management and the analysis of costs. In
the following twenty years a category of recurrent topics emerged which would today
be classified as 'management'.
Emerson's contribution was drawn from his experiences as an engineer on the
spreading US railways. He saw the need for clear division of line-staff jobs and
management responsibilities.
1881 saw the establishment of the world's first business school, The Wharton School,
at the University of Pennsylvania.
The first true management book appeared in 1896 when J Slater-Lewis published 'The
Commercial Organisation of Factories'. This textbook of organisation and management
was in many ways decades ahead of its time, containing many ideas which are still
current in modern management.
In the early years of the 20th century the professional members of the technical
societies, such as the Institution of Mechanical Engineers began to take a great interest
in management. Many of the early British publications wee by accountants and
engineers, whilst in American during the same period, there was lively debate about
Scientific Management. F W Taylor (1903 and 1911), Gantt and the Gilbreths
(1909-11) pioneered techniques for systematic management but were little interested in
publishing their findings in the literature. Each produced one or two books, however,
which are still used in management circles today. In the UK their ideas were met with
suspicion by the leaders of organised labour and this generated an emotional opposition
that has persisted even to today. Taylor's work on the science of work and 'functional
management' was not published until 1911.
Frederick Taylor (1856-1917) has become known as the father of scientific
management. His aim was to increase worker efficiency by scientifically designing
jobs, and he believed that there was one best way to do a job and that it must be
discovered and then put into operation. His most famous observation and
experimentation was done at the Bethlehem Steel Company in North America, where
he decided to try to construct a "science of shovelling" to modify the job of employees
who shovelled materials. He asked questions about the size and weight of the shovel
used, which worked best with different materials, how long did it take to pick up and
put down the shovel-full of material, and how long was required to swing the shovel
from place to place and throw the load a given distance? He was able to find ways of
increasing the amount of material shovelled each day by matching shovel size with the
size of the men, the weight of materials, and the height and distance the materials were
to be thrown. The number of shovellers was reduced from 600 to 140 over three years,
whilst the average amount of material shovelled per worker raise from 16 to 59 tons
per day. This resulted in a raise of 60% in average earnings for the workers whilst the
cost of handling the materials dropped by over 50%.
The idea of finding and using the one best way to perform a job was also the interest of
husband and wife team, the Gilbreths (Frank, the building contractor and consultant
1868-1924, and Lillian the industrial psychologist 1878-1972). They used motion study
to reduce each job to the most basic movements possible, and this form of analysis is
still used today to establish job performance standards. The time taken to carry out
each movement required to do the job is measured. Inefficient or unnecessary motions
are identified and eliminated. Certain variables of the worker, the working
environment, and the motion itself were taken into account. Examples of these
variables include anatomy, experience, size, health, and temperament; clothes, heating,
lighting, tools, and union rules; and direction, cost, speed, and combination with other
motions and sequence, respectively. The Gilbreth's work made a major contribution to
time and motion and work methods study and pioneered the forerunner of management
development.
Also interested in increasing worker efficiency, Henry Gantt realised that
unsatisfactory and ineffective tasks and piece rates (incentive pay for each item
produced by an individual) were usually set on what someone else had done in the past
or one someone's opinion of what could be done. Gantt felt that the role of scientific
management was to get rid of the opinion and base judgements on exactly what could
be done. Gantt stated that "the essential differences between the best system of today
and those of the past are the manner in which tasks are 'scheduled' and the manner in
which their performance is rewarded". His effort was directed towards improving
performance by task-scheduling and reward innovation. Gantt is remembered primarily
for the scheduling tool, still used today, that bears his name (the Gantt chart
summarises what work was scheduled for specific time periods, how much of it has
been completed, and by whom it was done).
Pareto is famous for his 80/20 rule. An economist and sociologist, he saw society as a
system of forces which breaks down when its normal equilibrium is destroyed. His
ideas were later explored in the Hawthorne experiments.
The early years of the 20th century in the UK was a barren period in management
writings since so much of what was published was superficial, and largely ignored by
owners and managers. British industry was largely ignorant of contemporary advances
in management thought and practice the outbreak of war in 1914, although there were
notable exceptions such as Cadbury and Renold.
