management schools

Y-Negocios

2022

We explain what the management schools are and the characteristics of the empirical, scientific, classical and more.

Administrative schools seek to make administration more efficient.

What are administrative schools?

The schools of administration or administrative schools are the different empirical and theoretical approaches that exist around the management. Each one has a specific way of conceiving and applying administrative sciences to the real world, generally the result of the reflections of its founders, who tend to be psychologists, engineers, economists and, of course, administrators.

In fact, there is no strict consensus regarding the nature of administration or its ideal methods, so the different schools have their supporters and detractors, with points for and against. Despite this, all schools pursue exactly the same thing: to find the ideal formulation of the administrative fact, which allows it to be perfected and made more and more efficient.

The main administrative schools that are known are listed below.

The empirical school

This school gets its name from the doctrine philosophical of empiricism, which holds that the experience it is the best way -if not the only valid way- to obtain knowledge and thus make the best decisions.

Consequently, the best administrators are those who are trained by reviewing past experiences, with the purpose of finding general patterns, decisive factors and, in general, valid indications to undertake current administrative projects.

Therefore, the empirical school gives little value to the administrative principles, since it prefers that its conclusions come from the analysis of the experience that has occurred and not that they are formulated a priori.

Its critics, in this sense, maintain that two administrative experiences will never be so similar as to repeat all its elements and be able to apply identical solutions. For this reason, it is essential to have a theories and theoretical approaches, not only merely practical analysis.

One of the great empirical theorists of administration was the German-American Ernest Dale (1917-1996), one of the thinkers who contributed the most to administration and management in the 20th century.

the scientific school

The scientific school seeks to maximize production and improve efficiency.

The scientific school of administration was born at the end of the 19th century, when engineers and industrialists began to be interested in administrative models that would allow them to improve production.

heiress of the spirit positivist At the beginning of the 20th century, this school aspired to study administration from a verifiable, objective, scientific point of view, which would find its universal rules, just as it happens with the exact Sciences. Most of the time, it involved coming up with formulas to maximize production and improve productivity. efficiency from the workers.

The founder of this current was the American Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915), whose written work revolved around the scientific organization of work, in books such as shopmanagement from 1903 or Scientific Management Principles of 1911. In these works, Taylor revolutionized the traditional concept of management, assigning administrators a greater share of responsibility in production.

On the other hand, Taylor shared certain prejudices social around the working class, which he considered inherently lazy.For that reason, he aspired to measure and control details such as the number of moves a worker he had to do to keep his production to the maximum, as if they were robots.

The critics of the scientific school rightly point out the rigidity of its postulates and its aspiration, typical of the time, to understand the production process as a mere matter of gears to be controlled, without taking into account the subjective or psychological factors of the process. worked.

The dynamics that this school proposed ended up alienating the employee of the monotonous and repetitive task that he did, which brings with it significant amounts of frustration and discomfort.

the classical school

Also known as the "operational" school or "the administrative process”, this current considers that in all the administrative facts, however different they may be, more or less the same can be identified. functions and therefore apply certain universal principles.

Therefore, the task of the administrator must be to identify these functions and their adaptation to certain ideal patterns, for which he classifies the functions as follows:

  • Technical functions, which have to do with the dynamics of production of goods;
  • Commercial functions, which have to do with exchange operations (purchase, sale and exchange) of products;
  • Financial functions, which have to do with obtaining and applying financial resources;
  • Accounting functions, which have to do with inventories, balances and statistics of operation of the productive system;
  • Security functions, which have to do with the protection of goods and people to preserve their usefulness for the future. productive process;
  • Administrative functions, understood as a mixture of anticipating, organizing, coordinating and controlling, all in the hands of administrators.

The founder of this school was the Frenchman Henry Fayol (1841-1925), which is why it is often referred to as Fayolism. In its Industrial and general administration In 1916, Fayol explains that administration is as old as humanity itself, but that modern developments force us to think about it from a more technical and specialized point of view.

Thus, Fayol created the first administrative process model, which served as the basis for many others born later, in which the number of functions contemplated varied and changed their names, but always agreeing that the ultimate administrative function is that of control.

The human-relationalist school

The human-relationship school breaks with the views so far, since it focuses on the human element of administrative processes, emphasizing that dealing with people is not the same as dealing with automatic processes.

This school was born from the studies of the Australian psychologist Elton Mayo (1880-1949) in the United States, who sought to understand absenteeism, desertion and low productivity of many Business. Thus, he demonstrated that it is impossible to expect commitment and collaboration from the workers if they are alienated from the production process itself, especially if they are not heard or taken into account.

Mayo conducted four different studies:

  • The first was between 1923 and 1924 in a textile factory in Philadelphia, where the monotonous and exhausting work caused continuous desertions among the workers. Mayo proposed increasing rest periods, and convinced management to allow workers to arrange their rest periods themselves. Although they reluctantly agreed, the surprise was the rapid drop in attrition and the immediate increase in productivity.
  • The second was in 1927 at the Western Electric Company in Chicago, a company that needed to increase the productivity of its tremendously unmotivated workers. The experiment, initially, consisted of modifying their physical working conditions, for which a control group and an experimental group were created: but although the second was much more successful than the first, the reasons ended up not depending on the physical change in the environment, but of the change in the treatment that the scientists of the study gave to the workers: by feeling useful and taken into account, the workers were much more motivated in the tests than in their regular jobs. This refuted the traditional view that the only thing that motivates the worker is the promise of money from the salary.
  • The third and fourth studies were carried out during World War II, and had to do with absenteeism in industrial companies. But they were much more easily resolved thanks to the two previous experiences that the Mayo team had had, thus verifying the effects of the previous conclusions in new work environments.

