Management

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"Management" (from Old French, "ménagement"="the art of conducting, directing", from Latin "manum agere"="lead by the hand") characterises the process of leading and directing all or part of an organization, often a business, through the deployment and manipulation of resources (human, financial, material, intellectual or intangible). One can also think of management functionally: as the action in measuring a quantity on a regular basis and adjusting an initial plan and the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. Situational management may precede and subsume purposive management.

Historical development

Some writers trace the development of management thought back to Sumerian traders and ancient Egyptian pyramid builders.

Modern management

19th Century

Modern management as a discipline began as an off-shoot of economics in the 19th century. Classical economists such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill provided a theoretical background to resource allocation, production, and pricing issues. About the same time, innovators like Eli Whitney, James Watt, and Matthew Boulton developed technical production elements such as standardization, quality control procedures, cost accounting, interchangeability of parts, and work planning.

By the middle of the 19th century, Robert Owen, H. Poor, and M. Laughlin and others introduced the human element with theories of worker training, motivation, organizational structure and span of control.

By the late 19th century marginal economists Alfred Marshall and Leon Walras and others introduced a new layer of complexity to the theoretical underpinings of management. The first tertiary-level course in management was offered in 1881 by J. Wharton. By 1900 we find managers trying to place their theories on a thoroughly scientific basis. Examples include H. Towne's Science of management, Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific management, Frank Bunker Gilbreth's Science of motion study, and Henry L. Gantt's charts. J. Duncan wrote the first college management text book in 1911.

20th Century

The first comprehensive theories of management appeared around 1920. People like H. Fayol and A. Church described the various branches of management and their inter-relationships. In the early 20th century, people like O. Tead, W. Scott and J. Mooney applied the principles of psychology to management, while other writers, such as Elton Mayo, M. Follett, C. Barnard, Max Weber, Rensis Likert, and Chris Argyris approached it from a sociological perspective.

One of the earliest books on Management as a science was by Peter Ferdinand Drucker called Concept of a Corporation. It is the result of Alfred Sloan (head of General Motors) commissinoing a study on the organisation. Drucker went on to write 32 books, mostly along the same vein of study.

H. Dodge, R. Fisher, and T. Fry introduced statistical techniques into management. In the 1940s, Patrick Blackett combined these statistical theories with microeconomic theory and gave birth to the science of operations research. Operations research, sometimes known as "management science", attempts to take a scientific approach to solving management problems, particularly in the areas of logistics and operations.

Some of the more recent developments include the theory of constraints, reengineering, and various information technology driven theories such as agile software development. The theory of constraints approach describes management decision-making as a continuous cycle of three basic questions—What to change? To what to change to? How to make the change happen?

Towards the end of the 20th century, management was seen as consisting of a number of separate branches, including:

1. Human resource management
2. Operations or production management
3. Strategic management
4. Marketing management
5. Financial management
6. Information Technology management

21st Century

In the 21st century we find it increasingly difficult to subdivide management into categories in this way. More and more processes simultaneously involve several categories. Instead, we tend to think in terms of the various processes, tasks, and objects that can be managed.

Different varieties/objects of management

• Change management
• Communications management
• Constraint Management
• Cost management
• Crisis management
• Customer relationship management
• Earned value management
• Enterprise management
• Facility management
• Integration management
• Knowledge management
• Marketing management
• Micromanagement
• Pain management
• Perception management
• Procurement management
• Program management
• Project management
• Process management
• Product management
• Quality management
• Resource management
• Risk management
• Skills management
• Spend management
• Supply chain management
• Systems management
• Time management
• Stress management

See Also:

• Adhocracy
• Engineering management
• Management consulting
• Management development
• Management Technology
• Middle management
• Poor management
• Senior management
• Strategic management
• Virtual management
• Peter Drucker's management by objectives
• Eliyahu M. Goldratt's theory of constraints
• Pointy Haired Boss - (Negative stereotypes of managers)

Finding related topics

• list of management topics
• list of marketing topics
• list of human resource management topics
• list of economics topics
• list of finance topics
• list of accounting topics
• list of information technology management topics
• list of production topics
• list of business law topics
• list of business ethics, political economy, and philosophy of business topics
• list of business theorists
• list of economists
• list of corporate leaders
• list of companies

External links

• Management Theories
• http://www.mapnp.org/library/
• Famous Quotes on Management

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