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The evolution of management thought and the patterns of management analysisThe purpose of this paper are to give a basic understanding in evolution of management
thoughts and the patterns of management analysis. It is a compilation of resources that explain
what management is different levels of management, what tasks are essential for managers. It
also includes recent changes in management practices along with and explanation of challenges
for management in a global environment. Throughout this paper we will gain a basic
understanding of the evolution of management thought and the different theories involving
management.
We will give a brief overview on :
* Scientific management theories of Frederic Taylor and his major followers
* The social-man concepts of Mayo and his colleagues and the social system theory of Chester
Barnard.
* Explain the nature of the management theory jungle
* Discuss the managerial roles
* Recognize some recent contribution to management thought
Despite the inexactness and relative crudity of management theory and science, the development
of thought on management dates back to the days when people first attempted to accomplish
goals by workimg together in groups. Although modern operational-management theory dates
primarily from the early twentieth century, there was serious thinking and theorizing about
managing many years before.
While this chapter can do little more than sketch some of the high spots in the emergence of
management thought, it is worthwhile for persons interested in management to know something
of the background of the evolution of management thought. Even limited knowledge can help
one appreciate the many insights, ideas, and scientific underpinnings that preceded the upsurge
in management writing during recent years. Familiarity with the history of management thought
may help you avoid rediscovering previously known ideas.
You will see that the many different contributions of writers and practitioners have resulted in
different approaches to management, and these make up a management theory jungle. Later in
this chapter you will learn about the different patterens of management analysis and what can be
done to untangle the jungle.
Scientific Management
Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), lead developer of scientific management. Scientific
management, also called Taylorism, was a theory of management that analyzed and
synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor
productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes
and to management. Its development began with Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and
1890s within the manufacturing industries. Its peak of influence came in the 1910s; by the
1920s, it was still influential but had begun an era of competition and syncretism with opposing
or complementary ideas.Although scientific management as a distinct theory or school of
thought was obsolete by the 1930s, most of its themes are still important parts of industrial
engineering and management today. These include analysis; synthesis; logic; rationality;
empiricism; work ethic; efficiency and elimination of waste; standardization of best practices;
disdain for tradition preserved merely for its own sake or to protect the social status of particular
workers with particular skill sets; the transformation of craft production into mass production;
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and knowledge transfer between workers and from workers into tools, processes, and
documentation.
Scientific management's application was contingent on a high level of managerial control over
employee work practices. This necessitated a higher ratio of managerial workers to laborers than
previous management methods. The great difficulty in accurately differentiating any such
intelligent, detail-oriented management from mere misguided management also caused
interpersonal friction between workers and managers.
While the terms "scientific management" and "Taylorism" are often treated as synonymous, an
alternative view considers Taylorism as the first form of scientific management, which was
followed by new iterations; thus in today's management theory, Taylorism is sometimes called
(or considered a subset of) the classical perspective (meaning a perspective that's still respected
for its seminal influence although it is no longer state-of-the-art). Taylor's own early names for
his approach included "shop management" and "process management". When Louis Brandeis
popularized the term "scientific management" in 1910, Taylor recognized it as another good
name for the concept, and he used it himself in his 1911 monograph.
The field comprised the work of Taylor; his disciples (such as Henry Gantt); other engineers and
managers (such as Benjamin S. Graham); and other theorists, such as Max Weber. It is
compared and contrasted with other efforts, including those of Henri Fayol and those of Frank
Gilbreth, Sr. and Lillian Moller Gilbreth (whose views originally shared much with Taylor's but
later evolved divergently in response to Taylorism's inadequate handling of human relations).
Taylorism proper, in its strict sense, became obsolete by the 1930s, and by the 1960s the term
"scientific management" had fallen out of favor for describing current management theories.
However, many aspects of scientific management have never stopped being part of later
management efforts called by other names. There is no simple dividing line demarcating the
time when management as a modern profession (blending art, academic science, and applied
science) diverged from Taylorism proper. It was a gradual process that began as soon as Taylor
published (as evidenced by, for example, Hartness's motivation to publish his Human Factor, or
the Gilbreths' work), and each subsequent decade brought further evolution.
Taylors Principles
Taylor was a mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. Taylor is
regarded as the father of scientific management, and was one of the first management
consultants and director of a famous firm. In Peter Drucker's description,
Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of
systematic observation and study. On Taylor's 'scientific management' rests, above all, the
tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses
in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. Taylor,
though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first
foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since even though he has been dead
all of sixty years.
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Followers of Taylor
Henry L. Gantt
Henry Laurence Gantt, A.B., M.E. (May 20, 1861 November 23, 1919) was an American
mechanical engineer and management consultant who is best known for developing the Gantt
chart in the 1910s.
Gantt charts were employed on major infrastructure projects including the Hoover Dam and
Interstate highway system and continue to be an important tool in project management.
