Practise Management History

History and theory of the practise of management

Introduction

The history of the practise management can date back as early as Egyptian times building the great pyramids, for building this large to be built there must have been some form of management practise used or else the project would never have been finished. The most important pre-twentieth century influence on management was the industrial revolution, Robbins, DeCenzo and Coulter (2008).The industrial revolution made it possible to cut down the level of manpower, replacing them with machines. This led to it being economical and cost effective to use big factories which cut down on costs. Many people hugely benefited from this setting up monopolies in many industries, this led to

The systems approach: Systems theory is one of the dominant organizational theories in management today. It treats an organization as either an open or closed system. A system is a set of distinct parts that form a complex whole. A closed system is not affected by its environment, while an open system is. Today nearly all systems are open as they all interact with their environment. This relationship is called dealing with stakeholders. Stakeholders are any group affected by the management’s decisions such as the employees, suppliers and so on. The systems approach also deals with the external environment such as economic climate and global factors. The manger must be able to manage and co-ordinate the various activities of the business so the systems approach give a broad overview of the manager’s tasks (Robbins, DeCenzo and Coulter

The contingency approach: A contingency approach to management is based on the theory that management effectiveness is contingent, or dependent, upon the interplay between the application of management behaviours and specific situations. In other words, the way you manage should change depending on the circumstances. The contingency approach has been used as a more in depth approach, replacing the more simplistic approaches. It takes into account that every organisation is different and is run in a different way, PWC is run differently to Guinness. Some of the practises will be the same but the majority will be different. The contingency approach takes many different variables into consideration, Robbins, DeCenzo and Coulter