History of Management Thought 5E

This important text and reference examines the evolution of management thought
from its earliest days to the present by examining the backgrounds, ideas and
influences of major contributors. Profiles significant eras in the development of
management thought, analyzing various trends and movements. With each
subsequent edition, the author further refines his presentation and analysis to
interpret management history in the light of current business developments and
management thought.? This Fifth Edition has been significantly updated to reflect
the impact of technology and changing market conditions.

Table of Contents
Contents
Part One Early Management Thought?
Chapter 1 A Prologue to the Past?
Chapter 2 Management Before Industrialization
Chapter 3 The Industrial Revolution: Problems and Perspective??
Chapter 4 Management Pioneers in the Early Factory
Chapter 5 The Industrial Revolution in the United States
Chapter 6 Industrial Growth and Systematic Management?
Part Two The Scientific Management Era
Chapter 7 The Advent of Scientific Management?
Chapter 8 Spreading the Gospel of Efficiency?
Chapter 9 The Human Factor: Preparing the Way?
Chapter 10 The Emergence of Management and Organization Theory
Chapter 11 Scientific Management in Theory and Practice?????????????
Chapter 12 Scientific Management in Retrospect??
Part Three The Social Person Era
Chapter 13 The Hawthorne Studies
Chapter 14 The Search for Organization Integration
Chapter 15 People and Organizations
Chapter 16 Organizations and People
Chapter 17 Human Relations in Concept and Practice
Chapter 18 The Social Person Era in Retrospect
Part Four The Modern Era
Chapter 19 Management Theory and Practice
Chapter 20 Organizational Behavior and Theory
Chapter 21 Science and Systems in Management
Chapter 22 Obligations and Opportunities
Chapter 23 Epilogue
Author and Name Index?
Subject Index?


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http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/wos/worksite/knowles_history.html

Why Management and Business Studies
Need History
By Harry Knowles*

In the late 1980s, a roundtable discussion between prominent Harvard business historians and
management academics concurred with the proposition that understanding history is an important part
of managing. Participants agreed that history also helps managers determine their organisations
current position using comparisons with the past. In addition managers can determine whether current
events are part of a continuous trend or are discontinuities. It was also recognised that history is even
more important in choosing strategies in todays rapidly
changing business environment.

John D. Rockefeller (right) with Ludlow
Miners, 1915. Business History can provide
key insights into management practice and
the evolution of business strategies.
In 1996, a survey of 75 members of the Management
History Division of the Academy of Management
considered that employing a management history
perspective in business courses delivered a variety of
benefits. These included providing a much needed context
to understand various other courses in the field, giving
students a perspective to employ in understanding their
discipline, anchoring students in theory and dispelling the
myths found in various text books.
These outcomes have been mirrored in additional research
into the role of historical perspective in a business
education curriculum. An historical component can also be
justified on the basis that:
It is an important tool for understanding human nature and its past endeavours and can throw
light on the present and future in many ways
Historical study increases our understanding of humanity and has lessons for human
aspirations, ambitions and organisations. Eg contemporary empowerment and subcontracting
initiatives were better known in previous eras as the helper and putting-out systems.
Historical study can develop communication skills (language ability, writing proficiency), an
ability to evaluate evidence and a healthy scepticism to received opinion and propaganda
It can provide management students with an overview of the development of the national and
international economy and provide key insights into industrial structure and the evolution of
business strategies.
It can broaden business education by illuminating government-business relations, technology,
corporate culture and business ethics
Business and management history not only encompasses the study of organisational systems
but its breadth of approach provides managers with insights into human behaviour operating
under a variety of constraints and influences
Modern managers operating in a world of high-speed decision-making need to be aware of
how long-tem changes have affected enterprises. Business/management history is multi-
disciplinary and concerned with long-term change and offers a more practical focus.
Business/management history supplements management theorys principles for managing
organisations by offering portrayals of reality against which those principles may be tested
and experienced vicariously.
At the Harvard Business School, history has long been and remains a vital part of the School. More
than any other business school, the Harvard School has integrated the study of history into its
curriculum from its earliest days. Today, the School offers three MBA courses in business history,
including the module Creating Modern Capitalism which is taken by all incoming students.

A particularly important aspect of management/business history is historical research. Not only does it
provide a foundation for identifying the current state of knowledge but it also offers a framework for
securing and integrating new information. Yet another valuable feature is that it affords the opportunity
for management teachers, researchers and practitioners to frame the right questions the how,
why and what questions that historians ask appropriately link into the academic areas of enquiry of
theory, process and practice. A third benefit is that the information that is obtained in historical
research allows for the construction of an integrated framework which presents research data in a
manner that is valid, understandable and applicable. A reassessment of the past is essential if we are
to properly understand the present and predict the future.

The value of management/business history has long been recognised. Early work in the 1920s
focussed on topics such as employee relations, productivity, wage plans and work methods. In the
1950s, J ohn Mees (1959) work, Twentieth Century Management Thought provided one of the most
significant in depth analyses and discussions of management history from the scientific management
era to the immediate post World War 2 period. In the 1960s and 1970s, Claude Georgess The History
of Management Thought (1968) and Daniel Wrens The Evolution of Management Thought (1972)
provided an important synthesis and direction in that particular field.

In the field of management history, some of the approaches have included a discussion of
management developments within a particular chronological period; the identification of various
schools of management thought and demonstrating the extent to which management theory and
practice have been a direct reflection of the ideas which emerged from these groups.

The employment of an institutional approach involves an historical focus on the operations within an
organisation, business firm or industry. For example, Chandlers research in Strategy and Structure
(1962) on the linkage between organisational strategy and structure. A biographical approach employs
biographies to provide insights into the lives and actions of famous business people and
entrepreneurs as well as providing the foundations for a fifth approach which combines ideas and
concepts with biographies. For example, an investigation of the ways in which an individual has
employed particular concepts in managing an organisation or in achieving particular organisational
goals.

So much of business and management teaching and research, particularly in Australia, is undertaken
in a temporal vacuum. Surely a management consultant retained to diagnose problems in a business
organisation needs an understanding of the organisations history and the historical context of its
environment in the same that a medical practitioner requires knowledge of the patients medical history
as a prerequisite to diagnosing an illness. It is unlikely therefore that a management professional
would claim than an historical perspective is unimportant. Nevertheless, the need to integrate an
historical perspective into what is taught and researched in Australian business schools is generally
ignored.

Clearly, the employment of an historical perspective adds a further important dimension to
management/business research and teaching, particularly in the realm of theoretical explanation and
methodology. Many trained historians have found their way into business schools and management
departments in Universities the opportunity is there for the taking.

References:
J . W. Gibson et al, The role of management history in the management curriculum :1997, J ournal of
Management History, V. 5 (5), 1999, pp. 277-285
Alan Kantrow (ed), Why history matters to managers, Harvard Business Review, J anuary-February
1986, pp.81-88
R. Warren and G. Tweedale, Business ethics and Business History: Neglected Dimensions in
Management Education, British J ournal of Management , V.13, 2002, pp. 209-219

* Harry Knowles, Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney.