The Roots and Future of Management Theory

A Systems Perspective

William Roth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351409247
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industrial Management
• Index: Business

Interesting and easy-to-read, The Roots and Future of Management Theory: A Systems Approach provides a comprehensive overview of today's workplace -past, present ,and future. The author brings the key characters in the evolution of management theory to life. Not only will your students understand the roots of our current situation, how workplace change happens, and what forces are involved - they will see how it fits into changes in society as a whole. There have obviously been many changes in the workplace from the Medieval Period to the present, and there will certainly be even more changes in the future. This book explores these changes and connects them to changes in: general philosophy (rationalism, empiricism, pragmatism); religious philosophy (Catholicism, Protestantism); social philosophy (Machiavellian Humanism, Christian Humanism); economic philosophy (laissez faire, Communism); and workplace philosophy (technology as a friend, technology as an enemy). Battles have raged through the ages between these opposing forces, affecting management systems, the quality of working life, and life in general. The author discusses how this has lead to today's quest for a synthesis of the strengths of these forces, and suggests that it has been found in the systems approach. He describes what this synthesis - combined with the powers of the computer - could and should lead to in the future. Written at a level that both graduate and undergraduate student will understand, The Roots and Future of Management Theory provides an overview of management theory. Comprehensive but not overwhelming, this textbook will give your students an understanding the changes in the workplace since the beginning of the industrial age, and offer them some insights into the changes most likely to occur in the 21st century.

 I  THE
PRE-INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION ERA

The Pre-Industrial Revolution era began at the end of the Dark Ages, roughly around a.d. 1000. It includes the later Medieval period, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment. This last provided a bridge to the early Industrial Revolution. But the supports for this bridge, its pilings, were shaped over the previous 700 years by a wide range of socioeconomic institutions and by individuals.

What happened during the Pre-Industrial Revolution era depended little upon technological innovation. The primitive technology available during this time changed little and remained secondary in importance to the skills of workers. Neither was the era influenced greatly by changes in the size of businesses. Most were small and remained relatively small. Finally, the era was not guided to a major extent by marketplace pressures. Such pressures existed, to be sure, but, for the most part, they were heavily regulated.

The Pre-Industrial Revolution era world of business, therefore, received its character and direction primarily from socioeconomic forces — the Church, feudalism, the state, then the church again, then the state. It was also molded by a progression of larger-than-life individuals — ambitious businessmen, bold explorers, innovative thinkers, and courageous change agents — who defined key concepts upon which modern-day management theory continues to feed. These concepts, despite their age, are at the core of most of our current business successes, as well as most of our current management problems.

In order to understand the secret of these successes and the real causes of these problems and to put them into a clear context so that we can deal effectively with them, the place to start is with their historical roots.

1 Medieval Period and
the Renaissance:
Developing the Basics

After Reading This Book You Should Know

1. How, during the Medieval period, the three major forces shaping European society were the Catholic Church, the nobility, and the craft guilds.
2. How guilds kept the economy in balance.
3. The role the Crusades played in the development of the European economy.
4. How the new merchant class built its power on the new concept of “profit.”
5. How increased wealth became the objective of individuals, nations, and the church.
6. Why, while life improved tremendously for those with power, the situation of the working class deteriorated.
7. What the origins of Machiavellian humanism were and why it became a driving force in the economic world.
8. How and why Christian humanism evolved as an alternative to Machiavellian humanism.

Medieval Europe: A Tightly Bound Society

While the Roman Empire, under Julius Caesar and his successors, was still the dominant influence in Western Europe (up to around a.d. 500), economic development remained an objective. A network of well-built roads was laid to link the various regions. Towns were erected to serve as focal points for commerce. Protection while traveling was provided for those involved in trade.

Once the Roman influence disappeared from this region, however, the tribes that regained power allowed the road system to deteriorate and the towns to crumble. Craftsmen and peddlers traveling any distance usually had to provide for their own protection. Those in control had no desire to integrate the economy or to develop a centralized government, characteristics that had been the strength of the Roman Empire. Rather, kingdoms remained loose federations of extended families that lived off their own lands, independent and self-sufficient, sometimes trading with each other, more frequently fighting.

This was the societal model that persevered through the Dark Ages and into the Medieval period. By that time, around a.d. 1000, the wood and thatch hut of the headman had evolved into a stone fortification; family members had become the local nobility; the amount of land controlled and cultivated had grown; and “serfs,” nonfamily members who worked the land and swore their allegiance to the local lord in return for his protection, had been brought into the fold. The serfs paid for the lord’s protection and for the Church’s blessing by giving part of their harvest to each. Also, they were required to spend time working in the fields of each. Self-sufficiency remained the rule and survival the major concern of most.

