If coordination and integration are accepted as the essence of management, then management can be defined as “the process by which individual and group effort is coordinated toward group goals.” Another common definition is that “management is the creation of an environment which will facilitate the accomplishment of an enterprise objective.” Still another stresses the functions of management as “a distinct process consisting of planning, organization, actuating, and controlling, performed to determine and accomplish the objectives.” In short, management aims to reach predetermined objectives by a thought-out, organized, and systematic approach.
The processes of management apply to any situation in which a goal or objective is sought. Individuals manage their time, effort, and resources in order to reach goals. In studying for a course, students perform various management functions in order to reach a goal: a grade of A, B, or C, or a good grasp of the material. However, there are other obligations and social desires which must also fit into the limited schedule of a day or week-other courses, jobs, and social activities! To accomplish everything, it becomes necessary to plan carefully and allocate time among all activities and interests. Some people organize their efforts carefully, and carry out their plans conscientiously. Others do things randomly and find that they are cramming for every test and often failing to reach their goals. In much the same way, a salesman may plan and organize his efforts with care, or he may waste time in coffee and conversation. Through lack of planning he may call on one prospect on the west side of town and plan the next prospect for the east side and then back again, whereas he could have called on both prospects in the same area with greater economy of gasoline and time.
The same principles apply to both small and large businesses. The art and science of management, once mastered, is transferable. The president of a college, the deans, the department chairmen and other members of the administration are all managers. While they deal with matters of faculty, staff, students, and curriculum, the essence of their jobs is no different from that of the job of the president of a large manufacturing firm, and the other managers of a group of employees producing a wanted commodity. The successful manager of a business firm will be a successful manager of a school or a branch of government-if he can master the technical aspects of the new position. One reason why managers in industry are often called to serve in government is not that they know government, but that they know management, and can perform its functions by making good use of people who have technical knowledge of the job.
Business is only one form of enterprise. What differentiates it from others is its: objectives: a business is profit-oriented whereas a city government is service oriented. Both require management. Stated from the system point of view, both business and government have inputs, transformations, and outputs. These differ, but both need the ingredient of management to coordinate and grate the input and the transformation process in order to produce the desired output. So important is management to business that small well-managed firms are often bought by large ones for the quality of management that can be obtained in no other way.
There are many other classifications of managerial activity, but to simplify our discussion, we shall consider the three classifications described by Donnelly, Gibson and Ivancevich in Fundamentals of Management: classical, behavioral, and management science, remembering that these include the thinking of most management theorists and practitioners.
The thinking of the classical school is described mainly in the literature that predates World War II. Engineers, scientists, and practitioners employed by business and government were then seeking answers to fundamental problems of efficiency, maximization of output-to-input ratios, and increases in the productivity of workers. Classical theorists defined management in terms of the functions of the manager and felt that the essential nature of management lay in his unique activities, Classical management theory was derived from two views of the management of work: the first was called scientific management, and the second, which considered the management of the whole organization, was called total entity management. Late in the nineteenth century, at the time big business was emerging in the United States, “scientific management” had its beginnings at the shop level. Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientific management, employed his engineering background to study work standards and the relationship of output to wages. He started in the steel industry, where he examined every measurable aspect of a particular job to discover what the worker did and how he did it. By carefully observing every detail in the handling of pig iron, Taylor was able to train a worker to increase his tonnage from 12% to 47% long tons a day. Taylor observed that a man handling a 92-pound pig of iron could remain under that load 43 per cent of the work day but had to rest and recuperate the rest of the time. By selecting certain workers and teaching them how to handle their workload properly, he was able to increase production by 300 per cent, and the workers’ incomes from $1.15 to $1.85 per day. By studying other jobs in the steel mill, Taylor increased efficiency and developed a variety of methods and procedures to implement the concept of management.
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth also used the shop level approach, and through time and motion studies, speeded and increased productivity. As an apprentice bricklayer, Gilbreth had been able to reduce the number of motions required in outside brick laying from 18 to 4%. The Gilbreths used a camera in the study of work motion, and contributed other devices for measuring and improving efficiency.
Other investigators soon became interested in “total entity management,” or more effective means of directing the entire business firm. European business was ahead of the United States in this respect since the Industrial Revolution began in Europe much earlier than it did in the New World. In France, Henri Fayol managed a large coal mining concern, and for fifty years practiced a formalized approach to management. His ideas were put into writing in 1916, but it wasn’t until 1929 that an English translation appeared.
Fayol proposed a framework for the analysis of administrative behavior and suggested a program of fourteen points for management practice. He and other early theorists emphasized structure and formal relationships in the business firm. They did not ignore the human element, but called upon others to develop knowledge about the actual work situation, while they developed an extensive body of knowledge and schemes of logically related concepts which we discuss under “The Functions of Management”
As we have seen, the classicists studied the functions and relationships of the formal business system. Others became interested in the human element within the organization. Human relations theory called attention to the importance of the individual within the system in the final determination of success and failure. Donnelly considers the behavioral school to be made up of two parts, as follows:
In the 1930s, the idea emerged that people were the important consideration in management, and that through people objectives were established and achieved. In 1927, a group of researchers from Harvard University were invited to conduct studies at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric in Chicago. The first phase was to study the effects of physical environment, such as changes in the amount of illumination in the working area. Next, working conditions such as rest periods, refreshments, and working hours were examined. Interviews were then used to determine attitudes. Finally, the social organization existing among workers was analyzed.
It was found that illumination was not a major factor and other changes in work conditions also had little effect on productivity. Rather, the social organization which grew up in the experimental groups appeared to have the greatest influence on productivity. In the final phase, the researchers found that the work group itself set fair rates for all its members, and that there were no relationships between productivity and intelligence, dexterity, or other skills. The conclusion was that the wage incentive plan was less important in determining the individual worker’s output than group acceptance and security!
While this study was often criticized, it placed a new emphasis on social factors in the study of work. The concern with human relations thus gave a new direction to the study of management: the behavioral science approach.
The behavioral sciences are psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Psychology includes the sub-fields of social psychology, industrial psychology, organizational psychology, and others. Sociology is the study of man in society, of interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships within groups. Sociologists, like psychologists, are interested in behavior of the individual in an organization and as part of the larger and smaller groups within an organization. Anthropology examines the behaviors of man which have been learned and are part of culture. Behavior, priority of needs, choices, and means of satisfying needs, are all parts of culture. While psychology and sociology have had greater effect on shaping managerial thought, anthropology has made significant contributions to the understanding of organization through aspects of culture. This is especially true for international development.
