Management Thought Essay Example

management branches. Max Weber can be classified in the bureaucratic management branch of the classical school. Weber's interest in organizations evolves from his view of the institutionalization of power and authority in the modern Western world.

He constructed a "rational-legal authority" model of an ideal type bureaucracy.

This ideal type rested on a belief in the "legality" of patterns of normative rules and the right of those elevated to authority to issue commands (legal authority). Weber postulated the rules and regulations of a bureaucracy serve to insulate its members against the possibility of personal favoritism. Max Weber (1864-1920) Weber believes all bureaucracies have certain characteristics:

• A well defined hierarchy.
• All positions within a bureaucracy are structured in a way permitting the higher positions to supervise and control the lower positions.
• This provides a clear chain of command facilitating control and order throughout the organization.
• Division of labor and specialization. All responsibilities in an organization are rationalized to the point where each employee will have the necessary expertise to master a particular task.
• This necessitates granting each employee the requisite authority to complete all such tasks.
• Rules and regulations. All organizational activities should be rationalized to the point where standard operating procedures are developed to provide certainty and facilitate coordination.

Impersonal relationships between managers and employees. Weber believes it is necessary for managers to maintain an impersonal relationship with the employees because of the need to have a rational decision making process rather than one influenced by favoritism and personal prejudice. This organizational atmosphere would also facilitate rational evaluation of employee outcomes where personal prejudice would not be a dominant consideration.

Competence. Competence should be the basis for all

decisions made in hiring, job assignments, and promotions.

This would eliminate personal bias and the significance of "knowing someone" in central personnel decisions. This fosters ability and merit as the primary characteristics of a bureaucratic organization.

Records. Weber feels it is absolutely essential for a bureaucracy to maintain complete files regarding all its activities. This advances an accurate organizational "memory" where accurate and complete documents will be available concerning all bureaucratic actions and determinations. Weber's bureaucratic principles have been widely adopted throughout the world.

Yet, there are many critics.

The primary criticism of Weber's theory of bureaucracy is the overwhelming acceptance of authority as its central tenet. This inevitably fosters an unrelenting need to develop additional authority causing the bureaucracy to be unresponsive and lack effectiveness. The emphasis on impersonality can lead to personal frustration for its employees while generating red tape to reinforce previously authorized decisions. The bureaucracy is increasingly viewed both by its employees and the public as a passionless instrument for responding to human needs.

The need to divide labor and specialize can foster feelings of employee alienation and estrangement.

As the demands of society become every more complex, the need increases for interpersonal communication and sharing between employees of the resulting organizations. Unwittingly, Weber helped to foster an extremely negative attitude toward the concept of bureaucracy conjuring up images of a highly inflexible and inhumane organization often working at cross purposes with the needs of those it is supposed to serve.

Scientific Management

Another branch of the classical school of management is the scientific management approach.

The scientific management approach emphasized empirical research for developing a comprehensive management solution.

Scientific management principles are to be applied by

managers in a very specific fashion. A fundamental implication of scientific management is the manager is primarily responsible for increasing an organization's productivity. This has major implications for the American economy in the face of a consistent lack of competitive productivity and GNP growth. The major representatives of this school of thought are Frederick Winslow Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth.

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) Frederick Taylor is known as the "father of scientific management.

" Taylor began work at the age of 18 as an apprentice to a pattern-maker, and as a machinist. He later joined the Midvale Steel Company as a laborer rising in eight years to chief engineer. During this period at the steel mill he performed exhaustive experiments on worker productivity and tested what he called the "task system," later developing into the Taylor System and eventually progressing into scientific management.

His experiments involved determining the best way of performing each work operation, the time it required, materials needed and the work sequence. He sought to establish a clear division of labor between management and employees.

Taylor's task management methodology rests on a fundamental belief that management, the entrepreneurs in Taylor’s day, was not only superior intellectually to the average employee, but had a positive duty to supervise them and organize their work activities. This would eliminate what Taylor called "the natural tendency of workers to soldier" on the job.

In 1911 a paper Taylor originally prepared for presentation to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers was published as The Principles of Scientific Management. Taylor positioned scientific management as the best management approach for achieving productivity increases. It rested on the manager's superior

ability and responsibility to apply systematic knowledge to the organizational work setting. Taylor developed four principles of scientific management:

A scientific management methodology be developed.

Managers should assume the responsibility for selecting, training and developing the employee.

Managers should fully cooperate with employees to insure the proper application of the scientific management method.

Management should become involved with the work of their employees as much as possible. Scientific management consisted of a system for supervising employees, improving work methods, and providing incentives to employees through the piece rate system. While Taylor assumed there was an unquestioned necessity to supervise employees, he also sought the best way of performing a job as well as to provide financial incentives for increased productivity by paying employees by the piece through the piece rate system.

Taylor's Principles became enormously popular in America as well as in Europe providing organizational theory an aura of science.

Scientific management led to time and motion studies, efficiency experts and others spreading the gospel. Taylor's optimistic belief that study of the organization through his scientific method would provide the answers necessary to resolve the most difficult productivity problems is extremely important to contemporary management. He is the first to point out that it is management's primary responsibility to make an organization productive.

However, other areas of his methodology have proven to be flawed. In particular, Taylor's insistence on close supervision flies in the face of all contemporary organizational research demonstrating close supervision is counterproductive. Additionally, the piece rate system all too often is either inapplicable in today's computerized assembly lines or is compromised by management continually raising the quota.

Frank (1868-1924) and Lillian (1878-1972) Gilbreth The Gilbreths were strong

advocates of scientific management. Frank Gilbreth made his first management studies of bricklayers.

After extensive studies of bricklayers, he was able to reduce the motions in bricklaying from 18 1/2 to 4. This produced an almost 170% increase in the bricklayer's productivity while not increasing the amount of effort needed. Gilbreth was interested in developing the one best way of doing work. His system later became known as "speed work" which was achieved by eliminating unnecessary motions.

Frank, working with his wife, Lillian, subsequently became heavily involved in time and motion studies isolating 17 basic work motions that they termed therbligs (therblig is Gilbreth spelled backwards).

Their studies of work included the use of a cyclograph, a form of stereoscopic movie camera, whereby the time and motions of a worker could be carefully studied. Lillian Gilbreth published one of the earliest works on the psychological study of management, The Psychology of Management. She was also the earliest female pioneer in scientific management.

The Gilbreths were immortalized by two of their children who wrote Cheaper by the Dozen chronicling life under the scientific management method of their parents.

Administrative Management

Henri Fayol belongs to the administrative management branch of the classical school. His entire working career was spent with a mining company, Commentary-Fourchambault Company, where he rose from an apprentice to General Manager in 1888 remaining there until his retirement in 1918. He is credited with turning the company around from a threatened bankruptcy into a strong financial position by the time of his retirement at age 77. As a result of his management experience, Fayol strongly believed management theories could be developed and taught to others.

His first

writing on administration, Industrial and General Administration was published in 1916 in the Bulletin of the Society of Mineral Industries and later appeared as a book.

The book became prominent in the United States after a second English translation appeared in 1949 under the title General and Industrial Management. Henri Fayol (1841-1925) As a result of his long management career, Fayol developed fourteen management principles: 1. Division of Work. Division of work, specialization, produces more and better work with the same effort. It focuses effort while maximizing employee efforts.

It is applicable to all work including technical applications.

There are limitations to specialization which are determined by its application.

Authority and responsibility. Authority is the right to give orders and the power to exact obedience. Distinction must be made between a manager's official authority deriving from office and personal authority created through individual personality, intelligence and experience.

• Authority creates responsibility.
• Discipline. Obedience and respect between a firm and its employees based on clear and fair agreements is absolutely essential to the functioning of any organization.
• Good discipline requires managers to apply sanctions whenever violations become apparent.
• Unity of command. An employee should receive orders from only one superior.
• Employees cannot adapt to dual command.
• Unity of direction. Organizational activities must have one central authority and one plan of action.
• Subordination of Individual Interest to General Interest.
• The interests of one employee or group of employees are subordinate to the interests and goals of the organization and cannot prevail over it. Remuneration of Personnel.
• Salaries are the price of services rendered by employees. It should be fair and provide satisfaction both to the employee and employer. The rate of
  

remuneration is dependent on the value of the services rendered as determined by the employment market.

A chain of authority exists from the highest organizational authority to the lowest ranks.

While needless departure from the chain of command should be discouraged, using the "gang plank" principle of direct communication between employees can be extremely expeditious and increase the effectiveness of organizational communication.

• Order.
• Organizational order for materials and personnel is essential. The right materials and the right employees are necessary for each organizational function and activity.
• Equity. In organizations equity is a combination of kindliness and justice. The desire for equity and equality of treatment are aspirations to be taken into account in dealing with employees.
• Stability of Tenure of Personnel. In order to attain the maximum productivity of personnel, it is essential to maintain a stable work force. Management insecurity produces undesirable consequences. Generally the managerial personnel of prosperous concerns is stable, that of unsuccessful ones is unstable.
• Initiative. Thinking out a plan and ensuring its success is an extremely strong motivator. At all levels of the organizational ladder zeal and energy on t he part of employees are augmented by initiative.
• Esprit de Corps.

