Assignment

 Management today is very dynamic and managers have a unique perception &
expectations from the organisations .In this ever changing business environment,why it
is important to study different schools of management thoughts?

 Today, Management or we may also say business environment has undergone fundamental
changes during the last decade or so

Management ,the word itself spell the meaning (to manage).It is the administration of the
organisation whether, profit or non-profit organisation.

Nowadays in these business environment where external and internal both the factors are
responsible for dynamic changes and the adoption to these dynamic changes are necessary as to
survive in the business environment and to run the business more effectively and efficiently.

As from the above saying”why it is important to study different schools of management

thoughts”.
As today day to day change in business environment leads to change in management activities
in these 'MANGEMEMT SCHOOLS” a major role.It provide thoughts which exactly deals with
current changing environment.
It deals with managing the work of workers efficiently, understanding human behaviour,
increasing quality of managerial decision making through application of quantitative techniques,
interacting to environment,applied management principles and process.

Firstly,we will discuss about the five major school of management thoughts thoroughly -

1) CLASSICAL SCHOOL
2) BEHAVIOURAL SCHOOL
3) QUANTITATIVE SCHOOL
4) SYSTEM SCHOOL
5) CONTINGENCY SCHOOL

CLASSICAL SCHOOL

The classical school is the oldest formal school of management thought. Its roots pre-date
the twentieth century. The classical school of thought generally concerns ways to manage work and
organizations more efficiently. Three areas of study that can be grouped under the classical school are
scientific management, administrative management, and bureaucratic management.
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT.

In the late 19th century, management decisions were often arbitrary and workers often worked at an
intentionally slow pace. There was little in the way of systematic management and workers and
management were often in conflict. Scientific management was introduced in an attempt to create a
mental revolution in the workplace. It can be defined as the systematic study of work methods in order
to improve efficiency. Frederick W. Taylor was its main proponent. Other major contributors were Frank
Gilbreth, Lillian Gilbreth, and Henry Gantt.

Scientific management has several major principles. First, it calls for the application of the scientific
method to work in order to determine the best method for accomplishing each task. Second, scientific
management suggests that workers should be scientifically selected based on their qualifications and
trained to perform their jobs in the optimal manner. Third, scientific management advocates genuine
cooperation between workers and management based on mutual self-interest. Finally, scientific
management suggests that management should take complete responsibility for planning the work and
that workers' primary responsibility should be implementing management's plans. Other important
characteristics of scientific management include the scientific development of difficult but fair
performance standards and the implementation of a pay-for-performance incentive plan based on work
standards.

Scientific management had a tremendous influence on management practice in the early twentieth
century. Although it does not represent a complete theory of management, it has contributed to the
study of management and organizations in many areas, including human resource management and
industrial engineering. Many of the tenets of scientific management are still valid today.

ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT.

Administrative management focuses on the management process and principles of management. In

contrast to scientific management, which deals largely with jobs and work at the individual level of
analysis, administrative management provides a more general theory of management. Henri Fayol is the
major contributor to this school of management thought.

Fayol was a management practitioner who brought his experience to bear on the subject of
management functions and principles. He argued that management was a universal process consisting
of functions, which he termed planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling. Fayol
believed that all managers performed these functions and that the functions distinguished management
as a separate discipline of study apart from accounting, finance, and production. Fayol also presented
fourteen principles of management, which included maxims related to the division of work, authority
and responsibility, unity of command and direction, centralization, subordinate initiative, and team
spirit.

Although administrative management has been criticized as being rigid and inflexible and the validity of
the functional approach to management has been questioned, this school of thought still influences
management theory and practice. The functional approach to management is still the dominant way of
organizing management knowledge, and many of Fayol's principles of management, when applied with
the flexibility that he advocated, are still considered relevant.
BUREAUCRATIC MANAGEMENT.

