1.Classical School of Management
It emerged around the turn of the 20th century. It is divided into scientific management theory which focuses on the work of individuals and Administrative management theory which is concerned with how organizations should be put together.
a)Scientific Management
It is closely associated with the work of Frederick W. Taylor, Frank and Lilian Gilbreth and Henry l. Gantt. They believed that by using observation, measurements, logics and analysis, the manual tasks could be redesigned to make their execution more efficient. The main objective of this initially was to determine how jobs could be designed in order to maximize the output per employee or to improve efficiency (F.W Taylor is the father of scientific management). Scientific management is the name given to the principles and practices that emerged out of F. Taylor?s work. He was interested in analysing the job and determining its basic concepts.
In order to do this, he conducted a wide variety of experiments with an intention to:
1. Know how long it should take a worker or a machine to perform a given task.
2. Develop uniform standards for work.
3. Find a method of maintaining the workers within the jobs.
4. Learn better ways of supervising and motivating the personnel.
In his study, he developed four major principles which are referred to as the elements of scientific management. Scientific selection of the workers so that each worker would be given responsibility for the task for which he/she is best suited. The workers must be scientifically selected and trained so that they can be more productive in their jobs. Encourage friendly interactions between management and employees but with a clear separation of their duties. There must be division of labor and co-operation between managers and workers.
Henry Gantt, Frank and Lilian Gilbreth as well contributed to scientific management by dedicating themselves to the idea of finding the one best way of doing every job. Henry Gantt developed graphic methods of describing plus making possible better managerial control. He emphasized the importance of time and cost in planning and controlling managerial works. As a result of his experiments, he developed the Gantt Chart which is a graphical method used by managers in scheduling, planning and controlling organizational activities.
Contributions of Scientific Management
Scientific management did not ignore the human element and has contributed to the systematic use of financial incentives which motivates people to produce as much as possible.
Enables management to set standards of performance that are attainable and to give extra pay to those who exceed the minimum i.e. those who produce more or exceed the production output should be rewarded more. Pay should always be pegged to performance and productivity. Based on the conclusion made by the scientific managers, modern managers should realize the importance of proper employees selection and those who are best suited for the job and henceforth training and development. Encourages the promotion of efficiency and combating waste and dedication to finding a better way of doing a job.
In conclusion and according to scientific management, managers today can't simply assume that employees are only interested on higher salaries/wages or that dividing jobs into their simplest tasks ensures a quality product, high morale and organizational effectiveness.
b)Administrative Management
Henry Fayol is recognized as the father of classical organization theory/father of modern management/administration management. He started as an Engineer and later became a very successful administrator in a large Fresh mining company. He believed that managers would be successful if they understood and applied the basic principles and functions of management. He believed that a manager?s job could be divided into 5 functions/processes of managerial responsibilities;
a. Planning - Choosing a course of action that will help the organization achieve its goals. Consists of activities a manager engages in to determine in advance what he and the subordinates would attempt to accomplish and how they will go about it.
b. Organizing- meaning mobilizing of resources to put plans into action. It's the work a manager undertakes to allocate and to arrange the work to be done to ensure its efficient and effective performance.
c. Directing- providing direction to employees and getting them to do their work. It?s a managerial function that enables managers to get things done through people, individuals and groups or teams. It constitutes motivation, leadership, communication and co-ordination which is a process of binding together, unifying and harmonizing all the activities and efforts within an organization setting.
d. Controlling- monitoring the plans to ensure that they are being followed, identifying deviations and establishing a corrective/remedial action.
e. Staffing: Ensuring that the organization has the right and qualified number of staff at any given time which constitutes recruitment and selection. Fayol developed 14 principles of management which he felt that they should be applied by managers at operational levels. His model of management is still applicable in our modern society today. He stressed that in describing the various managerial functions, the key responsibility and focus of a/any manager?s efforts has to be kept in mind very clearly, that is, that a/any manager achieves results by utilizing human and material resources efficiently and effectively.
Henry Fayol’s Fourteen Principles
Division of labour - Work must be divided among workers. It is based on the fact that specialization belongs to the natural order of things. The more people specialize, the more efficiently they can perform their work. Aims at producing more and better results with the same effort.
