Management Research Essay ⋆ Business Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Management research reflects the broad, eclectic, interdisciplinary character of both the academic field of management and management practice. Research within management can range widely from highly quantitative, positivist, and functionalist studies to qualitative, postmodernist, and critical approaches, and to trans disciplinary work that transcends traditional boundaries between different philosophies and methodologies.

Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915) is generally seen as the founding father of the “scientific” strand of management research, epitomizing the classical, functionalist (i.e., where the aim is to improve the effectiveness of the functions of management) approach. Taylor used detailed time studies (in which he would break a particular job into individual components and measure each to the hundredth of a minute) in a bid to optimize shop floor work and improve efficiency and worker productivity at his employer Bethlehem Steel. His “scientific management” became highly popular in the first two decades of the 20th century, spearheading the efficiency movement in America.

The Taylorist belief that all people are primarily rational economic agents and that quantitative scientific methods offer the best way to address management problems continued to underpin the subsequently developed quantitative or “rational” management research philosophies and methodologies. For example, statistical methods of analysis, network analysis, simulation techniques, and theories of linear and dynamic programming associated in particular with operations research, management science, accounting, and finance began to gain prominence in the 1960s as part of the rise of Systems Rationalism, which drew heavily on Taylorist principles. Like Taylorites, systems rationalists relied on science in search for universal tenets that managers could use to plan, forecast, and boost effectiveness in their work. Quantitative management research methods (including those left behind by Systems Rationalism) are still informed by similar goals.

In contrast to scientific management and Systems Rationalism, the Human Relations movement (1925– 55) gave rise to the management research focus on social or “normative” issues in employee behavior and management. Elton Mayo (1880–1949) is normally heralded as the founder of the Human Relations approach. Mayo was involved in the observational and experimental studies of worker productivity at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant and drew on clinical psychology, sociology, and anthropology to make sense of the shop floor dynamics. He emphasize the need to research employees’ needs for social belonging (which he saw as more important than monetary incentives or physical working conditions), so that managers could provide appropriate leadership and generate commitment as a means of improving productivity.

Similarly to the principles of Taylorism in relation to the subsequent “scientific”’ approaches to management, these research goals of the Human Relations school continued to inform many of the later qualitative, social sciences–oriented research philosophies and methodologies. For instance, the growing concern in practitioner and consultant literature with organizational culture and quality (from 1980s onward) has drawn inspiration from Japanese corporations, the specific “culture” of which became seen as the key to instilling employee commitment and loyalty and thus improving business performance and quality.

This concern became translated into attempts to analyze corporate cultures in order to enable managers to shape them by creating and instilling particular value systems in their organizations. This research agenda has produced and still underpins today a diverse range of organizational culture-related research objects and management tools—from teamwork, Total Quality Management, empowerment, and self-actualization to emotional intelligence, organizational storytelling, and organizational spirituality. It typically relies on qualitative or mixed methods of analysis.

One approach to management research voguish particularly in Europe is that called Critical Management Studies. This Marxist-inspired perspective views management suspiciously as devising dehumanizing methods for controlling workers. Another recent development in management research is the growing interest in trans disciplinary work, whereby ideas and methods traditionally associated with one research area are adopted by researchers in other areas. As a result, management research can now transcend the boundaries between different philosophies, specialisms, and methodologies as well as be located within them.

Bibliography:

Mark Easterby-Smith, Richard Thorpe, and Paul Jackson, Management Research (Sage, 2008);
Michael M. Harris, Handbook of Research in International Human Resource Management (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008);
Peter Bevington Smith, Mark F. Peterson, and David C. Thomas, The Handbook of Cross-Cultural Management Research (Sage, 2008);
Milé Terziovski, Energizing Management Through Innovation and Entrepreneurship: European Research and Practice (Routledge, 2009).

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