The evolution of management thought has grown rapidly throughout the last century.
Developing from the simple idea that employees need to work to make a living and expanding into the idea that the emotionally satisfied worker creates the most successful workplace, schools of management have become recognized as important tools to any organization. The five schools of management thought included a progressive movement from classical school to behavioral school, to quantitative or the management science approach, then systems school and finally to contingency school of management.Yet all these are still influencing the management practices of the present. Classical school of management was the first recognized study of the principles of management.
This classical school of management thought was “based on the belief that employees have only economical and physical needs, and that social needs and need for job satisfaction either don't exist or are unimportant” (classic, 2009). Started back in the 1880’s, the main goal of this management study was to increase efficiency and production (Donnelly et al. , 1984) .This school of thought was based on the scientific management which included a study of work methods and systems in order to increase efficiency.
It was also based on the administrative management principle which expected the manager to mange processes to obtain the expected results of the organization’s plan (Barnett, 2007). The main management functions considered by the classical school were planning, organizing, and controlling. These main functions of management were being applied in order to understand how to manage larger more complex organizations.At the turn of the century, many businesses were expanding their product lines and becoming larger multi-product companies. It is logical that the management goals needed to change for these larger groups of workers with more expansive goals. Thus, managers realized that they needed a plan to solve new problems in management (Donnelly et al.
, 1984). Here is where the main management functions- planning, organizing, controlling- became necessary to define the goals of the manager. Planning was basically defining the goals or objectives needing to be met by the organization (Donnelly et al. 1984).It stands to reason that without a clear plan the organization will have no direction.
Organizing was the development of the organization itself: what types of workers were needed-such as skills and abilities, what types of equipment or materials were needed, and any other aspects of the organization that would be necessary for the plan to be implemented (Daft, 2000). Finally, controlling meant the manager was responsible for making sure performance of the organization met with the organization’s plan (Donnelly et al. 1984).Later in the twenty-first century, leading was added as one of the functions of management separately from controlling. This thought took the aspects of controlling and split them into leading and controlling.
In this idea, leading was the use of influence to motivate employees to strive for the organization’s goals (Daft, 2000). Controlling meant “monitoring employees’ activities, keeping the organization on track toward its goals, and making corrections as needed” (Daft, 2000).Seeing how the functions of management were altered a bit in the twenty-first century, yet still are based on the original school of thought, serves to prove that this first study of management was not only original but a basis for management studies even in today’s society. By the late 1920s it became clear that the classical school of thought was not focusing on the whole picture. The workplace needed to start considering the human aspect of the employees in order to gain the most from performance and attendance.Behavioral school considered the fact that human employees would not always perform as the plan expected they should because of emotions, conflicts, and other issues such as illness or lack of motivation.
The behavioral approach grew out of a necessity to recognize the weaknesses in the classical school. Particularly, the disregard for human behavior was ignored as classical school emphasized efficiency and process, but failed to acknowledge the factors of human needs and emotions (Barnett, 2007). The behavioral approach realized that humans would not always perform as expected to in theory.This was due to the interrelationships between people, the work, and the organization (Donnelly et al.
, 1984). Because people have human feelings, social needs, and motivational needs, expecting them to perform as machines and numbers, simply was not working. The Behavioral Approach utilized behavioral sciences such as psychology, sociology, and even anthropology to understand human behavior in the workplace. Managers developing the behavioral approach to management concentrated on motivation, communication, group leaders, and social work group formations.
These scientists studying behavioral aspects of managing workers focused on managing the people not only the plan. It was realized that workers’ performance was affected by interactions with other workers. The workplace was recognized as a social environment (Donnelly et al. , 1984).
Managers were now expected to manage people not just the plan or production. By beginning with studying human relations, such scientists as Clair Turner and Fritz J. Roethlisberger, found that a system needed to be developed between management and the laborers that would make communication easy and understandable.In other words, a system needed to be in place where laborers and managers could communicate effectively and understand each other (Barnett, 2007). The most important studies that implemented this idea were the Hawthorne studies. These studies focused on human relations in the work environment and concluded that if workers’ needs were satisfied, the workers would perform better.
