Management of people barely existed before the industrial revolution, in that, business owners used to handle most, if not all, of the duties. However, institutions such as the military and the church were some of the areas where management of people revealed itself. Ideas of current management date back to the 1700s, where scholars such as Adam Smith conceptualized the future of management (Nelson, 1995) . The rise of the industrial revolution prompted innovation and change in management theories. Theorists of the twentieth century have vastly contributed to management theories and the proper managerial practices to manage people. The focus of these theories was on ways to optimize input from outlined inputs. This paper aims to develop a timeline of five fundamental management theories over time.
In the modern business world, managers have unlimited resources which give them the opportunity to learn new skills and refresh courses to stay updated. For instance, looking back a century ago, there were limited resources for managers to improve their skills. In 1888, a French miner, Henri Fayol, became director of a mining company that was in a financial crisis. Through his position, he needed to come up with ways to turn around the company. He developed the Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management (Uzuegbu, 2015) . Through his management principles, Fayol was able to turn the company around to stability. During his retirement, Henri Fayol wrote about the success of his management strategies which had turned around the company. These principals were the design of what Fayol believed if followed would help a company run effectively. Fayol’s primary roles of management are planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling. However, Fayol’s theories have been criticized for not being flexible and are geared towards specific sectors such as construction and manufacturing where outcomes are immediately graded. In today’s high-tech companies, Fayol’s principles can get outdated or obsolete.
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Fredrick Winslow Taylor is well-known for his shop-management philosophies, which gave him the title Father of Scientific Management. Taylor worked at the Midvale machine should where he noted some staff members were not pulling their weight thus causing a jam in production thereby leading to ineffectiveness. This made him create the task management system. This model looked at each job and the desired results and measured the progress of work being done. His Principles of Scientific Management talks about saving money and time when employees of a company work at peak performance. Taylor’s system removed anything that was valueless and only used the best practices.
Taylor studied the performance of workers and their lifting abilities to measure effort in relation to jobs done by employees. Despite Fayol’s theory being accepted as scientific management that enables management to put resources to the best possible use, it has not been spared of criticism. For example, it has been criticized for creating unemployment as it encourages the use of machines and job cuts as it is driven by more job productivity. It also fosters exploitation of employees as they are not given their fair share in increasing profits. The principle is also expensive on the employee’s side as it requires a considerable investment. It is also time-consuming as it entails frequent mental revision and complete reorganization of the company.
Henry Ford is credited for developing the assembly line technique of mass production. Henry Ford was an industrialist who developed the Ford motor company. In 1903, Ford established the Ford Motor Company and rolled out the first Model T five years later. To meet the demand of the vehicle, Ford introduced the revolutionary mass production approach which coined the term Fordism. Fordism is a manufacturing philosophy whose goal was to achieve high productivity by standardizing the output. This could be met through using assembly lines and dividing into small deskilled duties. Fordism model of management seeks to combine both the worker and machine as one unit. Fordism emphasizes minimizing production costs at the expense of profit maximization. Henry Ford’s Assembly Line dominated much of western economy. As shown, there is plenty of positivity associated with Fordism. However, this principles has its specific negative effects in the ever-changing world. For instance, it is difficult to find a steady career because of the advantages the model has on large companies. This approach is especially at the entry level to get into a company and walk up to the ladder.
Kurt Lewin’s is well-known for his model of the change process in human systems. Lewin is best known for his contributions to the field of organization development and dynamic group study. His research which focused on change theory, action learning, and action research earned him the title of father of Organization Development (Hussain, 2016) . Kurt Lewin’s change theory model is based around a 3-step process which provides a high-level model of change. It provides managers with a framework to implement a change effort, which in most cases is very sensitive and should be made as intact as possible. This theory can help a manager make radical changes in the organization, minimize disruption of the company’s operation structure and ensure that the change is permanently adopted. Ideally, the 3 phases of Kurt Lewin model offer guidance on how to change people.
Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory outlines that to realize change; a manager has to implement new places and reassign duties. However, change will only be effective if people involved embrace it and assist putting it into practice. Despite the change theory being used in many managerial situations today, it takes much time to implement. Most companies prefer this approach to make changes as it is easy to use thereby making it inapplicable in cases that need urgent replacement. Employees may become worried during the refreezing phase because of the introduction of another change hence placing them in a change shock. This change shock makes employees inefficient in their tasks.
One of the key management theories in the history of management is the hierarchy of needs that was developed by Abraham Maslow (Hall, 1968) . Maslow based his theory on the psychological principles and therefore came up with a ladder of needs that would need to be addressed by a human being to ensure satisfaction. Writing in the 1943 paper “A theory of Human motivation, Maslow asserted that the needs of the person which were lower in the pyramid required to be satisfied before ensuring that the urges higher up in the ladder are met. Maslow developed the theory in the period that was between 1943 and again in 1952. The approach was developed when there was considerable debate regarding the motivating factors behind the performance of the people in the workplace. The number of people that was under the investigation consisted of people who were mentally stable and high functioning, and therefore they represented the healthiest population of people.
In the time that the theory was developed, there was a need to address the motivating factors behind the effort that people put in their work. Maslow used the psychological principles in this and therefore outlined how the management can motivate the people. Maslow stated that a person would need to satisfy the needs in an order which started with physiological needs, safety, love or belonging, esteem and finally self-actualization. The highlights of the principle were that the highlight of the drivers of the human behavior, and thus it enabled the management to understand the needs that need to be satisfied. The limitations developed from the misunderstanding that the needs might need to be solved in step to step manner, which Maslow clarified later by stating that the satisfaction of the needs can overlap.
Conclusion
Management principles are part of the crucial factors that constitute the foundation of effective management. For many years, scholars and managers have come up with different strategies which are aimed at making the process of management easier. As noted, there lacked effective management systems before the industrial revolution. Hence most of the management practices were witnessed in institutions such as the church and the military. Later after the industrial revolution, various approaches of management began to emerge. Some of the management theories have been examined in this paper. An example being Henri Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management which he analyses in his book General and Industrial Management. In the book, Henri Fayol notes principles such as division of work, discipline, authority, and responsibility and unity of command among others. Other management principles covered in this paper are Fordism by Henry Ford, Fredrick Taylor’s Shop-Management Principles, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory. It is also of essence to note that these management principles are not effective in totality as they have their specific limitations. However, what cannot be denied is how these management theories have been of importance to the management of companies across the world.
References
Hall, D. T., & Nougaim, K. E. (1968). An examination of Maslow's need hierarchy in an organizational setting. Organizational behavior and human performance , 3 (1), 12-35.
Hussain, S. T., Lei, S., Akram, T., Haider, M. J., Hussain, S. H., & Ali, M. (2016). Kurt Lewin's change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge .
Nelson, A. C., & Duncan, J. B. (1995). Growth management principles and practices . American Planning Association.
Uzuegbu, C. P., & Nnadozie, C. O. (2015). Henry Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management: Implications for Libraries and Information Centres. Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice , 3 (2), 58-72.
