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  • Essay / Management Research

    In 1973, Henry Mintzberg published his influential work on management, following detailed observations of what managers did at work (Brooks, I. 2009. Pg161). Based on an observational study of five executives, Mintzberg identified ten managers of activities carried out within the scope of their work (Brooks, I. 2009. Pg161). These ten activities have been classified into three sets of roles, namely: interpersonal roles, informational roles and decision-making roles (Reference for Business. n, d). Mintzberg approached his management research with the idea that management corresponds to the actual activities that managers perform as part of their jobs. We can therefore say that Mintzberg defined the management roles based on what he had observed with the selected managers. Kotter (1982), largely supporting Mintzberg's findings, found that managers do not spend their time alone performing isolated tasks (Brooks, I. 2009. Pg161). Contrary to what was previously understood, managers did not spend most of their time planning, organizing, coordinating, commanding and controlling (Brooks, I. 2009. Pg161). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Mintzberg dismissed Fayol's theory of management and called it folklore. Mintzberg called Fayol's concept folklore because Fayol did not conduct empirical research but rather formed his theory based on his own experience (Mintzberg, H. 1990). However, Mintzberg's empirical study is based on five organizations in action. This sample size is too small to define what management is because there are many different types of managers in different industries. Mintzberg's theory is therefore inapplicable to all types of industries. On the other hand, there are similarities between the two conceptions of management. For example, according to Mintzberg, managers took control by assuming the role of disruption managers when they responded to pressures and crises when the organization faced unexpected disruptions (Brooks, I. 2009. Pg161). According to Fayol, controlling means checking if everything is working as expected. Lamond, on the other hand, believed that Mintzberg's roles only expanded Fayol's five functions (Lamond, 2003). In 1909, Taylor published "The Principles of Scientific Management." In this, he proposed that by optimizing and simplifying tasks, productivity would increase (MindTools. n, d). He started the scientific management movement and he and his associates were the first to study the work process scientifically (MindTools. n, d). His emphasis on rationality led to the application of scientific principles to work management in order to establish the most efficient way of working (Brooks, I. 2009). He suggested that: a clear distinction should be made between planning a job and the roles of different workers; a scientific selection process should identify the right person to carry out the task; jobs must be standardized and simplified; tasks must be broken down into a single set of actions; there was “a best way” to organize any set of tasks to be performed and it was up to management to take comprehensive action to achieve that desired state (Brooks, I. 2009). Taylor argued that efficiency, standardization and discipline would result from these scientific management processes (Brooks, I. 2009). Henri Fayol focused primarily on the administrative parts of management, while Taylor focused on the production side of management. Taylor's theory leads to a.