History of Management- People Who Played Key Roles

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    Frederick W. Taylor

    Frederick W. Taylor is known for the idea of scientific management. Scientific management is the study of the relationship between people and tasks to redesign the work process in order to make it more efficient. He focused on the idea that the amount of time a worker takes to produce one unit of output can be reduced by usung the division of labor and more specialization. In 1910, scientific management was widely known and practiced. (George, Jones, p.39-40)
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    Frank and Lillian Gibreth

    Frank and Lillian Gilbreth were followers of Taylor. Their goals were to look at every action needed to complete a task and break those actions down even more, and find the most efficient ways to do them. They also studied the connection between conditions of the workplace and worker stress and performance. They made improvements in magagement theory and left room for more to come. (George, Jones p. 42)
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    Henry Ford

    Henry Ford and his team created the moving conveyor belt. This forever changed the manufacturing process, and was a huge financial success. However, it created problems for employees. Ford then created what is known as "Fordism." He cut workdays to eight hours and doubled daily wages. He also strictly monitored his employees behaviors. Many other companies looked to mimic Ford in order to compete. Ford's ideas are still looked at in management today. (George, Jones, p. 41-42)
  • Hugo Munsterberg

    In 1913, Munsterberg published "Psychology and Industrial Efficiency", which included ideas related to scientific management. One part of the book focused on the demands of jobs, and how important it is that the worker meets the capabilites. The second part explained psychological conditions that will produce the greatest output from each worker. The last part looked at the importance of creating influences on human needs that were also desirable in business (Pioneers, 2014).
  • Morris Cooke

    In 1918, Cooke published "Our Cities Awake", in which he explained his argument for using scientific managemtent in the managing of cities and towns, as well as in education. In 1911, Cooke was the director of public works in Philidelphia and saved the city one million dollars just in garbage collection costs over four years. Some of Cooke's major findings that are a huge part in management include pay based on tenure and the hiring of your own graduates (Pioneers, 2014).
  • Mary Anderson

    After the radification of the 19th Amendment of the Constitution, women recieved the right to vote. This led Anderson and other women's rights activists to strive for gender quality in other aspects of society. She was the director of U.S Department of Labor's Women's Bureau until 1944. Anderson was devoted to improving working conditions of women. She knew that women could play as big of a part in the business world as men, and had a major influence on women in the management world (Caudron).
  • Max Weber

    Max Weber developed the principles of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a sustem of organization and administration that is used to guarantee efficiency. He touched on authority and all the ideas that go along with it. He is an important figure in management because many of his ideas are still used today. (George, Jones p. 45-46)
  • Henri Fayol

    Henri Fayol was CEO of Comambault Mining and developed fourteen principles that he thought were crutial in the effectiveness of the management process. These princinples of management include Division of labor, Line of authority, Equity, Initiative, and many others. Fayol's principles still remain a huge part of the basis of management today. (George, Jones p. 47)
  • George Elton Mayo

    Mayo was a Harvard Business School Professor who conducted the Hawthorne Experiments. He wanted to see how different working conditions affected productivity. Eventually, instead of learning about the effects of working conditions, they learned about the effects of being observed and listened to. Productivity always went up when there was friendly observation involved. These experiments greatly influenced the way employees were treated. (Caudron, 2002)
  • Mary Parker Follett

    Mary Perker Follett is known as the mother of management thought. Follett believed that Taylor left out the idea that workers should be included in the job analysis proccess, and believed that it made the process more effecient when they were. She also voiced the idea that knowlege and skills should have more power over authority when it comes to who should be in charge in a given moment. Although many may not have agreed with her in that time, many do now. (George, Jones p. 51)
  • Dave Packard and William Hewlett

    Hewlett and Packard started a computer manufacturing company in a garage. They focused their management on being a people-friendly and loyal company. They even had an "open door" policy they took seriously, as many offices didn't have doors.They implemented health insurance plans, cash-profit sharing, and started using flextime. Although they did have their setbacks, Hewlett and Packard have become very well known in management and human resources (Caudron, 2002).
  • William Russell Kelly

    Kelly opened the first Russell Kelly Office Service in Detroit, which provided temporary employees, because of businesses inability to hire quickly enough during a post-war boom. The idea of temporary employees was brought into many different business fields. It also changed the way loyalty and performanence was looked at in the workplace, and paved way to more flexible hours and attitudes towards work (Caudron, 2002).
  • Abraham Maslow

    Maslow did research in humanistic psychology and developed a hierarchy of needs. Besides the basics of food, water, and air, he added needs such as self-actualization, love and belonging, and safety. During the 1960s, Maslow's ideas became popular when people were looking for more meaning in their lives.These needs can come into play when talking about the work force and work motivators. They can be taken and used in management skills and techniques (Caudron, 2002).
  • Peter Drucker

    Drucker published the book,"The Principles of Management", which was the first to state management as a disipline. It has been said that Peter Drucker invented management. He believed in hiring people based on their strengths, and then hiding those people's weaknesses with strengths of other employees. He is also important to the history of management because his book made it possible to more easily teach the ways of management and create great leaders out of just about anyone (Caudron, 2002).
  • Daniel Katz, Robert Kahn, and James Thompson

    Katz, Kahn, and Thompson created one of the most influential views of how external environments affect an organization. They viewed an organization as an open system. An open system gets resources from its external environment and then takes those resources and makes them into goods and services, which are then but back in the external environment. The idea of an open system and organizational enironments became a huge turning point in management (George, Jones p. 56)
  • Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch

    Lawrence and Lorsch developed the contingency theory in the United states. The contingency theory states that, "the organizational structures and the control systems that managers choose depend on characteristics of the external environment in which the organization operates." This means there isn't any one way to organize that is better than any other. Changes in external environments also lead to changes in the organization in which it has to adapt to (George, Jones p. 57-58).
  • Douglas McGregor

    In 1960, Douglas wrote his book, "The Human Side of Enterprise". In it, he wanted to contradict the belief that workers are naturally lazy. He had two models, Theory X and Theory Y. Theory X assumed that everyone hates work and will avoid it unless punished. Theory Y takes on the idea that workers will be motivated if they are respected and inluded in decision-making. His ideas influence management today by the way businesses design policies and conduct employee reviews (Caudron, 2002).
  • Steve Jobs

    Steve Jobs started Apple in his parent's garage. Jobs and the company have had a huge impact on not only businesses and management, but on pretty much the whole world. Jobs acted as if there was no norm, and was extremely passionate about his work. He was sometimes difficult to work with, but was extremely successful. Not only did he teach people some management strategies, the technology that has been created has greatly changed the way companies run and manage their businesses (Real Leaders).
  • W. Edwards Demming

    Demming was an American who became the father of quality control in Japan. He believed that quality issuees were at the fault of the system, not of employees. He also thought that when quality is improved, costs decrease, productivity improves, market share increases, the company increases profitability, and the number of jobs increases. Demming had a fourteen-point plan to sum up his teachings on quality improvement. His research changed the way business is looked at (Pioneers, 2014).
  • Warren Bennis

    Bennis passed away in 2014 at 89 years old and seemed to be an expert in leadership. He wrote over thirty books on the subject and gained an interest for it when he led a platoon during World War II. He advised presidents and business exectutives, as well as taught at schools including Boston University, Harvard, and M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. Bennis believed that leaders were made, not born, and believed in integrity. He had a huge impact on the world of management (Rifkin, 2014).