Classical Theories of Management

There are three main theories of classical management which were developed by different people. They include bureaucracy (Weber), scientific management (Taylor) and the administrative theory of Henry Fayol. This discussion seeks to find out how relevant the classical theory is in our organizations.

Taylor who is known as the father of scientific management (Tucker, 2002) argued that it was only by increasing the efficiency of workers that productivity of an organization was going to go up. He therefore came up with four principles that would ensure efficiency.

One of the principles was to ensure that workers were well remunerated and recognition given for high quality work and extra efforts made. The second principle was that labour needs to be divided in equal measures and portions between managers and employees. This meant that managers need to come to the level of employees and not bog them down with work but instead they should share work equally. In the same principle Taylor argued that it was important for managers to involve the junior workers in the decision making process as this would help the employees feel that they are a part of the organization (Aldo, 1972).

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Looking at Taylor’s argument and those of Weber and Taylor, the classical management theories are not as relevant in our organizations. Some the reasons include the fact that most employees work for short perspectives as opposed to long perspective (Morgan, 2006). Employees are also expected to be subordinate and thus the issue of sharing of duties is not applied.

It has also been noted that employees do not have much over their work and thus their contribution may be minimal. These among other weaknesses of the classical management theories make irrelevant in our organization.

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Reference:

Aldo, D. (1972). The Classical Theory. Washington: University of North Carolina Press.

Morgan, G. (2006). Images of Organization. London: SAGE

Tucker, K. (2002). Classical Social Theory. New York: Wiley-Blackwell