As the Medieval period progressed, life began to improve. One reason for this was a population explosion. During the Dark Ages, largely because of the continual wars waged between feudal lords, because of the nobility’s attitude toward the common people, because of the generally harsh living conditions, the population of the continent had decreased. But now, in England, for example, the population tripled in a span of 300 years, thus creating more production power and a larger market for goods and services.

This was both a blessing and a problem for those in power. While more crops could be planted and harvested, there were also more people to control. Peasants had begun voicing a desire for more than a life of simple servitude. The nobility responded the only way it knew, with force, which had traditionally been its major policy-shaping vehicle. Male members of the nobility had been trained since childhood in the arts of warfare. They now used those arts not only to protect, but also to control their serf populations.

The Church was initially subtler. It tried to keep the population dependent. Peasants were not allowed to learn to read. Curiosity was considered a sin. The church promised that it would provide the right answers to any reasonable questions that peasants might have. In the middle of the 13th century, however, with the Inquisition, the Church took off its gloves, making it painfully clear that those who questioned its authority would suffer for their indiscretions, for their lack of obedience.

But change, despite all efforts, was inevitable, as it always has been. Perhaps the most significant driving force was the reestablishment of trade. By the 11th century, regions of Europe had begun exchanging goods again. Flanders, for example, began producing excess woolen cloth which it traded to Norse sailors for honey, furs, and other goods from the north. The French began exporting wine to England. The British began exporting tin, the Italians glassware, and the Spanish horses.

Also, as settlements around the castles of lords and the establishments of the clergy expanded, an obvious need arose for organization of the crafts industries so that supply would meet, but not exceed, demand. The guild system evolved in response to this need. The first guilds included a mixture of all the craftsmen of a town, as well as merchants who were originally street peddlers buying here and selling there to gain a few pennies.

The original mission of these guilds was not so much to regulate trade as it was to negotiate with the local lord concerning what part of profits would be taken in taxes, what the trade laws would be, who would make the legal decisions, what warehouse and shop space would be made available, what protection would be provided. These initial guilds, therefore, could be considered early versions of our present-day unions, representing the workers in negotiations with owners.

As guilds grew in economic strength, some were eventually able to wrest the power of community governance away from the local lord. The lords were in a bind. They no longer owned the source of production outright; as they had when land was the wellspring of all wealth and power. They no longer possessed the skills necessary to control the economy. They were fighters and rulers, not businessmen. And their quality of life was improving rapidly due to the contributions of the local craftsmen and merchants. So, from at least one perspective, trying to stop this shift in power did not make much sense.

Towns were becoming, as in Roman times, centers of trade. Their inhabitants, however, were a new breed. They were not serfs working the land, not nobility, not clergy, not professional soldiers. Instead, they were mainly the producers and providers of an ever-growing range of goods — houses, carts, candles, rope, cloth, shoes, tables, rugs — some brought in from other regions, some, even, from other countries. These citizens were called “burgers” which means, literally, “townspeople,” and they were the beginning of a new middle class.

By the 1200s, the Church also had begun to realize the value of this new class and had grudgingly sanctioned it. Still, in its desire to uphold traditional values, in its concern for the general welfare, in its ongoing effort to maintain control over the lives of its flock, the Church made an effort to stifle the greed that might erupt from newly evolving economic opportunity. The Church said that the merchants were allowed to ask only a “just price,” a price that enabled them to maintain a reasonable standard of life, but no more. The Church resisted development of the banking industry so critical to business growth and commerce and banned related practices that it considered un-Christian including speculation and usury (the loaning of money for profit).

As things progressed, friction arose between the two key factions in the guilds, the local craftsmen and the merchants. The latter, because of their expanding reach and greater opportunity for profits, also because of their ability to manipulate the craftsmen, were becoming wealthy and powerful. The craftsmen, however, still limited by the fact that they could sell directly only to local markets and by the fact that they were dependent on the merchants for access to markets outside the local sphere, were not doing as well. Suspicion and resentment grew.

Eventually, the guilds broke up, merchant houses going off on their own. Because of their success, they no longer needed the security that the “togetherness” of the guilds had provided. The various crafts also broke away, forming independent “subguilds” that focused on the welfare of their specific trade.

