CLASSICAL MANAGEMENT THEORIES
Classical management theory is just like the
great-grandparent of organizational studies. We're gonna check out the context
at the time it emerged, the three primary theories that make it up,
and mention whether it's still relevant today. So first, let's check out
the context. This happened as a reaction to the economic Revolution
which is that the late 1700s to late 1800s. Industry equals work, revolution
equals rapid change, and large changes within the way people worked, the rapid
explosion of massive factories.
That's what was happening. People
were moving from farms to factories, from small shops to large companies. One
among the most sparks or ingredients of the economic revolution was power,
steam power, and hydropower specifically.
The machines want to manufacture in these new
large factories were run on power, not by hand. It's just like the difference
between a bicycle and a motorbike. This sped up work dramatically and helped
factories grow quickly. There have been also some machinery innovations
inside these factories. For instance, in 1873, Whitney invented the gin. Gin is
simply short for the engine. it had been a touch apparatus that separated the seed
from the cotton far more quickly than might be done by hand, and inventions and
innovations just like the gin and other machines sped up work even further.
Transportation was also booming.
That's another key ingredient of the economic revolution, just like the
railroads. They connected most cities within the U.S. by the mid-1800s.
Steamboats caught on around 1800 also, and therefore the roads were
improving. This rapidly changing context created an excellent need.
The three ingredients, power, machinery, and transportation came together to
spark the economic Revolution.
There were tons of emerging issues at the time
that folks needed to grapple with. They were new. Large groups of individuals
working together, people working alongside machinery, the pace of industry was
speeding up quickly, and corporations were trying to find simpler ways to
handle their new challenges.
These issues prompted tons of the latest
questions. For instance, how are we gonna organize all this? How are we getting
to maximize productivity with those changes? And the way are we getting to
manage these people working together? And we're gonna check out three
folks that answered these questions pretty effectively at the time:
Max Weber, Frederick Taylor, and Henri Fayol. Once we mention these three guys, we're talking about the founding fathers of
the classical management theory, and these are the three names you are going to find out in most textbooks on the subject. So let's start with Max Weber.
MAX WEBER THEORY
He's most known for the term bureaucracy, which,
to him, meant the organization should appear as if an extension of the state
and therefore the system. He wanted a legal-rational approach to organizing.
That meant that he didn't wanna follow the normal family-type system where the
top of the family was responsible, or perhaps you had a charismatic sort of
leader.
He thought these weren't the proper thanks to
run large organizations, and he wanted a legal-rational approach where he saw
each person's authority and will be tied to his or her official position within
the organizational hierarchy. If you're during a job, it ties thereto your responsibilities position, and if you allow that job, you do
not keep all that influence and power. Whoever the new person is responsible.
So this was his way of balancing power and keeping things rational and
arranged.
He wanted clear rules that governed performance
and standardized guidelines for hiring and firing. So he was really concerned
about problems with favoritism or what he called particularism, and he wanted
to rent the simplest people to figure in organizations and organize them logically.
Max Weber was an enormous picture sort of
thinker compared to the 2 others we'll check out today, which big picture term
is bureaucracy.
FREDERICK TAYLOR THEORY
Frederick Taylor also entered the discussion, and in contrast to Max Weber, who was the enormous picture, Frederick Taylor is far more micro in his focus. He was using the term scientific management for his adopted approach. To him, this meant applying science to figure. He was considering the customized approach as inefficient. He saw tons of factories and other people basically all doing things their own way.
However, they wanted to do their particular job organization, they might, and he thought this wasn't efficient. This wasn't the simplest thanks to-do jobs. So he said let's do time and motion studies, to review what proportion time every single minor task should take and the way many motions every single minor task should take and that we can speed things up and are available up with the one right way.
So each task has weakened into tiny steps and standardized to the one right way, and so, he would enter a corporation, check out all the inefficiencies, and find out the one right thanks for doing every single job and his results were actually pretty impressive.
For example, when he went into a bricklaying organization, they were laying brick down and that they were bending over to select them up, and he thought it had been all very inefficient. So he came up with a system where the bricks were all right at hand level, and that they were abreast of a shelf, and other people did not have to bend over to select them up, and he made another change to their time and therefore the way they used their emotions and he sped it about 300%.
