Classical Theories of Organizations

This chapter contains a brief presentation of two of the major approaches that have dominated both the theory and the practice of organization in the twentieth century. The origin of the first one, Scientific Management, coincided with the birth of the modern theory of organizations. The second one, Human Resources, emerged in reaction to the failures of the first as a diagnosis of its defects and an attempt to elaborate alternatives that could avoid them. In their paradigmatic and idealized form, however, both approaches have been proven to be insufficient by themselves for the purpose of providing the theoretical and technical resources to understand the complexity of organizational phenomena and to operate with them.

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Notes

The detailed analysis of the operations required for the production of a pin in Smith’s example is substantially quoted from the entry “Épingle”, written by Alexandre Deleyre for the Encyclopédie, edited by Diderot and D’Alembert, and published from 1751 to 1772. In this sense, the Enlightenment had a decisive influence on the consolidation of the theoretical background for the development of the scientific management of labor. The celebration of the “machine” both as a symbol of the power of the technique and as a model for the understanding of reality paved the way, among other things, for the material analysis of cooperation. Long before the success of scientific management, such principles were applied to the training of European armies, with the purpose of identifying a set of efficient, simple operations that soldiers should learn and execute unconsciously, as gears in a mechanism.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy Giacomo Turbanti

1. Giacomo Turbanti