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Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations
In 1776, Adam Smith, a famous economist and business theorist, published his book "Wealth of Nations", in which he described a plethora of different ideals of economics and how to improve production in businesses. He advocated for the division of labor along with specialization in tasks; just enough that a worker could become very skilled at his job involving "very few simple tasks" without it becoming "dull and meaningless." (Malone, 65) -
Henry Gantt
Henry Gantt (1861-1919) was a management consultant who was instrumental to the history of management. Throughout his life he expressed the importance of logistics through scheduling and charts, and created the Gantt Chart, which gives a visual representation of work to be done and how projects relate to one another. He also sought to make industry more efficient by reducing accidents, organizing tasks, and establishing a system for managers to earn bonuses through their work. (Peterson, 1987) -
Mary Parker Follett
Mary Parker Follett is considered to be the mother of management thought. She focused on the "human side" of management, and encouraged managers to listen to the ideas of workers and defer to those of superior knowledge, while managers would act more as organizers than authoritarians. She often emphasized the importance of knowledge and expertise in the work environment and that those who contained the most should possess the management position. (Jones, 51) -
Taylorism - Scientific Management
Beginning in the 1880's and reaching its pinnacle in the early 20th century, scientific management was the idea that science and mathematics could be applied to the business and production cycles in order to maximize efficiency and yield. This is also called "Taylorism", as it was pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor, who sought to improve the management of businesses and the economy through empiricism, the scientific method, and by understanding what drove factors of production. -
Quantitative Management
Included in Taylorism, Quantitative Management used mathematics in the scientific method in order to help managers make decisions as to a company's direction and how best to improve efficiency. Later on this took on a new meaning with Information Technology Systems, where such requirements for productivity could be programmed into a computer. (Jones, 55) -
Max Weber's Principles of Bureaucracy
Max Weber, a German sociology professor, at the turn of the century wrote extensively about the derivation of authority when it came to politics, social structures, and businesses. As for business, he stated that a manager's authority came directly from their position, should be clarified as to its extent, and how it should be used to establish clear rules and hierarchies within a business. He also believed a manager's position should be dependant on skill, not standing. (Jones, 45) -
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth were psychologists who contributed to studying time-and-motion theories. This was important for business due to their goals, which included breaking large tasks into smaller tasks, doing them more efficiently, and reducing costs and effort. They also studied the effects of fatigue and how it affected workers, looking at factors like the amount of light, heat, and the aesthetics of the workplace. (Jones, 42) -
Centralization of Authority
Centralization of Authority is a long-debated tenant of management that Fayol did not support in his principles of management. It implies that authority should be concentrated within a few individuals higher up on the corporate chain of command, where executive decisions can be made for the direction of everything in the company. Fayol disagreed and preferred lower-level chains of command so a company could be more easily managed. (Jones, 48) -
Operations Management
Another concept that has been in existance for hundreds of years, but was written about in detail by Taylor in 1911, when he attributed it to his management science theory. Operations management is the basic idea of having mangers supervise the day-to-day operations of the company using specific skills to analyze their production, find problems, and correct them to improve efficiency. (Jones, 55) -
"Fordism"
Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, was an innovator when it came to efficient managerial and production practices. After years of testing, he perfected his work process involving assembly lines, but the process was too stressful for most workers, who began to leave. As a result, he offered incentives of shorter workdays and more wages, along with more concern for their "sociology". As a result, his company reaped huge gains. (Jones, 42) -
Henry Fayol - Principles of Management
A frenchman born in Istanbul, Henry Fayol was a French mining engineer and CEO. During his lifetime, he established his 14 principles of management, which at times echoed other great thinkers' ideals. They included: Division of labor, proper authority and responsibility, centralizing authority, worker equity, allowance for creativity, discipline, comraderie, organizational order, single plans of action, and more. (Jones, 47) -
The Hawthorne Experiments
Starting in 1924 and ending in 1932, a series of experiments in the workplace were conducted under Elton Mayo, a Harvard psychologist. It was concluded through these experiments that a worker's performance is directly affected by the behavior and performance of the managers above them. This led to the human relations movement, where supervisors were taught to treat workers in such a way to maximize their performance. (Jones, 51-52) -
Bank Wiring Room Experiments