Biography
Gantt was born in Calvert County, Maryland. He graduated from McDonogh School in 1878
and then went on to attend and graduate from Johns Hopkins University in 1880. After
graduation, he went back to teach at the McDonogh school for three years. He subsequently
went on to graduate from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, awarded a Masters
of Engineering degree.
In 1884 he first began work as a Mechanical Engineer with Pool and Hunt of Baltimore. In
1887, he joined Frederick W. Taylor in applying scientific management principles to the work at
Midvale Steel and Bethlehem Steelworking there with Taylor until 1893. In his later career as
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a management consultantfollowing the invention of the Gantt charthe also designed the
'task and bonus' system of wage payment and additional measurement methods worker
efficiency and productivity.
In 1916, influenced by Thorsten Veblen he set up the New Machine, an association which sought
to apply the criteria of industrial efficiency to the political process.
With the Marxist Walter Polakov he led a breakaway from the 1916 ASME conference to
discuss Gantt's call for socialising industrial under the control of managers and Polakov's
analysis of inefficiency in the industrial context.
Henry Gantt is listed under Stevens Institute of Technology alumni.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) awards an annual medal in honor of
Henry Laurence Gantt.
Work
Henry Gantt's legacy to production management is the following:
The Gantt chart: Still accepted as an important management tool today, it provides a
graphic schedule for the planning and controlling of work, and recording progress
towards stages of a project. The chart has a modern variation, Program Evaluation and
Review Technique (PERT).
Industrial Efficiency: Industrial efficiency can only be produced by the application of
scientific analysis to all aspects of the work in progress. The industrial management role
is to improve the system by eliminating chance and accidents.
The Task And Bonus System: He linked the bonus paid to managers to how well they
taught their employees to improve performance.
The social responsibility of business: He believed that businesses have obligations to the
welfare of the society in which they operate.
Gantt charts
Gantt created many different types of charts. He designed his charts so that foremen or other
supervisors could quickly know whether production was on schedule, ahead of schedule, or
behind schedule. Modern project management software includes this critical function even now.
Gantt (1903) describes two types of balances:
the "mans record", which shows what each worker should do and did do, and
the "daily balance of work", which shows the amount of work to be done and the amount
that is done.
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Gantt gives an example with orders that will require many days to complete. The daily balance
has rows for each day and columns for each part or each operation. At the top of each column is
the amount needed. The amount entered in the appropriate cell is the number of parts done each
day and the cumulative total for that part. Heavy horizontal lines indicate the starting date and
the date that the order should be done. According to Gantt, the graphical daily balance is "a
method of scheduling and recording work". In this 1903 article, Gantt also describes the use of:
"production cards" for assigning work to each operator and recording how much was
done each day.
In his 1916 book "Work, Wages, and Profits" Gantt explicitly discusses scheduling, especially in
the job shop environment. He proposes giving to the foreman each day an "order of work" that
is an ordered list of jobs to be done that day. Moreover, he discusses the need to coordinate
activities to avoid "interferences". However, he also warns that the most elegant schedules
created by planning offices are useless if they are ignored, a situation that he observed.
In his 1919 book "Organizing for Work" Gantt gives two principles for his charts:
Gantt shows a progress chart that indicates for each month of the year, using a thin horizontal
line, the number of items produced during that month. In addition, a thick horizontal line
indicates the number of items produced during the year. Each row in the chart corresponds to an
order for parts from a specific contractor, and each row indicates the starting month and ending
month of the deliveries. It is the closest thing to the Gantt charts typically used today in
scheduling systems, though it is at a higher level than machine scheduling.
Gantts machine record chart and man record chart are quite similar, though they show both the
actual working time for each day and the cumulative working time for a week. Each row of the
chart corresponds to an individual machine or operator. These charts do not indicate which tasks
were to be done, however.
A novel method of displaying interdependencies of processes to increase visibility of production
schedules was invented in 1896 by Karol Adamiecki, which was similar to the one defined by
Gantt in 1903. However, Adamiecki did not publish his works in a language popular in the West;
hence Gantt was able to popularize a similar method, which he developed around the years
19101915, and the solution became attributed to Gantt. With minor modifications, what
originated as the Adamiecki's chart is now more commonly referred to as the Gantt Chart.
Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (July 7, 1868 - June 14, 1924) was an early advocate of scientific
management and a pioneer of motion study, but is perhaps best known as the father and central
figure of Cheaper by the Doze
Biography
Born in Fairfield, Maine to John Hiram and Martha (ne Bunker) Gilbreth, had no formal
education beyond high school. He began as a bricklayer and became a building contractor, an
inventor, and finally a management engineer. He eventually became an occasional lecturer at
Purdue University, which houses his papers. He married Lillian Evelyn Moller on October 19,
1904 in Oakland, California; they had 12 children, 11 of whom survived him. Their names were
Anne, Mary (19061912), Ernestine, Martha, Frank Jr., William, Lillian, Frederick, Daniel,
John, Robert and Jane.
