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Evaluation of Management Thought

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INTRODUCTION

Definition of Management

Management is the art, or science, of achieving goals through people. Since managers also supervise, management can be interpreted to mean literally “looking over” – i.e., making sure people do what they are supposed to do. Managers are, therefore, expected to ensure greater productivity or, using the current jargon, ‘continuous improvement’. More broadly, management is the process of designing and maintaining an environment in which individuals, working together in groups, efficiently accomplish selected aims (Koontz and Weihrich 1990, p. 4). In its expanded form, this basic definition means several things. First, as managers, people carry out the managerial functions of planning, organizing, …show more content…

In the 1980s 8.7 million foreign nationals entered the U.S. and joined the labor market. They often have distinct needs for skills and language proficiency, much as those before them at the advent of the industrial age. Early management theory consisted of numerous attempts at getting to know these newcomers to industrial life at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century in Europe and the United States. In this section, we will survey a number of the better‐known approaches to early management theory. These include scientific management, classical organization theory, the
Behavioral school, and management science. As you study these approaches, keep one important fact in mind: the managers and theorist who developed these assumptions about human relationships were doing so with little precedent. Large‐scale industrial enterprise was very new. Some of the assumptions that they made might therefore seem simple or unimportant to you, but they were crucial to Ford and his contemporaries.

We examine how management theory concerning appropriate management practices has evolved in modern times, and look at the central concerns that have guided its development. First, we examine the so-called classical management theories that emerged around the turn of the twentieth century. These include scientific management, which focuses on matching people and tasks to maximize efficiency; and administrative management, which focuses on

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