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Management is universal in the modern industrial and technological world. All organisations are required to make decisions, to coordinate activities and to evaluate their performance as they strive to achieve pre-determined goals. Technological developments have, on a continuous basis, changed the approaches to management. In addition, the complexities of human relationships have contributed to making management a dynamic new science.
Within our environment we are able to identify many managerial activities e.g., personnel management, marketing management, educational management or even production management, each with specific approaches and challenges while having common elements in their day to day operations.Management has been defined by Daft and Marcic (1998) as the attainment of organisational goals in an effective and efficient manner through planning, organising, leading and controlling organisational resources.
Perspectives of management and the organisation
The early study of management began in North America with the Classical Perspective, which emphasised a rational, scientific approach to the study of management and sought to make organisations efficient operating machines in response to various problems in the manufacturing sector. This perspective contains subfields, which are:
scientific management,
bureaucratic organisations
administrative principles
Scientific management emphasised scientifically determined changes in management practises as the solution to improving labour productivity. Some of its basic philosophies were to develop standard methods for performing jobs and training workers in these methods. They provided wage incentives to workers for increased output and therefore demonstrated the importance of compensation for work performance. A failure of this approach was that management did not appreciate the needs of workers and regarded them as uninformed and ignored their ideas and suggestions.
Frederick W. Taylor, Henry Gantt, Frank and Lillian M. Galbreth were pioneers of scientific management.
Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915) was regarded as the father of scientific management. He emphasised management at the shop level rather than general management and was concerned mainly with the efficiency of workers and managers in actual production. Taylor considered each worker as a separate economic person motivated by financial needs.
Bureaucratic organisations emphasised management on an impersonal, rational basis through such elements as clearly defined authority and responsibility, formal record keeping, and separation of management and ownership. The term bureaucracy is associated with red tape and rules- a perceived negative connotation. Max Weber (1864-1920) a German theorist developed the concept of an ideal model or pure form of organisational design that is formal, impersonal and governed by rules rather than by people. The basic characteristics of the model are:
regular activities aimed at organisation goals are distributed as fixed official duties
the organisation follows the principles of hierarchy
operations are governed by a consistent system of abstract rules that are applied to individual cases
the ideal official operates as a formal personality without emotion
employment in the organisation is based on technical qualifications and is not subject to arbitrary termination
technically bureaucracy attains the highest degree of efficiency
Administrative principles focused on the total organisation rather than the individual worker outlining the management functions of planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling. Contributors of this approach included Henri Fayol, Mary Parker Follet, and Chester I. Barnard.
Henri Fayol (1841-1925) was a French industrialist and theorist. He emphasised the structural nature of organisations. Fayol was the first management author to state a series of management principles that would provide guidelines for successful coordination. He regarded the elements of management as its functions, which he listed as – planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling.
The second perspective is the Humanistic Perspective. This is a management perspective that emerged around the late 19th century. It emphasised understanding human behaviour, needs, and attitudes in the workplace. The subfields are the:
human relations movement
human resources perspective
behavioural sciences approach
Human Relations Movement shaped management thinking and practises. It emphasised satisfaction of employees basic needs as the essential element to increased worker productivity. Mary Parker Follet and Chester I. Barnard were early advocates of a more humanistic perspective. Elton Mayo was a leading theorist in this field.
Elton Mayo (1880-1949) is best known for the Hawthorne studies; the first major attempt to undertake genuine social research. These were a series of experiments on worker productivity that attributed employees increased output to managers better treatment of them during the study. It also focused on the effects of the physical environment upon worker productivity. The conclusions to be drawn were:
individual workers cannot be treated in isolation, but must be seen as members of a group
the need to belong to a group and have status within it is more important than monetary incentives or good physical working conditions
informal groups at work exercise a strong influence over the behaviour of workers
Human resources perspective suggests jobs should be designed to meet higher-level needs by allowing workers to use their full potential. This therefore maintained an interest in the worker as an individual and the need for considerate leadership.
Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor were foremost contributors.
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) suggested a hierarchy or classification of human needs a theory of human motivation. At the core of his theory is the concept that we are motivated by fulfilling a hierarchy of needs. It shows that as our lower level needs are satisfied, our higher level needs become dominant. Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, as it is commonly called, started with physiological needs and increased upwards to security, social, esteem and finally, self-actualisation needs.
Maslows theory has provided a useful framework that is still presently used. It is relevant to workplace motivation issues and how managers meet those issues. A critical analysis of Maslows Theory is that individual needs were existence (the basics of life), relatedness (social and interpersonal) and growth (personal development) instead of a hierarchical arrangement.
Douglas McGregor, (1906-1964) focused on the dual nature of people who explored the human side of organisations and defined the traditional and the current views of worker behaviour.
Theory X emphasised the following:
the average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can
most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organisational objectives
the average human prefers direction, wishes to avoid responsibility, has relatively little ambition, wants security above all
Theory Y makes the following assumptions:
the expenditure of physical and mental effort is as natural as play or rest
the average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility
man will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed
Frederick Herzberg described the two-factor theory or motivation-hygiene theory concluded that certain factors tended to lead to job satisfaction, while others led to dissatisfaction. The factors giving rise to satisfaction, were called motivators e.g., feelings of recognition, achievement and desire. Those giving rise to dissatisfaction were called hygiene factors e.g., pay, working conditions, company policy.
The third perspective is the Modern Management Science Perspective, which applied mathematics, statistics and other quantitative techniques to solve military problems. This later impacted upon management and business applications. Two main approaches are Systems Theory and Globalisation.
Systems Theory sees organisations as open systems that interact with the external environment to survive. Organisations must monitor their environments, adjust to changes and have new inputs in order to survive and prosper. The school is an open system and relies on its environment for its survival. The five components are:
inputs material, human, financial or information resources used to produce goods and services
transformation process managements use of production processes inputs then change into outputs
outputs the organisations products and services
feedback knowledge or information on the processes or products
the environment social, political and economic forces that surround the organisation
Globalisation spawns the need for innovation and creativity. As a result, new management approaches emphasised empowerment of workers and involvement of employees. The success of the Japanese and other Far Eastern countries in the manufacturing sectors has stimulated the participatory management practises in response to growing competition.
William Ouchi Theory Z management principles and techniques are approaches to employee motivation based on Japanese management practises for increasing productivity. The Japanese believe high quality to be the key to increased productivity and greater profit. This new philosophy focused on managing people and included lifelong employment prospects, shared forms of decision-making and relationships between manager and subordinate based on mutual respect.