The structuralist school

Also known as the “social system school”, it proposes an approach sociological administration, heir in particular to the books of the German sociologist Max Weber.

The structuralist approach sees the administration as a dynamic integrated into the social system, that is, to all kinds of external organizations and social media from which it receives significant influence. Therefore, it is proposed in the first place to understand the historical evolution of the societies and its main types of organizations, to understand the impact that the arrival of the Industrial Revolution.

An impact that could be traced not only in productive organizations, but also in commercial, political, social, educational, etc., and that leads to the identification of certain “structures” in all forms of human organization, such as:

  • Functional structure, which refers to the division of labor into positions and specific delimitations, that is, each position or rung of the structure corresponds to a behaviour expected.
  • Structure of authority, which refers to the chain of command, that is, the division between those who command and those who obey, or those who supervise and those who act. This authority can be given by custom, by charisma, by honorary distinction, etc.
  • Structure of the communications, which refers to information control instances, which can flow horizontally (between peers) or vertically (according to the authority structure). In addition, communication can be in written, oral or graphic form.

The study of these and other structures allows the formalization or bureaucratization of the administrative organization, that is, the application of rules and measures of control that allow the repetition of determined processes in more or less identical terms.

Therefore, the role of management lies in understanding these structures and managing the bureaucracy to allow the feedback in the production process.

The human-behavioral school

Also called "school of human behavior" or "neo-human-relationalist", it brought with it a new approach to the study of administration from a human perspective, although approaching it from a broader perspective than previous schools.

In fact, this school claims the experiences of Elton Mayo, although in reality its main exponents were the German Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) and the American Douglas McGregor (1906-1964).

Lewin was one of the pioneers of experimental social psychology, organizational psychology and applied psychology, considered one of the "Big Four" of German Gestalt psychology.His contribution to the school was foundational, through the dynamic study of small groups, in which he highlighted the virtues of integration and participation of workers in the production process.

For his part, McGregor published in 1960 his book The human aspect of companies, in which he proposed two different approaches to managing personnel for productive purposes:

  • "Theory X", the most traditional and least effective approach, which understands the employee as an individual denied work whose only work motivation is to receive salary money.
  • "Theory Y," the approach that took into account the findings of the psychology modern compared to motivation and therefore proposes a change in the way administrators act.

This change has to do with authority: McGregor proposes that this is just one of the forms of influence between the manager and the employee, the most coercive and the one that encounters the most resistance, and therefore it should be used only when confrontation is inevitable. or when you are willing to dismiss the employee.

Instead, McGregor proposes that managers should seek to motivate their employees, taking into account the different levels of satisfaction of the famous Pyramid of Abraham Maslow.

Thus, the mere satisfaction of the basic rungs of the pyramid will imply an equally basic commitment on the part of the employee, while higher rates of personal satisfaction and self-realization will bring about a significantly greater motivation on the part of the worker. To do this, McGregor proposes:

  • The integration of the company's objectives and the individual needs and aspirations of the workers;
  • The increased participation of workers in the decision making and goal setting;
  • The development of self-control and self-management of employees in meeting their goals;
  • Promote camaraderie and sensitivity among the group of workers.

the math school

Also called "quantum school" or "decisional theory", this current focuses its interest on the study of decision-making within a social organization, paying less attention to the rest of the aspects.

This school was proposed by specialists from the mathematics and the economy like the American economist and political scientist Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001) or his compatriot James Gary March (1928-2018), an expert in organization theories.

According to this school, the important thing about management is its full understanding of the decision-making dynamics, which essentially involves three points:

  • The definition of the problem, which consists of identifying the inconveniences to be solved and the existing needs, as well as their respective constituent elements.
  • The analysis of alternatives, which consists of the search for paths of action to solve the problem, trying to anticipate the possible drawbacks of each one.
  • The choice of the best solution, which consists of operations research, that is, the implementation of a method to choose through the scientific method the best alternative. The latter is precisely what these authors call “management science”.

The study of decision making and decision problems gave rise to a theory (Decisional Theory) that is not only applied to the field of administration, but to many other areas of human endeavor.

systems theory

Perhaps the most contemporary of the administrative schools is the one that proposes to understand the administrative fact as a system, that is to say, a region of the universe that can be isolated and studied in its elements and internal functioning, abstracting from the rest.

Although this theory came from biology, is not only applied to this field of knowledge, but to practically any other: from the human body to the thermodynamic systems of the physical and even cultural study.

When we think of systems, we are starting from four fundamental principles:

  • Every system contains elements (subsystems) that operate in an interrelated manner and that in turn can be understood as systems in themselves. Therefore, the initial system is in turn a subsystem of a larger and broader one. To study a system, then, we must choose its hierarchical limits.
  • Every system advances towards a specific goal, to which its respective parts contribute. Without such a goal, the system would lose meaning and therefore also its respective parts. And in the event that any of them did not fulfill any function in this sense, it could be perfectly dispensed with without affecting the others.
  • Every system is complex, in the sense that introducing a change in just one of its components will bring about a larger change in the total system and in the other elements that accompany it as well.
  • The behavior of any system depends on the respective behavior of each of its parts, but also on the correct interrelation between them.

The impact of this theory in the administrative world was immense, and resulted in the formulation of new mathematical models of management and new data management models, which not only took advantage of the computers modern, but they allow to build an administrative perspective that adjusts to each case in question.

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