Approaches to Management

UNIT 1

MANAGEMENT

Management is tasks. Management is discipline. Management is also people.

Warming – up

Read the following definitions of management. Choose the one you like most. Explain your choice.

1. Management is the art and science of making appropriate choices.

2. Management is administration of business or public undertakings, comprising both an organizational skill, including the ability to delegate, and an entrepreneurial sense.

3. Management is the control and organizing of a business or other organization.

4. Management is making people do what you want them to do.

5. Management is getting work done through people.

6. Management is developing people through work.

Text 1

Read the text and be ready to characterize the main approaches to management described in the text.

Approaches to Management

Effective management produces higher profits. Accordingly, managers have been highly motivated to understand the nature of their job and to improve their performance. Since the last half of the 19^th century three theories of management have achieved popularity. These are the classical, the behavioral, and the quantitative approaches to management. Today, management combines features of all these in a balanced approach.

The central belief of the classical school of management is that by applying rational analysis to the production and management functions of business, worker and equipment productivity can be increased, resulting in higher profits. This idea was first introduced around the turn of the century by F. Taylor in the USA and Henri Fayol in France, among others. Fayol divided the manager’s work into specific functions in the belief that this systematic breakdown of responsibilities would promote effectiveness. Taylor was interested in what is now called industrial engineering. His time-and-motion studies prepared the way for the mass production and assembly line system of today. The classical rational approach to management tended to ignore the human element. Taylor believed that higher productivity permit higher wages and salaries. They made little allowance, however, for other human needs.

In the 1930s, there arose a new approach to management stressing the human factor in business. This approach became known as the behavioral, or human relations, school. Its adherents believed that an organization’s goals could be met only by first understanding and then consciously dealing with human needs and interactions. Great emphasis was placed on human motivation and on group dynamics. In some extreme expressions of this view, managers were expected to act as psychological counselors for their workers.

In the 1960s, another emphasis in the study of management began to emerge. A quantitative approach stressing the use of numbers and derived largely from systems theory began to be applied to business management and its associated activities. Systems theory is a group of verbal and mathematical principles that describes how the related parts of a system may be organized. The approach allows the use of statistical studies of groups of workers, consumers or managers for making certain decisions. Mathematical models are often constructed to predict the results of alternative management actions. A new field of study, operational research, analyzes the methods by which the business activities are carried out and proposes changes for increased efficiency. The difference between this kind of analysis and the classical approach is that the quantitative method emphasizes (a) the overall system in which work is being done and (b) statistical study of group operations rather than a close analysis of a particular worker or job.

The main effort among managers today is to take the best of these approaches and use each where it will do the most good. Some call this the contingency, or situational approach.

These various approaches to management, combined with intuitive ability and with common sense and experience, help to make modern business management increasingly effective, humane, and flexible.

Tеxt 2

Read the text and be ready to answer the questions after the text.

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