How does the use of management approaches keep pace with the changing trends of worlds?

Union is strength. This common saying has existed between people for a long period of time. With the start of cooperation between different people, they tend to start forming groups when facing a problem that requires much effort. David Premack (2010) suggests that there are fundamental differences between humans and animals. Humans alone can reinterpret the higher order relations between these relations. This gradually leads to differences on mind set in different unique individuals. Different people do not always share the same thoughts as compared to one another. Conflicts or misunderstanding usually come up, making team productivity unfavorable. As a result, management approaches are always essential to maintain the unity of the whole team.

Management approaches are important in remaining team productivity. However, these approaches were not exactly the same in the past. The approaches changed from time to time in order to suit the exact needs of that certain period of time. I find out that it will be interesting to discuss and search more deeply about the ways and reasons on the changes of management approaches. In this essay, I will be identifying different main management approaches, then applying and analyzing the reason why it was used at that time.

The first type of management approaches comes from the ancient management. Its history can be followed back to at least 5000 years before. When most countries are mostly ruled by imperialism or absolutism, the person who has the highest power gains the control over the citizen in the country. According to Rymer, E. (2014), in Egypt, the power of pharaoh was very high. It was showed through the dominance on people in building pyramids. The pharaoh was the political, religious, and economic leader of the Egyptians. The pharaoh easily acted as a leader, delivering direct orders to the workers to complete the construction work. Another example of management through absolute power is the building of the Terracotta Warriors of China. Wu (2015) mentioned that the Qin society was very centralized, which gave emperor and staff absolute power over country issues. The emperor was able to call out great construction works from the powers. Regardless there were numbers of civilians sacrifice, all of the large scale construction projects were able to be finished according to the leader’s favor. These examples showed that early management was established through absolute power. Through the use of power, civilians were given a simple and clear order, to finish the objective construction. The absolute power was generally accepted by most numbers of civilians, which can be explained that civilians did not receive very high levels of education. The idea of democracy was not introduced yet.

The idea and importance of management was not yet very clear in early times. However, the basic of management was established unintentionally in the past. Smith, A. (1776) suggested the introduction of division of labor into the general business environment. He explained that the greater part of the skill and judgment applied throughout the process, the greater the effects of the division of labor were. Labors were assigned specific kinds of simple work, in which they would mainly focus on over time, allowing them to learn and master the process they were assigned on a faster pace. This method was different from the other ways of production in the factories at that time. Factories used to train workers to carry out the whole process of production, but not only one step. The implement of division of labor gave a proportional increase in the productive power of labors. The idea of dividing and assigning specific works was not common at that time. The productivity still had rooms for improvements.

The demand for management became higher and higher after the Industrial Revolution. During Industrial Revolution, Porter, M. E., and Millar, V. E. (1985) pointed out that technological progresses greatly affected the physical components of the businesses. By substituting machines with traditional human labor, companies were able to obtain competitive advantages over others, leaving information processing as the few types of work for human labors. Companies collected more capitals for their business while replacing more human labor by using more technologies and developed a mature factory system, this gradually expands their size of business (Daniel, A. W. and Arthur, G. B., 2009). The size of business grew bigger. Maintaining and running the business becomes more difficult. Under this situation, the importance of correct management approaches came up in order to increase company’s competence in the market.

Since the Industrial Revolution increases the demands of proper management approaches, nowadays different management approaches have been developed. The first type of management approach is called scientific approach. Taylor, F. W. (2004) stated that under scientific approach, the initiative of the workers on completing tasks is brought to a higher level. Since the old type of direct management approach depends heavily on the initiative of the workers. When labors’ interests were not entertained, they lost their interest on working and completing assigned tasks. http://americainclass.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Taylor-Scientific-Management-1910-excerpt.pdf

References:

Daniel, A. W. & Arthur, G. B. (2009). The Evolution of Management Thought. the U.S.A.: Wiley.

Porter, M. E., & Millar, V. E. (1985). How information gives you competitive advantage.

Premark, D. (2010). Perspectives on Psychological Science. Why Humans Are Unique, 5 (1), 22-32.

Rymer, E. (2014). Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt. Retrieved October 22, 2015 from http://historylink101.com/n/egypt_1/a-pharaoh.htm

Smith, A. (1991). The wealth of nations (Vol. 3). A. S. Skinner (Ed.). New York, NY: Prometheus Books.

Taylor, F. W. (2004). The Principles of SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT .the U.S.A.: American Class.

Wu, A. (2015). the Qin Dynasty. Retrieved October 25, 2015 from http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/china-history/the-qin-dynasty.htm