Courtesy : Diploma in business administration
Evidence-based management
Evidence-based management
Evidence-based management is an emerging movement to use the current, best evidence in management and decision-making. It is part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices. Evidence-based management entails managerial decisions and organizational practices informed by the best available evidence.As with other evidence-based practice, this is based on the three principles of: 1) published peer-reviewed (often in management or social science journals) research evidence that bears on whether and why a particular management practice works; 2) judgement and experience from contextual management practice, to understand the organization and interpersonal dynamics in a situation and determine the risks and benefits of available actions; and 3) the preferences and values of those affected. # ISO certification in India
History
Some see management as a late-modern (in the sense of late modernity) conceptualization.On those terms it cannot have a pre-modern history – only harbingers (such as stewards). Others, however, detect management-like thought among ancient Sumerian traders and the builders of the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Slave-owners through the centuries faced the problems of exploiting/motivating a dependent but sometimes unenthusiastic or recalcitrant workforce, but many pre-industrial enterprises, given their small scale, did not feel compelled to face the issues of management systematically. However, innovations such as the spread of Arabic numerals (5th to 15th centuries) and the codification of double-entry book-keeping (1494) provided tools for management assessment, planning and control.# ISO certification in India
- An organisation is more stable if members have the right to express their differences and solve their conflicts within it.
- While one person can begin an organisation, “it is lasting when it is left in the care of many and when many desire to maintain it”.
- A weak manager can follow a strong one, but not another weak one, and maintain authority.
- A manager seeking to change an established organization “should retain at least a shadow of the ancient customs”.
With the changing workplaces of industrial revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries, military theory and practice contributed approaches to managing the newly popular factories.
Given the scale of most commercial operations and the lack of mechanized record-keeping and recording before the industrial revolution, it made sense for most owners of enterprises in those times to carry out management functions by and for themselves. But with growing size and complexity of organizations, a distinction between owners (individuals, industrial dynasties or groups of shareholders) and day-to-day managers (independent specialists in planning and control) gradually became more common.# ISO certification in India
Early writing
The field of management originated in ancient China, including possibly the first highly centralized bureaucratic state, and the earliest (by the second century BC) example of an administration based on merit through testing. Some theorists have cited ancient military texts as providing lessons for civilian managers. For example, Chinese general Sun Tzu in his 6th-century BC work The Art of War recommends[citation needed] (when re-phrased in modern terminology) being aware of and acting on strengths and weaknesses of both a manager’s organization and a foe’s.[need quotation to verify] The writings of influential Chinese Legalist philosopher Shen Buhai may be considered[by whom?] to embody a rare premodern example of abstract theory of administration.American philosopher Herrlee G. Creel and other scholars find the influence of Chinese administration in Europe by the 12th century. Thomas Taylor Meadows, Britain’s consul in Guangzhou, argued in his Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China (1847) that “the long duration of the Chinese empire is solely and altogether owing to the good government which consists in the advancement of men of talent and merit only,” and that the British must reform their civil service by making the institution meritocratic. Influenced by the ancient Chinese imperial examination, the Northcote–Trevelyan Report of 1854 recommended that recruitment should be on the basis of merit determined through competitive examination, candidates should have a solid general education to enable inter-departmental transfers, and promotion should be through achievement rather than “preferment, patronage, or purchase”. This led to implementation of Her Majesty’s Civil Service as a systematic, meritocratic civil service bureaucracy. Like the British, the development of French bureaucracy was influenced by the Chinese system. Voltaire claimed that the Chinese had “perfected moral science” and François Quesnay advocated an economic and political system modeled after that of the Chinese.French civil service examinations adopted in the late 19th century were also heavily based on general cultural studies. These features have been likened to the earlier Chinese model.# ISO certification in India
Various ancient and medieval civilizations produced “mirrors for princes” books, which aimed to advise new monarchs on how to govern. Plato described job specialization in 350 BC, and Alfarabi listed several leadership traits in AD 900. Other examples include the Indian Arthashastra by Chanakya (written around 300 BC), and The Prince by Italian author Niccolò Machiavelli (c. 1515)
Mirrors for princes
Written in 1776 by Adam Smith, a Scottish moral philosopher, The Wealth of Nations discussed efficient organization of work through division of labour. Smith described how changes in processes could boost productivity in the manufacture of pins. While individuals could produce 200 pins per day, Smith analyzed the steps involved in manufacture and, with 10 specialists, enabled production of 48,000 pins per day.[need quotation to verify]
