The Early and Modern Management Theory in the United States

In early America, many industrial managers had an autocratic style of management Managers were controllers who managed work being done by their subordinates as well as the behaviors and attitudes of their subordinate workers. This management style was closely related to Douglas McGregor‘s theory X, from his 1960 book called the Human Side of Enterprise. Theory X is a management theory that assumed “most people are naturally reluctant to work and need discipline. Direction, and close control if they are to meet work requirements.

”  However not all managers took that approach Douglas McGregor himself rejected Theory X as being the best route for managers to take. Douglas McGregor also came up with other theories including theory Y, that assumed “employees want to work, achieve, and take responsibility for meeting their work requirements,”  I believe Theory Y has become much more dominant while.

Theory X has faded into history “The early study of management as we know it today began with what is now called the classical perspective” Classical perspective “contains three subfields, each with a slightly different emphasis: scientific management, bureaucratic organizations, and administrative principles”  I would like to discuss the administrative principles style.

Henri Fayol (1841-1925) was a major contributor to the administrative principles management style, which uses a “total organization” approach. In his book General and Industrial Management, Fayol discussed many principles of management. A few examples include the concept of the unity of command, in which every employee receives there instructions from only one superior, and the scalar chain, where authority starts at the top of the organization and continues down till it includes every employee.

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Also the concept of unity of direction, where similar activities within a company are under the authority of a single manager, with specialization groups to produce more and higher quality work with the same amount of effort.  Studying and writing about this subject reminds me of a managerial process we had at one of my former employers. At Siemens Building Technologies, we had the seven steps of continuous improvement, step one was to define improvement objectives, step two was to determine customer requirements, step three was determine main problem areas, step four was to identify improvement levers, step five was define the solution, step six was implement the solution, step seven was monitor progress. In theory, I think that is a pretty good process to follow in just about any industry you work in. This process came about from Siemens Building Technologies’ “total quality management” managing style that Siemens Building Technologies used.

I remember during the all company meetings, the managers would discuss the total quality management (TQM) standard practices These TQM practices made it so all employees were expected to be focused on the customer needs and expectations as well as participate in quality control, using the seven steps of continuous improvement, Customer relationship management, or CRM, use the latest and greatest information technology to keep track of customers and customer spending habits. CRM system can collect and manage large amounts of client data, “These systems can help managers be more accurate in their sales forecasts, coordinate sales and service staff more easily, improve product design and marketing, and act quickly to respond to shifting customer needs and desires” (Daft, 2013, p, 58) NetSuite is a good example product of for CRM.

As a Manager I would try and take a little time each week to do a self-evaluation and review how I am doing at planning, leading the team, organizing, and controlling. I would also do a monthly self-evaluation on my conceptual skills, my technical skills, and my human skills to see if they are up to par with where would like them to be, and improve them if necessary. I would also endeavor to have a backup plan B and backup plan C to keep thing moving forward if skills on the team somehow failed so that the effectiveness and efficiency of my department’s performance would not decline to unacceptable levels. Many of the details of how I would manage would depend on the industry in which I am a manager. For example, I would manage retail workers or security officers differently than I would manage engineers and architects.