Gilbreth discovered his vocation when, as a young building contractor, he sought ways to make
bricklaying (his first trade) faster and easier. This grew into a collaboration with his eventual
spouse, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, that studied the work habits of manufacturing and clerical
employees in all sorts of industries to find ways to increase output and make their jobs easier.
He and Lillian founded a management consulting firm, Gilbreth, Inc., focusing on such
endeavors.
They were involved in the development of the design for the Simmons Hardware Company's
Sioux City Warehouse. The architects had specified that hundreds of 20-foot (6.1 m) hardened
concrete piles were to be driven in to allow the soft ground to take the weight of two million
bricks required to construct the building. The "Time and Motion" approach could be applied to
the bricklaying and the transportation. The building itself was also required to support efficient
input and output of deliveries via its own railroad switching facilities.
Gilbreth served in the U.S. Army during World War I. His assignment was to find quicker and
more efficient means of assembling and disassembling small arms.
According to Claude George (1968), Gilbreth reduced all motions of the hand into some
combination of 17 basic motions. These included grasp, transport loaded, and hold. Gilbreth
named the motions therbligs, "Gilbreth" spelled backwards with the th transposed. He used a
motion picture camera that was calibrated in fractions of minutes to time the smallest of motions
in workers.
George noted that the Gilbreths were, above all, scientists who sought to teach managers that all
aspects of the workplace should be constantly questioned, and improvements constantly
adopted. Their emphasis on the "one best way" and the therbligs predates the development of
continuous quality improvement (CQI) (George 1968: 98), and the late 20th century
understanding that repeated motions can lead to workers experiencing repetitive motion injuries.
Gilbreth was the first to propose serve as "caddy" (Gilbreth's term) to a surgeon, by handing
surgical instruments to the surgeon as called for. Gilbreth also devised the standard techniques
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used by armies around the world to teach recruits how to rapidly disassemble and reassemble
their weapons even when blindfolded or in total darkness.
Work
Lillian Gilbreth combined the perspectives of an engineer, a psychologist, a wife, and a mother;
she helped industrial engineers see the importance of the psychological dimensions of work. She
became the first American engineer ever to create a synthesis of psychology and scientific
management.
Fayolism
Fayolism was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized the role of management in
organizations, developed around 1900 by the French management theorist Henri Fayol (1841
1925). It was through Fayol's work as a philosopher of administration that he contributed most
widely to the theory and practice of organizational management.
His theories and ideas were ideally a result of his environment; that of a post revolutionized
France in which a republic bourgeois was emerging. A bourgeois himself, he believed in the
controlling of workers in order to achieve a greater productivity over all other managerial
considerations. However, through reading General and Industrial Management, it is apparent
that Fayol advocated a flexible approach to management, one which he believed could be
applied to any circumstance whether in the home, the workplace, or within the state. He stressed
the importance and the practice of forecasting and planning in order to apply these ideas and
techniques which demonstrated his ability and his emphasis in being able to adapt to any sort of
situation. In General and Industrial Management he outlines an agenda whereby, under an
accepted theory of management, every citizen is exposed and taught some form of management
education and allowed to exercise management abilities first at school and later on in the
workplace.
"Everyone needs some concepts of management; in the home, in affairs of state, the need for
managerial ability is in keeping with the importance of the undertaking, and for individual
people the need is everywhere in greater accordance with the position occupied. '- excerpt from
General and Industrial Management
5. Control: The final element of management involves the comparison of the activities of
the personnel to the plan of action, it is the evaluation component of management.
Industrial Psychology
A branch of applied psychology devoted to the psychological aspects and laws of human labor.
Industrial psychology came into existence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at a time
when industrial production was expanding, new types of labor and common occupations were
emerging, and greater demands were being made on the individual.
The emergence of industrial psychology is linked to the beginning of the scientific organization
of labor. At first, the most important problem faced by industrial psychology was that of
vocational selection. An analysis of differences in the productivity of workers who had received
approximately the same training led to the thought that more or less stable individual differences
existed with regard to vocational aptitude. Special tests were created to evaluate this aptitude
quantitatively and carry out vocational selection. It became necessary to study thoroughly the
psychology of various occupations. This led to the discovery that differences in dispositions,
interests, and motivations impel individuals to prefer a given profession. Special career
guidance bureaus were organized to assist adolescents in choosing a profession. A special
branch in industrial psychology was created: vocational guidance and consultation. Specialized
research was conducted on the development of the professional skills and qualities that are
important for various types of work. This branch of industrial psychology seeks to provide
recommendations for improving teaching methods and implementing various training and
exercise programs.
Another important branch of industrial psychology studies variations in efficiency due to fatigue
and the daily activity cycle. It also seeks to determine optimal work schedules so as to minimize
variations in work productivity and quality throughout the workday, workweek, and so on.
