Management

Modern Enterprises Need Managers

The rise of management as an organizational discipline arguably is the most important business development of the 20th century. Management practices came into demand when labor transitioned from manual work to “knowledge work.” In the early 1900s, 90% of those employed anywhere in the world had blue-collar or domestic service jobs. As economies and businesses grew, the need for skilled professionals grew as well. “Knowledge workers” carry their skills with them; they “own their means of production.” And as companies sought to compete on a basis other than cost, the quality and efficiency of their managers became the “competitive advantage” that could set one firm apart from the others.

One telling case history illustrates the critical role that managers play in a big organization. Henry Ford started the Ford Motor Company in 1905. Fifteen years later, Ford was the pre-eminent US automobile manufacturer. Yet by 1927, it had fallen to a distant third in US car manufacturing, a position it clung to for the next two decades. Why did it plunge so far so fast? Henry Ford did not believe in management; his corporate concept posited an all...