Business Management

Table of content

Executive Summary

Management thought has now matured to a point where managers may be conceived of as the new “proletariat”- come the managerial revolution. Management thought has indeed been enlarged on by Sheldon, Mayo, Follett, Moony, Burnham and Urwick has solidified their concepts by pointing out the independence of their thinking, the interrelation of their analysis, and the similarity of their conclusions.

Introduction:

The men who figured prominently in this scientific approach, however, were a decided cut above the old-school managers who determined procedures and made decisions on the basis of “what worked before should solve the problem now”. This new breed of scientific managers emphasized “let’s investigate the facts and make our decisions in light of the findings.” These men, symbolized by taylor and his contemporaries, were perceptive to the facts at hand, especially as they applied to the process of industry. they were hard-hitting practical men, who is a fair day’s work? How long should a worker require to do a given job? what is the best location for a plant? How workers be supervised? What is the best way to select a worker for a job? These were the problems of the moment.

As a result of the efforts of these practitioners of scientific managements, managerial reasoning changed from a this-is-the best way approach. These managers, we should emphasize, made the first major break with traditional decision making by advocating a management approach based on facts and scientific reasoning.

Oliver Sheldon:[pic 1]

Oliver Sheldon was a director of the Rowntree Company in York, in the UK, in the 1920s. He was graduated from Oxford and completed his military service.[pic 3][pic 2]

He was closely involved in restructuring the management and organization of the growing confectionery company at a stage where its growth meant by necessity it had to move away from the personal, family-centered management of its founder, Joseph Rowntree, towards a more professional cultures. "The leadership of men calls for patience, courage, and, above all, sympathy." Service to the community was the primary motive and fundamental basis of industry.[pic 4]

Consequently, Sheldon advocated a human relations style of management which placed the individual in a human context involving a range of emotional and psychological needs. In this, he disagreed fundamentally with contemporaries such as Taylor, who saw economic need as being the primary motivator of workers. Anticipating later writers such as Mayo and Herzberg by some years, Sheldon argued that, while basic economic needs must be met, wider personal and community needs were equally important. Industry was key to shaping society and the leaders and managers of industry consequently had to work to ethical considerations which were greater than purely financial. While stressing the need for efficiency, he saw service and democracy as complementary to this - reflecting long established Rowntree practices, introduced by Joseph and extended by Seebohm Rowntree and Oliver Sheldon, such as ensuring their workers were paid a "living wage", had decent working conditions and were consulted on and involved in decision making in the workplace. Both the firm and individual directors were closely involved in a range of community work, often motivated by their Quaker religious beliefs and/or their Liberal politics. In 1904, Joseph Rowntree gave away half his personal fortune and almost two-thirds of the shares in the company to three Trusts to pursue a range of charitable, social and political work. All three continue today in the forms of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (which includes the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust) and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. All are still based in York.