Contemporary industrial psychology is developing special methods to measure fatigability and
the decrease of efficiency. In this respect, industrial psychology is closely related to the
physiology of labor. It has accumulated a wealth of material on efficiency and fatigability and
on how the individual is influenced by working conditions, the nature of operations performed,
the monotony or danger of work, unusual and extreme working conditions, the individuals
motivation, and the development of the individuals needs and capacities in the collective labor
process.
Industrial psychology seeks the rational restructuring of various professions, articulation of the
most psychologically beneficial way a professions component operations can be put together,
and formulation of the scientific basis of expedient automation; this is all very important in
raising the productivity of labor. Industrial psychologists coordinate their efforts with specialists
in mechanization and automation. The study of the psychological factors leading to accidents
has led to the creation of special methods to effect vocational selection and prevent accidents by
means of special exercise and training techniques.
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A number of special directions in the psychology of professions have emerged, including the
psychology of aviators, cosmonauts, transport operators, assembly-line workers, and agricultural
workers. These directions emerged after the study of the psychological characteristics of specific
types of work, compilation of detailed descriptions of professions and professional activity that
evaluate how a persons mental characteristics and capacities are utilized, and determination of
professionally desirable personality traits.
Both experimental and analytical methods play an important role in industrial psychology. One
method involves special exercises that make use of various devices to simulate the basic
characteristics of a given profession. Methods of variational statistics also play an important
role.
In view of the contemporary scientific and technological revolution, industrial psychology is
called on to study the new conditions and forms of human labor, as well as possible stimulating
factors. It is also called on to study new professions and the requirements of labor employing
advanced technology. Industrial psychology is closely linked to the sociology of labor, social
psychology, engineering psychology, organizational and economic psychology, economics,
industrial ethics, biotechnology, the physiology and hygiene of labor, cybernetics, administrative
disciplines, applied mathematics, qualimetry, and technical aesthetics.
Hugo Mnsterberg
Hugo Mnsterberg (June 1, 1863 December 19, 1916) was a German-American
psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and
theories to Industrial/Organizational (I/O), legal, medical, clinical, educational and business
settings. Mnsterberg encountered immense turmoil with the outbreak of the First World War.
Torn between his loyalty to America and his homeland, he often defended Germany's actions,
attracting highly contrasting reactions.
Biography
Hugo Mnsterberg was born into a Schill Jewish family in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) an
east Prussian port city. His father Moritz (18251880) was a successful lumber merchant who
came from Breslau in the middle of the 19th century. His mother, Minna Anna Bernhardi (1838
1875) was a recognized artist and musician, was Moritz's second wife, and the niece of his first,
Rosalie Weinberg (18301857). Both his mother and his father died before he was 20 years old.
Moritz had two sons with Rosalie, Otto (18541915) and Emil (18551915), and two with
Anna, Hugo (18631916) and Oscar (18651920). The four sons remained close, and all of
them became successful in their chosen careers. A neo-Renaissance villa in Detmold, Germany,
that Oscar lived in from 1886-1896 has recently been renovated, and opened as a cultural center.
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Industrial psychology
Mnsterberg was an admirer of Frederick Winslow Taylor to whom he wrote to in 1913: Our
aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science, which is to intermediate between the modern
laboratory psychology and the problem of economics. Industrial psychology was to be
independent of economic opinions and debatable . . . interests. Mnsterberg's works Vocation
and Learning (1912) and Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913) are usually considered the
beginning of what would later become known as industrial psychology. His books dealt with
many topics including hiring workers who had personalities and mental abilities best suited to
certain types of vocations as the best way to increase motivation, performance, and retention,
methods of increasing work efficiency, and marketing and advertising techniques. [1] (349) His
paper Psychology and the Market (1909) suggested that psychology could be used in many
different industrial applications including management, vocational decisions, advertising, job
performance and employee motivation.
In Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913) Mnsterberg addressed many different topics
that are very important to the current field of industrial psychology. His objective was "to sketch
the outlines of a new science which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory
psychology and the problems of economics: the psychological experiment is systematically to
be placed at the service of commerce and industry." He selects three points of view that he
believes are of particular importance to industrial psychology and seeks to answer those
questions. These three questions include "how we can find the men whose mental qualities make
them best fitted for the work which they have to do; secondly, under what psychological
conditions we can secure the greatest and most satisfactory output of work from every man; and
finally, how we can produce most completely the influences on human minds which are desired
in the interest of business." In other words, we ask how to find "the best possible man, how to
produce the best possible work, and how to secure the best possible effects."
