Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to attract attention to the historical process that management thought had passed through, and to present its 7000-year long past along with the point that has been arrived in the 21st century. Management thought has roots in the past streching till around the year 5000 BCE and the Sumerians. This thought had been in a stagnant period that showed occasional rises up until the 18th century. After the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, studies in the area of management can be classified as such: the Classical School, the Neo-Classical School, the Modern School, Postmodern Tendencies and Contemporary Concepts and Applications. The Classical School takes efficiency and productivity as basic goals while recognizing man as a robot, and organization as a closed system. The Neo-Classical school that captures organization as a social system emphasizes that human beings can attain rationality through satisfaction. The Modern School draws attention to the necessity of quantitative methods while it accepts organization as an open system and management as a center of decisions. Postmodern Tendencies had focused on the amelioration of quality with its principle of privileging the human being and had struck its stamp on the period between 1970-1995. Constant change, constant learning, strategic thinking and professionalization have become features of the 21st century concepts and applications. In today’s organizations utilizing such concepts and applications, information-focusedness, cooperativeness, virtuality and complexity are attributes that attract attention

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