So now, one bricklayer could put down as many bricks because it took three to do within the past, so his work was pretty dramatic and successful in some ways.
So Max Weber took an enormous picture,
bureaucratic approach. Frederick Taylor took a micro-level approach to watch
the precise tasks, and Henri Fayol, or Henri within the French Fayol, took a
mid-level approach.
HENRI FAYOL THEORY
He was watching the management side of things. How we could manage people? That was the large question that he wondered about. He suggests a theory of management called administrative science, or sometimes, just called classical management, and he believed managers needed to be trained during a far more systematic approach.
He didn't really see any wonderful theories out there for a way we should always train managers, and so, he wanted to contribute thereto discussion. In fact, he wrote, it's a case of setting it going, starting the general discussion.
That is what I'm trying to do by publishing this survey, and that I hope a management theory will emanate from it. So he wrote a book that then became popular within the late 1940s. During a section of that book, he talked about the management activities that managers should be pretty competent at, and this is often an inventory that you're going to see in many textbooks on the subject.
He thought we would have liked good planning, that managers should look ahead and chart a course for the organization. He was considering the organization as the key management activity. They have to pick and arrange people in an orderly and efficient fashion. He wanted the manager to be in command. To oversee, lead, and drive the method but to remain out of the small print.
That was up for the regular workers. Managers should even be good at coordination, needed to harmonize and facilitate the overall activities of various departments and groups within the overall organization, and last, control.
The manager needed to make sure compliance on everything, from accounting, finance, the technical side, internal control, and other areas. This is often an inventory you're gonna see during a lot of classical management sections of books once they mention Henri Fayol.
COMMON ELEMENTS OF ALL THREE THINKERS
Besides the small print we talked about
for Weber, Taylor, and Fayol, there also are some common elements that they
really all wrote about in a method or another that brings them together. All of
them wanted a transparent hierarchy in a corporation, that chain of command. All
of them wanted some sort of division of labor. They wanted a uniform approach
to figure. They wanted the centralization of authority, largely within the
manager's hands. They wanted the separation of private life from
organizational.
They all really wanted the simplest people within the right jobs, which was one explanation why they wanted to separate personal life from organizational, so people didn't play favorites. They wanted to pick the simplest employees based upon qualifications and performance, and that they also wanted people paid fairly, a minimum of in theory.
Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol talked specifically about paying outstanding employees, your best people, more so you'll attract and keep your best and most talented people. Henri Fayol even talked about profit-sharing, which was pretty innovative and that I say a minimum of in theory because not tons of organizations took this recommendation, but these researchers wrote on that.
So Weber, Taylor, and Fayol all close to making a foundation of what we call classical management theory, and this is often an approach you are going to find out during many textbooks because it really has become the great forefather's studies of organizations.
Almost everything that comes after the classical management era may be a reaction against it. So, we should consider the human resource, human relations, system theory and the team approach these are all responses to and a reaction against classical management, and even today, I can not imagine a corporation that's not influenced by this approach is a method or other contents.
So is it still relevant today? Well, absolutely. During a lot of places, especially in manufacturing, and albeit we'd not think that manufacturing remains happening the maximum amount within us, it's absolutely still happening within us and everyone over the planet.
We have quite seven billion people on the earth.
We're making tons of things, and you continue to see this approach during a lot
of producing companies. You see it in warehouses and delivery services like
Amazon. You see it certainly in foodservice. If you have ever worked in a food
service like nutriment, then everything is basically a sort of assembly line.
Same thing with farming and food production.
It's really gone almost to seem a bit like a producing process, and so, tons of the way, not only is it still relevant, it's still more common than ever. Now, in fact, it's still just one thanks to doing things, and a few of the new knowledge-based, expertise-based, information-based companies don't take this approach, so Google, Facebook and other forms of companies like that aren't manufacturing tangible goods, and so, they are doing not take this classical management approach the maximum amount, although they're still very conscious of it, and a bit like the theories we mentioned, like systems theory, human relations, human resources, they are, in some ways, reacting against the classical management way of doing things.
So it's absolutely still relevant in many of our workplaces, and when it isn't directly touching us, we are certainly indirectly influenced by it. So that's a touch bit about the context of the three primaries theories that structure classical management theory, and that we looked a touch bit at whether it's still relevant today, and that I believe it certainly is.
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