General Administrative Theory And Contingency Approach

Management is defined as a complex activity that involves several principles, functions and business activities which has existed for thousands of years dating back to the construction of the Egyptian Pyramids and the Great Wall of China. In the 19th century, theorists propounded the study of management and contributed six major management theories, each being distinctive from one another, in order to understand the overall concept of management. These management theories consist of Scientific Management, General Administrative Theorists, Quantitative Approach, Organizational Behavior, Systems Approach and Contingency Approach. This essay will seek to critically discuss the contribution of three theorists; Frederick W Taylor, define the theory

The systems enables workers to do what needs to be done, how it is to be done and exact time allowed for doing the task, this system hinders employees from expressing creativity and excelling within a given task, causing a lack of motivation with individuals. The new motivation that Taylor encourages within ‘the automaton’ is monetary incentives. Workers are now money driven and no longer carry that passion for their profession.

General Administrative Theory is the theory of management that focuses on describing what managers do and what constitutes good management practice (Stephen P Robbins, 2011). Henri Fayol was a French industrialist who admired the management field. Fayol was one of the few theorists who created one of the classical management theories called Administrative Management.

Scientific management theory was concerned with increasing the productivity of the company and the first-line managers which made Taylor's theory an important theory but Fayol believed his theory was as essential to the management sector as Taylor’s theory because he focused on the activities of all

The Hawthrone studies were a series of studies carried out by the western Electric Company Works, which started in the 1920’s. The studies were initially created as a scientific management experiment to examine the effect of a number of lighting levels on worker productivity. As expected, when the light intensity increased so did productivity; however when the light was decreased productivity still increased. Only when the lighting was at a moonlit level did the productivity decrease. Due to these results they were not sure the reasons to this but stated that lighting was not a factor of productivity. The engineers behind the study were at a lost at what exactly contributed to the results of the experiment, so they asked Professor Elton Mayo of Harvard to assist with the