Nature and science of management

Management Theory

Over America's history, views on what business management should entail have changed continuously along with the advancement of technology. In this paper, management is defined as those individuals who ensure that the strategy of the company is carried out. When industry first began in the 1890s during the Industrial Revolution, it was not surprising that the management style, known as "classical," was based on developing systems for inventory control, scheduling, production and human resources, since the managers at that time period were primarily engineers whose main goal was to keep order in the workplace for production purposes. Classical management theorists believed that the employees could make logical and rational decisions to optimize personal gains from their work situations (Miner, 2002, p. 65).

There were a number of problems with this style of management that was based on 1) a bureaucratic set of defined rules, hierarchy and a distinct division of labor; 2) a scientific approach with "one best way" to do each job; and 3) an administrative method that emphasized the flow of information from the standpoint of increasing production. This scientific method focused on the relationship between the worker and machine, where the machine came first in the equation. The belief was that productivity can be increased through the efficiency of production processes, where jobs were created solely to economize time, human energy, and other productive resources. Each worker had a specific and clearly defined task that had to be performed as instructed with no exceptions (Miner, 2002, p.56).

In this form of management, there is no room for human creativity, motivation, personal input, or teamwork. As Argyris (1957) pointed out: The subordinate and dependent workers had almost no control over their working lives and their conditions they were treated more as infants than competent human beings."..organizations are willing to pay high wages and provide adequate seniority if mature adults will, for eight hours a day, behave in a less than mature manner!"

Over the centuries, management evolved to give workers greater involvement and say. Today's contemporary theories of management are conducive to interpret and react to the rapidly changing nature organizational environments. In a flattened world where global competition continues to increase, knowledge is product and technology evolves at such a fast pace, an organization needs the resource of its people to succeed. The management style is therefore what they call "contingency," or it changes depending the particular need and situation. The management style for a company that has the federal government as its main customer, for example, may be managed differently than a dotcom organization run by several young entrepreneurs. Examples of contemporary theories range from systems, where management looks at overall patterns and integrates different production areas for a unified whole, to chaos theory that believes people are most productive on the fringe of instability and disorder (Statt, 1999,p.23).

The need for strong interpersonal skills either heads the list or is near the top of what is needed for companies to succeed in the 21st century. Effective managers need to be transformational or what is called "change agents" who, through the use of interpersonal skills and analytical application, can motivate others to follow an organizational wide strategy (Miner, 1999, p. 167).

It is very rare that in today's environment that a hierarchal organization, as those in the early days of production and management theory, would be "productive." Management can no longer see human beings as objects or cogs in a wheel that can be mechanized like machines. This approach is completely at variance with present-day management concepts with its stress on teamwork, crossfunctionalism, empowerment, and motivated performance. Naturally, some companies are much further ahead toward this concept than others -- some only spout the need and do not practice what they preach and others recognize the positive results that come from taking such measures.

As noted above, interpersonal skills are essential in modern-day management approaches. The definition goes beyond communicating well with others. It also entails the personal traits that a person has to be a leader, which include such traits as ethical orientation, ability to accept and manage change, desire to enhance diversity, problem solving, global perspective, ability to motivate, and resiliency.

Interpersonal skills, however, are not the only abilities that a manager needs. Because he or she is overseeing people who are designing and making a product or service, the manager has to be able to understand that product or service, its role in the marketplace, the customer needs and a forecast of what changes will occur. They have to be involved with today's nitty gritty, but also act as visionaries for tomorrow. This takes a special type of individual.

A survey done of it CIOs this past May, (Robert Half, 2007) demonstrated this mix of business and technical expertise requirements. Twenty-five percent of the CIOs ranked technical skills as the area in which their it staff could most use improvement.

Project management abilities were a close second with 23%. However, most of the CIOs placed soft skills, such as communication, teamwork, and ability to take direction, with project management skills. The results included responses from more than 1,400 CIOs from a random sample of American companies with 100 or more employees.

A number of different research studies have found similar results. Katz and Shepherd's (2004) research on managerial competencies identifies three skill sets that are essential for success: technical, human, and conceptual, or performing the organization's work, focusing on interpersonal skills and being able to see the total picture. Although these three skills are important at all management levels, the technical becomes less so when moving up the organizational chart as the conceptual skills become more so. Human skills, says Katz, are equally important in all management ranks.