The management of people to achieve organizational and work-related goals has existed for centuries. The building of the pyramids in Egypt and the large-scale infrastructural projects during ancient times (from Roman roads and aqueducts to Indian and African precolonial organizational projects) have engaged some or other forms of managerial skills (Kamoche 2002; Kamoche and Newenham-Kahindi 2012). Sumerian stone tablets record managerial techniques that were practised as far back as 3000 BC (Hodgetts 1975). In the fifteenth century, managerial knowledge took shape through the colonial experience of administering military and civilian systems across broad geographical areas. This was even before the rise of large corporations (Frenkel and Shenhav 2006; Frenkel 2008). The colonial encounter as well as the transatlantic slave trade can also be viewed as managerial projects that required the management of vast and complex supply chains and human resources (Cooke 2003; Jammulamadaka 2017).
Although management was practised for centuries, its formal scientific documentation as a discipline and a science occurred in the nineteenth century with the work of Frederick Taylor. This makes it a relatively new discipline. The key to the establishment of management as a scientific discipline is the idea that the practice of managerial techniques was not sufficient to ensure managerial goals and objectives. The proponents of scientific management argue that practice had to be empirically informed (Legg 2004). Management education, informed by management scholarship, was therefore vital to ensure managerial success in work organizations. The formal writings of managerial techniques based on empirical research thus became the core to its disciplinary establishment. These writings moved management from the function of how to manage people and organizations to scientifically based managerial practices (Nienaber 2007).
Management as a research-based discipline was catalysed by the rapid industrialization of Europe following the industrial revolution. At the turn of the twentieth century, the reasons to coalesce the management of workers around a set of scientific beliefs about management were published (Swanepoel et al. 2014). These scientific beliefs were published in the book Principles of Scientific Management written by Frederick Taylor . Management, for Taylor and his followers, was a science and a decision-making instrument for managing workers to achieve maximum productivity. Taylor ās views of management have profoundly shaped the discipline ever since. These are reflected in contemporary managerial practices such as performativity, production, motivation, work organization and remuneration (Khorasani and Almasifard 2017).
The emergence of the factory and the rise of the new technologies gave practitioners of scientific management a rich context in which to test their ideas of management science (Goldman 2016). Scientific management, also known as classical management, provided opportunities for scholars to specifically research and publish on managerial education and practices. These scholars came from diverse academic backgrounds including psychology, sociology and economics. An increase in the scholarly production of managerial knowledge occurred, blending these disciplines with scientific management principles. The upswing of knowledge production that occurred was also an outcome of the need to support the rapid industrialization of Europe and North America. This included developing insights into how to better achieve performance and work design to ensure profitable work organizations.
Management can therefore be defined as the āprocess of creating and maintaining an environment in which employees, individually and collectively, can perform to achieve the purpose of the enterpriseā (Nienaber 2007: 3). The purpose of the enterprise can differ from profit achievement to service delivery, depending on the context. Despite the differing organizational contexts, the concern of management studies is the same. This is a concern with people management in work organizations. This element of management studies has evolved into the sub-discipline of human resources management (HRM). However, as Nienaber (2007) argues, both management and HRM are focused on the work organization-employee interface.
Management studies as a scholarly discipline seems to be performing well. This is despite the emerging intellectual critiques of the discipline from those within and outside. These critiques mainly come from industrial sociologists and critical management studies (Alvesson and Willmott 2003). Work and work organizations are transforming rapidly, and as some have argued, these changes signal the end of management as a practice (Peters 2017; Hester and Srnicek 2017). While change is inevitable over time, the discipline has proven to be resilient in adapting to organizational and economic changes.
Management scholars give great emphasis to work organizations that are a central feature of advanced and emerging economies. They include the psycho-social management of employees and the management of the labour relations of these employees at organizational levels. Given this purpose, HRM as the professional and applied face of management studies is an attractive profession and discipline for students, academics and practitioners. HRM has both a scholarly and an academic dimension and orientation. It is focused on generating models, theories and empirical work to aid managers to better manage the organizational dynamics of people. HRM is thus also an applied discipline. This is scholarly HRM in practice. In this sense it is about the management of people in organizations and the management of the work people do in organizations. It is therefore firmly embedded in the management of organizations. Whilst some managers may specialize in HRM work, HRM is an integral part of all managerial work (Swanepoel et al. 2014). It is specifically concerned with the interplay between work and people in work organizations.
HRM in particular has become an important matter and concern in view of the economic and development prospects and plans for Africa in general and South Africa in particular. Human resources are as important as material resources in an economy and in the development agenda of developing countries. This has become a topic of both academic interest and practical concern as African countries began to achieve independence from the 1950s onwards. The increased awareness about the efficient management of human resources and the need for it have focused on varying aspects of human resources. Scholars examined HRM as a profession and as a practice. For instance, Van Rensburg et al. (2011) in their study considered the contemporary drive towards professionalizing this field as found in South Africa. They also discussed the need for the body of knowledge and standards that are necessary for the practice of management. They confirm that HRM in South Africa bears the characteristics that give it the standing of a profession.
HRMās professional status is achieved through obtaining appropriate credentials. Relevant qualifications allow graduates to achieve professional status as human resources managers or practitioners. This often means that advisory boards made up of practitioners give inputs into HRM curricula and research at universities. There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between practice and scholarship in HRM. Much of the published work in this area has a practitioner-scholar approach. This approach emphasizes practical workplace interventions to assist in the more efficient management of people in work organizations. Most of the journals in this subject insist on a practitioner value emphasis on published work. These distinctive features of management and HRM serve to make these two closely related areas different from the traditional social science disciplines such as sociology and philosophy.
Management Studies : The African and the South African Contexts
Management of people has become a matter and concern in view of the economic and developmental prospects and plans for Africa in general and South Africa in particular. Africa as a continent is beginning to capture the imagination of entrepreneurs, corporations and scholars (George et al. 2016). This makes the importance, relevance and revival of management a growing area of interest on the continent. Human resources are as important as material resources in any economy and in the development agenda of developing countries. This has become a topic of both academic interest and practical concern ever since African countries ended ...