Should managers and management students study the history of management from a critical perspective - Essay Example

The study of the history of management is the basis upon which the entire profession set, and to deny students the opportunity to study it would also mean that the erosion of the profession has begun. Therefore, students and future managers have to study the history of management from a critical perspective because this is the only way that they can learn how to do better in their jobs. Furthermore, it is also important for a critical study of the history of the profession so that those who study it can not only be able to learn how the different theories of management evolved, but also be able to come up with better theories, which might help future managers.

The study of management history from a critical perspective is immensely important for the continued development of the profession. The critical study of management history is extremely important for managers of organizations because of the fact that they get to learn how to better manage the changes that are affecting their organizations. It is a well known fact that in most organizations, very few changes are effectively implemented by the managers who attempt to does so, with the success rate being so low that one would say that they are negligible.

The reason for these low rates of success is that there is often resistance from the employees because of the fact that the managers do not know how to address these changes before attempting to implement them. The managers of many organizations often ignore the feelings of their employees when implementing changes and when they meet resistance, they often take an antagonistic stance towards it. This is because many managers in the current generation have not had an opportunity to make a critical study of management history and attempted to learn from past management practices how to manage their employees.

Many managers view resistance to change from their employees as being a way to sabotage the activities of the organization, and often take an adversarial approach towards it. These managers are often ignorant of the history of management, because of they had been aware of it, then they would have realized from the mistakes of their predecessors that an adversarial stance against employees does not work. Therefore, it is very important for managers to critically study management history in order to be able to better manage changes within their organizations (Bedeian 2004, p.93). The era of globalization has come about so fast that many companies have come to have a hard time in keeping pace with the sudden expansion of their markets.

A large number of companies have expanded worldwide, and with this expansion has come the need for them to adapt to the different cultures that they encounter. Therefore, it is important for managers to get to learn about the history of management from a critical perspective in order to be able to know how to function in different environments. The history of management from diverse sources all over the world, when studied critically, can be most enlightening for managers as well as students of management (Smith 2007, p.523). This is because of the fact that, even in management, there is the need for cultural relativism, especially now when many organizations are operating on a global scale and interacting with diverse cultures.

Cultural relativism