Classical Approaches to Management - Essay Example

ical Approaches to Management Development in commerce, industry and business bears a direct correlation with management studies. In the last quarter of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century, industrial processes starting becoming more complex, businesses speedy and competition intense. Circumstances necessitated increase in the industrial production by streamlining processes, systems, work environment, and efficiency of the employees. This led to the development of Classical Approach to Management. Initially, it involved the—Bureaucratic, Administrative, and Scientific Management. Later, Classical Management also came to be associated with Human Relations development. No specific timelines can be drawn to view and study various aspects of Classical Management, because their propounding and practice often overlapped each other. However, it is certain that the emergence of Bureaucratic, Administrative, Scientific Management and Human Relations predate the World War II. The World War II involved the development of weapons, armoury, vehicles, aeroplanes, gear and logistics an unprecedented magnitude. This led to amalgamation of different theories of classical management and development of the Systems Theory based on analysis of systems that included men, machines, material and money. Here our discussion only relates to pre-World War II era school of management, called The Classical School of management. Max Weber (1864-1924), Fredrick Taylor (1856-1915), Henri Gnatt (1861-1919), Frank Gilbreth (1868-1924), and Henri Foyal (1841-1925) were its chief proponents. Scientific Management Toward the turn of the 19th century, production and industrial management was marred by chaotic scenes. Overburdening, whimsical decision making led relinquishment of duties by the employees. A conflict of interests often arose between the management and the workers. As a result, a lot of time and energy were wasted in conflict resolution. The need to end the state of arbitrariness at the workplace made the managements to base management on scientific principles. Since inculcation of scientific temperament was being mooted in all spheres of life, the world was enjoying the fruits of scientific innovation and invention. Frederick Taylor, Frank Gilberth, Henry Gnatt, and many others devised theories of scientific management at the work place. Henri Gnatt contributed to the movement of scientific management by devising the Gnatt Chart. Gnatt chart helped in scheduling of tasks to make an optimum use of manpower and energy. The movement of a worker, in accomplishing a particular task, was broken up into small actions and studied part by part. As a consequence to this, the most efficient method of doing a particular task based on optimum use of human energy and machines was devised. This was called the best and the scientific method. This method was only replaceable by a more efficient and scientific method evolved and tested in the same conditions. Time and motion studies were carried out. This further led to innovations and ergonomic models of doing a particular task. Roles and responsibilities of the management and workers were affixed. An incentive based pay model was evolved that had performance as the key parameter. Employees, to a particular position, were hired according to their expertise, knowledge and scientific temperament. Scientific management helped to organize various elements at play in a workplace and resulted in increased efficiency. But gradually, the objectivity of scientific management started to stand in the way of development and it was replaced by more inclusive models of management. Administrative Management Henri Foyal, a French industrialist propounded the theory of Administrative Management, Mary Parket Follet being its other chief proponent. To this day, some of the principles and theories enunciated by Foyal and Follet are being practiced in business and industry all over the world. Administrative management went a step further than adding scientific methodology to organizational controls. It created the guiding principles of modern management. Foyal studied the organizational management in discrete subjects like planning, organizing, coordinating, and controlling. However, he excluded Finance, Accounting and Production, the three key elements of management today, from his theory. His theory was as simple as its name. “What the managers do is management.” In order words it described the functional aspects of the managers. Besides, discreetly defining management, he also stated 14 principles in the form of aphorisms. He was a great believer of ‘union in strength’ which he stated in French as esprit de corps. Whereas Foyal explained his management principle by breaking various operations into their elemental form, including some, and excluding others, to find the underlying similarities, Follet believed in synergizing all forces and devising a theory of management that considered organizational behaviour in totality. Foyal’s theory has an inherent rigidity and inflexibility. In fact, it was rigidity associated with Administrative Management that led to its downfall and replacement. Follet stated that the organizations have a common goal that was sum of the individual efforts. This was the Universal Goal of the organizations. Follet, perhaps was the first person to create feedback model. The Universal Goal could not be created and stated from the management end alone. It was an assimilation of ideas generated from two way model of communication. Its graphical representation was circular and not linear. Administrative Management refuted the principle of Scientific Management that there was a ‘best way’ that governed the organizational working. In its place, Follet created the Law of Situation. Law of the Situation stated that excellence in work differed from one given situation to another. The managers had to be responsive and adaptive to new situations. In this way, Administrative Management was the precursor of modern management that flexible and malleable. Bureaucratic Management: This, too, is a primitive form of management wherein emphasis was laid on strict hierarchical control over management structures. At the core of this thought lies strict adherence to authoritative controls, hierarchical decision-making, and division of labour. In a way, bureaucratic management evolved in era known more for its obsession to quantity than quality. Max Weber, its chief proponent believed that better controls can be exercised if the hierarchical control stemmed from a legal authority vested in an individual occupying a position than from the cult status enjoyed by him that enlarged and faded with the absence and presence of a personality. In other words, the bureaucratic management decreased the reliance of management structure on a personality and vested it with the rule book. The charisma and personality of leader melted into the rule book and impersonality. This school strongly felt that only following strict rules led to the organizational efficiency and prosperity. The rule book was a written constitution of an organization in which all lateral and horizontal functions were well-defined. Such a formal constitution was unalterable and held little scope to change. The career paths were objectively chartered based on know-how, expertise, knowledge, and experience. There was no scope for a junior employee with remarkable creativity and performance to leapfrog many positions to enter the echelons of top management Virtual non-existence of competition, monopoly market conditions, lack of modern communication channels, intuitive and psychological tools to understand human personality were some of the factors that led to its growth and success. However, with time, bureaucratic methods came to be associated with wastage and inefficiency and management experts had to formulate theories that were individual and system centric than rule specific. Human Relations By 1920, management studies came to be studied by human behaviour experts. They delved deep into human social behaviour patterns and tried to study management in their light. These experts felt that employee couldn’t be treated as a machine. Thus the studies moved a step further from traditional approach of efficiency and process control procedures. This led to the emergence of behavioural school, which took a departure from the earlier studies—Administrative, Bureaucratic, and Scientific management. Researchers like Elton Mayo, Abraham Maslow, and Chester Barnard were among the first to include human behaviour in work place environment and included it in management studies. Management studies came into the purview of psychologists, and sociologists like never before. Of primary importance in the Human Relations theory is the Hawthorne Effect. Researchers studied that the workers behaved differently when their behaviour was being studied. This was empirically studied in a pioneering experiment carried out at the Hawthorne Plant of the Western Electric Co. George Homans carried the movement forward in his landmark book ‘The Human Group’. A salient feature of the Human Relations group was the emergence of the manager as a team leader who not only guided and coordinated the team effort, but also fostered human relationship and encouraged inter-personal dialogue. In fact, leadership was other side of the coin of relationship management. The Human Relations theorists laid stress on employee satisfaction. They stated that a satisfied employee was more productive and efficient. These theorists felt that employee and management antagonism could be quelled only with coordinated and mutual efforts. They felt that no one understood the situational circumstances better than the employees and their inputs in devising management strategy were essential. The modern Human Resource Development science borrows heavily from the Human Relations theory. Conclusion No theory is complete and no principle in management can stand true eternally like a gospel truth. Management science is constantly under evolution. The classical theory of management provided a frame work for the researchers to carry the movement forward. Stated other way around, any theory that gains acceptance today in management today has its seed sown in earlier schools of thought studied under the Classical School of Management. Read More