As a part of the Hawthorne Studies, Elton Mayo conducted the bank wiring room experiments, which studied worker relations. They found that progress "norms" were created at the workplace, and that anyone who exceeded or failed to meet the "norms" were given labels and were liable to be singled out for their excess or lack of ambition. This, amongst the workers, was to create a "fair" workload. (Jones, 52) -
Human Relations Movement
Born of the Hawthorne Studies conducted by Elton Mayo, the Human Relations Movement emphasized how a manager's behavior could directly affect the productivity and attitude of workers, and therefore moved towards providing supervisors with human relations training in order to gain worker's cooperation, and thus improving efficiency. (Jones, 52) -
Informal Organization
As a result of the Hawthorne Studies, it was concluded that an informal form of organization existed between workers in any given workplace that often allowed colleagues to bond together over their shared experiences in the place of work. They created norms and group-based goals, and as they banded together they could either acquiesce to management or inhibit their control. (Jones, 53) -
The HP Way
Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett, founders of HP, had very specific methods of managing their employees, which by most standards were very conscienscious. They encouraged long-term employment and almost never laid off anyone, instead choosing to dock pay and hours if needed until their company recovered. They always encouraged workers to be creative and communicate more effectively, and tried to be on first-name bases with everyone in the company. (Jones 54-55) -
Management by Wandering Around
Initially put into practice by David Packard and Bill Hewlett from Hewlett-Packard, this concept encourages managers and supervisors to "wander" aorund the office or workplace chatting with employees and occasionally customers. This was intended to keep managers "in touch" with the lives and goings-on of the other employees, and would work to improve morale and ultimately efficiency. (Peters, 6-34) -
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Developed by psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943, man's Hierarchy of Needs stated that basic needs had to be fulfilled before self-actualization and ego-based needs could be achieved. This concept intrigued those trying to understand workers in order to better manage the efficiency of a company. However, after much debate it was concluded that every worker viewed their job in a different light, and general rules such as this hierarchy couldn't be fully applied to maximize efficiency. (Travieso) -
Toyota Production System
Though by no means completely unique, a fairly innovative system was developed over the course of 30 years by Sakichi Toyoda (Founder of Toyota) and Taiichi Ono, a prominent Japanese businessman. Essentially just-in-time production, it also focused specifically on eliminating waste in production, lending respect to workers, and always continuing to improve a company or its products, or "Kaizen". (Sim & Chang, 97-110) -
Closed System View
As a counterpoint to the Open System View, the Closed System View essentially lacks everything that the open system offered, including its affectivity by the external environment. It does not recieve raw materials from external sources and is entirely self-contained. Most businesses cannot exist completely indepedently and therefore most experience entropy, or begin to fall apart. (Jones, 57) -
Theory X and Theory Y
In the 1960's, Douglas McGregor introduced two theories regarding workers' behavior in organizations. The first was Theory X, which stated that "The average employee is lazy, dislikes work, and will try to do as little as possible." and as a result, management should closely supervise workers to ensure their productivity. Theory Y supposed much the opposite, stating employees "are not inherently lazy, [and] given the chance, employees will do what is good for the organization."(Jones 53) -
Open System View
The Open System view is a concept that can be applied to most businesses and organizations that produce their own goods involving inventory. Essentially it contains three stages, involving input, conversion, and output, where in each stage they respectively include collecting raw materials, converting raw materials into finished goods, and finally releasing the good or service to the customer. (Jones, 56) -
Contingency Approach
In the 1960's, amongst all of the classical approaches in order to understand what management and psychological principles would make businesses work most efficiently, the contingency approach asserted that every business was inherently different, experienced different sets of problems, and had completely indistinguishable employees, and therefore no one set of management principles could be fully applied. Rather, unique solutions would result from unique situations. -
Management Information Systems
Management Information Systems has become much more prevalent in recent business practices, but has its roots in earlier technological systems. MIS's using technology allow managers to make quicker more efficient decisions by providing updated information on internal and external factors involving the company. In the form of raw data, it can be transferred quickly and effectively without losing anything in translation. (Jones, 55) -
Total Quality Management
Influenced by Taylor, but implemented more later on in history, Total Quality management arose during a period of competition between the quality of goods coming out of the east and west. It focuses primarily on analyzing every step of production closely to ensure quality of the product is retained throughout. (Jones, 55)
