Classical Era Reflection Paper (Evolution of Management Class) - Essay Example

Furthermore, the paper includes discussion on scientific management principles as well as their significance in the activities of today’s managers. Over the years all these theories have been greatly practiced in different workplaces throughout the world. One of the major objectives of discussing these theories is helping the today’s managers so that they can utilize their capabilities in the best possible ways. In addition to these, the paper also includes disadvantages of using these theories.

As a result, it is expected that this paper is going to be very useful for the managers in making effective decisions in their career. Classical Era and It’s Impact The basic concept of management is one of the oldest concepts in the world. Individuals and organizations have been using the core concepts of management over the past few centuries throughout the world. Without proper management wars could not be won. Even the wonders of this world and the process in which they are built, reflect the fact that ‘management principles’ were greatly in use even in the past.

However, there was lack of written formats of the core principles of management. The classical era of management started from 1880 and it lasted till 1930. Prior to this classical era there was pre-scientific era of management that started from 1000 and lasted till the beginning the classical era (Singh, 2009). During classical era general management theories started to evolve. Two of the main thrusts were scientific management and administrative theory. Famous French industrialist, Henri Fayol can be called as the father of administrative theory.

He came up with five functions of management and 14 universal principles (Singh, 2009). On the other hand, scientific management came in the picture in 1900 (Singh, 2009). Basically it is the advanced edition of systematic management which was proposed with the purpose of solving the managers’ problems regarding the demand of consumers (Russell & Taylor, 2006). The partial failure of systematic management principles resulted in the origination of scientific management. Scientific management can be defined as the “management which conducts a business or affairs by standards established by facts or truths gained through systematic observation, experiment or reasoning” (Kreitner, 2006).

Frederick Taylor is known to be the father of this type of management. Taylor was able to improve the individual outputs significantly by conducting ‘task and time study’ and developing ‘piece-rate incentive systems’. He also used systematic training and selection process. His main objective was to make the behavior and attitude in the workplaces as predictable and as stable as possible, because predictable and stable work behavior is likely to improve the level of efficiency of sophisticated factories and machines.

Taylor heavily trusted on various monetary incentive schemes as he used to believe that money is one of the biggest motivating factors that can improve the performance of even lazy workers (Singh, 2009). Four basic principles that were proposed by him are (i) development of scientific approach, (ii) scientific selection, training and teaching, (iii) encouragement of co-operation among the managers and workers and lastly (iv) proper division of responsibilities among management and workers (McDaniel & Gitman, 2007).

There are many other contemporary experts who followed