Everything you need to know about the schools of management thought. Several schools of thought of management have evolved over a period of time depending on the learning and philosophy of the exponents.
A study of literature in the field of management is necessary to the modern manager, so as to develop his own way of solving the managerial problems and managing the resources of an enterprise effectively.
The mental philosophy of the manager will be automatically conditioned by his own thinking and frame of reference. His leaning will automatically be in favour of certain philosophy or school of thought.
Some of the schools of management thought are:-
1. Management Process School or the Operational Approach 2. The Empirical School or the Management by Customs School 3. The Human Relations or the Human Behaviour School 4. The Social Systems School
5. Decision Theory School 6. The Mathematical School 7. The Systems Approach School 8. The Contingency Approach School of Management.
Top 8 Schools of Management Thought
Schools of Management Thought – According to Some Well-Known Management Writers Like Haynes, Massie, Ernest Dale, George Terry, Harold Koontz and a Few Others
Management is one of the oldest arts dating back to the beginnings of civilisations. Excepting some attempts to study the art of administration or management systematically in some of the leading civilisations of the world, the management discipline or science is relatively of recent origin.
Beginning with an examination of the functions performed by the executives, the process of management has been studied by the scholars drawn from a number of disciplines. The stream of management has swelled with rich contributions from all the various disciplines. As a result different management theories have emerged.
Each of these reflects a specialist angle of the contributors from a particular discipline. For a long time, there was no communication among the various disciplines on the concept and process of management. As a result, there is a great measure of confusion leading to a situation which Harold Koontz has described as the “management theory jungle”.
The various approaches to the study of management as propounded by specialists from different disciplines have come to be called the schools of management thought. Attempts have been made by writers on management to identify the major schools of thought in management. Though they refer to essentially the same schools, they have used different terms and expressions.
Some of the well-known contributions in this regard are given below:
1. According to Haynes and Massie, the streams of thought in management are quantitative concepts, managerial economics, accounting, universal principles of management, scientific management, human relations and behavioural science.
2. According to Ernest Dale, management writers may be divided into classicists and behaviourists.
3. Newman, summers and Warren refer to the various schools as productivity approach, behavioural approach, rationalistic model approach and institutional approach.
4. According to George Terry, the various schools are-
(a) Management by custom
(b) Scientific management school
(c) Human behaviour school
(d) Social behaviour school
(e) Systems management school
(f) Decisional management school.
According to Harold Koontz, the major schools of management thought are:
(a) Management process school
(b) Empirical school
(c) Human behaviour school
(d) Social system school
(e) Decision school
(f) Mathematical school.
Taking into account the above classifications, we may identify the major schools of thought in management as follows:
(i) Management process school
(ii) Empirical school
(iii) Human behaviour or human relations school
(iv) Social school
(v) Decision theory school
(vi) Mathematical or quantitative management school
(vii) Systems management school
(viii) Contingency school.
1. Management Process School or the Operational Approach:
This approach is known by various labels such as the traditional approach, the Universalist approach or the classicist approach. The father of this school of thought was the noted French management thinker and practitioner Henri Fayol. According to this school, management can best be studied in terms of the process that it involves.
The management process consisting of five broad categories of functions, viz.- planning, organising, starting, directing and controlling is in evidence in all managerial situations. Following this, this school of management thought has evolved some universal principles of management.
Those subscribing to this school are of the view that management principles are universally applicable. They could be equally well applied to business, government or any other type of organisations. However, they do recognise the distinctions between the different types of enterprises.
In short, the main features of the management process school are:
(i) The study of management should focus on the role and functions of managers.
(ii) The functions of managers are the same irrespective of the type of organisation.
(iii) The conceptual framework of management can be built through an analysis of the processes of management and identification of principles.
(iv) The five functions, viz., planning, organising, starting, directing and controlling are the core of management.
The chief contributors and thinkers belonging to this school of thought are- Henri Fayol, J.D. Mooney. A.C. Reiley, Lyndall Urwick, Harold Koontz, Newman, Summers and McFarland.
The management process school is criticised on three main grounds:
i. This school is losing ground as hardly any significant contribution has been made after what Henri Fayol contributed at the end of the nineteenth century.
ii. The so-called universal principles of management do not always stand the test of empirical scrutiny.
iii. Organisations function under dynamic conditions and, therefore, searching for universal principles may not always be a fruitful exercise.
With all these criticisms, the management process school does provide a concept on framework which could be usefully utilised in understanding the basics of management.
2. The Empirical School or the Management by Customs School:
Those subscribing to this school of thought believe that management is a study of the experiences of managers. If managerial experiences can be studied closely, management knowledge would emerge and grow out of it. This knowledge can be utilised by other managers in making their own decisions and solving managerial situations faced by them. But this school of thought depends heavily on the historical methods of study.
The basic assumption of this approach to the study of management is that the actual business situation contributes to the development of managerial skills. The study school treats the case method of study and analysis as the best methods of imparting management education.
