Management Thought
This article covers meaning, importance & types of Management Thought from HRM perspective.
What is Management Thought?
Management thought, over the years, has evolved as a concept which has provided a guideline on how to manage an organization or a team with the available resources. Management thought has been changed with changing times based on economic, social, cultural, scientific inputs from various scholars, practitioners, philosophers etc.
Importance of Management Thought
Management is defined as the art of getting things done by making the best use of available resources. Over the passing centuries, organizational structure has undergone radical changes, and simultaneously the process of management as well. Hence, several theories were propounded over centuries which were considered crucial for understanding business operations. These, when clubbed together, are called Management Thought. Going forward too, there would be further evolution in management thought as well which would work well based on contemporary needs & requirements.
Types of Management Thoughts & its Evolution
Management thought has evolved over the centuries and can be classified as follows:
Classical School
The Classical School of Management Thought refers to the pre Scientific Management Period (before 1880) whose cornerstone belief was that employees have solely physical and economical needs. Social needs such as career growth, job satisfaction, work-life balance are non-existent and therefore, not important. Hence, this management thought practiced division and specialization of labor, organizational hierarchy and centralized decision making process and focused on profit maximization. The 3 pillars of Classical school were Scientific Management Theory by F.W. Taylor, Administrative Theory by Henry Fayol and Bureaucratic Management by Max Weber.
Behavioral School
With the human relations movement, the management thought started changing and this led to the Behavioral School, which focused on individual employees. It was aimed at understanding the human behavior in an organizational setting.
Quantitative School
This was followed by the Quantitative School which relied heavily on application of Operations Management and Management Information Systems. During the period of 1940s to 1970s, the focus was shifted to use of statistical and mathematical models for increasing accuracy and effectiveness of managerial decision making.
Systems School
The Systems School and Contingency School of Management thought became popular in the latter half of 20th century. The systems school modelled the organization as a system for transforming inputs into outputs. The organization is affected by both internal and external factors and seeks to achieve equilibrium.
Contingency School
Systems School was considered too complex but laid the foundation of Contingency School of management thought, which considers that there is no one best way of management. Hence, application of management principles has to vary as per the situation at hand. It is determined on the basis of several factors like position-power, organizational hierarchy and task structure.
Apart from these, there also exist contemporary schools of management thought such as Total Quality Management and Learning Organization.
Hence, this concludes the definition of Management Thought along with its overview.
Browse the definition and meaning of more similar terms. The Management Dictionary covers over 1800 business concepts from 5 categories.
Continue Reading:
