A Brief History of Management

Management is an essential component in any business or organization and it applies at every level in all types of organizations. Management can be defined as "The attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner through planning, organizing, leading and controlling organizational resources." The terms planning, organizing, leading and controlling are called "management functions". Today management is a broad area of study that has been developed throughout the past century and is still evolving.

The invention of the steam engine by James Watt kick-started the industrial revolution. With the industrial revolution, the concept of a factory emerged. Factories that did mass production with thousands of workers from different backgrounds mushroomed in the industrial world and thus a need for management arose. The idea of management at that time was to bring efficiency and order to an otherwise chaotic workplace.

This was the time when management was perceived and studied as a science. Frederick Winslow Taylor is considered the father of Scientific management. Through his experience and observations, Frederick Taylor came up with scientific management which aimed at increasing efficiency at the production level. In his monograph "The principles of Scientific Management", he highlighted four principles. They are
1. Study the way a job is performed and create a new scientific way to perform it with maximum productivity
2. Codify the new method into rules and train and equip the workers with the new method
3. Select workers whose skills match the rules developed and provide detailed instruction and supervision.
4. Establish fair levels of performance and reward higher performance.
In Scientific Management it it assumed that man is an "economic animal" and that money is the motivating factor. Also this system of management only applies at the operational level of the organization.

While efforts in management were only applied to the operational level of an organization, gradually attention moved to the upper hierarchical levels of the organization. This led to the development of the "Modern Management theory". A french mining engineer Henry Fayol is considered the father of modern management theory. Fayol was the first to define the 4 management functions quoted in the first paragraph of this post. In his book, "Industrial and general Administration", he divided all administrative activities into six categories. They are,
1. Technical
2. Commercial
3. Financial
4. Security
5. Accounting
6. Administrative
He also proposed 14 principles of administration - Division of work, Authority and responsibility, discipline, unity of command, unity of management, subordination of individual interests to the common good. remuneration, centralization, hierarchy, order, equity, stability of the staff, initiative, espirit de corps.
Unlike Taylor's Scientific management which focused in the operational level of an organization, Fayol's theory of management focused in the managerial level. Fayol also claimed that workers can be motivated by more than just money and also argued for equal treatment of all workers.

While the management process that is practiced today is mostly based on Fayol's theories, certain aspects of management are still evolving. The functions of management are interconnected and each function needs to be performed collectively and to various degrees for the management process to be successful. Although based on scientific principles management also requires a certain level of creativity in application. The management process can also depend on factors such as the culture and structure of the organization. By adapting to this dynamic nature and selecting the proper approach to management, organizations will be able to succeed in today's world.