To Mnsterberg the most pressing question was the "selection of those personalities which by
their mental qualities are especially fit for a particular kind of economic work."Basically fitting
the person with the correct skill set with the correct position to maximize their productivity, and
to select those that have "fit personalities and reject the unfit ones." He gives many reasons why
its difficult to select or place the correct person to any given vocation for many reasons and says
that certain qualities cannot be taken alone to determine a persons fit for a position including
their education, training, technical abilities, recommendation of previous employers, personal
impressions of the person "the mental dispositions which may still be quite undeveloped and
which may unfold only under the influence of special conditions in the surroundings; but, on the
other side, it covers the habitual traits of the personality, the features of the individual
temperament and character, of the intelligence and of the ability, of the collected knowledge and
of the acquired experience. All variations of will and feeling, of perception and thought, of
attention and emotion, of memory and imagination." That in reality having confidence in those
prior factors is completely unfounded because he believes that "A threefold difficulty exists. In
the first place, young people know very little about themselves and their abilities. When the day
comes on which they discover their real strong points and their weaknesses, it is often too late.
They have usually been drawn into the current of a particular vocation, and have given too much
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energy to the preparation for a specific achievement to change the whole life-plan once more.
The entire scheme of education gives to the individual little chance to find himself. A mere
interest for one or another subject in school is influenced by many accidental circumstances, by
the personality of the teacher or the methods of instruction, by suggestions of the surroundings
and by home traditions, and accordingly even such a preference gives rather a slight final
indication of the individual mental qualities. Moreover, such mere inclinations and interests
cannot determine the true psychological fitness for a vocation."
Mnsterberg points out that wandering from one job to another is more common in America and
notes that this does have certain advantages including "that a failure in one vocation does not
bring with it such a serious injury as in Europe, but it contributes much to the greater danger that
any one may jump recklessly and without preparation into any vocational stream." Therefore he
sought to find a psychologically scientific way of vocational guidance. He describes how two
such systems have come to rise in America that attempt to guide young students as they leave
school to they chosen vocation, and a newer system marked by a movement toward scientific
management in commerce and industry.
This second newer system started in Boston and is essentially a form of career guidance for
children. A member of the community would call a meeting of all the neighborhood boys who
were to leave elementary school at the end of the year and discuss with them whether they had
any reasonable plans for the future. It was clear that the boys knew little of what they wanted to
do or what would be expected of them in the real world, and the leader was able to give them,
especially in one-one-one conversations, valuable advice. They knew too little of the
characteristic features of the vocations to which they wanted to devote themselves, and they had
given hardly any attention to the question whether they had the necessary qualifications for the
special work. From this experience an office "opened in 1908, in which all Boston children at
the time when they left school were to receive individual suggestions with reference to the most
reasonable and best adjusted selection of a calling. There is hardly any doubt that the remarkable
success of this modest beginning was dependent upon the admirable personality of the late
organizer, who recognized the individual features with unusual tact and acumen. But he himself
had no doubt that such a merely impressionistic method could not satisfy the demands."
Mnsterberg identified three main reasons why this worked: first, because they analyzed the
objective relations of the hundreds of different accessible vocations, as well as, the children's
economic, hygienic, technical, and social elements that should be examined so that every child
could receive valuable information as to the demands of the vocation and what opportunities
could be found within that vocation. Second, that the schools would have to be interested in the
question of vocational choice so that observations of an individual child could be made about
their abilities and interests. And finally, what he believed to be the most important point, "the
methods had to be elaborated in such a way that the personal traits and dispositions might be
discovered with much greater exactitude and with much richer detail than was possible through
what a mere call on the vocational counselor could unveil." Mnsterberg believes that these
early vocational counselors point towards the spirit of the modern tendency toward applied
psychology, and that the goal can only be reached through exact, scientific, experimental
research, "and that the mere nave methods -- for instance, the filling-out of questionnaires
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which may be quite useful in the first approach -- cannot be sufficient for a real, persistent
furtherance of economic life and of the masses who seek their vocations."
The question of selecting the best possible man for a particular vocation for Mnsterberg comes
down to making the process very scientific, trying to create tests that limit the subjectivity that is
possible through more traditional techniques of introspection, and instead using measurements
of ones personality, intelligence and other inherent personality traits to try to find the best
possible job for every individual.
Mnsterberg also explored under what psychological conditions that an employer can secure the
most and highest quality output of work from every employee by looking at the effects the
effects of changing the work space environment, what can possibly effect workers production,
problems of monotony in factory and other vocations that involve tedious repeated tasks and
how to avoid these situation, studied attention and fatigue in the workplace, and the Physical
and social influences on the working power.
Finally investigating how a company can secure the best possible effects in terms of sales.
Mnsterberg talks about ways to study the satisfaction of economic demands, experiments with
discovering the effectiveness of advertisements, the psychology of buying and selling, and in the
end discusses the future development of economic psychology.
He concluded that people's work performance is dependent on both social issues and job
content. He suggested a tension between workers' 'logic of sentiment' and managers' 'logic of
cost and efficiency' which could lead to conflict within organizations.
Disagreement regarding his employees' procedure while conducting the studies:
The members of the groups whose behavior has been studied were allowed to choose
themselves.
