Classical Management Theorists and their impact today

“Management is a process or form of work that involves the guidance or direction of a group of people toward organizational goals or objectives.”

The theories in which this guidance and direction are achieved are many, however the foundation stones to modern day theory and management as a whole were laid in the years between the turn of the century and the great depression, 1900 to the 1920’s. This era of management thinking has since been named the Classical School of thought. Its developers focused on efficiency, including the subdivisions of administrative, bureaucratic and scientific management. Administrative management emphasised the flow of information within an organization. Bureaucratic management relied on a rational set of structuring guidelines; rules and procedures, hierarchy, and clear divisions of labour. Scientific management however focused on the ‘one best way’ to do a job.

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The inventors of these trains of thought are forged in history as the ‘Universalists’ of management, and their ideas are still evident today (Collins 1993, pg 9-13). The theories devised by Taylor, Weber, Fayol and other members of the classical school before these events were designed for organizations of another world, though still a world of human organizations. Command: maintain productivity among the organizations employees

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The second principal was the scientific selection, training and development of workers to ensure that they possessed the skills and abilities to match the specific needs of the task and know the rules and procedures defined by the research. The focus towards close supervision, rules and regulations, and an impersonal bureaucracy were all results of the circumstances that confronted managers and business owners at that time. (Pugh & Hickson, 1980 pg 90-93)

Bureaucracy is another element of classical management school; the most important contributor to this being a qualified lawyer named Max Weber (1864-1920) a German academic. (Robbins, 1990 pg 44)

The administrative principles of the classical theorists were useful to managers as small; owner-manager businesses developed into large companies and corporations with the expansion of the industrialized world.

The world today is a vastly different one to that of one hundred years ago, a century of two world wars, a nuclear stand off and rapid advancements in technology. The amount of coordination and control obtained from the use of these classical principles was necessary for the further growth of the early twentieth century organizations. This assumption is not valid for the various types of organizations in the modern world. He recommended that each sector of the organization have a clearly defined specialisation and that the management should be neutral and impersonal, leading to all employees being treated equally. Fayol devised the function of management into five aspects that are the basis of management thought and action;

1. Taylor wrote in a time when factories were creating problems for management who needed new methods to deal with the management challenges bought on by the influence of the Industrial revolution on organizations. Stability of Staff: A low turnover rate of employees and long-term commitment are necessary for an efficient organization

13. Classical principles of management evolved during the start of the last century.

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Approximate Word count = 2258
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

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