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Phase One: Early 20th Century
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Mass production and large monopolies emerged in this period, which is thought of in terms of some of the giants of the time including Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller. Leaders such as these men and innovators such as Thomas Edison were considered to be born and not made. Therefore, the Great Man theory of leadership was generally accepted.
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Max Weber (1864–1920) led the thinking about organizations with a rational and mechanical approach that emphasized strict rules to control workers to maximize efficiency. Units of workers needed to mesh and run like the cogs in the machines of large factories and mills. Henry Fayol was a pioneer in framing the concept of management in these organizations. He defined the roles of managers as organizing, leading, planning, controlling, and coordinating. Frederick Taylor's ideas led to the need for experts to determine the one best way to achieve a task. Work became standardized and people received training to perform those tasks.
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Mary Parker Follett was a social worker who rejected many of these ideas. She is credited with laying the foundation of the human relations movement of management based on the reciprocal relationships of workers and their supervisors. She believed managers should have power with workers rather than power over workers, and that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. She is known for her work on negotiation, dispute resolution, and win-win interactions. Following Follett's lead, Elton Mayo also focused on the importance of personal interactions and relationships in work as the Hawthorne Studies (in which work environment factors were manipulated to determine physical and social changes in workers) became the model for the study of work.
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Phase Two: Mid-20th Century
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Abraham Maslow's psychological theory of the hierarchy of human needs (from basic physiological needs to self-actualization) began to drive organizations to consider factors other than monetary rewards in their management of workers. Douglas McGregor was another psychologist whose ideas were consistent with Maslow's model. He identified Theory X as a management model in which employees are viewed as lazy with a dislike for work; therefore, tight controls, coercion, blame, and incentives are needed for work to get done. He balanced that view of people with Theory Y in which managers assume people are ambitious, are self-motivated, and want to do well at their work—which is a strong motivation in itself. By engaging workers in decisions about their work, they can use all of their talents to control and direct their own work.
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Between World War I and World War II, health-care organizations were primarily small, religious-affiliated hospitals that physicians and nurses managed while delivering care. Some large public hospitals, such as insane asylums and tuberculosis sanitoria, were established to care for particular patients. Typically, the management models of Mary Parker Follett were utilized by ...