Trace the evolution of management principle from the classical school to the present essay

Trace the evolution of management principle from the Classical School to the present Difficulties have been the tumbling blocks in locating the source and the evolution of management. In the quest of searching its evolution people have made two verticals. One is ruled by the concept of modern conceptualisation that is the modernity and the other is taking back to the days of the Sumerian traders or the builders of the pyramids of the ancient Egypt to keep the communities and the slaves respectively, open to exploitation but motivated yet.

As the pattern of managing men changed, the concept of management shifted into the organisational affairs more, keeping the industrial revolution as a yard stick. The paper here reflects the movement of the management thoughts of the former vertical, dealing mainly with the organisation and its work force and its credence to execute in their respective areas. In fact management nurtures on the concept of ‘ necessity is the mother of inventions’ where the lack of mechanised records during the pre-industrial revolution era pushed it to refine the complexities of the perpetual journey of the changing management principals through its school of thoughts. Dating back to 6th century BC, The Art of War of Sun Tzu the Chinese general is a military game theory that also teaches the management, the principles of being aware and doing business depending on both own and competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, is the core concept of modern day’s management principal and practice of SWOT analysis.

Further towards the modernity, in 1513 The Prince of Niccolò Machiavelli expressed the principal of leadership by maintaining a fear but the hatred to keep the situation in control. It was the social management for the leadership of Florence, Italy. In the year 1776 The Wealth of Nations of Adams Smith the Scottish moral philosopher created the niche for the principle of specialisation of labour for effective management. It was the production management where Smith’s analysis boosted the per day production of pins from 200 to 48, 000 (Gomez-Mejia; Balkin & Cardy, 2008).

This is the journey of management in this living world touching all the aspects of it to state that, management is as old as the world, and as new as the moment. It is the industrial revolution that escalated the flow and the type of business and a creative need for the professional mangers. Though, the early organisations like military and church have founded the leadership models, working on which gets the modern managers the creativity to travel through the school of thoughts. Considering the traditional or the classical school of management thought, commonly perceived as the beginning of the management as per the concept of modernity; took the then leadership execution into further complexity to solve more demanding situations in the emerging business trends. The Classical school of thoughts came into existence around 1900 through 1920s; setting three main principles of that particular school of thought as bureaucratic, scientific and administrative. Max Weber, the father of modern Sociology viewed bureaucracy to be the most logical and rational structure to control large organisational structure. The approach includes law, procedure, rules and regulations, which are of great help at any time. Especially in today’s emerging business era, the dos’ and don’ts’ have become much rigid and the concept comes handy to maintain the order structure in the flow of operations.

It gives the work force authority with responsibility, setting other scopes to avail like, special functions of the work place, legal support, hierarchical structure, guidelines to follow, company bureaucrats to negotiate issues, solving technical problems, promotion based on merit and a well defined career path. All the said supports are still of great help for running the company efficiently (Allen, 1998). The principle of scientific management of the classical era concentrates on the relationship of the man and machine.

In the year 1911, father of scientific management Frederick Taylor empathised with his proposal that the process can increase the productivity with efficiency on production. The principle sets opportunity for the work force to leverage on. The production efficiency can economise time which in turn can create more job. Effective maneuvered can save human energy and can be furrowed forother productivity, thus creating scopes for more jobs. The concept is to break down a job into reduced number of movements and timings and to keep a track on.

Then to redesignthe broken jobs with reduced movement, effort and risk of error increasing the optimum usage of technology. This principal of delegation of work still exists in any company, especially in big businesses. To control the resting time and duration and to award the increased output, different pay scales were also there, which now the professionals earn through the incentives as the variable income (Allen, 1998). The observation based time study of Taylor further took an innovative leap, where Frank Lillian Gilberth came up with an advanced concept where the time required for a particular work can be measured before hand with the help of ‘ elemental motion in work, the way these motions were combined to form methods of operation and the basic time each motion took’. In the year 1919 with his psychologist wife Lillian, Frank discovered Motion Study, the model to measure the determination of time required in the future to do it in the best way as scientific analysis of methods. After knowing the time required the common tendency goes to the segregation of work as the visibility of the available work slots have increased the work loading capacity.