Two women have been replaced since they were chatting during their work. They were
later identified as members of a leftist movement.
One Italian member was working above average since she had to care for her family
alone. Thus she affected the group's performance in an above average way.
Hawthorne effect
The Hawthorne effect (commonly referred to as the observer effect) is a form of reactivity
whereby subjects improve or modify an aspect of their behavior, which is being experimentally
measured, in response to the fact that they know that they are being studied, not in response to
any particular experimental manipulation.
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History
The term was coined in 1950 by Henry A. Landsberger when analysing older experiments from
19241932 at the Hawthorne Works (a Western Electric factory outside Chicago). Hawthorne
Works had commissioned a study to see if its workers would become more productive in higher
or lower levels of light. The workers' productivity seemed to improve when changes were made
and slumped when the study was concluded. It was suggested that the productivity gain
occurred due to the impact of the motivational effect on the workers as a result of the interest
being shown in them.
This effect was observed for minute increases in illumination. In these lighting studies, light
intensity was altered to examine its effect on worker productivity. Most industrial/occupational
psychology and organizational behavior textbooks refer to the illumination studies [citation needed].
Only occasionally are the rest of the studies mentioned.
Although illumination research of workplace lighting formed the basis of the Hawthorne effect,
other changes such as maintaining clean work stations, clearing floors of obstacles, and even
relocating workstations resulted in increased productivity for short periods. Thus the term is
used to identify any type of short-lived increase in productivity.
Evaluation of the Hawthorne effect continues in the present day.
giving two 5-minute breaks (after a discussion with them on the best length of time), and
then changing to two 10-minute breaks (not their preference). Productivity increased, but
when they received six 5-minute rests, they disliked it and reduced output.
providing food during the breaks
shortening the day by 30 minutes (output went up); shortening it more (output per hour
went up, but overall output decreased); returning to the first condition (where output
peaked).
Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back
to the original condition. However it is said that this is the natural process of the human being to
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adapt to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment occurring.
Researchers concluded that the workers worked harder because they thought that they were
being monitored individually.
Researchers hypothesized that choosing one's own coworkers, working as a group, being treated
as special (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and having a sympathetic supervisor
were the real reasons for the productivity increase. One interpretation, mainly due to Elton
Mayo, was that "the six individuals became a team and the team gave itself wholeheartedly and
spontaneously to cooperation in the experiment." (There was a second relay assembly test room
study whose results were not as significant as the first experiment.)
But Mayo says it is to do with the fact that the workers felt better in the situation, because of the
sympathy and interest of the observers. He does say that this experiment is about testing overall
effect, not testing factors separately. He also discusses it not really as an experimenter effect but
as a management effect: how management can make workers perform differently because they
feel differently. A lot to do with feeling free, not feeling supervised but more in control as a
group. The experimental manipulations were important in convincing the workers to feel this
way: that conditions were really different. The experiment was repeated with similar effects on
mica-splitting workers.[citation needed]
Richard E. Clark and Brenda M. Sugrue (1991, p. 333) in a review of educational research say
that uncontrolled novelty effects cause on average 30% of a standard deviation (SD) rise (i.e.
50%-63% score rise), which decays to small level after 8 weeks. In more detail: 50% of a SD
for up to 4 weeks; 30% of SD for 58 weeks; and 20% of SD for > 8 weeks, (which is < 1% of
the variance).
Richard Nisbett of the University of Michigan has described the Hawthorne effect as 'a glorified
anecdote,' saying that 'once you have got the anecdote, you can throw away the data.'"
Harry Braverman points out in Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the
Twentieth Century that the Hawthorne tests were based on industrial psychology and were
investigating whether workers' performance could be predicted by pre-hire testing. The
Hawthorne study showed "that the performance of workers had little relation to ability and in
fact often bore an inverse relation to test scores...". Braverman argues that the studies really
showed that the workplace was not "a system of bureaucratic formal organisation on the
Weberian model, nor a system of informal group relations, as in the interpretation of Mayo and
his followers but rather a system of power, of class antagonisms". This discovery was a blow to
those hoping to apply the behavioral sciences to manipulate workers in the interest of
management.
The Hawthorne effect has been well established in the empirical literature beyond the original
studies. The output ("dependent") variables were human work, and the educational effects can
be expected to be similar (but it is not so obvious that medical effects would be). The
experiments stand as a warning about simple experiments on human participants viewed as if
they were only material systems. There is less certainty about the nature of the surprise factor,
other than it certainly depended on the mental states of the participants: their knowledge,
beliefs, etc.
Research on the demand effect also suggests that people might take on pleasing the
experimenter as a goal, at least if it does not conflict with any other motive, but also, improving
their performance by improving their skill will be dependent on getting feedback on their
performance, and an experiment may give them this for the first time. So you often will not see
any Hawthorne effectonly when it turns out that with the attention came either usable
feedback or a change in motivation.
