Management Theories

After the end of the Industrial Revolution, large corporations were beginning to grow in size and power in order to satisfy what seemed the endless demands for new goods and services. As corporations and labor forces grew, there was a need to develop a more systematic study of organization and management, known as management theory, the significant being Frederick Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management which involved the development of training workers through special incentives and compensation (Boone p.33). In general, early management scientists tended to believe that there was a single way to organize companies and manage employees. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were initial attempts for launching a systematic and scientific study of management; by the 1950's, there were multiple books and articles focused on organization and management theory. Since then, a number of new paradigms, or models, concerning employee motivation and employee-employer relationships have aroused influencing the basic principles of modern management theory.

Literature Review: Herzberg and Drucker

Frederick Herzberg, a pioneer on management theory, is best known for his motivation-hygiene theory and work in job enrichment. In his article, One More Time: How do you Motivate Employees, Herzberg explores the past theories of motivation and development of the motivation-hygiene theory. The motivation-hygiene theory suggests "the factors involved in producing job satisfaction (and motivation) are separate and distinct from the factors that lead to job dissatisfaction" (Boone p.174). In others words, job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are not the opposite of one another but rather two separate attitudes. Herzberg cla...

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...principles of management. The set of assumptions that have laid the foundations for the practice of management such as being internally focused, having given technologies and markets, are no longer close to our present reality. With the arrival of the Information Revolution, the Herzberg's and Taylor's theories about management have become somewhat obsolete obstacles to the efficient practice of management. There is no longer a single, dominant way to efficiently run a company or a single plan that can increase productivity. As technology improves, there will be different problems a firm will be challenged with and teamwork among employees and employers will become more necessary. Thus, it is not surprising that there is a new generation of management theorists emerging that are reevaluating and reformulating the old assumptions and paradigms of management theory.