The Historical Approaches to Management This activity is important because management practices have developed from decades of management practice and theory. Each approach to management developed as the needs and issues confronting managers changed over time. Understanding the evolutionary process helps to clarify how managers operate in the current organizational environment. The historical perspective of management thought is divided into two major sections:
1. classical approaches
2. contemporary approaches.
Many of these approaches to managing people and organizations overlapped as they developed and had significant impact on one another. The goal of this activity is to sequence classical and contemporary management approaches appropriately. Hover over each item to read a hint. Then, drag the item to the corresponding management practice or theory.

The classical perspective of management, which emerged from the Industrial Revolution, focuses on improving the efficiency, productivity, and output of employees, as well as the business as a whole. However, it generally does not focus on human or behavioral attributes or variances among employees, such as how job satisfaction improves employee efficiency.

Contemporary management approaches:

Classical, Behavioral and scientific management approaches tend to focus more on the internal workings of organizations. The contributions of each school's of thought are still being applied today. However both researchers and practitioners are now giving more attention to interaction of the organizations with their external environment. The contemporary approaches to management include:

1. The Systems Theory

2. The Contingency Theory

a. Contingency theory of management