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Adair (1984) warns of gross factual inaccuracy in most secondary publications on Hawthorne
effect and that many studies failed to find it. He argues that it should be viewed as a variant of
Orne's (1973) experimental demand effect. So for Adair, the issue is that an experimental effect
depends on the participants' interpretation of the situation; this is why manipulation checks are
important in social sciences experiments. So he thinks it is not awareness per se, nor special
attention per se, but participants' interpretation that must be investigated in order to discover
if/how the experimental conditions interact with the participants' goals. This can affect whether
participants believe something, if they act on it or do not see it as in their interest, etc.
Rosenthal and Jacobson (1992) ch.11 also reviews and discusses the Hawthorne effect.
In a 2011 paper, economists Steven Levitt and John A. List claim that in the illumination
experiments the variance in productivity is partly accounted for by other factors such as the
weekly cycle of work or the seasonal temperature, and so the original conclusions were
overstated.If so, this confirms the analysis of SRG Jones's 1992 article examining the relay
experiments.
Chester Barnard
Chester Irving Barnard (November 7, 1886 June 7, 1961) was an American business
executive, public administrator, and the author of pioneering work in management theory and
organizational studies. His landmark 1938 book, The Functions of the Executive, sets out a
theory of organization and of the functions of executives in organizations. The book has been
widely assigned in university courses in management theory and organizational sociology.[2]
Biography
In his youth, Barnard worked on a farm, then studied economics at Harvard University, earning
money selling pianos and operating a dance band. Harvard denied him a BA because of a
technicality, but a number of universities later granted him honorary doctorates.
Barnard joined the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (now AT&T) in 1909. In 1927,
he became president of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company. During the Great Depression,
he directed the New Jersey state relief system. [2] He was elected a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1939.[3] He was president of the United Service Organizations
(USO), 1942-45. Upon retiring from business, he served as president of the Rockefeller
Foundation, 194852, and as chairman of the National Science Foundation, 1952-54. End 1950s
he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research.
Work
Barnard looked at organizations as systems of cooperation of human activity, and noted that
they are typically short-lived. It is rare for a firm to last more than a century. Similarly most
nations last for less than a century. The only organization that can claim a substantial age is the
Roman Catholic Church. According to Barnard, organizations are not long-lived because they
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do not meet the two criteria necessary for survival: effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness is
defined the usual way: as being able to accomplish stated goals. In contrast, Barnard's meaning
of organizational efficiency differed substantially from the conventional use of the word. He
defined efficiency of an organization as the degree to which that organization is able to satisfy
the motives of the individuals. If an organization satisfies the motives of its members while
attaining its explicit goals, cooperation among its members will last.
Barnard was a great admirer of Talcott Parsons (19021979) and he and Parsons corresponded
persistently. The two scholars would send manuscripts for commentary to each other and they
would write long letters where they engage in a common theoretical discussion. The first
correspondence between Barnard and Parsons began in the end of the 1930s and it persisted
essentially to Barnards death in 1961.
Figurehead.
Leader.
Liaison.
Monitor.
Disseminator.
Spokesperson.
Entrepreneur.
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Disturbance Handler.
Resource Allocator.
Negotiato The 10 roles are then divided up into three categories, as follows:
Category
Role
Interpersonal
Figurehead
Leader
Liaison
Informational
Monitor
Disseminator
Spokesperson
Decisional
Entrepreneur
Disturbance Handler
Resource Allocator
Negotiator
Interpersonal Category
The roles in this category involve providing information and ideas.
1. Figurehead As a manager, you have social, ceremonial and legal responsibilities.
You're expected to be a source of inspiration. People look up to you as a person with
authority, and as a figurehead.
2. Leader This is where you provide leadership for your team, your department or
perhaps your entire organization; and it's where you manage the performance and
responsibilities of everyone in the group.
3. Liaison Managers must communicate with internal and external contacts. You need to
be able to network effectively on behalf of your organization.
Informational Category
The roles in this category involve processing information.
4. Monitor In this role, you regularly seek out information related to your organization
and industry, looking for relevant changes in the environment. You also monitor your
team, in terms of both their productivity, and their well-being.
21
Decisional Category
The roles in this category involve using information.
7. Entrepreneur As a manager, you create and control change within the organization.
This means solving problems, generating new ideas, and implementing them.
8. Disturbance Handler When an organization or team hits an unexpected roadblock, it's
the manager who must take charge. You also need to help mediate disputes within it.
9. Resource Allocator You'll also need to determine where organizational resources are
best applied. This involves allocating funding, as well as assigning staff and other
organizational resources.
10. Negotiator You may be needed to take part in, and direct, important negotiations
within your team, department, or organization.