Henri Fayol, a French mining engineer, gave a paper to a Congress of a Metallurgical
Society in 1908 and put forward two revolutionary lines of thought. Eventually
published in an English translation of his 1916 book after his death in 1925, the ideas
were that management could be analysed systematically as a process and could, and
should, be taught. Fayol (1841-1925) is considered to be the pioneer of administrative
theory due to his writings on the elements and general principles of management. The
elements he outlined - planning, organising, command, co-ordination, and control still represent a useful way to study, analyse, and act upon the management process. He
believed that "all activities to which industrial undertakings give rise can be divided
into six activity groups": technical - production, manufacture, adaptation; commercial buying, selling, exchange; financial - search for and optimum use of capital; security protection of property and persons; accounting - stocktaking, balance sheet, costs,
statistics; and the managerial activities listed previously. His general philosophy of
management is still looked to for advice and guidance by many modern managers. His
general principles cover three general themes of organisational efficiency, handling
people, and appropriate management action. With the publication of his work, the
study of management began to receive more attention.
Fayol's 14 General Principles
Division of work - specialisation to make best use of the human resources of the
organisation.
Authority - the right of the manager to command, with equivalent responsibility i.e.
accountability.
Discipline - common effort through penalties for employees - self-discipline for
managers.
Unity of Command - workers receive orders from only one 'boss'.
Unity of Direction - people working together must have the same overall objectives in
a single plan.
Subordination of individual interests to the general interest of the organisation as a
whole.
Remuneration - must satisfy both the employee and the employer, and many variables
such as cost of living, success of the business, and general business conditions should
be considered in determining rate of pay.
Centralisation - lowers the importance of the subordinate role - degree of centralisation
or decentralisation should depend on the specific organisation.
Scalar Chain hierarchy for unity of direction with lateral communication - managers
are in hierarchies as part of a chain like authority scale - lower-level managers should
always keep upper-level managers informed.
Order - all materials and people related to a specific kind of work should be assigned to
the same general location in the organisation.
Equity - Fair and equal treatment for all.
Stability of tenure - retaining employees should be a priority.
Initiative - allow and encourage staff to be enterprising and self-directed in new and
additional work.
Esprit de Corps - team spirit with motivation by management to encourage harmony
and a general good feeling among employees.
Henry Ford introduced innovations in technical control through flow assembly lines
(1913) and the '$5 day'. He was also a master marketer, first recognising that the
middle-class car market existed, and that he could provide products that the people
wanted.
Max Weber's work on bureaucratic management and how individuals respond to
power and authority in organisations and how they impact on leadership style was
published in 1924, four years after his death. He was concerned with the nature of
bureaucracies, types of organisation, and organisation design. Also around this time
Ludwig von Bertalanffy wrote about systems theory. Mary Parker Follett,
educationalist, philosopher, and political scientist, gave her first paper in 1924 to a
Conference of the Bureau of Personnel Administration in the United States. Over the
next few years she published a remarkable series of papers on the fundamentals of
management. She was concerned with the existence of sound principle rather than the
practice of management. Her 'law of the situation' points to the need for flexibility to
meet different situations. She was also interested in group dynamics and organisation
design.
The famous Hawthorne Studies took place between 1924 and 1933 (more on this later).
Harvard professor Elton Mayo's contribution was the notion of 'social man', i.e.
solidarity in groups, and that decisions may be 'non-logical' i.e. based on sentiment and
emotion, rather than purely rational. This was in the emerging humanistic management
tradition which emphasised human relations in industry and respect for individuals. He
also published 'Democracy and Freedom' in 1919. Although Hugo Munsterberg had
earlier suggested that experimental psychology techniques could be applied to the
selection, training and motivation of personnel, it is generally thought that the
behavioural approach to management began with a series of studies at the Hawthorne
Works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago which took place from 1924 to
1932. The Australian social psychologist Elton Mayo (1880-1949) is widely credited
with this work, although he was only peripherally involved compared with
Roethlisberger, Dickson and Whitehead, and for only part of the study time. Accounts
of the studies describe the relay test room experiments and the bank wiring observation
room experiment. The experimenters looked at productivity of the workers under
different working conditions. They tried to determine the relationship between level of
lighting and efficiency by measuring worker output. Surprisingly, they found that no
matter what conditions employees were exposed to, production increased. The
experimenters concluded that the attention given to the group was sufficient to alter
their work efficiency and that indeed human factors within organisations could
significantly influence production. They also examined social relationships in the
working group. It was believed that members of the work group, who were on
piecework incentives, would pressure each other to work harder and so earn more pay.
