ABSTRACT
We spend our lives in many different sorts of organisations ranging from informal family groups, structured voluntary bodies and formal bureaucracies. The common process involved in making these work effectively is management. Management is the process that differentiates socially coordinated and motivated goal oriented activity from socially uncoordinated activity. Its objective is normally to create order out of chaos to ensure survival. As such it is one of the key characteristics of human social activity. Almost all the great management theorists have been concerned with how to plan, coordinate, control and direct organisations operating in relatively unchanging environments and to most effectively return enterprises from decline and crisis to prosperity and stability. It is important to recognise the contribution such theorists have made because their work has had a significant effect on practising managers’ views of the world. Many of the conventional wisdoms that managers live by derive from the nostrums of the early theorists. Two strands of early thinking became dominant and still have a widespread influence at least partly because they often appear to confirm the intuitive approaches many managers take. They give, however, quite different perspectives on how to cope with both stability and crisis.
