zHISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF MANAGEMENT

Major objective of treating “Management Theory and Practice” in a concise, interesting, and understandable manner will be to present management history and theory with an emphasis on the future. Most students will be applying the concepts learned here over a period of next many years. Another objective shall be to identify several areas where management concepts are applicable to the personal and professional goal-setting and also to apply the management skills to the challenge of managing the most difficult peer or subordinate – the one that may confront you in the mirror each morning in your professional career.

In any treatment of a basic subject like this, there is little that the resource/anchor person can claim to be uniquely his own except his/her tacit knowledge and the presentation style. The write-ups from chapters of recommended text books for this course has also been included and are highly acknowledged.

The Intellectual Heritage of Management:

Organized endeavors directed by people responsible for planning, organizing, leading, and controlling activities have existed for thousands of years. The Egyptian pyramids and the Great Wall of China, for instance, are tangible evidence that projects of tremendous scope, employing tens of thousands of people, were undertaken well before modern times. The pyramids are a particularly interesting example. The construction of a single pyramid occupied more than 100,000 workers for 20 years. Who told each worker what to do? Who ensured that there would be enough stones at the site to keep workers busy? The answer to such questions is managers. Regardless of what managers were called at the time, someone had to plan what was to be done, organize people and materials to do it, lead and direct the workers, and impose some controls to ensure that everything was done