By studying management situations which are unique, the manager gets an idea about what could be good managerial decisions and what makes for poor managerial decisions. He also develops the analytical and problem solving abilities which are so very essential for the successful practice of management in actual life.
The main features of this school of thought may be summed up as under:
(a) Management is the study of experience.
(b) The managerial experience can be passed over to the practitioner and students.
(c) The success and the failure of management in the process of decision-making could provide guidance to the manager in a similar situation.
(d) Theoretical research has to be based on practical experience.
The empirical school of thought goes mainly by precedents in so far as it studies the managerial situations handled by the managers and their own experience. However, the exponents of this school do not fully realise that a manager has to work under dynamic conditions and that history does not exactly repeat itself.
The situations of the past may not be exactly the same as of the present. There is definitely a certain amount of danger in transferring the insight gained from a particular case relating to the past to a situation facing the manager at a point of time in the present.
In the words of Harold Koontz- “Management unlike law is not a science based on precedents and situations in the future exactly comparable to the past are exceedingly unlikely to occur. There is a positive danger in relying too much on past experience and on undistilled history of managerial problem solving for the simple reason that the technique or approach found right in the past may not fit a situation of the future.”
The principal tool of study for the empirical school of thought is the case method. The case is considered to be the most convenient way of acquiring skill in decision-making. However, this method is not necessarily the best method in imparting training for decision-making. In decision-making, there are several complex variables which change under dynamic conditions. It is because of this, that the case method of study and instruction has its own limitations.
The main contributors and thinkers subscribing to the empirical school of thought are the Harvard Business School, Ernest Dale and the Management Associations in different countries, more notably the American Management Association.
3. The Human Relations or the Human Behaviour School:
Management could rightly be thought of as the process of getting things done through or with people. If that be so, any organisation could be compared to a building that is made up of bricks of people. The relationships among these people are the cementing force that bind them together in pursuit of common objectives.
According to this school of thought, management is the study of behaviour of people at work. The school had its origins in a series of experiments conducted by Professor Alton Mayo and his associates at the Harvard School of Business at the Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works, near Chicago.
These studies brought out for the first time the important relationships between social factors and productivity. Hitherto productivity of the employees was considered to be a function only of physical conditions of work and money wages paid to them. For the first time it was realised that productivity depended heavily upon the satisfaction of the employees in work situations.
Following the Hawthorne experiments, a great deal of work has been carried on by behavioural scientists belonging to a variety of disciplines including psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy in studying the behaviour of people at work in organisations. Those who subscribe to the Human Relations or the Human Behaviour School of thought are of the view that the effectiveness of any organisation depends upon the quality of relationships among the people working in the organisation.
Therefore, the management, according to them, must concern itself with an analysis of organisational behaviour, that is, interaction of people with the organisation. The basic assumption of this school still remains that the goals of the organisation are accomplished through and with people.
Apart from the study of formal organisation and techniques used by such organisations, this school studies the psychological processes in the organisations, group dynamics, informal organisations, conflict, change, motivation and relationship and the various techniques of achieving organisational development by improving the relationships among the various groups of people constituting organisation and the climate of the organisation. Thus, it may be said in summary that this school concentrates on people and their behaviour within formal and informal organisation.
The main features of the human behaviour school of thought are:
1. Since management is getting things done through and with people, a manager must have a basic understanding of human behaviour in all its aspects, particularly in the context of work groups and organisations.
2. Management must study inter-personal relations among people.
3. Greater production and higher motivation can be achieved only through good human relations.
4. Motivation, leadership, communication, trading, participative management and group dynamics are critical to the study of management.
5. The study of management must draw upon the concepts and principles of various behavioural sciences like psychology and social psychology.
The main thinkers subscribing to this school of thought are Elton Mayo. Roethlisberger, McGregor and Keith Davis. The school has also benefited from the contributions of psychologists like Maslow, Argyris, Herzberg and McClelland.
While there is no denying the fact that the study of human behaviour in work organisation is extremely important for an understanding of the processes and problems of management, it is felt that it will be going too far to say that management should be confined only to this area.
There are other variables, particularly the management of technical aspects of job which have an equally important bearing on the effectiveness of an organisation. In order to have a complete study of the field of management, the science of management must address itself to these problems also. It might, therefore, appear that if the study of management were to be confined to human behaviour or human relations, it would be unduly restricting the scope of the science.
4. The Social Systems School:
This school of thought is closely related to the human behaviour or the human relations school of thought. According to this view, an organisation could be considered as a social system consisting of various groups of people. The founding father of this school of thought Chester Barnard, viewed an organisation as a co-operative system involving collaboration and co-operation among a number of groups.
If the groups in an organisation did not cooperate together in pursuit of a common objective, the effectiveness of an organisation will be jeopardised. The focus of this school of thought is, therefore, on the study of the organisation as a co-operative or collaborative system.
