The role of management history in the management curriculum

Before the twentieth century, there are already abundant of examples of

historical management writings which have provided useful information for
teaching management, and this trend continue until today. The management
history importance has long been known and articles focused on topics such as
employee relations, productivity, wage plans and work methods has been wrote
by Alford (1922) in the early of 1920s for the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers.

The most significant work that analyses and discuss about management history
contribution from the era of scientific managers to post - WWII that has been
written is the “Twentieth Century Management Thought” (1959), a dissertation
by John Mee. His work served as the basis for his Ford Foundation talks at New
York University that resulted to the subsequence publication of Management
Thought in a Dynamic Economy (1963). The Evolution of Management Thought
(1972) by Daniel Wren had been the primary work in the field because it
provided important synthesis and direction for the field. This book has been
translated into Japanese and until now become a leading authoritative reference
source for management historians and teachers.

A lot of writers have attempted to approach management history by many ways

and one of the ways is by identifying a particular time period and discussing
management develops during the era. The second approach is the use of a
“schools” approach that was popularized by Koontz (1961). Next approach is the
use of an institutional approach. The historical focus of this way is on events in
an organization, business firm or industry. The fourth approach is the use of
biographies for providing insights into the lives and actions of famous people.
The last approach is the fifth way, the combining of ideas and concept with that
of biographies or examining them by themselves.

The research of management history is essential because it provides a basis for

knowing the current state of knowledge and also provides a framework for
obtaining and integrating new information. Other use of management history is
for developing the “right questions” to ask in research, teaching, and practice.
Next benefit of management history is it provides information for constructing an
integrated framework.
Two researches have been done and compared in 1989 and 1996 in order to
investigate the current status and future direction of management history
teaching in the management curriculum. In these researches, questionnaire was
mailed to members of the Management History Division. For the 1989 survey;
the random sample or Management History Division (MHD) members that
participate in the research is 200 while in 1996, 350 people have participated.
From 200 samples in the 1989 survey, 110 or 56% respond rate was received. Of
these, 74 indicated that they were teaching management and went on to answer
the rest of the questions. For 1996 survey, only 75 surveys or 21% were
completed. Of these, 56 indicated that they teach management courses. This
was the group that provided information on how management history is being
used in their courses.

The data from the last two researches were analysed and 8 overall conclusions
were drawn. The eight conclusions are; the membership in the Management
History Division (MHD) is not restricted or limited to AACSB school professors. In
the survey, 45% indicated that they taught at schools that were not AACSB
accredited, 3% did not give respond and the others work at schools that were
AACSB accredited. The second is Management History is not a popular course.
Next, individuals who have taught management history are more likely to be
professors with extensive teaching experience. The fourth conclusion is the
survey asked respondents to note the courses that they teach and the
percentage of time they spend teaching management history in each course.
The responds are:

% of respondents % of time spent for

Subject teaching the subject teaching the subject
1989 1996 1989 1996
Principles of 68% 50% 16% 13%
management
Business policy 52% 58% 10% 9%
Organization behaviour 44% 30% 10% 9%
Human management 0% 33% 0% 8%
Most professors use the text of management history itself for the primary source
and this is the fifth conclusion. Next, the question that asked respondents to
assess whether management history was given sufficient coverage at their
schools showed remarkable consistency between the two surveys. The seventh
conclusion is there are a variety of benefits associated with using the
management history information in business courses. The last is there were a
number of steps that were recommend in 1989 for the MHD to take in order to
promote the teaching of management history and similar recommendations were
also made in 1996 survey.

As the conclusion from this topic and the researches, we noticed that the survey
show that management history is not a highly popular course. The amount of
management history coverage in the curriculum maybe increasing while there is
no strong for making management history a required course. And lastly, there
was concern among the respondents that the Management History Division
(MHD) takes an active role in helping the lecturers that teach management
history.

Personal opinion

Management means creative problem solving. Management is accomplished

through 4 functions of managements that are planning, organizing, leading and
controlling. Definition of management is making a work done trough other. So,
management is a very important thing in our life. In order to learn management
and apply it, we need to know its history.

Curriculum is a total plan for learning or can also be defined as an educational

path, when discussing the technical education system. Management curriculum
is the total plan of learning management. In this management curriculum,
management history is an essential subject that must be added.

This is because management had started before the twentieth century and the
prove is there are already a lot of historical management writing from that time.
Management history is very important in management curriculum. There are a
lot of benefits that we can get from the management history. From this subject,
we can know all the history of management and these histories can be analysed.
Things that should or should not be done can be taken as advice and this will
lead us to a good and better future.
Reference

Agrawal, S. Sharma, P.B. and Kumar, M. (2008). Knowledge Management

Framework for Improving Curriculum Development Process in Technical
Education. Journal of Third International Conference on Convergent and
Hybrid Information Technology. p. 890

Sarkar, C. (2000). Knowledge Management: A Cautionary Tale. pp. 1-3