1.1.1 Early proponents of the role approach
The Role Approach to specifying what constitutes effective management derives data from the various roles that managers assume when managing. Essentially, the Role Approach examines what the functions of management are. The Role Approach gained momentum in the early part of the 20th century when the French industrialist, Henri Fayol, theorised that managers perform five basic functions:
- Planning
- Organising
- Commanding
- Coordinating
- Controlling (Fayol, 1949:3)
Fayol's theory was based on his experiences in French industry, rather than on objective analysis. This subjective analysis was common among early theorists. In an analysis of bureaucracy, Max Weber argued that management therein involved the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge:
Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge. This is the feature of it which makes it specifically rational. (Weber, 1947:340)
While many have taken issue with Weber about how rational the management of bureaucracy sometimes is, Weber's theory was derived at a time when a rational approach to management was emerging. It reached its pinnacle and is exemplified in the work of Frederick Taylor. Taylor referred to his theory as "Principles of Scientific Management". It involved scientific observation to replace what he perceived as a rule-of-thumb approach to the organisation of work. Under scientific management, Taylor argued that the role of the manager:
...is the scientific selection and then the progressive development of the workmen. It becomes the duty of those on the management side to deliberately study the character, the nature and the performance of each workman with a view to finding out the limitations on the one hand, but even more important, his possibilities for development on the other hand; and then, as deliberately and as systematically to train and help and teach this workman, giving him, wherever it is possible, those opportunities for advancement which will finally enable him to do the highest and most interesting and most profitable class of work for which his natural abilities fit him, and which are open o him in the particular company in which he is employed. [sic] The scientific selection of the workman and his development is not a single act; it goes on from year to year and is the subject of continual study on the part of management . (Taylor, 1947:41)
Although Taylor 's theory applied to a relatively stable production environment, there is merit in his human relations training and development approach which still applies in today's work environment of fast and continuous change. Mary Follett (Parker, 1984) extolled scientific management because it was based on rational inquiry. In a 1925 paper titled "The Giving of Orders" (perhaps the title is an indication of the period in which it was written) Follett shifted the role of management from simply giving orders to finding the reason for an order to be given:
We have here, I think, one of the largest contributions of scientific management: it tends to depersonalise orders. ...one might call the essence of scientific management the attempt to find the law of the situation... Our [the manager's] job is not how to get people to obey orders, but how to devise methods by which we can best discover the order integral to a particular situation . (Follett, 1941:59)
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