Management Theory
Many since the turn of the century have studied management theory. Although examples of management practise can be traced back several thousand years, the development of management as a field of knowledge is recent. Much of the impetus for developing management theories and principals came from the industrial revolution and factory growth in the early 1800s. With factories became a widespread need to coordinate large numbers of people in producing goods. Some individuals began to think about ways to run factories more efficiently and effectively. Later known as preclassical management contributors, they focused on particular techniques to solve specific problems. They were then followed by individuals who developed broader principles and theories which formed the bases of the major viewpoints, or schools, of management; classical, which emphasised finding ways to more efficiently manage work and organisations; behavioural, which tried to understand factors affecting human behaviour in organisations; quantitative, which focused on mathematics, statistics and information aids to supporting managerial decision making and effectiveness and contemporary, which represents ,major innovations in ways of management thinking. Several approa
Much of systems theory resembles the scientific method: a manager is to hypothesize, design a controlled experiment, collect data, and analyse data. " Systems must be viewed as a whole; changes in one part of the system affect the other parts. "Douglas McGregor would love to have live today, for the old saying that necessity is the mother of invention rings true. In other words, the business world has finally caught up with McGregor and Maslow and is far more accommodating and receptive to his philosophy. Ironically, the more technologically advanced an organisation becomes, the more important a company's human resources are for its survival. The second reason being that with a knowledge of the various contributions made by the early management theorists like Taylor, Fayol and Mayo and those others that followed their line of reasoning, today's managers are better able to look to the future and make their respective management decisions with a firm knowledge base of what methods have been attempted, what methods have been successful and how the culture and spirit of the time effected the evolution of the management process. In summary, these two management theories, the human relations movement and the systems theory are of major relevance to managers of today's organisations because firstly they revolve around the employees, who are the people in the organisation that make it work and they are the ones who produce the goods and services and secondly in order for an organisation to achieve its goals it needs to operate smoothly and as a system. The key to productivity, from a managerial view, seemed to be showing greater concern for employees so they feel more satisfied with their work and is willing to produce more. In summary, satisfied employees leads to harder working employees and thus increased productivity and many modern day managers now hold this theory of human relations or resources as one of the most important of any of the management theories and approaches that still exist. A plant is an example of an open system because it needs air and sunlight from the environment. Identify wider systems (the environment)4. Managers holding these assumptions set up elaborate controls and attempt to motivate strictly through economic incentives. A systems view of management for example would recognise that, regardless of how efficient the production department is, if the marketing department does not anticipate changes in consumer tastes and then work with the production department to move with the changes, the organisations own performance is affected and is tarnished.
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