Schools of management (theory)

The idea is simple. Over the last one hundred years, different experts in management have proposed different ways to manage effectively.

Henrie Fayol was one of the earliest and he said that managers need to develop a good administration based on a few key principles (i.e. unity of command, scalar principle, ....)

Frederick Taylor said that the key was 'schientific management.' In other words, you need to study people's jobs and simplify the steps so that the job can be done more quickly

Max Weber argued that you had to develop a bureaucracy that was transparent, logical and orderly

The various experts in the behaviour school argued that if you engage people (i.e. challenge them, make their job interesting,....), your organisation will be more effective

After the 1950s, the systems, the process and the learning schools added more knowledge about management. In all of these three schools, the important thing is to understand that people depend on other people to do their job. To manage well, you need to see the "big picture." For the systems school, that means that you need to focus on the system as a whole. For the process school, you need to see how to coordinate the work between departments . For the learning school, you need to get the experts in the organisation to share their knowledge with members in the organisation that are less knowledgeable.