It may be mentioned here that a system is an entity or unit consisting of various parts called sub-systems which are inter-related or inter dependent. A social system is, therefore, a unit or an entity consisting of various social subsystems called the groups.
The major contribution of this school of thought is in the development of concepts and theories related to the formal organisation, that is, the organisation as formerly planned by the entrepreneurs or the top management. Another area in which valuable contribution has been made by the pioneers belonging to this school is that of the informal organisation.
An important aspect of the Social Systems School of thought in management is its focus on the cultural factors in the working of an organisation. It is recognised by the exponents of this school that people working together in groups have their own norms and values which have a bearing on the contribution that they are likely to make towards the goals of the organisation.
Further the organisation has its own cultural environment made of norms and values. The norms and values of the organisation are in turn affected by the culture in which the organisation operates.
For example, when an organisation is functioning in a culture that places a great value on industry and social responsibility, the organisation’s own culture is likely to be affected by these values. In turn, the culture of the organisation will have a bearing on the norms, values and mores of the various groups that form part of it.
The main features of the social systems school of thought in management are as follows:
1. An organisation is a social system, i.e., a system of cultural relationship, and management concerned with the effectiveness of an organisation must study it as such.
2. Formal organisations represent cultural relationships of the social groups working within the organisation.
3. Co-operation of the members working and the groups is essential and is the core of good management.
4. Management has to direct its efforts towards establishing harmony between the goals of the organisation and the needs, aims and aspirations of the people comprising the various groups in the organisation.
5. Relationships exist between internal and external environments and change.
The main pioneers and contributors to this field are Max Weber, Moreno, Simon and Rensis Likert.
While the Social Systems Approach has made many valuable contributions to management it must be realised that the field of management cannot be confused with the study of sociology. Sociology is one of the important tools for an understanding of the organisation as a social entity and the various kinds of cultural pressures and conditions under which this Social System has to work.
But it cannot do justice too many other aspects of the working of an organisation including the technological factors and the factors connected with the psychological behaviour of the people connected with the organisation, be they individuals or groups.
5. Decision Theory School:
The essence of management lies in decision-making. Whatever a manager does is the outcome of a decision made by him from out of a set of alternatives available to him. The Decision Theory School of management thought concentrates its attention on decision making and treats the various aspects of decision-making as constituting the scope of the study of management.
This school of thought has its origins in the theory of consumer’s choice which has been the favorite preoccupation of the economists since early 19th century. Economists have been trying to determine the process through which a consumer makes a rational choice from among a number of alternative commodities or products available to him. It also takes into account some of the relatively irrational or logical aspects of consumer’s choice.
While the Decision Theory School of thought accepts the basic assumption that decisions are taken through rational choice from among different alternatives given different constraints, it does not confine itself to the process of decision-making. In fact, the analysis of this school includes the behaviour of the persons or organisational groups making the decision.
Going further into the question of decision-making, the exponents of this school also concern themselves with the various factors involved in decision-making including the implementation of the decisions, the psychological and sociological foundations of decisions and even the cultural background of the decision-makers.
In so far as the writers belonging to this school touch upon the social and cultural factors relating to the decision-makers and bearing on the decision-making process, this school gets very close to the Social Systems School of thought in management.
The main features of this school of thought may be summed up as under:
1. Decision-making is central to the study of management.
2. The field of management theory is, in essence, the field of decision-making.
3. The members of any organisation are essentially decision-makers and problem- solvers. Hence, management is the study of the process of decision making and the personalities and behaviour of the decision-makers.
4. Management information system and the process and technique of decision-making form the subject-matter of the study of management according to the decision theory school of thought.
The main contributors and thinkers belonging to this school are Chester Barnard, James March, Herbert Simon, Forrester and Richard Cyert.
Decision-making is certainly a very central and critical aspect of management. However, the advocates of this school do not always concern themselves with the actual practice of decision-making. In fact, they miss the point that decision-making cannot be treated as an independent function. It is after all only one of the tasks that the executive performs. In some cases, it takes only a small fraction of the time of the executive.
In view of this, it is open to question whether the decision-theory school can do justice to the various aspects of management which include besides decision-making such important functions as coordination, organisation and implementation of decisions.
6. The Mathematical School:
If there is one discipline which has made inroads into practically all disciplines, it is mathematics. Universally recognised as an important tool of analysis and a language for precise expression of concepts and, relationships among the concepts, mathematics has now entered the field of management in a big way.
It is sometimes said that modern economics is more than half mathematics and less than half economics. Perhaps the same could be said about the writings of the mathematical school of thought in management.
The scientific and technological developments and the introduction of computers have brought management and mathematics closer to each other. Mathematics is now being used in management to study various problems and analyse them as also to find out suitable rational solutions to these problems. In this respect, the mathematical school is closely related to the decision theory school of management.
The exponents of the mathematical school of thought believe that effective solutions to the problems of management can be achieved through application of suitable simulation and the use of analytic and synthetic mathematical techniques.