Authority and responsibility (right to command and have obligation) i.e. managers need authority to carry out responsibility. Authority is the right to command or the right to give order. Responsibility is an obligation and an essential counterpart of authority. Discipline - Workers should respect rules and regulations of the organization. It implies obedience and respect for the agreements between an organization and employees. Unity of command - An employee should receive commands from only one supervisor. Each employee should have one immediate Boss who gives instructions and the employee is accountable to. If this is violated, it undermines authority; discipline is also in jeopardy; order is disturbed and stability is threatened.
a. Unity of direction - One manager should have one plan for each of the organizational objectives. The efforts of everyone in the organization should be co-ordinated and focused in the same direction.” One manager, one plan, one set of objectives”
Individual subordination - the interest of the organization should always come before the individual interest. Where the interests differ, managers should always reconcile.
b. Remuneration - The pay should be fair and good and performance should always be rewarded.
c. Centralization - There should be one point in the organization that exercises overall control. It is decreasing the role of the subordinates in decision making and facilitates communication and consultation between organizational units. Decentralization is its opposite and it?s the concept of offering more participation in decisions making.
d. Scalar chain of command - authority should flow downwards from the top to the bottom through the chain of command.
e. Order - people and materials should be at the right place at the right time.
f. Equity - Managers should be fair in dealing with employees.
Stability of tenure
Efficiency can only be achieved by a stable labour force. A high staff turnover is not healthy for an efficient functioning of an organization.
g. Initiative - Employees should be given freedom to act and be innovative. And participate in decision making.
h. Espirit de corps – This means in union there is strength- teamwork should always be encouraged.
Management universality argues that those with general knowledge of management functions and principles can manage any type of an organization. It says that these principles and functions can be learned by anybody who is interested and especially through formal training.
Marx Weber and Bureaucracy
Marx Weber (1864 - 1920) was a German sociologist who was sensitive to the abuse of power by people in managerial positions. In order to reduce the arbitrary use of power he recommended an organizational system that would be run by rules and regulations and he referred this organization to as a Bureaucracy. Under a bureaucratic organization there is a hierarchical structure based on the formal authority and where people are guided by rational rules and regulations.
According to Weber, the basic principles of bureaucratic organizations are:
1. Division of labour by functional specialization.
2. A well defined hierarchy of authority.
3. A cadre of professional employees.
4. A system of rules and procedures.
5. Autonomous decisions by office holders.
6. Merit based employee selection and tenure.
7. Maintenance of written records, communications and rules.
Evaluation of the Classical Organizational Theories
Although the classical theories contributed greatly to the understanding and practice of management, it has been criticized on a number of grounds. These theories assumed that all 29
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organizations can be managed by the same set of rules and regulations. They failed to appreciate the difference between various organizations. e.g. public enterprise and private enterprises.
The classical approach can be effective under a stable environment but with the frequent changes in modern management, it proves ineffective as conditions require modifications of management principles and bureaucratic rules. Following outdated rules and principles can be counterproductive. The classical theories undervalued the human element in organizations. It considered people as passive and capable of reacting only to organizational rules and economic incentives. It ignored qualities such as; attitudes, emotions, creativity and initiative and it failed to accommodate the fact that people are capable of going against rules.
Note: The classical organizational theories of Henry Fayol and Marx Weber have had a lot of impact on management even today. Many current textbooks in management are organized on the basis of the principles and theories put forward by the two people. The principles are still valid in modern management and many complex organizations today are managed through the use of bureaucratic rules put forward by Marx Weber.
In order to address the short comings of the classical theories the human relations movements (HRM) and the behavioral science approached were developed.
2. Behavioral School of Management Theory
This theory was developed because others had neglected the human element in the workplace. It is considered to be a more people oriented theory. Among the contributors include; Chester l.Bernard (1886 - 1961), Mary Parker Follet (1868-1933), Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916), and Prof. Elton Mayo (1880-1949) who is associated with the Human relation movement (HRM).
Mary Parker recognized the potential importance of the individual but advocated that no one could become a whole person except as a member of a group. She strongly believed that management and the labour force must become part of one group.
Chester Bernard said that people come together in formal organizations to achieve things they can't achieve when working alone. As they pursue the goals of the organisation, they must also satisfy their individual needs. He believed that for an organizationto function effectively there is need to maintain a balance between the organisational goals and the goals of individuals.
Hugo Munsterberg is the father of industrial psychology and he suggested that productivity could be increased through finding the best possible person meaning the worker whose mental ability is the best for the job. He also suggested that productivity can be increased by use of the psychological influence meaning identifying the best possible effects to motivate the employees. He stressed on finding the best possible work or the ideal psychological conditions for maximizing productivity. He was interested in the mutuality of interests between managers and employees. He developed psychological tests for fitting the right person to the right job which is similar to Fredrick Taylor's principle of the scientific selection of workers.
