Harold Koontz - Management (1984)

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Every organization structure, even a poor one, can be charted, for a chart merely indicates how departments are tied together along the principal lines of authority. It is therefore somewhat surprising to find top managers occasionally taking pride in the fact that they do not have an organization chart or, if they do have one, feeling that the chart should be kept a secret.

Harold Koontz
The management theory jungle is still with us... Perhaps the most effective way [out of the jungle] would be for leading managers to take a more active role in narrowing the widening gap... between professional practice and our college and university business [schools].

Harold Koontz
Organization charts are subject to important limitations. A chart shows only formal authority relationships and omits the many significant informal and informational relationships.

Harold Koontz
This book undertakes the study of management by utilizing analysis of the basic managerial functions as a framework for organizing knowledge and techniques in the field. Managing is defined here as the creation and maintenance of an internal environment in an enterprise where individuals, working together in groups, can perform efficiently and effectively towards the attainment of group goals. Managing could, then, be called "performance environment design." Essentially, managing is the art of doing, and management is the body of organized knowledge which underlies the art.

Harold Koontz
The various schools of or approaches to management theory that I identified nearly two decades ago, and called "the management theory jungle," are reconsidered. What is found now are eleven distinct approaches, compared to the original six, implying that the "jungle" may be getting more dense and impenetrable. However, certain developments are occurring which indicate that we may be moving more than people think toward a unified and practical theory of management.

Harold Koontz
Although students of management would readily agree that there have been problems of management since the dawn of organized life, most would also agree that systematic examination of management, with few exceptions, is the product of the present century and more especially of the past two decades.

Harold Koontz
The Current Approaches to Management Theory and Science

Harold Koontz
The Human Behavior School: This approach to the analysis of management is based on the central thesis that, since managing involves getting things done with and through people, the study of management must be centered on interpersonal relations. Variously called the "human relations," "leadership," or "behavioral sciences" approach... This school concentrates on the "people" part of management and rests on the principle that, where people work together as groups in order to accomplish objectives, "people should understand people."

Harold Koontz
Empirical School ; A second approach to management I refer to as the "empirical" school. In this, I include those scholars who identify management as a study of experience, sometimes with intent to draw generalizations but usually merely as a means of teaching experience and transferring it to the practitioner or student. Typical of this school are those who see management or "policy" as the study and analysis of cases and those with such approaches as Ernest Dale's "comparative approach."

Harold Koontz
Management is defined here as the accomplishment of desired objectives by establishing an environment favorable to performance by people operating in organized groups. Each of the managerial functions (planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling) is analyzed and described in a systematic way. As this is done, both the distilled experience of practicing managers and the findings of scholars are presented. This is approached in such a way that the reader may grasp the relationships between each of the functions, obtain a clear view of the major principles underlying them.

Harold Koontz
[ Management can be defined as] the function of getting things done through others.

Harold Koontz