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The Great Management Theorists : F. W. Taylor, Max Weber, And Douglas Mcgregor

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This paper analyzes five great management theorists: F. W. Taylor, Max Weber, Mary Parker Follett, and Douglas McGregor. Each theorist will be compared by four management functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling as detailed in the textbook: The Essentials of Contemporary Management-Sixth Edition from Gareth Jones and Jennifer M. George. We begin by discussing commerce prior the industrial revolution and then we define the key management functions, followed by an examination of each theorist, applying a template of analysis and critique.
A recently discovered leather daybook dating within the period of 1837-1857 accurately depicts the activities of a small crafts business prior to the arrival of the industrial revolution. …show more content…

Organizing is structuring the resources to achieve organizational goals. The textbook The Essentials of Contemporary Management-Sixth Edition focuses primarily on the human aspect of organizational resources. Leading is articulating a clear vision and energizing and enabling organizational members so they can understand the part they play in achieving organizational goals. Lastly, controlling is evaluating how well an organization is achieving its goals and taking action to maintain or improve performance.
Let’s begin by analyzing F. W. Taylor. Taylor’s scientific method can be summed up as a systematic study of relationships between people and tasks to increase efficiency (Jones and George 2015). There are four principles involved in this method: (1) Study the way workers perform their tasks, gather all the informal job knowledge that workers possess, and experiment with ways of improving the ways that tasks are performed. This step has the similar attributes of the organizing and controlling tasks discussed earlier in that the controlling task also involves evaluating the division of labor. (2) Codify the new methods of performing tasks into written rules and standard operating procedures. This step is very much about the organizing task. Although there are written rules, this aspect diverges from the leading

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