Human Relations Movement to Management
Management can be defined as a set of activities directed at the efficient and effective utilization of resources in order to achieve organizational objectives. Management focuses on the entire organization from both a short and a long-term perspective. Management is the managerial process of forming a strategic vision, setting objectives, crafting a strategy and then implementing and executing the strategy. Management goes beyond the organization?s internal operations to include the industry and the general environment. The key emphasis is on issues related to environmental scanning and industry analysis, appraisal of current and future competitors, assessment of core competencies, strategic control and the effective allocation of organizational resources (HRM).
It started in the 1920's and 1950's and concerns itself with the treatment of psychological satisfaction as the primary management concern. Elton Mayol is referred to as the father of HRM. HR refers to how people interact within an organization i.e. the way managers interact with their subordinates. When the management of people leads to better performance, then there are good human relations. When the morale and efficiency deteriorate in an organization HR is bad. Managers need to know why employees behave the way they do, what psychological factors motivate them if they are to create good human relations. Good human relations exist when
people interact with mutual respect and treat each other with understanding. Managers should try to respect their subordinates while the employees should also reciprocate.
Human Relations Originated from the Hawthorne Studies
Hawthorne studies attempted to improve efficiency and morale at the work place by understanding the underlying factors behind human motivation at the work place i.e. by understanding those factors that motivate man to work. These experiments were conducted by Professor Elton Mayol and his colleagues and they based their experiments at the Hawthorne plant of western electric company in Chicago (USA) between 1927-932. The experiments aimed at investigating the relationship between certain physical factors (lighting-illumination, heating and ventilation) and workers productivity.
Workers were subdivided into several experimental work groups and each group was subjected to deliberate changes in the physical factors i.e. deliberate changes in lighting, heating and ventilation. A control group was also used whose physical factors remained constant throughout the experiment. The observation was that the productivity of both groups increased with increased lighting, ventilation, heating and other physical factors. This remained even when the physical factors were increased to the extreme.
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people interact with mutual respect and treat each other with understanding. Managers should try to respect their subordinates while the employees should also reciprocate.
2.4.10 Human Relations Originated from the Hawthorne Studies
Hawthorne studies attempted to improve efficiency and morale at the work place by understanding the underlying factors behind human motivation at the work place i.e. by understanding those factors that motivate man to work. These experiments were conducted by Professor Elton Mayol and his colleagues and they based their experiments at the Hawthorne plant of western electric company in Chicago (USA) between 1927-z932. The experiments aimed at investigating the relationship between certain physical factors (lighting-illumination, heating and ventilation) and workers productivity.
Workers were subdivided into several experimental workgroups and each group was subjected to deliberate changes in the physical factors i.e. deliberate changes in lighting, heating and ventilation. A control group was also used whose physical factors remained constant throughout the experiment. The observation was that the productivity of both groups increased with increased lighting, ventilation, heating and other physical factors. This remained even when the physical factors were increased to the extreme.
It also continued to increase when the physical factors were reduced to the minimum. The mystery was that the increase in productivity was noted in the control group whose factors remained the same. This made it difficult to arrive at an accurate conclusion which prompted further studies by Prof. Elton Mayol from Harvard University. Elton Mayol introduced new variables to the groups e.g. higher wages, introduction of the rest period (breaks) of varying duration s. He also shortened the work day and the work week and the workers were also allowed to choose their own rest periods and given greater say in major decisions in the experiments. He observed that financial incentives in form of higher pay had no influence in productivity.
Productivity even with the introduction of new variables tended to rise and fall erratically. He concluded that money and other materials may affect productivity in one way or another but they
could not motivate the workers towards better performance. He also concluded that increased concern about the workers welfare and a more sympathetic supervision on the part of management were the strongest motivators. The social groups or promotion of the associations among the workers have a positive and negative effect on performance. Since workers had been chosen for the experiment and given special attention, they had developed some pride that motivated them to work hard to improve their productivity. There existed an informal agreement among all workers involved in the experiment which enabled them to work harder and hence improve productivity. The sympathetic supervision was also noted to have some impact on the level of productivity. The existence of an informal work group within the formal organization led to the establishment of standards of performance by the members of the group. This group constituted the social work environment which had both positive and negative effects on performance. According to Mayol, the workers found their jobs boring and meaningless but through their association with their colleagues and friends, it imparted some meaning and interest to their jobs. It also provided them with a means of protection from harsh management. This group identification was considered to have a strong influence on the employees or worker's behavior. Management should strengthen and not suppress informal groups in formal organizations.
marto answered the question on March 4, 2019 at 07:26