It is said that management principles can be traced back as far as 5000 years, which has provided considerable amount of time to refine and develop these principles into efficient and successful ideologies. Throughout history, management practise has evolved thanks to a number of pioneers who have veered away from the norm to revolutionise views on what it means to be a good and efficacious manager. Both Robert Owen and Richard Branson can be seen as frontrunners of their time, performing feats in the realm of management that nobody before them would have dared to have even considered.
Robert_Owen Robert Owen was born in Newtown in Wales, United Kingdom. During his life he managed to improve well-being, education and rights of the working class. His driving ambition to create a better society made him a successful manufacturer and an important pioneer of Modern Management. "The most important experiment for the happiness of the human race that has yet been instituted in any part of the world"1 [Owen, 1801] started when Robert Owen bought the New Lanark Mills in 1801. Under his management the New Lanark became a model community which was driving towards prosperity and making progress through the new technology. He was considered a kind man, who treated his employees very well. Owen highlighted the importance of education; he believed that knowledge is a useful skill that could release working class children from hunger and poverty. Thus New Lanark was the first place in the world that had an Infant School. This allowed parents to keep on working and created the opportunity for wider education provision, including evening classes for workers. He also introduced better working conditions for children; children under ten were not allowed to work in the village and no children were allowed to work for longer than 10 hours a day.
Moreover he raised the minimum wage for child labour, raised wages for adults, reduced working hours and provided all the