The Crusades End Europe’s Isolation

Another major contributor to change, progress, and to the development of the middle class was the Crusades, initially mounted by Pope Urban II for three reasons. The first was to stop fighting among Europe’s lords by giving them a common objective, a common enemy. The second was to unite the European and Western Catholic Churches under papal leadership. The third was to reclaim the Holy Lands, specifically Jerusalem, from the Moslems.

Less religious, more pragmatic people also saw the Crusades as an opportunity to regain control of shipping routes in the eastern Mediterranean from the Moslems and actually to reopen trade relations with those they were going to fight, as well as with cultures lying beyond the Holy Lands to which Europe, up to this point, had been denied access.

Militarily, these Crusades, lasting until almost the 1300s, were a disaster for the European forces. Commercially, they were a success. They did, indeed, allow merchants to find new trading partners, to discover and bring home new technology and products. Marco Polo, perhaps the most famous merchant of that period, traveled during the late 1200s overland all the way to China and developed trading relations with the clan of the great warrior Genghis Khan whose armies dominated the Asian continent and, at one later point, threatened to overrun even Europe.

Back on the home front, the craft guilds were moving steadily to solidify their position in the local market. Each community of any size now had its’ own well-organized guilds. These organizations had several key responsibilities, the most important of which was to protect members from outside competition and to restrain members from taking unfair advantage of each other. Guilds also controlled the training of apprentices and set limits on the number of craftsmen producing any one product.

Although guild-controlled craftsmen had no geographic mobility, almost no social mobility, and little chance to improve their economic situation, they generally enjoyed job security. People, during the Medieval period, had little opportunity to develop individual potential. Emphasis, as we have said, was on surviving. Group effort, rather than individual effort, offered the best chance of doing so. Craftsmen were members of closely knit communities, their efforts meshing with those of everyone else in the community.

The economic conduct as well as the personal conduct of guild members was bounded by the rules of morality and, to a large degree, by the laws of the Church, which housed God’s representatives on Earth. Most guilds built their own chapels. The guild’s major purpose, from a religious perspective, was to help members gain grace and, therefore, gain salvation through “good works,” deeds that contributed to the welfare of the community. They charged their “just price,” a share of any business profits going to glorify God.

It was during the Medieval period that many of the great cathedrals of Europe were raised, sometimes several generations of craftsmen contributing to the same structure. In any village, the largest and handsomest building was usually the stone church that was, in turn, often surrounded by the thatched huts of the local people.

Guild-controlled businesses, like all other organizations, were hierarchical in structure. This model mimicked the chain of command of the Church, the original hierarchy in the Western world, and the system of feudal lords. The Church had the pope, bishops, archdeacons, and clergy on descending levels. The feudal system had the king, barons, lesser lords, and knights. Guild shops had the owner/boss (called the “master craftsman”), “journeymen” and “apprentices.”

No other way of structuring organizations was even considered at this point. Because of the ceaseless turmoil and warring, because of the unstable nature of kingdoms and boundaries, because of the sometimes violent confrontations between church and state concerning supremacy, emphasis was on clarifying the lines of authority and power; the hierarchy provided the best vehicle for accomplishing this.

Although the management structure of the guild shop mirrored that of church and state, its management philosophy did not. Church parishioner and state subjects, on the one hand, were children to be controlled, guided, and taken care of. They were expected to contribute when called upon without question, but were allowed little input into decision making. On the other hand, while guild members were to be controlled, guided, and taken care of, they, unlike parishioners and subjects, were also expected to contribute...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Biography
• Contents
• Preface
• PART I: THE PRE-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ERA
• 1 Medieval Period and the Renaissance: Developing The Basics
• 2 The Reformation: Opening the Door to Opportunity
• 3 The Enlightenment: Cornerstones for a New Socioeconomic Order
• 4 Bringing the Pre-Industrial Revolution Era into Perspective
• PART II: THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
• 5 The Early Industrial Revolution: Europe Leads The Way
• 6 The Early Industrial Revolution: The United States Catches Up
• 7 The Late Industrial Revolution: Efficiency vs. Effectiveness
• 8 Bringing the Industrial Revolution Era into Perspective
• PART III: THE POST-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ERA
• 9 The Gathering Forces of Change
• 10 The Post-Industrial Revolution Era: Tying It All Together
• 11 The Post-Industrial Revolution Era: The Slowly Shifting Tide
• 12 Bring the Forces That Have Driven the Evolution of Management Theory into Perspective
• Bibliography
• Index