The advent of mass production, in the period during and following the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States, brought novel approaches and ideas as to how organisations were best managed.

The Classical School of Management is thought to have originated around the turn of the century and dominated management thinking into the 1920s. It focused on the efficiency of the particular work process, and has been divided into three schools of thought. These include Bureaucratic management that focuses on rules and procedures, Scientific management which concentrates on the ‘best’ way in which a job can be done and Administrative management which has emphasised the need for the flow of information within the organisation.

Classical theorists considered workers and their needs as being secondary to the needs of the organisation and hence it has become an outdated form of management. Despite being outdated classical management theory remains of interest as it introduced management as a subject for analysis and provided ideas for the future development of management theory.

Bureaucratic Management Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German sociologist who first used the word bureaucracy to describe a particular form of management structure. He proposed a structure that was to provide maximal efficiency and stability. The six key elements of this were: 1. A hierarchical structure that has a clear chain of command with the higher positions having control over the lower positions. (Hierarchy) 2. Each employee was to have the expertise to complete a particular task. Labour available was divided and there was specialisation of skills. 3. All decisions and situations that could arise were to be governed by a complete and binding set of rules. (Formalisation) 4. The relationships between management and employees were to be impersonal. (Impersonality) 5. The