The contributors to this school of thought have been using mathematical and quantitative techniques in developing models of the various kinds of decisions and problems involved in managing organisations with a view to understanding them and also finding solutions to them. The major form that this school of thought has taken is Operations Research.
Basically, the Mathematical School or the quantitative method school dates back to the Scientific Management propounded by Frederick Taylor and his associates. It would be recalled that it was Taylor who for the first time suggested that a scientific study of work must be made before the management sets about the task of allocating work among the employees. The thinkers and writers belonging to this school are branded as management scientists.
The main features of the mathematical school of thought in management are:
1. Management is concerned with problem-solving and it must make use of mathematical tools and techniques for the purpose.
2. The different factors involved in management can be quantified and expressed in the form of models, i.e., in the form of equations which can be solved with the help of mathematical techniques.
3. Management problems can be described in mathematical symbols.
4. Operations Research, mathematical tools, simulation and model building are the basic methodologies developed by this school of thought.
The main contributors to this school are Taylor, Gilbreth, Gantt, Joel Dean, Newmann, Ackoff and Hicks. The contributions of mathematics in the field of management are undoubtedly quite impressive. Mathematics has certainly helped management in systematising thinking and has lent a certain measure of exactness to the management discipline.
The contribution of mathematics to the development of management can hardly be over-emphasised. However, it will also be necessary to take note of the major limitations of this school of thought.
In the first place, we must remember that mathematical models cannot be considered as a substitute for sound judgment. They can at best be treated as tools and techniques for purposes of analysis. Secondly, there are still certain phases of the management process which cannot be expressed in mathematical symbols and formulae.
Perhaps the danger with the mathematical school is that it leads us to believe that complex management problems involving people and other resources can be reduced to formulae or mathematical formulations which is not a very correct approach.
In fine, therefore, it may be stated that mathematics is at best a tool in management study and cannot be treated as being co-terminus with the science of management.
7. The Systems Approach School:
Major contributions in the development of management thought since 1960 have come basically from the quantitative and behavioural science schools of thought. However, a new direction in management thought has been given by what has come to be commonly called as the Systems Approach.
The Systems Approach is not new to the natural and the physical sciences where its application began about a quarter of a century ago. However, it is of recent application in the field of management.
Recapitulate, a system is composed of related and interdependent elements which form a unitary whole. It may be viewed as an assemblage or a combination of things or parts forming a complex whole. Every system is made up of a number of sub-systems arranged in a hierarchy.
From this point of view, an organisation may be viewed as a system made up of different parts in the form of departments. Each of the departments like Finance, Personnel, Production or Marketing is also a system comprising various other systems. Likewise, each of these sub-systems forming a part of the department can also be viewed as a system in its own right.
According to the Systems Approach School, attention must be paid to the overall effectiveness of the system rather than the effectiveness of a sub-system in isolation from the sub-system. The main focus here is on the interdependence and inter-relatedness of the various sub-systems, from the point of view of the effectiveness of a larger system. Let us apply this concept to an organisation.
According to the traditional schools of management thought developed before the Systems Approach, each department or function of management has to be studied separately. However, with the introduction of the Systems Approach, this approach or method of study has to be changed.
In an organisation, for instance, a project management approach may be introduced by forming teams drawn from different specialisations, coordinated by a project manager. This team would represent a combination of sub-systems brought together in pursuit of the goals of the larger system called the organisation.
The Systems Approach has been applied to various other approaches developed in the management thought. For example, in operations research, the systems approach has led to emphasis on computer application and operations management techniques. Similarly, in the field of organisational behaviour, a formal organisation is viewed as a system consisting of structure, processes and technology.
In a similar way, the human being is conceived of as a system containing biological, physiological and psychological processes and personality. In the field of management, Systems Approach has been applied for developing an appraisal or audit of management. According to the management audit approach, the functions of planning, organising, directing and controlling have to be audited not in isolation but in relation to the entire system as a whole.
Systems could be simple or complex. Simple systems can be studied more easily in terms of input, the processes and the output. In addition, feedback from the output could be linked with the input so that improvements could be brought about in terms of input, process and output.
But when it comes to complex systems, it is not easy to study large number of factors involved in such systems. It is here that the application of computer technology becomes important. Given the help of computers and various mathematical techniques, the model building approach is being used to produce simulations of actual systems.
This helps a great deal in analysing and designing organisational systems. However, this is an approach that has yet to be fully developed even though it holds out tremendous possibilities.
The major features of the systems approach to the study of management may be summed up as under:
i. A system consists of inter-related and interdependent parts.
ii. The systems approach emphasises the study of the various parts in their interrelationships rather than in isolation from each other.
iii. The Systems Approach to management brings out the complexity of a real life management problem much more sharply than any of the other approaches.
iv. The Systems Approach can be utilised by any of the other approaches including the process approach, the mathematical or the quantitative approach, the decision theory or the behavioural science or human relations approach. We have already seen how the social study approach also makes use of the Systems Study of management.
v. The Systems Approach has been utilised in studying the function of complex organisations and has been utilised as the base for new kinds of organisation like the project management organisation.