Teamwork is fundamentally important to an organization.

Creating work teams and using extensive face-to-face verbal communication encourages this. While subsequent organizational research has created controversy over many of Fayol's principles, they are still widely used in management theory. Chester Barnard (1886-1961) Another strong member of the administrative management school is Chester Barnard. Barnard led a

highly successful management career rising to the position of the President of New Jersey Bell Telephone Company. He was also very active professionally including acting as the head of the Rockefeller Foundation.

After giving a series of lectures on management, Barnard published his only book, The Functions of the Executive, in 1938. Basically, Barnard feels organizations are communication systems. He feels it is particularly important for managers to develop a sense of common purpose where a willingness to cooperate is strongly encouraged. He is credited with developing the acceptance theory of management emphasizing the willingness of people to accept those having authority to act. He feels the manager's ability to exercise authority is strongly determined by the employee's "zone of indifference" where orders are accepted without undue question.

Contrary to Weber beliefs that communication flows from the top of the organization to the bottom, Barnard feels organizational communication flows from the bottom to the top.

He states there are four factors affecting the willingness of employees to accept authority:

• The employees must understand the communication.
• The employees accept the communication as being consistent with the organization's purposes.
• The employees feel their actions will be consistent with the needs and desires of the other employees.
• The employees feel they are mentally and physically carry out the order from the higher authority.

Barnard also feels informal organizations within formal organizations perform necessary and vital communication functions for the overall organization. This is consistent with his belief that the executive's main organizational function is acting as a channel of communication and maintaining the organization in operation. Barnard's sympathy for and understanding of employee needs in the dynamics of the

organizational communication process positions him as a bridge to the behavioral school of management many of whose early members were his contemporaries.

The Behavioral Movement

As management research continued in the twentieth century, questions were increasingly raised regarding the interactions and motivations of the individual in organizations. Management principles developed during the classical period were simply not useful in dealing with many management situations and could not explain the behavior of individual employees. The principles of classical management theory were helpful in placing management objectives in the perspective of an organization; however, they failed to fulfill one of their earliest goals, i. . , providing management tools for dealing with organizational personnel challenges. In short, classical theory ignored employee motivation and behavior.

Curiously, an experiment, the Hawthorne experiment, rigorously applied classical management theory only to reveal its shortcomings. The behavioral school was a natural outgrowth of this revolutionary management experiment. Its theorists include Mary Parker Follett and Herbert Simon as well as numerous psychologists who turned from studying individual behavior to organizational behavior.

Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) One of the earliest pioneers in the behavioral movement was Mary Parker Follett. Follett received an education in political science and pursued a professional career as a social worker where she became absorbed in work place related issues.

She strongly believes in the inherent problem solving ability of people working in groups. Rather than assuming classical management's strongly hierarchical position of power in organizations, Follett asserts power should be cooperatively shared for the purpose of resolving conflict.

She is best known for her integration method of conflict resolution as opposed to the three choices she sites of domination, compromise or

voluntary submission by one side over another. If, for example, an individual is sitting in a library on a warm spring day near an open window and a second person decides to share the table but wishes to close the window to avoid the draft, we have the basis of a conflict. Now one person could try and dominate the other and force the window to either be open or closed leaving the other person unhappy.

A second alternative is for one person to simply submit to the wishes of the other, but be very unhappy. The third alternative is to compromise and close the window half way which will not satisfy either person. Follett states the best way to handle this situation is to resolve the issue jointly through "creative conflict resolution" where, in our example, the newcomer may voluntarily agree to sit in another part of the library adjusting the window according to his/her preference. In this case, both parties to the conflict are happy as the issue has been resolved according to their own desires.

Creative conflict resolution involves cooperatively working with others to devise inventive new ideas often providing strong interpersonal benefits. Herbert Simon The death knell of classical management theory was pronounced by Herbert Simon in his book Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administration Organization published n 1947.

Simon is particularly critical of the principles of administration including span of control and unity of command while saying all of the principles collectively were "no more than proverbs".

Simon found the principles of classical administration to be contradictory and vague. Simon's greatest management contribution is in decision making theory

for which he received a Nobel Prize. Simon states decision makers perform in an arena of bounded rationality and that the approach to decision making must be one of satisficing where satisfactory rather than optimum decisions are often reached.

Satisficing successfully adapts to and is a realistic solution for the limited time and resources a manager has when considering alternatives in the decision making process.