| Abstract: | Management theory has taken divergent paths in recent years. The author discusses each of these as well as the movement to unify existing schools of thought. The process approach, traditional and classical, has been supplanted by the quantitative, the behavioral, and the systems approaches. The author defines these and explains their role in management theory and their function in actual practice. Singly, none of these theories can be applied to every organization and management problem, and currently a theory is emerging that can be used to draw the disparate elements together. This new approach is the contingency theory of management, which can be applied situationally. |
