questions

Learning outcomes

1 Explain the origins of management.

2 Explain the history of scientific management.

3 Discuss the history of bureaucratic and administrative management.

Administrative management: Henri Fayol

4 Discuss the history of operations, information, systems and contingency management.

operations management, which involves managing the daily production of goods and services. In general, operations management uses a quantitative or mathematical approach to find ways to increase productivity, improve quality and manage or reduce costly inventories. The most commonly used operations management tools and methods are quality control, forecasting techniques, capacity planning, productivity measurement and improvement, linear programming, scheduling systems, inventory systems, work measurement techniques (similar to the Gilbreths’ motion studies), project management (similar to Gantt’s charts) and cost-benefit analysis.

Information management, For most of recorded history ,Information has been costly, difficult to obtain and slow to spread. It took immense efforts of labour and time to hand-copy information, and therefore books, manuscripts and written documents of any kind were rare and extremely expensive. The first ‘technologies’ to truly revolutionise the business use of information were paper and the printing press. Businesses have always looked for information technologies that would speed access to timely information.

Systems management, A system is a set of interrelated elements or parts that functions as a whole. subsystems, which are simply smaller systems within larger systems. Subsystems and their connections matter in systems theory because of the possibility for managers to create synergy.

Contingency management, Earlier you learned that the goal of scientific management was to use systematic study to find the ‘one best way’ of doing each task and then use that ‘one best way’ everywhere.