The Origin of Management is Sustainability: Recovering an Alternative Foundation for Management

What is it about?

Management’s origins are conventionally traced to Frederick Winslow Taylor, a man whose single-minded obsession with efficiency led to the original management theory of note: Scientific Management, but whose mechanistic thinking has now been superseded by a greater concern for people and the environment. We rethink this conventional historical view. Our examination of the politico-economic context of early 20th century United States highlights the crucial role played by Gifford Pinchot’s conservation movement, which burned briefly but brightly under U.S President Theodore Roosevelt as a Progressive response to the rampant capitalism of the Gilded Age. Scientific Management only gained currency after it was repackaged by Progressive lawyer Louis D. Brandeis (who saw it as a path to conservation as well as a more prosperous and just society) to win a legal case against the special interests of ‘big business’.

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Why is it important?

If these origins of management are recognized, the recent interest in sustainability can be understood as a return to rather than a break with the past and we might think differently about the purposes that management practice and theory might serve, today and into the future.

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