Contemporary Management Practices
THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF CONTEMPORARY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
The Premodern Era
Organized activities and management have existed for thousands of years, for example, the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China. Michelangelo, the genius artist of the Renaissance era, was a manager himself. In order to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and other great things, he personally selected his workers, trained them, and assigned them to one or more teams, and he kept detailed employment records. In the past several hundred years, especially in the last century, management has undergone systematic investigation, acquired a common body of knowledge, and has become a formal discipline of study.
What was Adam Smith’s Contribution to the Field of Management?
Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), made an argument on the economic advantages that organizations and society would achieve from the division of labor, which is the breakdown of jobs into narrow, repetitive tasks. Smith concluded that division of labor increased productivity by increasing each worker’s skill and dexterity, by saving time that is usually lost in changing tasks, and by the creation of labor- saving inventions and machinery.
Probably, the most important influence on management was the Industrial Revolution. It began in the late eighteenth century in Great Britain, where machine power was being substituted for human power. Thanks to this movement, there was the development of big organizations. John D. Rockefeller was putting together the Standard Oil monopoly, Andrew Carnegie was gaining control of two- thirds of the steel industry, and other people were creating new businesses that would require formalized management practices.
CLASSICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
The roots of modern management lie within a group of practitioners and writers who gave their contributions to management which we call the classical approach. The classical approach is the term
The Premodern Era
Organized activities and management have existed for thousands of years, for example, the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China. Michelangelo, the genius artist of the Renaissance era, was a manager himself. In order to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and other great things, he personally selected his workers, trained them, and assigned them to one or more teams, and he kept detailed employment records. In the past several hundred years, especially in the last century, management has undergone systematic investigation, acquired a common body of knowledge, and has become a formal discipline of study.
What was Adam Smith’s Contribution to the Field of Management?
Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), made an argument on the economic advantages that organizations and society would achieve from the division of labor, which is the breakdown of jobs into narrow, repetitive tasks. Smith concluded that division of labor increased productivity by increasing each worker’s skill and dexterity, by saving time that is usually lost in changing tasks, and by the creation of labor- saving inventions and machinery.
Probably, the most important influence on management was the Industrial Revolution. It began in the late eighteenth century in Great Britain, where machine power was being substituted for human power. Thanks to this movement, there was the development of big organizations. John D. Rockefeller was putting together the Standard Oil monopoly, Andrew Carnegie was gaining control of two- thirds of the steel industry, and other people were creating new businesses that would require formalized management practices.
CLASSICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
The roots of modern management lie within a group of practitioners and writers who gave their contributions to management which we call the classical approach. The classical approach is the term