introduction

• Management theory began with Human Relations, Scientific Management, and the Theory of Business Administration.
• Principles of management are discussed in lectures for 30 hours a week.
• Assessment methods include exam (70%) and discussions and workshops (30%).
• The course is characterized by two fundamental features: practical and interdisciplinary character.
• Management and Organization Theory is a scientific discipline with consecutive management theories, schools of thought, concepts and ideas driven predominantly by changing needs and problems of business practice.
• Management practice is eclectic and draws simultaneously from different Management and Organization theories.
• Esprit de corps
• Remuneration: Workers must be paid a fair wage
• Centralization: Decisions should be made as high up in the hierarchy as possible
• Scalar chain: The line of authority from top management to the lowest ranks (hierarchy)
• Subordination of individual interests to the general interest
• Order: People and materials should be in the right place at the right time
• Equity: Managers should treat their subordinates fairly
• Stability of personnel employment
• Unity of direction: Each group that has the same objective should be directed by one manager with one plan
• Management draws among others on the work of sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, economists, engineers, lawyers, mathematicians, statisticians, political scientists and others.
• Other disciplines are needed to explain organizational phenomena and formulate plans for the future, future structures and processes.
• In this class, contemporary approach to management is studied but historical background is provided.
• Old theories are not useless in contemporary world and different fragments of them are still applicable in different sets of circumstances.
• Management is the creation and maintenance of such conditions, so that an organization can fulfill its mission, achieve its goals, and maintain unity, which will enable the organization to continue existing.
• Organization is a group of people using technology and equipment, created in order to fulfill certain mission and to achieve established goals.
• Commercial organization maximizes economic surplus.
• Non-commercial organization realizes non-economic goals.
• Organization that realizes mixture of goals is also possible.
• Thomas Cook group was established in 1841 as Thomas Cook & Son and employs 22,000 people in 16 countries, including 9,000 in the UK.
• The company operates 550 high street stores.
• Scientific Selection, Training, and Development of workers is a key principle of Scientific Management, where workers are scientifically selected, trained, and developed rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
• In Taylor’s system, the wages that the workers received depended on whether they realized the established norm.
• If that did not work either, they were fired.
• Division of work is nearly equally divided between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
• The Principles of Scientific Management advocate for the elaboration and implementation of scientific methods for each task, with no room for variety in working methods.
• The disadvantages of Scientific Management include a rigid catalogue of rules to follow for the employees, extensive supervision and control, no human touch; main motivation is money, no negotiations about salaries and working conditions, work fragmentation; limited knowledge about the production cycle as a whole and the final product, individual performance evaluation, and no place for creativity of workers.
• Fayol’s Functions of Management (1916) include Planning, Organizing, Commanding, Coordinating, Controlling.
• Karol Adamiecki and Henry Gantt are known for the use of a chart as a tool for quality control in production, currently known as Gantt charts.
• Fayol’s principles (14) include Division of work: Specialization increases output, Authority: Formal authority is based on the function; personal authority is based on character and on relationships with employees, Discipline, Unity of command: Every employee should receive orders from only one superior.
• Workers that repeatedly were not able to meet this norm were trained at first and if that did not help they were given easier tasks that paid less.
• Cooperation with the workers is a crucial aspect of Scientific Management, ensuring that the scientifically developed methods are being followed.
• Henri Fayol co-created the principles of general theory of business administration.
• 180,000 UK customers were stranded abroad.
• Frederick Taylor, the Principles of Scientific Management (1911), is one of the founding fathers of management as a scientific discipline.