The Evolution of Management Thought

Citation

Wren, D. A., & Bedeian, A. G. (2023). The Evolution of Management Thought (9th ed.). Wiley.

Chapter Summary

The book has 22 chapters in four parts, an epilogue, and runs to about 464 pages. Its stated goal is to trace the roots of modern management thought: how ideas about the nature of work, human beings and organizations have changed through history. The method is described as analytic (the backgrounds and beliefs of the people who contributed), synthetic (weaving trends, social movements and environmental forces into one framework) and interdisciplinary (drawing on economics, history, political science, psychology and sociology). Chapter 1 frames each period through four facets of culture: economic, social, political and technological. Chapters close with summaries, and Parts I to IV end with a retrospective or summary.

Part I: Early Management Thought (Chapters 1–6)

Chapter 1: A Prologue to the Past. The goal of the book, the cultural framework and the definitions of management and organizations. Chapter 2: Management Before Industrialization. Management in early civilizations (the Middle East, the Far East and South Asia, Egypt, the Hebrews, Greece, Rome, the Church, feudalism) and the cultural rebirth that produced the Protestant, liberty and market ethics. Chapter 3: The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. The steam engine, management as a fourth factor of production, early factory challenges (labor, managerial talent, planning, organizing and controlling), and the cultural consequences including working conditions, child and female labor and the Great Enrichment. Chapter 4: Management Pioneers in Early Factories. Robert Owen, Charles Babbage, Andrew Ure and Charles Dupin. Chapter 5: The Industrial Revolution in the United States. The American system of manufacturing, the transport and communication revolutions, railroads, Daniel McCallum and Henry Poor, and emerging governance issues. Chapter 6: Industrial Growth and Systematic Management. Big business, Carnegie, systematic management and the labor question, and business in relation to society, labor and government.

Part II: The Scientific-Management Era (Chapters 7–12)

Chapter 7: The Advent of Scientific Management. Frederick W. Taylor's early years, Midvale, task management, the Eastern Rate Case, the congressional investigation and the "mental revolution." Chapter 8: Spreading the Gospel of Efficiency. Barth, Gantt, the Gilbreths including Lillian Gilbreth, Harrington Emerson and Morris Cooke. Chapter 9: The Human Factor: Preparing the Way. Personnel management, industrial psychology, early industrial sociology and the trade-union movement. Chapter 10: The Emergence of the Management Process and Organization Theory. Henri Fayol's principles and elements of management, and Max Weber on bureaucracy. Chapter 11: Scientific Management in Theory and Practice. Education for management, the international scientific-management movement, studies of practice (Hoxie, Thompson and Nelson), and early organization theory and business policy. Chapter 12: Scientific Management in Retrospect. The era viewed against its economic, technological, social and political environments, including Progressivism.

Part III: The Social-Person Era (Chapters 13–18)

Chapter 13: The Hawthorne Studies. The illumination, relay-assembly, interviewing and bank-wiring studies and what they suggested about organizations as social systems, leadership and motivation. Chapter 14: The Search for Organizational Integration. Mary Parker Follett and Chester Barnard. Chapter 15: People and Organizations. The micro view of people at work (groups, motivation, job enrichment, participation, leadership) and the macro view (sociotechnical systems). Chapter 16: Organizations and People. Organization structure and design, James Mooney, top-management viewpoints, and ownership and control including transaction cost economics. Chapter 17: Human Relations in Theory and Practice. Applying and extending human relations, and a re-examination of Hawthorne's premises, methods and data interpretation. Chapter 18: The Social-Person Era in Retrospect. The Depression to prosperity, shifting social values and the New Deal.

Part IV: Moving Onward: The Near Present (Chapters 19–22)

Chapter 19: Management Theory and Practice. General management, Peter Drucker, management education and the "management theory jungle," studies of managerial work, new institutional economics, resource- and knowledge-based theories, agency, and the move from business policy to strategic management. Chapter 20: Organizational Behavior and Organization Theory. Theories X and Y, job design, motivation, leadership approaches, and organization theory from the Aston studies to contingency, population ecology and institutional theory. Chapter 21: Science and Systems in an Information Age. Operations research, quality and quality circles, the Toyota Production System and lean manufacturing, general systems theory and cybernetics, and information and communication. Chapter 22: Obligations and Opportunities. Globalization, business ethics, and business and society including corporate social responsibility, stakeholders and social entrepreneurship. An Epilogue closes the book.

Key Concepts

Part I

• Cultural facets: the economic, social, political and technological conditions in which management ideas arise.
• Management as a factor of production: the recognition during the Industrial Revolution that management is a distinct resource.
• Systematic management: the pre-Taylor effort to organize large enterprises.

Part II

• Scientific management: Taylor's task management, with its incentives and "mental revolution."
• Management process and bureaucracy: Fayol's principles and elements, and Weber's ideal bureaucracy.

Parts III and IV

• Social person and human relations: the shift in attention to groups and informal organization after Hawthorne.
• Organization theory lines: contingency theory, population ecology, institutional theory and strategic choice.
• Modern issues: strategic management, quality and lean production, systems thinking, ethics and social responsibility.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Context for every idea. Each major figure is placed in the economic, social, political and technological conditions of the period, and Parts II and III each close with a chapter reviewing those environments.
• Interdisciplinary reading. The authors explicitly draw on economics, history, political science, psychology and sociology, which gives the history more explanatory force than a list of theories.
• Breadth in time. The coverage runs from early civilizations to globalization, ethics and the digital age, and the publisher notes the new edition adds material on the Italian Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution in Britain, the US after the Civil War, Taylor's background and the Hawthorne studies.
• Revisiting standard stories. Chapters on Hawthorne in theory and practice, the Hoxie report and the Thompson and Nelson studies look at evidence and interpretation instead of repeating textbook summaries.

Limitations

• Large and detailed. At over 450 pages with many biographical sections, it is more history than most introductory management courses need.
• Heavier on the early periods. The first three parts (18 of 22 chapters) end with the period around the New Deal; the more recent period is covered in four chapters, so current theory is treated at survey level.
• Centered on Britain and the United States. After a survey of early civilizations in Chapter 2, the narrative is built around Britain, the United States and France, with international scientific management and global studies of managerial work added later.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the history-of-ideas book in the principles of management list. Principles of Management (OpenStax), Robbins and Coulter's Management and Daft's Management are introductory textbooks organized around planning, organizing, leading and controlling; for them management history is one topic among many, where Wren and Bedeian devote a whole book to it. Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives is an upper-level text that compares three perspectives on organizations and continues from the organization-theory strands in Chapters 16 and 20 here.

Read Wren and Bedeian after an introductory course, to see where the standard topics of the course came from.

How to Use This Book

It is aimed at upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses; an introductory management course is the only prerequisite, and no background in history or economics is needed.

• Core: Chapter 1 for the framework; Chapters 7 to 10 for scientific management and the management process; Chapters 13 and 14 for Hawthorne and organizational integration; Chapters 19 and 20 for the link to current theory.
• Context chapters: Chapters 2 to 6 for the background of industrialization, and the retrospectives (Chapters 12 and 18) for the environment of each era.
• For a shorter route: read Part II and Part III and skim Part I.

Read the chapter summaries first, then the sections on the person or school you are studying, and compare the retrospective chapters with the textbook account you already know.