Quality School of Management
The Quality School of Management (also known as Total Quality Management, TQM) is a fairly recent and comprehensive model for leading and operating an organization. The prime focus is on continually improving performance by focusing on customers while addressing the needs of all stakeholders. In other words, this concept focuses on managing the entire organization to deliver high quality to customers.
Contingency Approach and Recent Contributions
The Contingency Management theory evolved out of the System Approach to managing organizations. According to the Contingency approach, management is situational; hence there exists no single best approach to management, as situations that a manager faces is always changing. However, situations are often similar to the extent that some principles of management can be effectively applied by identifying the relevant contingency variables in the situation and then evaluating them. Peter F. Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, Laurence Peter, William Ouchi, Thomas Peters, Robert Waterman, and Nancy Austin are some of the most important contributors to management thought in recent times. This has emerged perhaps as the best approach as it encourages management to search for the correct situational factors for applying appropriate management principles effectively. On the basis of the Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s research focusing on…
What is Management?
Management is a universal phenomenon. Every individual or entity requires setting objectives, making plans, handlingpeople, coordinating and controlling activities, achieving goals and evaluating performance directed towardsorganizational goals. These activities relate to the utilization of variables or resources from the environment − human, monetary, physical, and informational. Human resources refer to managerial talent, labor (managerial talent, labor, and services provided by them), monetaryresources (the monetary investment the organization uses to finance its current and long-term operations), physicalresources (raw materials, Physical and production facilities and equipment) and information resources (data and other kinds of information). Management is essentially the bringing together these resources within an organization towards reaching objectives of anorganization.
Chester Barnard and Social Systems Theory
One of the most important contributions to this school has been made by Chester I. Barnard. His classic treatise entitled "The Functions of the Executive", published in 1938, is considered by some management scholars as one of the most influential books published in the entire field of management. Like Fayol, Barnard based his theories and approach to management on the basis of his first-hand experience as a top-level executive. Fundamentals of System Approach: All organizations are a co-operative system. As co-operative systems, organizations are a combination of complex physical, biological, personal and social components, which are in a specific systematic relationship by reason of the co-operation of two or more persons for at least one definite end. An employee’s role and his …
Management – Modern Schools of Thought
This school of thought primarily focuses on the development of each factor of both workers and the organization. It analyzes the interrelationship of workers and management in all aspects. System Approach and Contingency Approach are the two approaches by this school of thought.
Behavioral and Human Relations Approach
The criticism of scientific and administrative management approach as advocated by Taylor and Fayol, respectively gave birth to the behavioral approach to management. One of the main criticisms leveled against them are their indifference to and neglect of the human side of the enterprise in management dealings. A good number of sociologists and psychologists like Abraham Maslow, Hugo Munsterberg, Rensis Likert, Douglas McGregor, Frederick Herzberg, Mary Parker Follet, and Chester Barnard are the major contributors to this school of thought, which is further subdivided by some writers into the Human Relations approach and the Human Behavioral approach. Elton Mayo and Hawthorne Studies Elton Mayo and Hugo Munsterberg are considered pioneers of this school. The most important contribution to this school of thought was made by Elton Mayo and his associates through Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company between 1927 and 1932. Following are the findings of Mayo and his colleagues from Hawthorne studies: Human/social element operated in the workplace…
Henry Fayol’s Universal Process Theory
One of the oldest and most popular approaches, Henry Fayol’s theory holds that administration of all organizations – whether public or private, large or small – requires the same rational process or functions. This school of thought is based on two assumptions: Although the objective of an organization may differ (for example, business, government, education, or religion), yet there is a core management process that remains the same for all institutions. Successful managers, therefore, are interchangeable among organizations of differing purposes. The universal management process can be reduced to a set of separate functions and related principles. Fayol identifies fourteen universal principles of management, which are aimed at showing managers how to carry out their functional duties. 1. Specialization of labor This improves the efficiency of labor through…
Classical School of Management Thought
Scientific Management and F. W. Taylor Scientific management, according to an early definition, refers to “that kind of management which conducts a business or affairs by standards established by facts or truths gained through systematic observation, experiment, or reasoning.” Advocators of this school of thought attempted to raise labor efficiency primarily by managing the work of employees on the shop floor. Frederick Winslow Taylor, who is generally acknowledged as “the father of scientific management” believed that organizations should study tasks and prepare precise procedures. His varied experience gave him ample opportunity to have firsthand…
Management – Evolution & Trends
Management as a practice gained ground when the concept of working together in groups to achieve common objectives was realized by men. But the study of management as a systematic field of knowledge began at the advent of the Industrial Revolution, which ushered in a new era of serious thinking and theorizing on management. To begin with, there is no single universally accepted theory of management. “The wild array of management theories could even look like a jungle” says Harold Koontz. However, to help put the different theories in perspective, we shall discuss them as representing different schools of thought.
