Page 14 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

6 Marketing: the Basics
times. The Latin word manum agree translates as ‘lead by the hand’, but more tellingly, also means using power and jurisdiction to lead. The word management itself did not appear until the early Renaissance, with the French using the word ménagement to describe the art of conducting. By 1589, the word was absorbed into the English language. Less than 100 years later, the words ‘manager’ and ‘management’ became common words in the English vocabulary and remain so today.
During the Age of Enlightenment, an intellectual movement originating in Europe during the eighteenth century, classical economists like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill formalized ideas about satisfying human needs with limited resources. The two discussed how scarcity affected the allocation of resources, methods of production and pricing of goods. While academics discussed problems related to scarcity, manufacturers experimented with production processes which led to an abundance of innovations: quality-control procedures, replaceable parts and mass-production techniques quickly revealed their benefits. Mass production, in particular, was one of the greatest innovations of that time. It utilized assembly lines and permitted high rates of production at a very low cost. It is because of mass production, much of the material wealth we enjoy today exists.
Mass production also fostered the creation of the multinational corporation, an organization that sought to vertically integrate itself controlling all factors of production, capturing all the profits within each production step, creating an immense amount of wealth for shareholders. However, at the same time, mass production meant workers were forced to do the same, repetitive actions day in day out, numbing both the brain and motivation. Workplace- related injuries during this time were unacceptably high by today’s standards.
The first comprehensive theories of management appeared in the 1920s. Henri Fayol was one of the first to explore the various branches of management and their interrelationships. Within the next twenty years, academics from the arts and sciences began applying principles of psychology, sociology and statistics to explain phenomena occurring in the business world. Subjects covering topics related to organizational behaviour, human resources and