When management is viewed as a complex management, the inter-relation between various functions like planning, organising, directing and controlling is brought out.
The major contributors to the Systems Approach school of thought are Kenneth, Boulding, Johnson, Cast, Rosen Zweig and C.W. Churchman. Another notable contributor is Martin particularly in the area of management audit system.
The Systems Approach has an edge over the other approaches in so far as its closeness to reality is concerned. However, the problem with the systems approach is its utter complexity particularly when it comes to a study of large and complex organisations or for that matter the whole management concept and function.
8. The Contingency Approach School of Management:
As one surveys the whole scene, it appears that the whole field of management is divided into two camps:
(а) Behavioural Camp, and
(b) Quantitative Camp.
Quantitative approach works in some situations while the behavioural approach works in others. Those who have grounding in disciplines like psychology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy have been in the behavioural science camp and have provided useful insights into the field of management from their respective viewpoints.
On the other hand, those who have come from disciplines like mathematics or natural or physical sciences have been trying to apply quantitative techniques of analysis to an understanding of management problems. The main problem, however, has been that while quantitative people could not overcome behavioural problems, the behavioural people could not cope with operational problems adaptable to quantitative solutions. In the 1980s, it is becoming more and more apparent that neither the quantitative nor the behavioural approaches have all the answers to all the situations.
In view of these deficiencies in both the behavioural and quantitative approaches, reliance has recently been placed more and more on what has been described as the Systems Approach to management. However, the problem with this approach is that it is still not complete in spite of all the advances made in the development of general systems.
In view of this, the thinkers and writers in the field of management are now veering round to the view that the study of management calls for a Contingency Approach which falls “somewhere between simplistic and specific principles and complex and vague notions.”
According to the Contingency Approach, management is situational. Study of management, according to this approach, lies in identifying the important variables in the situation. The approach has been used in important sub-systems of management like organisation, design, leadership, behaviour change and operations.
The major contributors to this school of thought in management are Joan Woodward, Fiedler, Lorsch and Lawrence.
At the present stage, the Contingency Approach to management seems to be the only practicable way to studying management, applying as it does to various other approaches including the latest among them, that is, the Systems Approach.
Taking into account the contributions which have been made by scholars from different disciplines, one faces a number of confusing views about the scope of management. Each scholar has been at pains to stress his own idea and contribution and point out the weaknesses of other approaches. “The mathematician censures the behaviourist for his lack of quantitative vigour; the behaviourist attacks the mathematician’s tendency to simplify assumptions and utilise hypothetical data in place of real world analysis. The empirical school criticises the processes school for its unscientific approach and understanding organisations, and so on.”
Keeping in view the confusion created by these learned scholars from various disciplines, one feels inclined to agree with Prof. Harold Koontz when he says that management theory represents a jungle with confusion and entanglements of language and findings.
The basic question that arises before a student of management is- Can we have a unified theory of management or do we have to content ourselves with the confusion that has been created by a number of scholars from different disciplines?
Here one is faced with two views:
(a) Let us choose from among the various approaches one that represents the best approach to the study of management;
(b) Let us not bother about the one best school as all of them represent “rather a kind of intellectual division of labour in studying the problems of management” (Herbert A. Simon).
If one were to go by the first view, it would appear that the management process school provides a basic framework for study which can utilise the insights provided by other schools. More particularly, the findings of quantitative schools can be applied in planning and controlling (and partly in organising) in a larger measure while the contributions of behavioural sciences and social systems school will have greater applicability to functions like organising, staffing and directing.
The Systems Approach will have a role in bringing out the interrelationship among all the functions. It is, however, the contingency approach that will give the best framework for analysis as it encourages a manager and a student of management to seek out the situational factors which would determine the effectiveness of management in all functions.
But this should not blind us to the other view which represents the best hope for the development of a relatively infant discipline that management is. The practice of management will undoubtedly benefit from the contributions of various schools which should be viewed as partners in an enterprise rather than warring claimants for the pride of place in management. In the words of D.O. Hebb, “A good theory is one that holds together long enough to get you to a better theory.”
Schools of Management Thought – With Main Features
Several schools of thought of management have evolved over a period of time depending on the learning and philosophy of the exponents. A study of literature in the field of management is necessary to the modern manager, so as to develop his own way of solving the managerial problems and managing the resources of an enterprise effectively. The mental philosophy of the manager will be automatically conditioned by his own thinking and frame of reference. His leaning will automatically be in favour of certain philosophy or school of thought.
