Classical Management Theories

The earliest formal theories of management, developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries around efficiency, formal structure and defined procedure, including scientific management's focus on measuring and optimizing individual tasks, administrative theory's general principles for organizing a whole enterprise, and bureaucratic theory's emphasis on hierarchy, rules and impersonal authority. Belongs here: any theory whose primary concern is designing an efficient formal structure, procedure or hierarchy for the organization as a system. Does not belong here: a theory whose primary concern is the psychological or social experience of workers, grouped under Behavioral, Human Relations and Contingency Theories.