Evolution of Management

Objectives: I will try to cover my understanding of ‘The Evolution of Management’ from ‘Craftsman ship’ and '3E' model for Organizations.

The Industrial revolution happened in 1770s in England and then spread to other parts of Europe and to the United States of America in 1990s. In its earliest days, manufacturing the production of goods and services was done on a very small scale by craftsmen and their apprentices in their small shops. The craftsmen who were very skilled in their field used simple tools and techniques and produced the goods as per the need and requirement of the customers. The responsibly of the complete production process was with a single craftsman (sometimes a few), and he only did all the activities involved in it(from start to finish).

       A craftsman making boxes in the manner of the 19th century                               

There were several shortcomings involved with the craftsman model of production. Because the products were hand-made (or with minimum machine), the process was slow. The problem of economy of scale didn't allow higher margins, which could have allowed the businesses to expand.

The factory model of production, a product of industrial revolution, brought some changes in terms of dividing the craftsman’s roles and job into smaller and specialized roles. This forced the craftsmen to join factories and the owners as production supervisors, which caused a decline in the autonomy and control of craftsmen.

Ford assembly line, 1913

The scientific management era brought a paradigm shift in the managing of organizations. Frederick W. Taylor, who believed in the ‘science of management’ based on observation, measurement, analysis and improvement of work methods, and economic incentives. Taylor believed that it’s the role of management to plan, to carefully select workers, train them and then find the best way to perform each job.  Henry Ford introduced the concept of ‘moving assembly line’ which increased the efficiency of the processes by leaps and bounds. A second concept used by him was division of labour, under which he divided the operation process into a series of small tasks, and individual workers were assigned for each task, which led to ‘de-skilling’. Unlike craft production, where each worker was responsible for doing many tasks, and thus required skill, with division of labour the tasks were so narrow that virtually no skill was required. 

A modern day 'Assembly line'

This made the organisations lesser dependent on the skill-level of the the workers and in turn more dependent on the skill set of managers like- Planning, Organizing, Coordinating, Controlling and Executing.

The Management of Organizations made managers aware of the need of continuous improvement and organizations started striving towards EXCELLENCE. 

While EXCELLENCE is a function of EFFECTIVENESS and EFFICIENCY , and mathematically can be written as Excellence= Effectiveness X Efficiency. This principle can be better termed as 3E's model of Organizations and in today's scenario (of a very high competition) this makes sense for managers to achieve it. The competitive advantage gained through Excellence model can make Organizations sustainable and add value to their processes.

In my next blog, I will try sharing my learning on setting SMART Goals and their achievement. KEEP FOLLOWING.