Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A. To trace the significant periods in the evolution of management thought from its earliest days to the
present. It will help us to :
1. integrate our knowledge of leadership
2. Provide a perspective on the past to apply to the present.
3. Develop alternatives because our knowledge has been broadened and deepened by an
understanding of the past.
B. A Cultural Framework
The culture is our total community heritage of non-biological, humanly transmitted traits and include
economic, social and political form of behavior associated with human race.
1. The economic facet – relationship of people to resources
2. The social facet – relationship of people to other people
3. The political facet – relation of the individual to the state
4. The technological facet – related to the art and applied science of making tools and equipment
5. Those elements are closely interrelated and interact to form the total culture.
3. Egypt
3.1 Joseph – best known vizier - from which the word supervisor is derived. In his era, the
awareness of limit to the number of people one management could supervise, which
known as the rules of ten
4. The Hebrew
Moses: he was able to employ an exception principle in managing, more orderly management
structure like span of control and delegation
5. The Greece
5.1 Socrates : He thought the transferability of managerial skills
5.2 Plato : remarked on human diversify and how this led to the division of labor
5.3 Aristotle: He worked on specialization of labor, departmentation, delegation, synergy,
leadership and scientific method
5.4 Xenophon: described the advantages of specializing labor
6. Rome
6.1 Developed a quasi-factory system to manufacture
6.2 Road system to speed distribution of goods
6.3 Resembled the corporate organization in form of joint stock companies, which sold stock
to public
6.4 There was highly specialized labor
6.5 The states regulated all aspect of people economic life such as tariff of trade, fines for
monopolists, used revenues to finance wars
C. Summary
1. Early management thought was dominated by cultural values that were antibusiness, anti-
achievement, and largely antihuman. Industrialization emerged when people were urged to take
thought of individual fulfillment in this world but to wait for a better one.
2. This cultural rebirth would establish the preconditions for industrialization and subsequently the
need for a rational, formalized, systematic body of knowledge about how to manage.
Competitive, changing environment, the manager had to develop a body of knowledge about
how best to utilize resources.