Again surprisingly, the opposite occurred. The faster workers were pressured to slow
down. It seemed that the men were more concerned about preserving relationships in
the work group than earning more money. Once published, the Hawthorne Effect and
social relationships conclusions gave managers an impetus for trying to understand
people. This led to the development of a human relations approach to management,
based on the growing belief that neglect of human factors had economic and social
costs in terms of resistance and disenchantment.
Walter Shewhart was perhaps the first to give serious attention to the relationship
between manufacturing quality and economic performance of the firm (1931).
Oliver Sheldon viewed management in much the same way as did Fayol but also
suggested that management had both a technical and an ethical dimension. He
introduced a philosophy which tried to combine the drive for technical efficiency with
a concern for social responsibility. Not until the 1970s did this become an important
management consideration.
The possibility of a science of management was being seriously considered by the mid1930s. Chester Barnard's 'Functions of the Executive' was the last major publication
in the field before the Second World War. In this classic book Barnard, then president
of a major US telephone company, analysed the process of co-operation that is inherent
in management. He believed that whilst management has its techniques and technical
operations, it also has a social content without which effectiveness or efficiency cannot
be attained. His notion of informal organisation based on values was published in his
famous book in 1938. For Barnard, management was essentially about establishing and
maintaining a system of co-operation through communication.
Roethlisberger and Dickson, the main researchers in the Hawthorne experiments,
published their results in 1939.
In the 1940s, the idea of the open system, part of biologist Ludwig von Bartalanffy's
General Systems Theory, received wider application in management thinking. A
biologist, von Bartananffy was the first to suggest that a systems approach, which
recognised wholes rather than trying to break things down into component parts, was
necessary to solve many problems.
Abraham Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs' was first published in 1943 and coincided
with the great thrust for mass production of war equipment and supplies. As a
psychologist and behavioural scientist, Maslow tried to account for human motivation.
He has been influential as perhaps the founder of 'humanist psychology', urging the
'humanisation' of work.
Luther Gulick's theory of departmentation categorised the principal methods by which
departments can be organised. His thinking was similar to that of Fayol's 14 Principles
of Management.
Lyndall Urwick (1943), a British army officer turned management consultant, was not
an innovator in management thinking, but rather an integrator of the works of Taylor,
Fayol, and others. He attempted to unify management knowledge.
Kurt Lewin (1948), the German psychologist, worked on group dynamics, conflict
management, and resistance to change.
Following the end of hostilities in Europe, Talcott Parsons (1951) wrote extensively
about the social system.
Joseph Juran asserted that company-wide quality cannot be delegated and published
the first quality manual in 1951. Like Deming, Juran lectured extensively in Japan.
The primary tasks of effective management have been the concern of Peter Drucker, a
prolific and influential writer, and many claim he introduced the true 'discipline of
management' (1954). He is widely credited with being the first to see that the purpose
of business lies outside of itself, with customers, and that structure depends on
strategy. he popularised management by objectives (MBO). Still writing today, Drucker
remains a major influential contributor to contemporary management thinking. His first
book appeared in 1939.
Kenneth Boulding (1956), an economist, defined a systems management approach
which viewed the organisation as a social system which requires stability and must be
adaptive, requiring the acquisition and analysis of feedback. This was a forerunner of
strategic management theory.
C Northcote Parkinson's books illuminated management thought on the role of
business enterprise (1957) and had wider influence in post-war society.
Joan Woodward (1958) rigorously analysed the relationship between the nature of
technology used and the structure of an organisation.
US clinical psychologist and management consultant, Frederick Herzberg's (1959)
big contribution was in suggesting that job satisfaction could be divided into 'hygiene'
factors and 'motivation' factors and that managers could design 'job enrichment' to
improve performance. In 1973 he predicted that 'Taylorism' would disappear within 10
years because it was obsolete and inefficient.
The first management theorist to emphasise the importance of marketing was
Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School (1960). His 'Marketing Myopia' article is
still held to be a classic.
Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y are concerned with authoritarian versus
participative management styles. McGregor, an American social psychologist
specialising in human behaviour within organisations, published his work in 1960. He
described two classes of assumptions that managers might have about people. Theory
X people are supposed dislike work and initiative and therefore have to be directed and
coerced, whilst Theory Y people have self-direction and self-control if committed to
organisational goals and involved in decision-making. This is clearly part of the
human relations tradition.
