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Identify and Compare the Contributions of Taylor, Fayol and Mayo to Management Today.

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Identify and Compare the Contributions of Taylor, Fayol and Mayo to Management Today.
Identify and compare the contributions of Taylor, Fayol and Mayo to management today.

Introduction

This essay outlines the main contributions of Taylor, Fayol and Mayo to the study of management. It then evaluates the contribution of these writers to management as it is practiced today. It does this by discussing in turn their work, explicitly and implicitly drawing comparisons between them. It argues that the various contributions reflect the differing circumstances and needs of the theorists, and are complementary in their contributions to modern management.

Management is essential to organized human endeavor, and as such has been practiced for thousands of years (for example see Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulter, 2000, p. 41; Lock and Farrow, 1988, p.4). It is however, only since the early part of the twentieth century that management has been formally studied (Robbins et al., 2000, p. 41).

Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1917), Henri Fayol (1841-1925) and Elton Mayo (1880-1949) are recognized as important early management theorists, although each built to some extent on the work of earlier writers (for example, see Koontz and O'Donnell, 1972, p. 21; Robbins et al., 2000, pp. 51-54). They are recognized not only for their own contributions, but as founders of recognized schools of management thought, and as important influences on later theorists (Lock and Farrow, 1988, p. 4).

Taylor

Many writers see the publication of ‘Principles of Scientific Management' by Taylor in 1911 as the beginning of modern management theory (for example, Robbins et al., 2000, p. 43; Massie, 1979, p.13), and his book as "perhaps the publication that has influenced management more than any other" (Lock and Farrow, 1988, p. 4). He is recognized as the ‘father of scientific management" (Lock and Farrow, 1988, p. 5), and perhaps his main contribution was "his insistence upon the application of scientific method" (Koontz and O'Donnell, 1972, p. 22). It is said that he helped

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