Various schools of management thought available are:
1. The Empirical or Management by Custom School,
2. The Human Behaviour or Human Relations School,
3. The Social System School,
4. The Decision Theory or Decisional Management School,
5. The Mathematical or Quantitative Measurement School,
6. The System’s Approach or Systems Management School, and
7. The Management Process School,
8. The Contingency School.
1. The Empirical or Management by Custom School:
Those who believe in this thought, is of the opinion that the management is a study of the experiences of managers. If managerial experiences can be studied closely, management knowledge would emerge and grow out of it. Other managers in making their own decisions and solving managerial problems faced by them can use this knowledge. But this school of thought depends heavily on the historical methods of study.
The basic assumption of this approach to the study of management is that the study of actual business situation contributes to the development of management skill. Even today we can see that in management courses much weight is given to the case studies to train students to understand and solve the managerial problems. By studying the management situations, which are unique the manager gets on idea about what could be the good managerial decisions and what makes the decisions poor.
By studying the cases, he can also develop the analytical and problem solving abilities, which are very essential for the successful practice of management in actual life. This school of thought is based on the proverb ‘learn from experience’.
Empirical school of thought goes mainly by precedents in so far as it studies the managerial situations handled by the managers and their own experience. However, the exponents of this school do not fully realize that a manager has to work under dynamic conditions and that history does not exactly repeat by itself. The situations of the past may not be exactly same as that of the present because of the development of technology and information system and changes in the social system. Hence, manager may face a problem if he tries to transfer the ideas gained by study of experiences of previous managers straight away.
While making decisions, manager must use his knowledge and study the present problem and try to combine his experience, knowledge from cases, and commonsense to solve the problem. In the words of Harold Koontz, “Management unlike law is not a science based on precedents and situations in the future exactly comparable to the past are exceedingly unlikely to occur. There is a positive danger in relying too much of the past experience and on un-distilled history of managerial problems solving for the simple reason that the technique of approach found right in the past may not fit the situation of the future”.
The principle tool of study for the empirical school of thought is the case method. The case is considered to be the most convenient way of acquiring skill of decision-making. However, this method is not necessarily the best method in imparting training for decision-making. In decision-making, there are several complex variables, which change under dynamic conditions. It is because of this, case study method has its own limitations. The main contributors of this school of thought are- Harvard Business School, Ernest Dale and the Management Associations in various countries, especially American Management Association.
The main features of this school of thought are:
(a) Management is the study of experience.
(b) The management experience can be passed over to the practitioners and students.
(c) The success and the failure of management in the process of decision-making could provide guidance to the manager in the similar situation.
(d) Theoretical research has to be based on practical experience.
2. The Human Behaviour or Human Relation School:
Management could be rightly thought of as the process of getting things done through or with people. If that is so, any organization could be compared to a structure made up of human beings. The relationship among these people is the cementing force that binds them together in pursuit of common organizational goals. According to this school of thought management is the study of behaviour of people at work.
This school had its origin in a series of experiments conducted by Professor Elton Mayo and his associates in Harvard School of Business at the Western Electric Company’s Hawthorns Works near Chicago. These studies brought out for the first time the importance of relationship between social factors and productivity. Until then the productivity of the employee was considered to be a function only on physical conditions of work and money wages paid to them. For the first time, it was realized that productivity depended heavily upon the satisfaction of the employee in work situations.
Following the Hawthorne Experiments, a great deal of work has been carried on by behavioural Scientists belonging to variety of disciplines including psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy in studying the behaviour of people at work in organizations. Those who subscribe to the Human Relations or the Human Behaviour School of thought are of the view that the effectiveness of any organization depends upon the quality of relationships among the people working in the organization.
Supporters of this school are of the opinion that the management should concern itself with the analysis of organizational behaviour or the interaction among the people at work. Apart from the study of formal organization and techniques used by such organizations, this school studies the psychological change, motivation and relationships among the various groups of people constituting organization and the climate of the organizations. In short, this school of thought concentrates on people and their behaviour, within formal and informal organization.
To summarize, the main features of this school are:
(a) Since, Management is getting things done through and with people, a manager must have a basic understanding of human behaviour in all its aspects, particularly in the context of work groups and organizations.
(b) Management must study inter-personal relations among people.
(c) Motivation of people and higher productivity can be achieved only through good human relations.
(d) Motivation, leadership, communicating, trading, participative management and group dynamics are critical to the study of management.
(e) The study of management draws upon the concepts and principles of various behavioural sciences like psychology and social psychology.
(f) The main thinkers subscribing to this school of thought are Elton Mayo, Roethlisbergar, McGregor and Keith Davis. This school has also benefited from the contributions of psychologists like Maslow, Argyris, Herzberg and McClelland.
3. The Social System School:
This school of thought is closely related to the Human Behaviour or Human Relations School of thought. In this school of thought, an organization is considered as a Social System consisting of various groups of people. The founder of this thought is Chester Bernard, who considered an organization as a co-operative system involving collaboration and co-operation among various groups of people.
In real world, we can see that co-operation among the people exists, the society will not have any problem, so also, in an organization, which is considered to a social system consisting various groups of people working together to fulfill organizational goals must work with common understanding and co-operation.
