Pre-scientific management era refers to the period immediately preceding the Scientific Management started by F.W.Taylor and his associates. Prominent among the pioneers who made significant contributions to management thought were

1. Robert Owen (1771-1858)
   He believed workers performance was influenced by the total environment in which they worked. Throughout his life Owen worked for the building up of a cooperation between the workers and the management. He believed and practised the idea that the worker should be treated as human beings. Owen suggested that investment in human beings is more profitable than investment in machinery and other physical resources. He introduced new ideas of human relations, e.g. shorter working hours, housing facilities, education of children, provision of canteen, rest pauses, training of workers in hygiene etc.

   Owen is known as the father of personal management. His ideas and philosophy may be considered as a prelude to the development of behaviour approach to management

2. Charles Babbage (1792-1891)
   Babbage was a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University from 1828 to 1839. Babbage perceived that the methods of science and mathematics could be applied to operations of factories. He made several contributions expounding his ideas and theories.

   Babbage was a pioneer of operations research and industrial engineering techniques. He laid considerable emphasis on specialisation, work measurement, optimum utilisation of machines, cost reduction and wage incentives. His emphasis on the application of science and mathematics laid the foundation for the formulation of a science of management.

3. Henry Vamun Poor
   Poor advocated a "managerial system" with a clear organization structure in which people could be held completely accountable and the need for a set of operating reports summarising costs, revenues and rates. He recognised the danger such a system might make people feel like cogs in a machine. To overcome this, he suggested a kind of leadership, beginning at the top of an enterprise that would overcome routine and dullness by instilling in the organization a feeling of unity, an appropriation of the work, and an esprit de corps. Thus Poor called for a system before Taylor. He called for the recognition of human factor before Mayo. He also suggested leadership to overcome the rigidities of the formal organization much before Chris Argyris.

4. Henry Robinson Towne (1844-1924)
   H.R.Towne was president of the famous 'Yale and Towne', a lock manufacturing company. He took particular interest in studying about efficient management of the business. He applied his ideas successfully in his own company. In 1886, he presented a paper the "Engineer as an Economist", wherein he urged the association of engineers and economists as industrial managers. The combination of the knowledge along with at least some skill as an accountant is essential for the successful management of industry. He suggested organised exchange of experience among managers and an organised effort to pool accumulated knowledge in the art of workshop management.

5. James Watt (1796-1848) and Mathew Robinson Boulton (1770-1842)
   They were the sons of the distinguished inventor of the steam engine. They applied a number of management techniques in their Engineering Factory at Soho (Birmingham, U>K). These techniques were:

   1. market research & forecasting

   2. standardization of components and parts,

   3. production planning

   4. planned machine for better workflow,

   5. elaborate statistical records

   6. maintenance of advance control reports and cost accounting procedures

   7. provision of employee welfare with sickness benefit scheme administered by an elected committee of employees, and

   8. scheme for developing executives

6. Captain Henry Metcalfe (1847-1917)
   Metcalfe published a famous book "The Cost of Manufacture and Administration of Workshop: Public and Private" in 1882. Metcalfe suggested "new systems control" covering the following

   1. The science of management is based on principles that are evolved by recording observations and experiences.

   2. The art of management should be based on several recorded and accumulated observations, which are presented systematically

   3. Ther management should make certain cost estimates on the basis of these observations

   4. However management should maintain only relevant and crucial information. A manager should prepare the details of work which will then be communicated to foreman and workers.

   Metcalfe suggested a system of cards. Under this system managers prepare two type of cards, i.e., time cards and material cards. This system is intended to assure the workers that good work done by them would be known to management. It also provides a method for gauging their work. The American Management Association has put Metcalfe's system of management on record.

Sytems of management were practised in one form or other ever since men started forming groups and living in civilised society. The Sumerian civilisation dating back to 300 B.C. had an efficient system of tax collection. The pyramids of Egypt, The Chinese Civil Service, the Roman Catholic Church and military organizations also offer good examples of early application of management. However a systematic study and analysis of management as a science began only in the twentieth century after the industrial revolution.

By far the most influential person of the time and someone who has had an impact on management service practice as well as on management thought up to the present day, was F. W. Taylor. Taylor formalized the principles of scientific management, and the fact-finding approach put forward and largely adopted was a replacement for what had been the old rule of thumb.

He also developed a theory of organizations, which served as the forerunner for many subsequent writers on management science. We will study about Taylor's "Scientific Management" in detail in another chapter.