Historical Evolution of Administrative Thought
Administration
The process of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the use of resources to achieve goals.
Historical Evolution of Administrative Thought
The Theory of Scientific Management
Frederick Taylor, Henry Gantt, and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
Short supply of work and the need to raise productivity in the early twentieth century (1856-1915) raised the need for efficiency of workers. This led to the design of better methods to accomplish each task, select, develop, and educate workers, and foster close and amicable cooperation between workers and employers.
Contributions:
- Rational organization of work
- Time and motion study
- Study of human fatigue
- Division of labor and specialization of labor
- Design of tasks
Classical Theory of Management
Henri Fayol
Emphasis on how the structure must be organized for efficiency. The company as a whole.
The efficiency of organizations is part of the whole and its organizational structure. This ensures efficiency in all parties, whether its organs (sections, departments, etc.) or people (officeholders and executors of tasks).
Contributions:
- Presented the core business functions
- Clarified administrative functions, defining the concept of stewardship
- Demonstrated by the proportionality of administrative functions that the hierarchy is distributed across the enterprise and is not exclusive to senior management
- Differentiated between management and organizational concepts
- Established the general principles of management
Quantitative Management
- Evolution of the development of mathematical and statistical solutions to military problems during World War II.
- Gave rise to Operations Research, responding to the need to optimize or find optimal solutions for production processes.
- Understanding the application of statistics, optimization models, information models, and computer simulations.
- Among the techniques are linear programming (resource allocation), critical path scheduling (more efficiency at work), and decisions of optimal levels of inventories.
- The direct contribution of this approach is in the planning and controlling operations of a firm.
Behaviorist School
Elton Mayo, Fritz J. Roethlisberger, and William J. Dickson
– Managers need to more efficiently handle the “personal side” of their organizations. The organization is the PEOPLE.
- Systematically discover social and psychological factors that create effective human relations.
- Peer pressure => greater influence to increase the productivity of workers’ demands of management.
- Concept of “social man”, driven by his personal financial needs
Contributions:
- Includes a new language to the administrative code, which speaks of the institution, leadership, communication, informal organization, and group dynamics
Reviews:
- This theory has been strongly criticized for developing a subtle strategy to deceive workers, demanding more while working less.
- This manipulative strategy sought to change employee behavior in favor of management objectives.
Theory X and Theory Y
Douglas McGregor
Theory X (The man seeks to satisfy lower needs)
- Employees do not like the job
- They must be controlled and punished for achieving goals
- Avoid responsibilities
- A little ambitious, like security
Theory Y (The man seeks to satisfy higher-order needs)
- For employees, work is natural
- Employees desire to exercise self-direction and control
- Employees accept and even seek responsibility
- The ability to make decisions is distributed and not necessarily the sole ownership of managers
Motivation-Hygiene Theory
Frederick Herzberg
Instead of the traditional continuous motivation-motivation spectrum, Herzberg proposes the following:
- Satisfaction – no satisfaction… “Motivators”
- Dissatisfaction – no dissatisfaction… “Hygiene factors”
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow
Contribution of elements of motivation:
- Self-actualization
- Esteem
- Love and belonging
- Safety and security
- Physiological
Systems Theory
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
- Study organizations as social systems embedded in systems that are interrelated and affect each other.
- All elements are integrated into relatively interdependent units.
- Allows managers to see the organization as a whole and the external environment as part of a wider system.
- The activity of one segment of the organization affects, to varying degrees, the activity of all other segments.
- Departments cannot be fully operational within the traditional organizational boundaries but must interact with departments across the enterprise.
- To do this, departments not only have to communicate with other departments but also often with representatives of other organizations.
- Systems theory emphasizes the dynamic nature and interrelationships of organizations and the administrative task.
- General managers may retain more easily the balance between the needs of different parts of the business and the needs and goals of the entire company.
- This new approach allows each process to direct the organization to provide responsible products and services that adhere to increasingly stringent parameters of customers and competition.
The strong and lasting relationships can be a successful product of acts and attitudes that revolve around “quality”. Total quality management adds a dynamic dimension to administration because quality is always a moving target.
A system is a meeting or series of related elements that interact to achieve a particular purpose.
Factors Affecting Modern Organizations
- Growth of organizations: Organizations tend to experience success, growth, and expansion of their activities. Whether in terms of size and resources, they expand their markets and the volume of their operations.
- Acute competition: As markets and businesses increase, risks are also growing. The product or service that proves to be the best is the one with the highest demand.
- Sophistication of technology: With the advancement of telecommunications, computers, and transportation, organizations and companies have internationalized their activities and operations.
- High inflation: Energy costs, raw materials, workforce, and money continually raise inflation. Inflation requires increasingly more efficient management of organizations and enterprises so they can get better results with available resources and programs to reduce operating costs.
- Economic globalization and internationalization of business: Export activity and creating new subsidiaries in foreign territories are recent phenomena that occurred after World War II, influencing future organization and management.