The major contribution of this school of thought is in the development of concepts and theories related to the formal organization, that is, the organization as formerly planned by the entrepreneurs or the top management. Another area in which valuable contribution has been made by the pioneers belonging to this school is that of the informal organization.
An important aspect of the Social System School of thought in management is its focus on the cultural factors in the working of an organization. It is recognized by the exponents of this school that people working together in groups have their own norms and values, which have a bearing on the contribution that they are likely to make towards the goals of the organization.
Moreover the organization has its own cultural environment made of norms and values, which in turn has effect on the functioning of the organization. If the elements of society are highly disciplined one, then the employees will also are of high culture and discipline.
The main features of this school are:
(a) An organization is a social system. It is a system of cultural relationship, and management concerned with the effectiveness of an organization must study it as such.
(b) Formal organizations represent cultural relationships of the social groups working within the organization.
(c) Co-operation among the members working and the groups is essential and is the core of the effective management.
(d) Management has to direct its efforts towards establishing harmony between the goals of organization and the needs, aims and aspirations of the people comprising the various groups in the organization.
(e) Relationship exists between internal and external environments and it may change from time to time depending social changes.
The main pioneers and contributors to this field are Max Weber, Moreno, Simon and Rensis Likert.
4. The Decision Theory School or Decisional Management School:
The main work of management is to make decisions. Whatever a manager does is the outcome of a decision made by him from the data on hand and the alternatives available to him. The decision theory school of management thought concentrates its attention on decision-making and treats the various aspects of decision-making as constituting the scope of the study of management.
This school of thought has its origins in the theory of consumer’s choice, which has been the favourite preoccupation of the economists since early 19th century. Economists have been trying to determine the process through which a consumer makes a rational choice from among a number of alternative commodities or products available to him. It also takes into account some of the relatively irrational or logical aspects of consumer’s choice.
While the Decision Theory School of Thought accepts the basic assumptions that decisions are taken through rational choice from among different alternatives given different constrains, it does not confine itself to the process of decision-making. In fact, analysis of this school includes the behaviour of the person or organizational groups making the decision.
Going further into the question of decision-making, the exponents of this school also concern themselves with the various factors involved in decision-making including the implementation of the decisions, the psychological and sociological foundation of decisions and even the cultural background of the decision-makers. This school of thought is very close to the Social System School of thought.
The main features of this school of thought are:
(a) Decision-making is very important in the study of management.
(b) The field of management theory is in essence the field of decision-making.
(c) The members of any organization are essentially decision-makers and problem- solvers irrespective of their cadre. Hence, management is the study of the process of decision-making and the personalities and behaviour of the decision-makers.
(d) Management information system, the process and techniques of decision-making form the subject matter of the study of management according the decision theory school of thought.
The main contributors and thinkers of this school of thought are Chester Bernard, James March, Herbert Simon, Forrester and Richard Cyert.
5. The Mathematical or Quantitative Measurement School:
Mathematics has been universally recognized as an important tool of analysis and a language for precise expression of concepts and relationships among concepts. Mathematics has now made entry in the field of management and is used by modern managers in decision-making process. Now all branches of study have been considered as optimal blend of mathematics and the principle subject.
The scientific and technological developments and the introduction of computers have brought management and mathematics closer to each other. Mathematics is being used in management to study various problems and analyze them to find an optimal and rational solution to these problems. In this sense, mathematics is closely related to the Mathematical School of Thought or Decision Theory School of Management.
The exponents of the mathematical school of thought believe that effective solutions to the problems of management can be achieved through application of simulation and by the use of analytic and synthetic mathematical techniques. The contributors of this school of thought have been using mathematical and quantitative techniques in developing models of the various kinds of decision and problems involved in managing organization with a view to understanding them also finding optimal solutions to them.
For example, a manager can use inventory models to solve the problems of inventory, Maintenance models to solve the problems of maintenance and Resource allocation models to have optimal utilization of existing resources. Nowadays, the mathematical branch Operations Research has become indispensable tool of a modern manager in making decisions. In fact, it is Fredric Winslow Taylor (F.W. Taylor), father of scientific management has advocated the use of science in management. The thinkers of this school have been labelled as Management Scientists.
The main features of mathematical school of thought are:
(a) Management is concerned with problem solving and it must make use of mathematical tools and techniques for the purpose.
(b) The different factors involved in management can be quantified and expressed in the form, of models and with the help of mathematics they can be solved.
(c) Management problems can be expressed in mathematical symbols.
(d) Operations Research, mathematical tools simulation and model building are the basic methodologies developed by this school of thought.
But one thing we have to remember is that mathematical models cannot be substitutes for sound judgement, they are only the means to make decisions. The results of the decision depend on the experience and insight of the decision-maker. The main contributors of this school of thought are, F.W. Taylor, Gilbreth, Henry Gantt, Joel Dean, Newmann, Ackoff and Hicks. Mathematics has certainly helped management in systematizing thinking and has lent a certain measure of exactness to the management discipline.