Logically, this made sense and this idea was embraced by the schools of management thought, leading to the behavioral studies which centered around the aspect that human relations were too generic and did not take into account human behaviors or cogitation.Behavioral science believed that the human relations’ supposition was too simplistic about the relationship between workers’ attitudes and production and did not consider the problem of predicting human behavior in the work environment (Barnett, 2007). So the behavioral school of management grew to include studying personality, attitude, value, motivation, group behavior, leadership, communication, and conflict in the work environment (Barnett, 2007). This approach was natural in that humans are driven by their internal needs, not just basic survival needs as the classical approach assumed.
As time passed and production grew, it makes sense that managers would see a need for satisfying workers’ inner needs to keep production aggressive and to motivate the workers to want to come to work and want to perform their best for the organization, therefore implementing a certain loyalty within the organization’s employees. This is a concept that develops into a team mentality by the twenty-first century. The introduction of technology into the production and service world led to a new approach to management thought.This was the quantitative school or management science approach to management.
Taking a lead from the scientific management ideals which were a part of the classical school of management, according to Philip M. Morse the main focus of management science was to “provide managers with quantitative bases for decisions regarding the operations under their control” (cited in Donnelly et al. , 1984). In other words, the management science approach relied on the numbers and the mathematical relationship between men and machine to perform a production task in a certain capacity.
This method was used to predict production. Although this school of management failed to account for the human aspects of managing, it did result from the classic school of thought. The ideas in behavioral and quantitative or management science approaches were well received but realized to be limited. Thus the systems and the contingency approaches responded in the 1960s. These systems both attempted to integrate the ideas from the first three schools of management thought.
The systems approach was originally developed by a biologist who felt that an organization should be the study of inputs producing outputs and the attempt to create an equilibrium between them (Barnett, 2007). This school of thought forced managers to solve problems that related to the output of production as a whole not as individual problems to solve. The benefit of the group is considered the benefit of the organization. In simpler terms, each part of a plan must identify with the main objective of the organization as a whole. Individual considerations were not allowed.Compromises for an overall system is what produces the overall objective or goal for the organization (Donnelly et al.
, 1984). The final theory is that the parts and individuals of an organization are interdependent and must be treated collectively. In contrast, the final school of management thought, the contingency approach, sees the interdependent parts of an organization and realizes that a different approach or resolution to each individual situation is necessary in order to achieve highest production output (Donnelly et al. , 1984).This makes sense. Even though the systems school is correct in seeing the parts of an operation as interdependent, the contingency approach develops this idea to expand into individual situations that call for independent reactions or solutions.
In other words, contingency school of thought allows for an independent decision based on the individual aspects of any given situation. Presently in the twenty-first century, these schools of management thought have led to other management practices based on the theories of the major five schools mentioned here.In today’s work environment we see Total Quality Management and the Learning Approach (Barnett, 2007). Total Quality Management “focuses on managing the entire organization to deliver quality goods and services to customers” (Barnett, 2007).
TQM involves the worker, the customer, competition, and continuous improvement. The idea behind TQM is to implement employee involvement in quality control: have the employees determine problems before they occur or catch them when they do occur in the production of a good or service.I see this in my own workplace where there is a level of managers whose job it is to monitor the service providers’ performance to catch poor performance before it affects the customer. TQM also implements determining what the customer expects and needs and attempting to provide that. I see this in my workplace also as we are constantly sending out surveys and also follow up consultations with current customers to determine if there were any problems or dissatisfaction that needs to be addressed and handled to maintain a satisfying relationship with a customer.Benchmarking or studying the competition to learn new approaches or ideas to production or service is another focus of TQM.
I see this in my work environment because we are always researching the competition to determine whether or not we would choose to implement their ideas and methods, but also to determine where they have failed so that we do not duplicate such mistakes. All of these implementations lead to the constant attempts to improve the organization to meet a changing environment. My work is a service oriented work and must change as society’s needs change. The Learning Organization is based on this theory too.The world is a quickly changing world, especially today when technology and environmental needs are constantly altering our lives.
In the learning approach the organization is constantly absorbing information and making changes to meet these modern challenges. This is like some of the aspects of the TQM. From Classical School to the Learning Organization it is obvious that these approaches to management each resulted from what was lacking in the school of thought that preceded it. However, it is clear that each school of management thought held ideas that were not forgotten but rather expanded on as the principles of management evolved.
