among them were James Watt and Boulton, Owen, Babbage and Poor.
Their main contributions are as follows:
(i) James Watt and Boulton. These
two men took charge of the management of the Soho Engineering Foundry
when it was established in 1796 in Great Britain. Watt was incharge
of organisation and administration, and Boulton was responsible for
the sales or commercial activities. They developed many management
techniques. Prominent among them were market research an forecasting
in marketing ares; planned machine layout in terms of work-flow
requirements, production planning, production-process standards, and
standardisation of product component in production area; calculation
of cost and profit for each machine and department in costing area;
training and development of workers and executive, work study and
payment by results, welfare programme and constitution of a committee
to administer it in personnel area.
Owen. He carried out most of
his experiments in the area of personnel management when he was
engaged in managing the textile mills in Scotland between 1800 and
1828. Owen improved working conditions in the factory, provided
meals to employees in the factory, provided housing and marketing
store facilities to the employees. His main philosophy was that good
personnel management paid dividends to the employer and it was in
essential part of every manager.
Babbage. Babbage was a
professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (1818-39) and took
keen interest in the problems of manufacturing operations. He is
best remembered for his book 'On the Economy of Machinery and
Manufactures' published in 1832. He was specially interested in the
economics of division of labour and development of scientific
principles to govern a manager's use of facilities, materials and
labour to get the best possible results.
Henry Varnum Poor. He was
editor of 'American Railroad Journal' in the latter half of the
nineteenth century. While on this position he watched and analysed
the progress of American railroad system. He visualized the scope
for effective management to bring the railroad in the light
direction. He gave many recommendations many of which might be
termed as most modern. He felt the need for a managerial system with
a clear organisation structure in which people have clear
responsibility and can be held accountable.