1. Makerere University Business School
Strategic Management Course
MANAGEMENT THEORIES

2. Introduction
Earliest contributors
Practicing managers
Social scientists
More recent theorists
Academicians
Management consultants

3. Practicing managers
Reflected on their experiences
To produce rational principles for
Universal application
Efficiency improvement
To structure work & organisations
Did not concentrate on human motivation
Classical / scientific

4. Early Social Scientists
Human behaviour at work
Started with efficiency, looking at
Physical conditions effect on employees
Ended up in human factors at work
Motivation, communication, leadership
Called
Human relations theorists or
Social psychologists
Later social scientists
Organisations as social systems
Contingency theorists

5. More recent theorists
Strategic perspective
Involve organisation factors:
Vision, mission, culture, structure, values,
external environment e.t.c
Build on previous theorists
More inclined to contingency theories

6. CLASSICAL MANAGEMENT THEORIES
Henri Fayol (1841 – 1925)
French industrialist & theorist
Mining engineer @ 19 years, MD @ 47
Was practically successful in management
Fayol’s definition of management by industrial
activities:
Technical, commercial, Financial, Security,
Accounting, and managerial
1st
5 activity groups were taken care of
Managerial activities required establishment of
principles

7. Fayol’s Principles of management
Division of work
Authority
Discipline
Unity of command
Individual interests sub-ordination
Remuneration
Centralisation
Scalar chain
Order
Equity
Tenure of office stability
Harmony, and team work

8. Comments on Fayol’s principles
Emphasis on structural organisation nature
– bureaucracy
Fairness, equity e.t.c were not consistent
with other main principles
Not suited for rapid change

9. Fredrick Winslow Taylor
Looked at efficiency on shop floor
Was a labourer, up to shop
superintendent
Developed scientific management
Background
Came up after industrial revolution
Dominant requirement was efficiency
Need for systematic of work
Workers only put in minimum effort

10. Scientific management principles
Work study analytical approach
Steps
Develop a science for each operation to replace opinion
& “rule of thumb”
Determine best method & its timing
• Study a job from skilled workers
• Eliminate unnecessary actions
• Produce best method – standard
Separate planning & controlling from actual “doing”
Select & train workers

11. Principles from Scientific management times
Frank & Lillian Gilbreths
Gilbreths applied scientific management to brick
laying
Used work study method to
Reduce movements per brick from 18 to 5
Current principles from scientific management -
Gilbreths
Therbligs – basic elements of on-the-job-motions
Process charting – process flow charts
Henry Gantt
Was Taylor’s colleague
Developed Gantt charts

12. Comments on scientific management
Benefits
Increased productivity
Rational approach – applies measurement
Incentive payments – based on results
Weaknesses
Rigidity – reduced workers’ role
Work fragmentation
Taylor was over-optimistic on acceptance by
both employees and management
Wages were determined scientifically - no
social considerations

13. Bureaucracy – Max Weber (1864 –
1920)
Common meaning
Red-tape; excess rules, paper work leading to inefficiency
Management theory meaning
An organisational form with a system of rules and hierarchy
of authority
Authority – acceptance of rule by those whom it is to
be exercised on.
Authority types
Traditional
Charismatic
Rational – legal
According to Weber, bureaucracy was:
The most rational means of controlling human beings
Indispensable for large scale & complex organisations.

14. Bureaucracy main features
A continuous organisation of functions
bound by rules
Specified spheres of competence
A hierarchical arrangement of offices
(jobs)
Appointment based on technical
competence
Separation of officials from ownership
Formulated rules, decisions & actions
recorded in writing

15. Bureaucracy weaknesses
Rules tend to be more important than
efficiency
Rigid behaviour
Prevents search for alternatives because
of programmed decision making
Damages relationships with clients and
workers
Difficult for change and adaptation