Abstract
Management as a separate discipline of study emerged oil the horizon of knowledge at the beginning of twentieth century, Today when we study 100 years history of evolution of management thought, we come across a variety of management thoughts with quite different focal points and explanations of management. Some authors call the same set of thoughts as "theories of management"; some other label them "management schools of thought", some authors give them the title as "approaches to management" and there are still others who call them a5 "approaches to management illeory". The reader finds himself in a bewildering state of mind. The confusion is created on two accounts. Firstly, the reader starts thinking that the terms theory, school of thought, approach, and approach to the theory of a subject as synonymous. The general vocabulary does not support this assumption. Theory means a set of generalizations to explain andlor predict a phenomenon in a field of inquiry e.g. hierarchy of need theory, theory of multiplier, theory of planetary motion etc. School of thought means a group of scholars sharing the same view e.g. Catholic or Protestant schools. Approach means the way or the method adopted to solve a particuln problem e.g. the communist or capitalist approach to economr. Finally approach to the theory of a subject means the way, the order or the method to organize the literature of the subject. It is for this inexactness of these terms to describe the set of thought constituting evolution of management or for the tack of a better term that some authors have called these thoughts as "perspectives" or "viewpoints".
Prof. Muhammad Azhar ikram Ahmad. (2000) "The Management Theory Jungle"— Resolved , Journal of Research ( Humanities), Vol XXXIV, Issue 1 .
-
Views
2085 -
Downloads
246
