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Classical Management Versus Human Relations Essay

Decent Essays

In the early 1900’s, some of the first ideas were thrown together to allow an organization to flourish in the upcoming modern era. The first theories were known as scientific and classical management, which focused on three separate theories from Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and Max Weber. The three theories have similar ideology in the fact that organization is driven by management authority, employees only source of motivation is money, and organizations are machinelike with employees making up the parts of the machine (Papa, Daniels, & Spiker, 2008). In the Prophecy Fulfilled case study, Mary Ann (senior auditor) takes on a management role with subordinates similar to that of Weber’s Bureaucratic Theory (Daniels 1987, pp. 77-78). …show more content…

The three main assumptions of the human relations model state that: people want to feel useful and important, people desire to belong and to be recognized as individuals, and these needs are more important than money in motivating people to work (Papa et. al, 2008). Mary Ann ultimately did not recognize any of these assumptions when deciding her management technique. The first change Mary Ann would implement with a human relations management perspective is allowing her subordinates more opportunity for feedback. Mary gave black and white instructions for task delegations with her classical approach. By implementing a human relations perspective, she would have allowed for the subordinates to give input on how they could best contribute to the job. Instead of assigning tasks before feedback, Mary Ann would have been more open for suggestions in the roles that her subordinates played. Mike would have been able to explain why he was ineffective in his last job scenario and also given the opportunity to explain that he is ready to take on more responsibility.
Although Mary Ann did not want to waste time with this open communication process, she would have realized that Mike and Jeanine work better together when each subordinate individually feels useful and important. Mary Ann got the results out of Jeanine that she expected because she made her feel useful and important. If Mike was properly motivated and given

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