Bureaucratic management focuses on the ideal form of organization. Max Weber was the major
contributor to bureaucratic management. Based on observation, Weber concluded that many early
organizations were inefficiently managed, with decisions based on personal relationships and loyalty. He
proposed that a form of organization, called a bureaucracy, characterized by division of labor, hierarchy,
formalized rules, impersonality, and the selection and promotion of employees based on ability, would
lead to more efficient management. Weber also contended that managers' authority in an organization
should be based not on tradition or charisma but on the position held by managers in the organizational
hierarchy.

Bureaucracy has come to stand for inflexibility and waste, but Weber did not advocate or favor the
excesses found in many bureaucratic organizations today. Weber's ideas formed the basis for modern
organization theory and are still descriptive of some organizations.

BEHAVIOURAL SCHOOLS

THE BEHAVIORAL SCHOOL

The behavioral school of management thought developed, in part, because of perceived weaknesses in
the assumptions of the classical school. The classical school emphasized efficiency, process, and
principles. Some felt that this emphasis disregarded important aspects of organizational life, particularly
as it related to human behavior. Thus, the behavioral school focused on trying to understand the factors
that affect human behavior at work.

HUMAN RELATIONS.

The Hawthorne Experiments began in 1924 and continued through the early 1930s. A variety of
researchers participated in the studies, including Clair Turner, Fritz J. Roethlisberger, and Elton Mayo,
whose respective books on the studies are perhaps the best known. One of the major conclusions of the
Hawthorne studies was that workers' attitudes are associated with productivity. Another was that the
workplace is a social system and informal group influence could exert a powerful effect on individual
behavior. A third was that the style of supervision is an important factor in increasing workers' job
satisfaction. The studies also found that organizations should take steps to assist employees in adjusting
to organizational life by fostering collaborative systems between labor and management. Such
conclusions sparked increasing interest in the human element at work; today, the Hawthorne studies
are generally credited as the impetus for the human relations school.

According to the human relations school, the manager should possess skills for diagnosing the causes of
human behavior at work, interpersonal communication, and motivating and leading workers. The focus
became satisfying worker needs. If worker needs were satisfied, wisdom held, the workers would in turn
be more productive. Thus, the human relations school focuses on issues of communication, leadership,
motivation, and group behavior. The individuals who contributed to the school are too numerous to
mention, but some of the best-known contributors include Mary Parker Follett, Chester Barnard,
Abraham Maslow, Kurt Lewin, Renais Likert, and Keith Davis. The human relations school of thought still
influences management theory and practice, as contemporary management focuses much attention on
human resource management, organizational behavior, and applied psychology in the workplace.

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE.

Behavioral science and the study of organizational behavior emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. The
behavioral science school was a natural progression of the human relations movement. It focused on
applying conceptual and analytical tools to the problem of understanding and predicting behavior in the
workplace. However, the study of behavioral science and organizational behavior was also a result of
criticism of the human relations approach as simplistic and manipulative in its assumptions about the
relationship between worker attitudes and productivity. The study of behavioral science in business
schools was given increased credence by the 1959 Gordon and Howell report on higher education,
which emphasized the importance to management practitioners of understanding human behavior.

The behavioral science school has contributed to the study of management through its focus on
personality, attitudes, values, motivation, group behavior, leadership, communication, and conflict,
among other issues. Some of the major contributors to this school include Douglas McGregor, Chris
Argyris, Frederick Herzberg, Renais Likert, and Ralph Stogdill, although there are many others.

QUANTITATIVE SCHOOL

The quantitative school focuses on improving decision making via the application of quantitative
techniques. Its roots can be traced back to scientific management.

MANAGEMENT SCIENCE AND MIS.

