In this modern area of management, we know more about management than ever before. For some reason however, we are no better at it. We still have many of the same management problems we had 30, 40 and even 50 years ago.
There is a long list of those who dare challenge the status quo with the introduction of new management thought. Like an army of modern day Don Quixote the names of W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran and Philip Crosby immediately come to mind with their work on quality and management.
With his introduction of far fetched concepts like the existence of the Knowledge Worker in 1954, Peter Drucker is perhaps the most famous management outlaw of his time. He wisdom has for ever changed management as a science for those professionals who practice it as a science. Joining Peter on the leading edge of modern management concepts is John Case and his concepts of Open Book Management as well as those of Peter Senge and his thoughts about big picture management of systems.
There are also those who have added to this movement without the virtue of the lime light. Among those is Daniel A. Wren, Professor of Management at the University of Illinois. Dr. Wren text, The Evolution of Management Thought, brings together various thoughts and perspectives on the history of management into a single package. It is by virtue of this effort that ideas of others can be put into perspective. From the preface of his fourth edition he offers this jewel of insight:
Our knowledge about the development of management thought is constantly growing, although knowledge of the more distant past grows more slowly. Some of our knowledge has not changed, some has been refined and extended, and recent developments have rarely, if ever, been cast into a historical perspective.
By this, I must agree. Framing our recent discoveries of management with historical perspective can help us understand what has gone well and what has gone wrong with this great experiment we call management.
When I started first started college, we talked about what managers do. When young enterprising students like myself asked why do we have managers? Where did they come from? The answers were varied and amazingly inaccurate.
The word Manage is derived from the Latin word Manus meaning hand. Common words include Manual (work done by hand), Manuscript (writing done by hand), and Manufacture (assembly done by hand - 1567). Not so common words include Manufactory (a place to assemble by hand - 1582). The word Manage, means to train by handling (1587) and the word Train comes from the Latin word Trahere meaning to drag or drawn to a new place (14 century).
While the word Manage is still used in European countries like France and Italy, the use is not the same as English speaking countries. In French Manege means horse riding school. In Italian, the word Maneggiare means to handle or train a horse and the word Maneggio means horse-riding school. Even in Spanish, the word Manejo means handling and Manejar means handle. The European equal to the US Manager is the French Gerant or agent (1576); and the Italian or Spanish Gerente; all coming from the Latin Gerere meaning to bear or carry on.
Perhaps the biggest distinction is the historical use of both Gerente and Maneggiare. Gerente is most often associated with “handling” the process and not an individual. Maneggiare is most often associated with one-on-one relationships and “handling” an animal.
Based on this information we know that in English speaking countries, prior to the industrial revolution the word Manage was associated with training horses and after the industrial revolution the word was associated with controlling people. We know that factories did not exist before the industrial revolution and we know they did exist after. Could there be a connection between manager and factory?
We also know that prior to the industrial revolution the majority of the population worked on farms and that goods were crafted in guilds, before they were manufactured in factories. After the industrial revolution, the majority of the population worked in factories and manufactured goods.
It is common knowledge that the industrial revolution influenced the nature of human economic activity. Steam powered implements replaced thousands of farm hands as modernization in agriculture reduced the demand for manual labor. It also gave rise to modern factories, which created jobs that paid more than farm work paid. The result was a shift of workers from farms to factories.
Originally comes from the word manufactory. It is a combination of the word manual, which means by hand; and factor, which means something that contributes to a function or an outcome such as an independent variable having a causal impact on a dependent variable. The word factor comes from the Latin facere, which means doer. To factorize or factorise means to reduce to individual factors. In the late 1500 and early 1600’s entrepreneur's in England used a concept similar to reverse engineering to take complex processes that were owned and protected by powerful guilds and reduce them to smaller activities and tasks. Thus, the factory is invented.
During this same time, the manager in the form of the animal controller was highly respected. He was considered a person with a unique insight and special transformational skills. Is it safe to conclude that since the Manager worked with animals, there is a good probability they also worked on farms? Is it also safe to assume that farmhands moving to factories needed to be trained? Is it safe to hypothesize that the concept of the training “function” of manager moved from farms to factories with the farm hands?
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