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The Management 'Before Christ' : Probably the Dark Matter in Universe of Management

Everything we do has Management. As it seems, the management is not defined clearly. George Terry says in his famous book, Principles of Management, that there has not been a clear definition of Management, because management is related to human beings and whatever is connected with humans has a degree of uncertainty and hence cannot be defined clearly. But overall management can be considered to be consisting of Planning,Organizing, Coordinating, Motivating and Controlling. Whatever may be the definition, management has been employed since way back in history.

Sumerians who lived around 5000 BC taught us the technique of Record Keeping. Huge pyramids were built between 4000 BC to 2000 BC. Nearly 1,00,000 laborers were employed to build those. Deciding the architecture, dividing the labor, allocating the resources and checking the completed work, what else was all this if not Management.

Later, Babylonians (between 2000 BC to 1700 BC) gave us the concept of setting the Targets and checking the completed work against the Targets (It is really wonderful to know that concepts like today's Sales Targets also existed 4000 years ago, isn't it ?). Later, Hebrews have used the Hierarchy Structure and had defined Procedures to carry out tasks.

Greeks (500 BC), contributed significantly towards Management. They viewed it as a Rational, Logical construct. Greeks were the first ones who used the concept of Standards. Romans (300 BC) used the concept of Centralized Management as opposed to Democratic Management proposed by Greeks, mainly due to the volatile conditions around that time.

The roots of some of the commonly used Management concepts are also found in Medieval periods. Post 1200 AD, a lot of movement was seen in the realms of Economic Management. Europeans started exploring the world for trade. Marco Polo, a famous European trader, reached Chinese shores and made some trade pacts with Changez Khan.

Factories were set up in Europe, which worked on Guild Principle, where the laborers were first trained as Apprentice. To resolve the trade related disputes, Venetians came up with Trade laws.

The double Entry Book Keeping started somewhere in 15th century and the concepts like Cost-Accounting and General Entry-Ledgers were also devised during same time. Even, many management principles have their roots in the Management and Economics Lessons of Chanakya, who is considered as The Guru of Indian Management.

It is really exhilarating to see how management has evolved not only in past 150 years but over the past 6000+ years. And finally it took thousands of years for Management to be accepted as a discipline of study and being learned as a separate stream.

The above examples are just the scratching on the Journey of Management before Christ, god knows how much more tons of information is till hiding away from us as the Dark Matter in the Universe of Management.

    


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