In response to this approach the Gantt chart by Henry Gantt assisted in scheduling the multiple overlapping works of a specific time period. His understanding was for everyone’s good. The levers to move Gantt’s model were motivation, rewards for good works; but no penalties for poor work, incentive over the minimum wage and guaranteed bonus on the fixed wages.

This was extreme ahead of its time which is still in use in the payroll system of the largest incorporations till date. The model gives a great in-depth to the human resource development and a positive outlook towards its expansion (Allen, 1998). The principle of Administrative management mainly focuses on the managers and the functions of management. Henri Fayol, the father of Modern Management, a French industrialist developed the five principles of managerial functions as a framework for studying management in his General and Industrial Management.

Planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling are the five functional principles that have remained unchanged still today, to carry out any business operation. These principles are the communication bridges to keep the entire organisation and its functions in one loop. Further, to extent the flow of communication to the other areas of the organisational vertical, Fayol has created 14 more principles of management that precisely made a bridge between the top and lower management via middle management to communicate any concern from orders to disconnects, to ensure a steady administration of the organisation and its work to meet the common goal (Allen, 1998). After a great deal of foundation of pillars of classical management, still the short comings reacted with the increase in the complicity of changing business atmosphere and the human conduct in it, leading the management principles to The Neoclassical School of Thought. This school of thought has provided with the Behavioural or Human Relation Management Principles, introduced in 1920 to address the human concern of the organisation. The movement began with the Hawthorne Studies during 1924-1933 at the Hawthorne Plant of the Western Electric Company, Cicero, Illinois. The study identifies the Hawthorne Effect that is the bias that occurs when people become aware of the fact that they are being observed.

This is an important study to measure the influence of the human factor on the worker output. The illumination experiments, the relay assembly group experiments, the interviewing program and the bank wiring group studies are the four major phases of the study, where the productivity of the worker is being tested under these four different phases. But to conclude, it shows no cause and effect relation between working condition and the result. It revealed that the main factor is the worker’s attitude that needs to be evaluated for better productivity, as the workers are tend to complaint on the basis of any hint of  problems creeping in the job area, problem of their home front or their own personal past problems.

While dealing with human relation management principles, it is important to notice, whether the behavioural movements of the workers are receptive to the orders of the superiors or not. This concern has been canonised by the CEO of New Jersey Bell Telephone, Chester Barnard in his Function of the Executives where he developed the principle of Strategic Planning and Acceptance Theory of Authority. Strategic Planning oversees the major plans and objectives. It is handled by the top management where it includes three major functions like maintaining the communication system, hire and retain personnel, and motivating the personnel. But all these managerial efforts depends on the acceptance of the subordinates, as the theory suggests, though the authority flow downwards but subjected to the acceptance of the subordinates. This can help the managers to be ready for the future reaction of the subordinates while making any big plan or project to avoid later disconnects and loss of flow (Allen, 1998).

To support the changing nature of business, the principles are now the product of The Contemporary School of Thought. It deals with the principles like the principles of Contingency Theory; managers take decision taking into consideration all the aspects of the present status and act on those as key of the situation. Among other modern theories, System Theory examines the system in effect in the organisation and determines the reaction of any action in that system and deals accordingly. It helps the manager to gain a new perspective of the pattern and the event of the workplace. It is a highly effective method in present day scenario where the business environment is highly volatile and needs constant cross section examine. As chaotic the environment has become, as discussed the organisations have come up with the most revolutionary principles of Chaos Theory.

Here the trend in life in general, in organisation and the world in general comes at the single horizon and refer to the biological system of the workers. It is much of a science that recognises that events are infact controlled very seldom (McNamara, 2008). The evolution of the management principals and its modern applications are ever changing and engaging. With any number of new creations of principles, the classic foundation can not be overthrown as all the further school of thoughts and principles nurturing on that bed of rock.  ReferenceAllen, G. (1998).

Supervision. Management Modern. Management History, BMGT-1301. Retrieved October 4, 2008, from http://ollie. dcccd. edu/MGMT1374/book_contents/1overview/management_history/mgmt_history.

htm Gomez-Mejia, L. R.; Balkin, D. B. and Cardy, R. L.

(2008). Management: People, Performance, Change, (3rd edition). New York: New York McNamara, C. (2008). Free Management Library. Brief Overview of Contemporary Theories in Management.

Retrieved October 6, 2008, from http://www. managementhelp. org/aboutfml/what-it-is. htm