People Management and the Rise of the Professional Manager

Based on Human Resource Management, 4th edition, by Alan Price

Professional managers

(...) By 1900 the USA had undergone several decades of rapid, large-scale industrialization. Large American companies such as Heinz and Singer Sewing Machines had the characteristics of modern, highly structured organizations. They produced standardized consumer durables for the mass market. These organizations required a supply of trained managers. Notionally selected on the basis of ability and expertise - rather than family connections - they needed to know how to organize, reward and motivate their staff. In the USA, state and private universities were opened to cater for this new professional need.

The first companies of equivalent size and organization did not arise in Britain and the Commonwealth until the 1920s and management education was similarly late in developing. Like most European or Asian companies they still tended to employ relatives or to promote long-standing workers to management roles. (...)

Human Resource Management, 4th edition discusses the continued influence of F.W. Taylor ('Scientific' Management). the Gilbreths, and Henry Ford and the doctrine of 'Fordism'.

Point to consider

* You could compare the three on dimensions such as 'hard-soft', 'authoritarian-liberal', 'subjective-objective', etc.

More in this section

• Introduction to HRM
• Managing People
• People management
• Professional managers
• The human factor
• Human Relations
• Management theory
• Development of the personnel specialism
• Management thinking
• From personnel to human resource management
• The new managerialism
• Defining human resource management
• Maps and models of HRM
• The Harvard map of human resource management
• Hard HRM
• Guest's Model of HRM
• Alternative HRM Models
• The Discourse of HRM