McKinsey 7S Framework
The basic premise of the model is that there are seven internal aspects of an organization
that need to be aligned if it is to be successful
Hard Elements
Strategy
Structure
Systems
Soft Elements
Shared Values
Skills
Style
23
Staff
and mid-sized businesses. However, a massive economic shift is not without upheavals. In 2000,
stock prices fell, especially for dot.coms, and lay-offs were widespread.
Management practices and perspectives vary in response to these social, political, and economic
forces. During hard times, managers look for new ideas to help them cope.
Management Scientific Perspective
The management science perspective emerged after World War II. It applied math, statistics,
and other quantitative techniques to managerial problems.
Operations research consists of mathematical model building and other applications of
quantitative techniques to managerial problems.
Operations management refers to the field of management that specializes in the physical
production of goods and services using quantitative techniques to solve manufacturing
problems.
Some of the more commonly used methods are forecasting, inventory modeling, linear and
nonlinear programming, queuing theory, scheduling, simulation, and break-even analysis.
Information Technology (IT) is the most recent subfield of the management science perspective,
often reflected in management information systems. IT has evolved to include intranets and
extranets, and software programs that help managers estimate costs, plan and track production,
manage projects, and allocate resources. Most organizations have departments of information
technology specialists to help them apply management science techniques to complex
organizational problems.
IMPORTANCE OF MANAGEMENT
a. Optimum utilisation of resources: Management facilitates optimum utilisation of
available human and physical resources, which leads to progress and prosperity of a
business enterprise. Even wastages of all types are eliminated or minimized.
b. Competitive strength: Management develops competitive strength in an enterprise. This
enables an enterprise to develop and expand its assets and profits.
c. Cordial industrial relation: Management develops cordial industrial relations, ensures
better life and welfare to employees and raises their morale through suitable incentives.
d. Motivation of employees: It motivates employees to take more interest and initiatives in
the work assigned and contribute for raising productivity and profitability of the
enterprise.
e. Introduction of new techniques: Management facilitates the introduction of new
machines and new methods in the conduct of business activities. It also brings useful
technological developments and innovations in the management of business activities.
f. Effective management: Society gets the benefits of efficient management in terms of
industrial development, justice to different social groups, consumer satisfaction and
welfare and proper discharge of social responsibilities.
25
business and this trend is likely to continue. Career paths are likely to be based on expertise
alone. Managers will be under pressure to develop this expertise and apply it in an everwidening range of situations rather than their ability to survive the bureaucratic jungle. They
will have to combine their personal, professional and operational qualities and capacities to the
satisfaction of employers and the society. The future must be considered as an opportunity and
not a problem.
The future business environment will he dominated by information technology (IT),
globalisation, material and energy shortages, problems of pollution and ecological balance,
consumerism, inflation and R & D. The costs of employing expert managers are regarded as an
investment for effective business performance. Management is a designated expertise,
increasingly professionalized and is likely to progress to a highly organised status. It is assumed
that young people will choose management as an occupation and will progress from lower to
middle and from middle to top management positions. An ever-greater range of knowledge is
available to all aspects of business and management.
Some forces/factors that are likely to have an impact upon management in future are as
mentioned below:a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
philosophers, management practitioners and scholars. Modem management is based on the solid
foundations laid down by management thinkers from the early historical period.
Summary
Many writers and practitioners have contributed to the development of management thought.
Frederick Taylors concern was productivity improvement through the application of the
scientific method. Henry Gantt developed the Gantt chart. He focused on the selection of
workers and cooperation between labor and management. Frank Gilbreth is known for his time
and motion studies, while Lillian Gilbreth focused on the human aspects work. Henri Fayol,
the father of modern management theory, formulated fourteen principles of management.
Hugo Munsterberg applied psychology to industry and management, while Walter Dill Scott
applied it to advertising, marketing, and personnel management. Max Weber is known for his
theory of bureaucracy. Vilfredo Pareto is considered the father of the social systems approach.
Elton Mayo and F.J. Roethlisberger became famous through their studies of the impact of the
social attitudes and relationships of work groups on performance. Chester Barnard suggested a
comprehensive social systems approach to managing. There are many theories about
management, and each contributes something to our knowledge of what managers do and the
managerial roles approach and 7-S approach were discussed in greater detail. The operational,
or management process, approach draws from various schools and systematically integrates
them.
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REFERENCES
[1] Weihrich, H. & Kooniz, H, 1993. Management: A Global Perspective McGRAW-Hill
publishers, 10th Edition, pp. 29-56.
[2] Evaluation of Management Thought: Chapter 2, 2013. [Internet]. Available at:
http://www.icmrindia.org/courseware/Introduction%20to%20Management/Evolution%20of
%20Management%20Chap2.htm, [Accessed 12 December 2014].
[3] Wren, D.A. & Bedeian, A.G, 2008. The Evaluation of Management Thought. [Internet].
Available at: http://amle.aom.org/content/10/2/353.full, [Accessed 12 December 2014].
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