Management Theory

     This week we looked at management theories as a useful tool briefly. Management theory can be defined as a collection of ideas which set forth general rules on how to manage a business or organisation. A theory addresses how managers and supervisors relate to their organisations in the knowledge of its goals, the implementation of effective means to get the goals accomplished and how to motivate employees to perform at the highest standard.

Classical School

The two theories that we focused on were :

Scientific management theory which is considered by most to be the brainchild of Frederick Winslow Taylor - embracing careful specification and measurement of all organisational tasks. Tasks were standardised as much as possible. Workers were rewarded and punished. This approach appeared to work well for organisations with assembly lines and other mechanistic, routinised activities.

Max Weber  embellished the scientific management theory with his bureaucratic theory. Weber focused on dividing organisations into hierarchies, establishing strong lines of authority and control. He suggested organisations develop comprehensive and detailed standard operating procedures for all routinised tasks.

    

                      

Human Relations School

Elton Mayo has been considered as the father of the human relations movement, which later became organisational behaviour. The other two important co-researchers are F.J. Roethlisberger and William J Dickinson. They believed that organisations always involve interrelationships among members and that it is the managers’ role to see that relationships are as conflict-free as possible, in order to accomplish the organisation’s objectives. They believed that the human aspects of business organisations had been largely ignored and felt that satisfaction of psychological needs should be the primary concern of the management.

Systems Approach

Systems theory has come up via media with an integrated and holistic approach to management problems. This has emerged as a way of looking at the organisation as a whole. Chester Barnard, George Homans, Philip Selznick and Herbert Simon are some of the advocates of the systems theory.

Contingency Theory

Basically, contingency theory asserts that when managers make a decision, they must take into account all aspects of the current situation and act on those aspects that are key to the situation at hand. Basically, it’s the approach that “it depends.” For example, the continuing effort to identify the best leadership or management style might now conclude that the best style depends on the situation.

     Though practice of management existed thousands if years ago, most of them needed to be refined and synthesised to call them management principles. The early 'autocratic period' of management is characterised by the use of absolute authority, coercion and force. Development of a unified and integrated management theory out of 'the management theory jungle' has some difficulties like applied science nature of the subject, lack of coherent theoretical concepts of its own and heavy reliance on concepts borrowed from other disciplines.