Rensis Likert (1961) pioneered research into the link between leadership styles and
business performance. Like McGregor, he was concerned with the interaction of
groups of people within organisations and their supporting relationships to each other.
The economic historian Alfred Chandler (1962) was one of the first management
theorists to see the importance of creating a strategic plan before designing the
structure of the organisation.
As president of General Motors from 1923 to the mid 1950s, Alfred Sloan virtually
single-handedly invented the decentralised, multi-divisional corporation structure
which is so prevalent today (1963). Although Sloan wrote only one book, about his
time at GM, he has captivated many other writers, including Peter Drucker.
Eric Trist (1963) was a key figure in the investigations conducted by the Tavistock
Institute, and concluded that technology is a man-machine relationship that determines
organisation structure. He described organisations as socio-technical systems. Blake
and Mouton (1964) published their tools for interventions in management
development, called the Managerial Grid.
The theory and practice of strategic planning has been the focus of influential work by
Russian-born Igor Ansoff (1965). His series of books have been milestones in the
development of strategic management, being based on original research work with
managers, consultants and academics across the world.
Warren Bennis was an outspoken critic of bureaucracy and predicted its decline
(1966).
Since 1967 Edward de Bono has urged managers to think about thinking in over 30
books, including the invention of 'lateral thinking'.
Robert Townsend published 'Up the Organisation' in 1970. Whilst satirical and
somewhat irreverent, it contains lots of good advice for managers and laid down many
guiding principles for the later excellence movement.
Stafford Beer (1972) saw management as an information processing activity and the
manager's primary task as control. he felt that the computer would be a tool for
revolutionising change in management and the principles of cybernetics as the science
of control systems, must therefore be the key principles of management.
Strategy-making, what managers actually do with their time, how managers' mental
processes work, and the design of organisations to suit their needs have been the major
themes contributed by Henry Mintzberg (1973). he continues to be perhaps the most
influential writer on organisation design.
'Small is Beautiful' was the single idea which made Fritz Schumacher famous in
1973. He revolted against large, impersonal organisations. His book held many other
ideas which have since been 're-invented' by other writers, such as sustainable
economic activity, pollution control, social impact of industry, etc.
Charles Handy (first book published in 1976) continues to write and teach his views
on the future of work, business organisation and corporate culture. He has written
mostly for a popular readership, but undoubtedly has been an influence on many
managers and students of business and management.
Lawrence and Lorsch (1976) developed a contingency-based model for
organisational structure and strategy.
Philip Kotler is arguably the most famous purveyor of principles of marketing, with
several best-selling textbooks to his name.
The 1970s saw strategic management and contingency theory increasingly addressing
institutional issues in management. Michael Porter has achieved considerable fame
and fortune with his ideas on strategies for competitive advantage (1980). He has since
moved on to look at competition on a global scale. William Ouchi's Theory Z was
published in 1981. Since then technology has dominated new thinking with the
widespread acceptance of the dawning of the information age.
W Edwards Deming (1982) is widely recognised as the founder of the quality
movement. He worked extensively in Japan from 1950, running many lectures as part
of the efforts to rebuild the country after the war. The famous '14 Points of
Management' are the core of his philosophy. Both Deming and Joseph Juran along
with Philip Crosby and Feigenbaum have advocated incremental improvement
processes. In his 1986 book 'Out of the Crisis', Deming urged a transformation of
American management style.
As a consultant rather than an academic or manager, Tom Peters is probably the
world's most famous management guru, following sales of 7 million copies of 'In
Search of Excellence' (with Thomas Waterman) (1982). Whilst perhaps not a truly
original thinker, Peters has popularised management to a mass readership and put the
concept of managing change on every manager's agenda in the 1990s. he has recently
suggested that excellence is no longer enough!
Managing change and empowering human potential in organisations have been the
special interests of the US sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter, another of the
'excellence' gurus (1983). She enumerated seven essential skills for managers of the
future in a trilogy of books which have been popular and influential amongst managers.
She is Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and until
recently edited the prestigious Harvard Business Review.
Michael Hammer's approach is complete organisational business process reengineering (BPR) to ensure that the enterprise is truly matched to its environment.