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1. SCHOOLS OF
MANGEMENT THOUGHT

2. Introduction
 The various approaches to the study of
management as put forward by specialists from
disciplines have come to be called the schools of
management thought .Major schools of
management thought are classified under the
following heads :

3.  The Management process school
 The Empirical school
 Human Behaviour school
 Social systems school
 Decision Theory School
 The Mathematical School
 The systems Approach school
 The contingency Approach school

4. 1.Management process school
(operational schools of management)
 Henri Fayol is known as the father of this School of
Thought. According to this school , management can be
studied in terms of the process that involves.
The management process consisting of five broad categories
of functions, viz. planning, organising, staffing, directing and
controlling is evident in all managerial situations. Following
this, this school evolved some universal principles of
management. These principles of management could be
equally well applied to business, government, or any other
type of organisation.

5.  The main features of the Management Process
School
 i. Management is the study of functions of managers.
 ii. The functions of managers are the same irrespective of
the type of organisation.
 iii. The functions of management, viz., planning, organising,
staffing, directing and controlling are the core of
management.

6.  Limitations of Management Process School:
 i. The various operational theorists do not agree about the
functions of management.
 ii. The so-called universal principles of management do not
always stand the test of empirical scrutiny.
 iii. Organisations function under dynamic conditions and,
therefore, searching for universal principles may not always
be a fruitful exercise.


7. 2. The Empirical school
 The important contributors to this approach are Earnest
Dale and group of researchers from Harward Business
School and The Management Associations of different
countries.
 . This school of thought considers management as the
study of experience of managers in the past. Analysing the
experiences of successful managers or the mistakes of poor
managers from case studies one somehow learns how to
manage. The main technique suggested by this school is the
case study method.

8.  The main features of this school are:
 i. Management is the study of managerial experiences.
 ii. The managerial experiences can be passed over to the
practitioners and students.
 iii. The techniques used in successful cases can be used by
future managers.
 iv. Theoretical researches can be combined with practical
experiences.

9.  Limitations of the Empirical School:
 This school depends heavily on the historical methods of
study. It goes mainly by precedents. It does not realize that
a manager has to work under dynamic conditions and that
history does not exactly repeats itself. The situations in the
past may not have been exactly the same as of the present.

10. 3.Human Behaviour School
 Thehuman relations theory of management began development in the early 1920’s
during the industrial revolution. At that time, productivity was the focus of business.
ProfessorElton Mayo began his experiments (the Hawthorne Studies), to provethe
importance of people for productivity –not machines.

11.  According to this school, management is the study of the behaviour of the people at
work. The main focus is on interpersonal relations. Good relations lead to good results.
Motivation ,leadership, communication, participative management andgroup
dynamics are the essential elements of human behaviour approach. The main merit of
this school is that it recognizeshuman beings to bethe most important resource ofan
enterprise.

12.  The main features of this school are:
 i. The school draws its concept from psychology, sociology,
human relations, inter-personal relationships, satisfaction
of worker’s needs etc.
 ii. Since management is getting things done through people,
the managers must have a basic understanding of human
behaviour and human relations in all its aspects,
particularly in the context of work groups and
organisations.

13.  iii. Management must study inter-personnel relations
among people.
 iv. Greater production and higher motivation can be
achieved only through good human relations.
 v. Motivation, leadership, communication, participative
management and group dynamics are the core of this school
of thought.

14. 4. The Social System School:
 Chester Bernard is the founding father of the social system
school of thought.
 The main features of this school of thought are:
 i. Management is a social system, a system of Cultural
relationships.
 ii. Formal organisations represent cultural relationships of the
social groups working within the organisation.
 iii. Cooperation and team spirit among the group members is
necessary for the achievement of organisational objectives.

15. 5. Decision Theory School:
 The main contributors and thinkers belonging to this school
of thought are Chester Bernard, James March, Herbert
Simon, Forrester and Richard Cyert. According to this
school, the essence of management lies in decision making.
Whatever a manager does is the outcome of a decision
made by him through rational choice from among different
alternatives available to him. For taking the right decision
at right time, the manager has to identify the problem,
search for various alternatives, evaluate them and select the
best alternative for implementation.

16.  Main features of this school of thought are:
 i. Management is essentially decision-making.
 ii. The members of any organisation are essentially
decision-makers and problem solvers
 iii. The quality of decisions is a prime factor for increasing
the efficiency of the organisation.
 iv. Management information system and the process and
technique of decision making form the subject matter of the
study of management.

17. 6. The Mathematical School:
 The main contributors to this school are Joel Dean,
Newmann and Hicks and others. According to this school of
management mathematical tools or techniques should be
used for solving the managerial problems. The dictum that
“what cannot be measured cannot be managed is relevant
here. Operations research, linear programming queuing
theory, gaming theory, simulation and model building are
some of the important techniques suggested by the
mathematical school for solving managerial problems.

18.  The essential features of this school are:
 i. Management is concerned with problem solving and it
must make use of mathematical tools and techniques for
the purpose.
 ii. The different factors involved in management can be
quantified and expressed in the form of models .

19.  Limitations:
 i. The mathematical models cannot be considered as a
substitute for sound judgment.
 ii. There are certain phases of the management process
which cannot be expressed in mathematical symbols and
formulae.

20. 7. The Systems Approach School:
 According to this school, management is a system made up
of a number of subsystems. This school suggests an
integrated approach for solving managerial problems. That
is , attention must be paid to the overall effectiveness of the
system rather than the effectiveness of any individual sub-
system in isolation from the other subsystems.

21.  Features of Systems Approach:
(i) A system consists of interacting elements. It is set of inter-related and inter-
dependent parts arranged in a manner that produces a unified whole.
 (ii) The various sub-systems should be studied in their inter-relationships
rather, than in isolation from each other.
 (iii) An organisational system has a boundary that determines which parts are
internal and which are external.
 (iv) A system does not exist in a vacuum. It receives information, material and
energy from other systems as inputs.

22. 8. The Contingency Approach
(situational approach)
 The major contributors to this school of thought are Joan
Woodward, Fiedler, Lorsch and Lawrence. Theorists of the
process school, quantitative, behavioural and systems
schools often assume that their concepts and techniques
have universal applicability, which is not so. These concepts
may, work in some situations and not in others.
 .

23.  According to this school of thought management problems
are different under different situations. There is no one best
way of management under all situations . Different
situations demand different solutions. That means , the
situation decides the pattern of management. In other
words, the pattern of management is contingent
(dependent) on the situation.