6. The Systems Approach or Systems Management School:
No doubt that major contribution in the development of management thought since 1960s have come basically from the quantitative and behavioural science schools of thought. However, a new direction in management thought has evolved which is named as Systems Approach. Though the systems approach is very much common in natural and physical sciences, this application is new to the field of management.
The system is composed of related and interdependent elements, which form a unitary whole. It may be considered an assembling or a combination of things or parts forming a complex whole. Every system is made up of a number of sub-systems arranged in a hierarchy. From this point of view that an organization may be considered as a system made of number of sub-systems as marketing department, personal department, finance department, and production department.
Once again each subsystem may be considered as an independent system for detailed analysis. According to the systems approach school of thought, attention must be given to the overall effectiveness of the system rather than the effectiveness of a sub-system in isolation. The major concerns here are inter-relationship and interdependence of various subsystems, from the point of view of the total effectiveness of main system.
According to the traditional schools of management thought developed before the Systems Approach, each department or function of management has to be studied separately. However, with the introduction of the Systems Approach, this approach or method of study has to be changed. In an organization, for instance, a project management approach may be introduced by forming teams drawn from different specialization coordinated by a project manager.
This team represents a combination of subsystems brought together in pursuit of goals of the organization (main system). Systems could be simple or complex. Simple systems can be studied in terms of input, the process and the output. In addition, feedback from the output could be linked with the input so that improvements could be brought about in input or process. To study large and complex systems, computers are made use of to build up models and to simulate.
The major features of this school are:
(a) A system consists of interdependent and interrelated parts known as subsystems.
(b) The systems approach emphasizes the study of the various parts in their interrelationships rather than in isolation from each other.
(c) The systems approach to management brings out the complexity of a real life management problem much more sharply than any of the other approaches.
(d) The systems approach can be utilized by any of the other approaches including the process approach, the mathematical approach etc.
(e) The systems approach has been utilized in studying the function of complex organizations.
The major contributors to the Systems Approach School of thought are Kenneth, Boulding, Johnson, Cast, Rosen Zweig and C.W. Churchman. We can also remember here Martin, particularly in the area of management audit system. The Systems Approach has an edge over the other approaches in so far as the closeness to reality is concerned.
7. The Management Process School or the Operational Approach School:
This approach is also known as Traditional Approach, the Universalistic Approach or the Classicist Approach. Henry Fayol, a French management practitioner is the founder of this school of thought. According to this school of thought, management can be best studied in terms of the process consisting of five broad categories of functions, namely, Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing and Controlling.
Basing on this, this school of thought has evolved some universal principles of management. The subscribers of this school are of the view that management principles are universally applicable. These principles can be applied to any type of organization, may be business, trade, manufacturing organizations or government organizations.
Main features of this school of thought are:
(a) The study of management should focus on the role and functions of managers.
(b) The functions of managers are the same irrespective of the type of organization.
(c) The conceptual framework of management can be built through an analysis of the processes of management and identification of principles.
(d) The five functions, namely- planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling are the core of management.
This School of thought has been criticized on the following:
(a) This school is losing ground as hardly any significant contribution has been made after Henry Fayol’s contribution.
(b) The so-called universal principles of management do not always stand the test of empirical scrutiny.
(c) Organizations functions under dynamic conditions and therefore searching for universal principles may not always be a fruitful exercise.
With all these criticisms, the management process school does prove a concept on framework, which could be usefully utilized in understanding the basics of management.
The chief contributors of this school of thought are Henry Fayol, J.D.Mooney, A.C. Reiley, Lyndall Urwick, Haroled Koontz, Newman and McFarland.
8. The Contingency School:
From all the above discussions, we can see that the whole field of management is divided into two streams:
1. Behavioural Approach and
2. Quantitative Approach.
Quantitative approach works in some situations while the behavioural approach works in some situations. Those who work in the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy will follow behavioural approach and provide useful insight to the field of management from their works. Those who come from disciplines like mathematics; physical sciences have been trying to apply quantitative techniques of analyses to an understanding of management problems.
The main problem however is that while quantitative people could not overcome behavioural problems, the behavioural people could not cope up with operational problems adaptable to quantitative solutions. In recent years it is seen neither of the two have answers to all the situations. When manager faces with a problem, he must use the basic principles of the two approaches and blend them with his experience and apply systems approach to get a reliable answer.
In view of this, the thinkers and writers in the field of management is now veering round the view that the study of management calls for a contingency approach, which falls somewhere between simplistic and specific principles and complex and vague notions. According to this approach, management is situational.
Study of management according to this approach, lies in identifying the important variables in the situation. This approach has been used in important subsystems of management like organization, design, leadership, behaviour and operations. In present seen of management this approach is more suitable one. Major contributors to this school are- Woodward, Fiedler, Lorsch and Lawrence.