The History of Management

Introduction

Management in business is the coordination of people to accomplish set goals efficiently and effectively. It comprises of planning, organising, staffing, leading, and controlling an organisation. Management itself is also an academic discipline, a social science whose object of study is social organisation in order to accomplish a mutual goal.

Since the dawning of civilisation, the value of the collaboration of people has been identified as a powerful method of advancement in all areas. The need, therefore, to organise people and resources was clearly evident. The concept of ‘management’ has grown over thousands of years and various management methods have also evolved in tandem. The historical progression of human civilisation is largely down to the knowledge acquired through the implementation of various management methods over time.

As the Spanish-American philosopher, George Santayana (1863 - 1952) theorised:

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The purpose of this report is to investigate management theory in the context of how it evolved over time and how it is put into operation in modern-day architectural practices. In order to analyse and discuss the topics thoroughly the report has been divided into two sections:

• Part A – The History of Management.

• Part B - Management Theory in Architectural Practices.

A Short Conclusion ends the discussion and references are presented on the last page.

Part A – The History of Management....

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...pproaches have emerged. In 1982 Peters and Waterman released a book called ‘In Search of Excellence’. In the book the authors identified 36 companies that demonstrated excellence in performance and analysed their findings. After this analysis they were able to identify eight ‘attributes of excellence’:

Attributes of Excellence. Available at: http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0073377015/582339/ghil77015_02.pdf

A separate approach that arose simultaneously is the idea of ‘Total Quality Management’ or T.Q.M. This involves the emphasis being placed on the overall quality of products and services. This shift in attention switched the focus from finding and correcting mistakes to preventing them. TQM is a management philosophy that emphasises the management of the entire organisation so that it excels in every way that is important to the customer.