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"Management" (from Old French, "ménagement"="the art of conducting, directing", from Latin "manum agere"="lead by the hand") characterises the process of leading and directing all or part of an organization, often a business, through the deployment and manipulation of resources (human, financial, material, intellectual or intangible). One can also think of management functionally: as the action in measuring a quantity on a regular basis and adjusting an initial plan and the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. Situational management may precede and subsume purposive management.
Some writers trace the development of management thought back to Sumerian traders and ancient Egyptian pyramid builders, but modern management as a discipline began as an off-shoot of economics in the 19th century. Classical economists such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill provided a theoretical background to resource allocation, production, and pricing issues. About the same time, innovators like Eli Whitney, James Watt, and Matthew Boulton developed technical production elements such as standardization, quality controlIn engineering and manufacturing, quality control or quality engineering is a set of measures taken to ensure that defective products or services are not produced, and that the design meets performance requirements. History Though terms like 'quality engi procedures, cost accountingCost accounting is the process of tracking, recording and analyzing costs associated with the activity of an organization, where cost is defined as 'required time or resources'. Costs are measured in units of currency by convention. There are now at least, interchangeability of parts, and work planning. By the middle of the 19th century, Robert OwenRobert Owen ( May 14, 1771 November 17, 1858) was a Welsh social reformer. He is considered the "Father" of the cooperative movement. He was born at Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in mid Wales, where his father had a small business as a saddler and ironmonger,, H. Poor, and M Laughlin and others introduced the human element with theories of worker training, motivationIn psychology, motivation is the driving force ( desire) behind all actions of an organism. Motivation is based on emotions, specifically, on the search for positive emotional experiences and the avoidance of negative ones, where positive and negative are, organizational structure and span of control.
By the late 19th century marginal economistsThe marginal theory of value asserts that the economic value of an object or service is set by the consumer's marginal utility. The essential idea is that to have value an object must be both useful and scarce to a consumer. This theory was first broached Alfred MarshallAlfred Marshall ( July 26 1842 July 13 1924), born in Bermondsey, London, England, became one of the most influential economists of his time. His book, Principles of Political Economy ( 1890) brought together the theories of supply and demand, of marginal and Leon Walras and others introduced a new layer of complexity to the theoretical underpinings of management. The first tertiary-level course in management was offered in 1881 by J. Wharton. By 1900 we find managers trying to place their theories on a thoroughly scientific basis. Examples include H. Towne's Science of management, Frederick Winslow TaylorFrederick Winslow Taylor ( March 20, 1856 March 21, 1915) was an American engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. Taylor was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania to a wealthy family. He had intended a university education at Harvard, but ill-hea's Scientific management, Frank Bunker Gilbreth's Science of motion study, and Henry L. Gantt's charts. J. Duncan wrote the first college management text book in 1911.
The first comprehensive theories of management appeared around 1920. People like H. Fayol and A. Church described the various branches of management and their inter-relationships. In the early 20th century, people like O. Tead, W. Scott and J. Mooney applied the principles of psychology to management, while other writers, such as Elton Mayo, M. Follett, C. Barnard, Max Weber, Rensis Likert, and Chris Argyris approached it from a sociological perspective.
One of the earliest books on Management as a science was by Peter Ferdinand Drucker called Concept of a Corporation. It is the result of Alfred Sloan (head of General Motors) commissinoing a study on the organisation. Drucker went on to write 32 books, mostly along the same vein of study.
H. Dodge, R. Fisher, and T. Fry introduced statistical techniques into management. In the 1940s, Patrick Blackett combined these statistical theories with microeconomic theory and gave birth to the science of operations research. Operations research, sometimes known as "management science", attempts to take a scientific approach to solving management problems, particularly in the areas of logistics and operations.
Some of the more recent developments include the theory of constraints, reengineering, and various information technology driven theories such as agile software development. The theory of constraints approach describes management decision-making as a continuous cycle of three basic questions—What to change? To what to change to? How to make the change happen?
Towards the end of the 20th century, management was seen as consisting of a number of separate branches, including:
In the 21st century we find it increasingly difficult to subdivide management into categories in this way. More and more processes simultaneously involve several categories. Instead, we tend to think in terms of the various processes, tasks, and objects that one can manage.
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