Management science (also called operations research) uses mathematical and statistical
approaches to solve management problems. It developed during World War II as strategists
tried to apply scientific knowledge and methods to the complex problems of war. Industry began
to apply management science after the war. George Dantzig developed linear programming, an
algebraic method to determine the optimal allocation of scarce resources. Other tools used in
industry include inventory control theory, goal programming, queuing models, and simulation.
The advent of the computer made many management science tools and concepts more
practical for industry. Increasingly, management science and management information systems
(MIS) are intertwined. MIS focuses on providing needed information to managers in a useful
format and at the proper time. Decision support systems (DSS) attempt to integrate decision
models, data, and the decision maker into a system that supports better management decisions.

PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT.

This school focuses on the operation and control of the production process that transforms
resources into finished goods and services. It has its roots in scientific management but became
an identifiable area of management study after World War II. It uses many of the tools of
management science.
Operations management emphasizes productivity and quality of both manufacturing and service
organizations. W. Edwards Deming exerted a tremendous influence in shaping modern ideas
about improving productivity and quality. Major areas of study within operations management
include capacity planning, facilities location, facilities layout, materials requirement planning,
scheduling, purchasing and inventory control, quality control, computer integrated
manufacturing, just-in-time inventory systems, and flexible manufacturing systems.

SYSTEM SCHOOL

The systems school focuses on understanding the organization as an open system that transforms inputs
into outputs. This school is based on the work of a biologist, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, who believed that a
general systems model could be used to unite science. Early contributors to this school included
Kenneth Boulding, Richard Johnson, Fremont Kast, and James Rosenzweig.

The systems school began to have a strong impact on management thought in the 1960s as a way of
thinking about managing techniques that would allow managers to relate different specialties and parts
of the company to one another, as well as to external environmental factors. The systems school focuses
on the organization as a whole, its interaction with the environment, and its need to achieve
equilibrium. General systems theory received a great deal of attention in the 1960s, but its influence on
management thought has diminished somewhat. It has been criticized as too abstract and too complex.
However, many of the ideas inherent in the systems school formed the basis for the contingency school
of management.

CONTINGENCY SCHOOL

The contingency school focuses on applying management principles and processes as dictated by the
unique characteristics of each situation. It emphasizes that there is no one best way to manage and that
it depends on various situational factors, such as the external environment, technology, organizational
characteristics, characteristics of the manager, and characteristics of the subordinates. Contingency
theorists often implicitly or explicitly criticize the classical school for its emphasis on the universality of
management principles; however, most classical writers recognized the need to consider aspects of the
situation when applying management principles.

The contingency school originated in the 1960s. It has been applied primarily to management issues
such as organizational design, job design, motivation, and leadership style. For example, optimal
organizational structure has been theorized to depend upon organizational size, technology, and
environmental uncertainty; optimal leadership style, meanwhile, has been theorized to depend upon a
variety of factors, including task structure, position power, characteristics of the work group,
characteristics of individual subordinates, quality requirements, and problem structure, to name a few.
A few of the major contributors to this school of management thought include Joan Woodward, Paul
Lawrence, Jay Lorsch, and Fred Fiedler, among many others.

From the foregoing description of various schools of management thought, it is quite clear that some
of schools overlap each other. Management is no longer the restricted domain of managers and
entrepreneurs. Different disciplines have contributed to the growth of managerial thought. As a result
of these diverse contributions, management has grown as a discipline. Some of the approaches take
only partial view of the area of management and see the managerial problems through coloured
glasses. This is owing to the fact that the exponents of particular schools have a tendency to stress the
concepts as developed in their parent disciplines.

This exclusiveness has blurred their vision and they take part or parts to be the whole. They do not
attempt to see that management is an inter-disciplinary subject which draws heavily on the
knowledge developed in different disciplines.

Inspite of this fact management has established itself as an independent discipline. Managerial
problems cannot be viewed only from one exclusive angle which the advocates of different schools
have attempted to do.

The purpose of studying various school of management throught is to enable you to recognize and
appreciate how developments in the field of management could contribute to current practices.

Today’s management is both a reflection of and a reaction to past management theories.In these way
it is important to study different school of management.

Class roll no.-48

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