ADAM SMITH
Background | Adam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher and political economist who is one of the fathers of modern economics. In 1759, while a professor at Glasgow University, he published The Theoryof Moral Sentiments, the work that established his academic reputation. After leaving Glasgow, Smith devoted much of his time to producing his second major work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776. His two great works focussed on observing and explaining society. In The Theory of Moral Sentiment.. The book was an explanation of human nature and of the organisation of society. The central theme of The Wealth of Nations is the division | Contribution to the management development | 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 decided 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.