The Classical Management Theory is thought to have originated around the year 1900 and
dominated management thinking into the 1920s, focusing on the efficiency of the work
process. It has three schools of thinking: Scientific management, which looks at the best
way to do a job; Bureaucratic management, which focuses on rules and procedures,
hierarchy and clear division of labour; and Administrative management, which emphasises
the flow of information within the organisation.
Scientific Management
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) is known as the father of scientific management.
His approach emphasised empirical research to increase organisational productivity by
increasing the efficiency of the production process. In the United States especially, skilled
labour was in short supply at the beginning of the twentieth century. The only way to
expand productivity was to raise the efficiency of workers. Scientific management theory
states that jobs should be designed so that each worker has a well-specified,
well-controlled task and specific procedures and methods for each job must be strictly
followed.
Taylors management theory rests on a fundamental belief that managers are not only
superior intellectually to the average employee, but that they have a positive duty to
supervise staff and organise their work activities. Thus, it was only applied to low-level
routine and repetitive tasks that could be managed at supervisory level.
Taylor developed four principles of scientific management:
1. A best methodology should be developed scientifically for each task.
2. Managers should select the best person to perform the task and ensure that the best
training is given.
3. Managers are responsible for ensuring that the best person for the job does the job using
the best methodology.
4. Remove all responsibility for the work method from the worker and give it to
management. The worker is responsible only for the actual job performance.
Taylor based his management system on production-line time studies. Using time study as
his base, he broke down each job into its components and designed the quickest and best
methods of performing each component. He also encouraged employers to pay more
productive workers at a higher rate. Scientific management became very popular in the
early part of this century as its application was shown to lead to improvements in
efficiency and productivity.
Advantages of Scientific Management
* Introduced a scientific approach to management.
* Improved factory efficiency and productivity.
* Used as a model upon which the creation of modern assembly lines was based on.
* Allowed managers to reward workers for higher performance and productivity through
the differential rate system.
* Built a sense of co-operation between management and workers.
Disadvantages of Scientific Management
* Limited by its underlying assumption that workers were primarily motivated by
economic and physical needs. It therefore overlooked the desire of workers for job
satisfaction.
* Led, in some cases, to the exploitation of workers and it has been often suggested that
scientific management was at the centre of many strikes prevalent in those days.
* Excluded the tasks of management in its application.
* Instilled an authoritarian leadership approach.
* Focused only on the internal operations of the organisation.
Bureaucratic management
Max Weber (1864-1920), known as the father of Modern Sociology, was the first person to
use the term bureaucracy to describe a particular, and in his view superior, organisational
form. He considered the ideal organisation to be a bureaucracy whose activities and
objectives were rationally thought, whose divisions of labour were explicitly spelled out.
He believed that technical competence should be emphasized and that performance
evaluations should be made entirely on the basis of merit. Weber defined the key elements
of a bureaucracy as:
I. 1. A well defined hierarchy with a clear chain of command where higher positions have
the authority to control the lower positions.
II. 2. Division of labour and specialisation of skills, where each employee will have the
necessary expertise and authority to complete a particular task.
III. 3. Complete and accurate rules and regulations, in writing, to govern all activities,
decisions and situations.
IV. 4. Impersonal relationships between managers and employees, with clear statements of
the rights and duties of personnel.
V. 5. Technical competence is the basis for all decisions regarding recruitment, selection
and promotion.
Webers model of bureaucratic management advanced the formation of huge corporations
such as ford.
Bureaucratic Management * Contributions
* Ensured that the organisation would be operated and managed by qualified/high calibre
personnel only.
* Allowed many organisations to efficiently perform routine organisational tasks through
job specialisation.
* Allowed management and employees to be more objective in their judgement and
approach due to rules and procedures for doing specific tasks being clearly set.
* Placed emphasis on job position, specialised employees and job continuity thus
providing the organisation with long-term perspectives and quality employees.
* Surpassed the loss of any employee or even of any manager due to the nature of job
specialisation. Hence in such a bureaucracy, anyone can be replaced.
Bureaucratic Management – Limitations
o Overwhelming concentration on authority discourages innovation and creativity;
o Imposed a formal and structured chain of command which is not compatible with
organisations that require flexibility and rapid decision-making. This is truer today where
organisations are constantly faced with a turbulent external environment of increased
competition.
o the emphasis on impersonality and division of labour leads to boredom, dissatisfaction
and discontent within the workforce
o rules and procedures may become so important in their own right that there is a tendency
to forget the underlying processes that they are meant to make more efficient.
Administrative Management
Henri Fayol (1841-1925) was a French industrialist and one of the most influential early
management thinkers. Scientific Management was concerned with increasing the
productivity of the shop floor. Classical Organisation Theory grew out of the need to find
