Reference: Fundamentals of Management

By Rafael A. Rodriguez and Erlinda S. Echanis

Chapter 1: Origins of Contemporary Management Thought

The beginning of management thought

Approximate Source Major Contributions
Year
5000 BC Sumerians Script, record keeping
4000 Egyptians Emphasized the need for planning, organizing and controlling
1800 Hammurabi Used of eyewitnesses and written documents for control, set
minimum wages for private employment
1600 Egyptians Centralization of authority in organization
500 Sun Tzu Need for strategy, careful planning, organizing, and directing for
success in war
400 Socrates Universities of the value of management skill in government, military
or private practices
325 Alexander The Use of staff in the military organization
Great
284AD Diocletian Decentralized organization to rule the roman empire
900 Alfarabi Listed traits of a good leader
1340 L Paccioli Double entry bookkeeping
1395 Francisco D. Cost Accounting
Marco
1410 Soranzo Journal Entries and ledger
Brothers
1418 Barbarigo Forms of business organization
1525 Niccolo Art of Acquiring and using power
Machiavelli
1776 Adam smith Specialization and division of labour in the manufacturing trades
1800 James Watt Standard operating procedures, planning, wage incentives, and audits
1855 Henry Poor Principles of organization and communications as applied to railroads
1881 Joseph Warton Established the first college course in business management (United
States)

Six major influences of modern management:

Scientific management
Henry Payol and Management Process School
The Human Relations Movement
The quantitative approaches
General System Theory
Management and Culture

Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management

Frederick Taylor is known as the father of scientific management. He advocated that productivity was
based on rational and systematic analysis of work methods in the shopfloor.

Caused of Low Productivity:

Restrictions of output by workers
Lack of standardization of work methods by management
The absence of systematic methods for defining output standards for different job
Ineffective incentive systems to reward workers for greater productivity

First and more fundamental of the above problems

Adversarial posture that workers and employers took vis-a-vis each other: Large number of employers
and employees is for war rather than peace and that perhaps the majority on either side do not believe
that it is impossible to arrange their mutual relations that their interest become identical..

Taylor contributions:
Mental Revolution : High wage but low labour cost
Use of tools such as methods analysis, and time and motion study
Adoption of functional foremanship
Piece rate system
Careful selection of workers

Frank and Lilian Gilbreth

Pioneered the use of synthetic and time standards, and the use of Gantt chart

Henri Fayol and the Process view of management

Fayol was the first to define management as consisting of the functions of planning, organizing,
coordinating, commanding and controlling

Fayols contributions: on Principles of management ( WF 9 11)

Unity of command
Unity of direction
Inseparability of authority
Scalar principle
Principle of specialization Principles of centralization
Principles of Esprit de corps
His conception on the nature of management and the principles of organization were more
fundamental and general than those proposed by his predecessors and continue to be influential
even today

Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger

Increase production is due to psychological and not due to physical environment .

Economic man - Productivity can be achieved by making the work as simple and easy as possible and by
trying worker reward to his productivity.

Social man productivity could be affected positively or negatively by the social environment in the
workplace, including the influence of his co-workers and the treatment accorded by him by his
supervisors.

Ackoff and Sasieni

The methods of quantitative sciences first found systematic applications in the war effort in Britain
during world war II.

Dale application of quantitative science called Operation Research or OR- so called because the study
teams were assigned to field commanders to solve problems involving actual operations in the war
effort.

Characteristics of Operation Research: approach to solving management problems

Formulating the problem
Constructing the model
Deriving the solution
Testing the model and evaluating solution
Implementing and maintaining the solution

System Approach
System approach is a new discipline which tries to describe phenomena by using concepts in several
disciplines.
Example: Business Organization can be viewed as
Technological system (production process)
Social system ( behaviour and relationship of people)
Socio-technical system (interaction between technological system and the social (people)

Management and Culture

Managerial practices differed in countries with different cultural traditions, such research generally
assumed that industrialization possessed its own logic which would ultimately lead to the same or
similar practices of management everywhere.