1 Introduction

While you may think that management is a relatively new field, it actually has its roots in the ancient world. In fact, whenever and wherever there has been commerce, there has been management and those thinking about how to do it better. For example, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, including the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Great Pyramid, could only have been constructed through the work of a great many people. The size and complexity of these structures suggest that there must have been people (managers) who coordinated the labor and resources needed to execute the construction plans. Similarly, the Romans and the ancient Chinese could not have managed their vast empires without management, nor could the Phoenicians and the Greeks have dominated oceangoing trade without management.

Because management has been around for a while, it makes sense that the study of management is old. This idea is supported by the many managerial insights we can find in political, diplomatic, and military history and in philosophy, poetry, economics, and literature. Anyone familiar with Shakespeare’s King Lear would recognize the present-day management problem of succession planning! Modern managers have been influenced by the works of Chinese military strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu, Roman general and politician Julius Caesar, and even Genghis Kahn, Mongolian conqueror and ruler of what became the largest land empire in all of history.¹ Mark Zuckerberg² of Facebook is a modern admirer of the Caesars and has said that he bases some of his management style on his classical education.

Despite its ancient roots, modern management is less than 150 years old. In fact, a comparison of management before and after the Industrial Revolution shows that the former is only a shadowy comparison to the latter. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, work was performed, with exceptions, mostly in home and on farms by forced labor (slaves or indentured servants) or family members, and the output they produced was often for employers’, local, or family consumption. Over the centuries, economics and morality shifted, and laborers could choose where and for whom to work. These changes, in turn, would bring about many changes in how labor and other resources were employed in production.

The two developments that transformed management were the revolutions in how and where goods were sold and the Industrial Revolution. The events combined led to the selling of a wider variety of goods to a wider variety of customers in more distant locations. These events also led to the establishment of vast companies. Competition required the development of economies of scale (i.e., increased production lowering costs) and required coordination and specialization in the use of resources. The combination of coordination and specialization problems encouraged the development of management study as a distinct field.

In this chapter, we trace the evaluation of management from its origins in the ancient world to its form as a modern profession. Understanding how management came to be helps us to understand its principles in a richer, more thorough context and to understand how each concept we discuss is based on evidence produced by a wide range of scholars over many years in the fields of engineering, economics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology.