Daniel A. Wren Quotes (1932-)

“George R. Terry (1909–1979) was the first to call his book Principles of Management... Terry’s elements included planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, controlling, and leading human efforts. Later, Terry combined the functions of directing and leading human efforts into an ‘‘actuating’’ function and stopped treating coordinating as a separate function. Terry defined a principle as ‘‘a fundamental statement providing a guide to action,’’ and his principles, like Fayol’s, were lighthouses to knowledge and not laws in a scientific sense.”

“BEHAVIORAL THEORIES OF THE FIRM: A turn from structure to internal processes was the theme of authors such as Richard Cyert and James March, Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn, and Karl Weick. Cyert, an economist, and March, a psychologist, emphasized internal competition for scarce resources, interest groups forming coalitions, conflict resolution, organizational learning, and among other concepts, the adaptive processes of decision making and performance feedback. Psychologists Katz and Kahn emphasized organizational roles, role conflict and ambiguity, the organization as an open input-output system, and circumstances when the hierarchy was preferable to participative styles. Weick, another psychologist, emphasized the organizing process rather than the organizational product and suggested that actions precede goals (goals are retrospective), that individual behaviors are interlocking, and so on.”

“Although the Gordon and Howell report noted the diversity of approaches to the study of management, it was Harold Koontz who delineated the differences and applied the catchy label ‘‘management theory jungle.’’”

“Management as an activity has always existed to make people’s desires through organized effort. Management facilitates the efforts of people in organized groups and arises when people seek to cooperate to achieve goals.”

“Harold D. Koontz (1908–1984) and Cyril O’Donnell (1900–1976) of the University of California at Los Angeles defined management as "the function of getting things done through others." They furthered Fayol’s ideas and sought to provide a conceptual framework for the orderly presentation of the principles of management. According to Koontz and O’Donnell, managers were known by the work they performed, which was planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. These authors pointed out that, although some authorities maintained that these functions were exercised in the sequence given, in practice managers actually used all five simultaneously. They stressed that each of these functions contributed to organizational coordination. Coordination, however, was not a separate function itself but was the result of effective utilization of the five basic managerial functions. Koontz and O’Donnell offered a number of principles: in organizing, for example, "the principle of parity of authority and responsibility" and "the principle of unity of command"; in planning, "the principle of strategic factors"; and so on. The Koontz and O’Donnell text became an enduring, integral part of the search for a systematic body of management knowledge.”

“Of the early management pioneers, history has provided us with the best records for four men: Robert Owen, Charles Babbage, Andrew Ure, and Charles Dupin.”

“Although the Gordon and Howell report noted the diversity of approaches to the study of management, it was Harold Koontz who delineated the differences and applied the catchy label ‘‘management theory jungle.’’”

“Although the Gordon and Howell report noted the diversity of approaches to the study of management, it was Harold Koontz who delineated the differences and applied the catchy label ‘‘management theory jungle.’’”

“Management as an activity has always existed to make people’s desires through organized effort. Management facilitates the efforts of people in organized groups and arises when people seek to cooperate to achieve goals.”

“Of the early management pioneers, history has provided us with the best records for four men: Robert Owen, Charles Babbage, Andrew Ure, and Charles Dupin... Ure knew the French engineer and management writer Charles Dupin, and when Dupin visited Great Britain in 1816–1818, Ure escorted him around the Glasgow factories. Dupin commented that many of the managers of these factories were Ure’s own students.”

“Of the early management pioneers, history has provided us with the best records for four men: Robert Owen, Charles Babbage, Andrew Ure, and Charles Dupin... Ure knew the French engineer and management writer Charles Dupin, and when Dupin visited Great Britain in 1816–1818, Ure escorted him around the Glasgow factories. Dupin commented that many of the managers of these factories were Ure’s own students.”

“Mooney's unpublished paper “The Science of Industrial Organization” (1929) portrays GM's multidivisional organization's use of the line-staff concept in organizing overseas assembly plants. Here I compare General Motors with Ford Motor Company, which had first-mover advantages overseas, and examine how each company organized and managed their international operations. “Linking pins,” a social-science concept, illustrates how GM's organizational hierarchy achieved vertical coordination of effort.”

“Historian Daniel A. Wren says that operations research/ management science has "… roots in scientific management." Like Taylor and the Gilbreths, today's management scientists use research and analysis to find optimal solutions to management problems. Modern-day management scientists, of course, use much more sophisticated mathematical tools and computers. And management science's goal is not to try to find a “science of management” but “to use scientific analysis and tools to solve management problems.””

“Wren and Bedeian 2008 is the most important management history book, and it is the one most widely used as a primary source in courses on management history.”