Free Management Dissertations - The Predecessor To Contemporary Management, The Classical Management
The predecessor to contemporary management, the classical management approach to control developed by Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol (Parker and Lewis, 1995) has been argued to be very similar to contemporary management theories, as has been seen by the parallels drawn between the contemporary concerns and foci of business and governments in today’s international environment, and those pertaining at the time of Taylor and Fayol. The persistence and revived profile of the classical management model of control is linked to contemporary Western management's economic rationalism, and genesis of this model of control is further explored by Parker and Lewis via its founders’ personal backgrounds and industrial environments.
Parker and Ritson (2005) take this argument further, claiming that in classifying Fayol as a founding father of the Classical Management School, many academics have, to some extent, misrepresented this still important management theorist: The Fayol portrayed in contemporary texts invariably emerges as a caricature of a much more insightful, complex, visionary and rounded management thinker. As such, Parker and Ritson’s study re-examines Fayol's personal and career history, as well as the arguments presented in his original work, General and Industrial Management, finding that he was a much more complex and multidimensional figure than his conventional stereotype today, and that his management theories embraced a wider spectrum of approaches and concepts than traditionally identified with the classical management school of thought. In marked contrast to his traditional portrayal, the study uncovers traces of ideas and concepts that anticipated aspects of the human relations movement, systems-based contingency theory, the movement towards greater employee involvement in decision-making and elements of knowledge management. Thus, this forces us to ask the question of whether contemporary management is actually a new system of commitment over control, or whether it is simply classical management control, re branded to take account of human relations and motivational concerns.
Mary Douglas's (1992) cultural theory of grid and group provides a framework for the description of three distinct cultural types corresponding to three logics for the legitimising of ‘collective coercion’. Each type is distinguished by characteristic structures of classification, power, and moral order operating at the individual cognitive level. Hendry (1999) uses this theory to illuminate and explain some of the major developments in the management and structuring of business organizations in the late twentieth century, widely accepted as the contemporary period.
Dissertations - Free Management Dissertations
