Chapter 2 · A Short History of Management Theory and Practice

People create, sustain, and revise its meanings, assumptions, and practices in specific social contexts.

Social construction makes historical change understandable without denying material or ecological realities.

Sacred object, currency, medicine, social improvement, mass-market business, and farmer empowerment.

Chocolate’s uses and purposes change with beliefs, technology, institutions, and organizational arrangements.

Cadbury’s Bournville emphasized worker/community welfare; Divine used producer ownership, representation, and fair purchasing.

The examples show that business arrangements can allocate benefits and power differently.

An organization owned and democratically governed by its members.

Kuapa Kokoo illustrates producers acting collectively as members rather than only as suppliers.

Pre-humankind; hunting/gathering; agriculture; money; capitalism/Industrial Revolution.

They provide the ecological and social context in which contemporary management developed.

Humanity occupies a very small and recent part of the universe’s history.

It highlights ecological dependence and the short duration of human institutions compared with natural history.

Solar energy supports life; carbon builds living systems; phytoplankton support food webs, oxygen production, and carbon cycling.

Human society and economic activity depend on ecological systems.

Sharing, giving, kinship, small groups, shared work, egalitarianism, and participatory leadership.

Table 2.2 contrasts these with typical modern financial self-interest, bureaucracy, specialization, and hierarchy. It is an illustration, not a universal claim.

Settlement, surplus, specialization, trade, property, hierarchy, and resource protection created coordination demands.

Domestication changed productive capacity and the organization of social institutions.

Natural exchange supports needs and community; unnatural exchange seeks money accumulation for its own sake.

The distinction concerns purpose and useful contribution, not simply whether money is used.

Managing exchanges and resources to support community needs and valued goods/services.

Aristotle links natural money use with sufficient, fair, community-sustaining provision.

Pursuing financial accumulation as an end in itself rather than creating useful goods/services.

The chapter presents Aristotle’s critique of unlimited money-making, including monopoly and resale without added value.

Reciprocity: mutual exchange; redistribution: collect/reallocate so people have enough; householding: stewardship for family/community.

These organizing principles were prominent before capitalism became dominant.

Materialism prioritizes possessions, finances, and productivity; individualism prioritizes individual self-interest.

Weber connects their wider legitimation to social/religious changes supporting capitalism.

Specialized workers repeatedly performed parts of a production process, increasing coordinated output.

Smith’s pin-factory example illustrates productivity benefits of specialization.

A corporation is a separate legal entity; limited liability limits owners’ financial exposure under that arrangement.

Corporate power and restricted early charters show that this legal form has a history, not an inevitable origin.

Classical; human relations; calculating; values/beliefs; sustainable development; emergence of SET.

The first four mainly develop within FBL assumptions; the final two shift success criteria toward TBL and SET.

Organizing → leading → planning → controlling.

This era order differs from the standard definition’s planning-organizing-leading-controlling list.

Scientific management optimizes specific jobs; bureaucracy rationally arranges the wider organization.

Their micro and macro focus complement each other in the classical era.

Taylor: scientific job design; Gantt: scheduling charts; Frank Gilbreth: time and motion studies.

They developed tools for task and production efficiency.

Weber: impersonal rules, competence, records, and authority; Fayol: administrative management including unity of command and scalar chain.

Bureaucracy replaced personal favoritism with formally rational arrangements; administrative principles clarified hierarchy.

Unity of command: one superior per employee; scalar chain: clear authority from top to bottom.

The first concerns immediate reporting, the second concerns the whole hierarchy.

Facilitating work, community, empowerment, and influence flowing to relevant expertise.

She opposed treating people merely as machine parts controlled from above.

Gilbreth: humane, safe work and reduced stress; Barnard: leadership and informal organizational relationships.

Both broadened attention beyond purely technical job design.

Awareness of being studied or special attention can influence people’s behavior.

It drew attention to social factors beyond physical lighting. It does not prove all attention always improves output.

X assumes work avoidance and need for control; Y assumes people can seek responsibility and contribute with enabling support.

They describe managerial assumptions rather than permanent categories of employees.

Using mathematics, statistics, and quantitative techniques for planning, decisions, and problem solving.

Operations research emphasizes models; operations management uses quantitative techniques for production decisions.

Assess cost coverage; project future needs; guide orders/stocks; allocate scarce resources; explore decision outcomes.

These tools exemplify the calculating era’s emphasis on planning.

Open systems exchange inputs/outputs with their environment; closed-system views focus internally as if self-sufficient.

An open view considers suppliers, customers, labor, and other external dependencies.

Synergy: combined performance exceeds separate contributions; entropy: closed systems deteriorate without needed inputs/energy.

Systems theory draws attention to relationships and resource dependence.

Decision limits caused by incomplete information and limited ability to process it.

Herbert Simon challenged the assumption that managers can always identify and select an optimal decision.

Effective management depends on fit among structure, culture, environment, technology, and strategy.

There is no single best way independent of the situation.

Scripts guide responses; institutionalization makes practices valued for themselves; expectations can channel behavior to confirm themselves.

These concepts explain control through learned meanings and persistent norms.

Shared values, symbols, and meaning can guide, inspire, and control organizational behavior.

The values/beliefs era emphasizes less visible control through identities and norms.

WCED’s Our Common Future offered a sustainability vision; IPCC work strengthened the scientific call for change.

Business collaboration and reporting supported the development of TBL theory and practice.

CSR concerns societal obligations; shared value links competitiveness with addressing problems; stakeholder theory recognizes affected groups beyond shareholders.

All broaden managerial attention, but their use does not automatically establish SET priority.

The 2008 financial crisis, the Anthropocene concept, and Occupy Wall Street in 2011.

They draw attention to financial assumptions, planetary impacts, and social inequality respectively.

Their critiques highlight limits, interdependence, harmful materialism/individualism, or ethical relationships with land.

These historical voices question unlimited accumulation and isolated financial success.