Lyndall Urwick

Youth and military service Urwick was born in Worcestershire, the son of a partner in Fownes Brothers, a long-established glove-making firm. He was educated at Boxgrove Primary School, Repton School and New College, Oxford, where he read History. He saw active service in the trenches during the First World War, rising to the rank of Major, and being awarded the Military Cross. Though he did not himself attend the military Staff College at Camberley, his respect for military training would affect his outlook on management in later life. He attended the second conference of the International Industrial Relations Institute held at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928. Urwick's own prolific writings on management truly began in this period. At this time, Urwick, along with his colleague at Rowntree's, Oliver Sheldon, became active members of the Taylor Society. but it provided Urwick the opportunity not only to lecture widely but to produce his books The Meaning of Rationalisation (1929) and The Management of Tomorrow (1933). It was also this time that he became particularly keen to promote the writings of Henri Fayol to an English audience. UOP's slogan was Profit on Principle: A British Service for British Business in the application of the Principles of Direction and Control. From the outset, UOP instituted a copy of the Bedaux System and Bedaux Unit, the Point System, in hundreds of factories and offices across Britain and further afield. Urwick became a well-known enthusiast of management education and management history, and a public promoter of F.W. Taylor and scientific management. So much so that Harry Braverman attacked him in 1974's Labor and Monopoly Capital as the 'rhapsodic historian of the scientific management movement'. In 1955 Urwick was awarded the Wallace Clark Award. In later years, Lyndall Urwick retired to Australia, where he died in 1983. His papers were donated to the Administrative Staff College, by then renamed Henley Management College. == Work ==

Making of Scientific Management In 1945, he made his most lasting contribution to management literature with the publication of his three-volume Making of Scientific Management. It was the first treatise to present a clear and focused discussion of the development and applications of management science. It included a comprehensive number of profiles of leading proponents of management theory, from early pioneers such as Charles Babbage and Frederick Winslow Taylor, to those such as Seebohm Rowntree and Mary Parker Follett who innovated and refined their concepts. All aimed to bring '"adequate intelligence" to the control of the forces released by a mechanised economy' to bring the logical standards of science to bear on business practice. It also dealt with early contributions to understanding the scientific approach to control in industry. A long background of scientific management practices had previously been largely unknown before publication of these volumes. The study included a view of methods of control at the famous Boulton and Watt Foundry, of Robert Owen's approach to personnel management, and of commercial management training. The Manager's Span of Control Lyndall Urwick was the first writer to apply the concept of span of control formally to business. Urwick asserted that the reduction of less important daily duties is essential for enhancing the personal touch that makes a business executive an effective leader. Using the work of General Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton, Urwick maintained that limiting the number of subordinates reporting to an executive ( i.e. restricting the span of control) can do the following: improve executive effectiveness; reduce pressure, inefficiency and incompetence; produce better employee co-operation; and build morale and sense of unity within the organisation. His own view of the education required did not accord with the College as it was finally established, which concentrated on a three-month course for established executives. He would have preferred something much closer to the model of the American business school, involving a longer course and aimed at pre-experience students. It was a continuing frustration for Urwick that England's two ancient universities failed to promote management education. == Publications ==

Books: • Urwick, Lyndall Fownes. Organization as a technical problem. 1933. • Metcalf, Henry C., and Lyndall Urwick, eds. Dynamic administration: the collected papers of Mary Parker Follett. Vol. 3. Routledge, 1942/2003. • Urwick, Lyndall Fownes. The elements of administration. Harper & brothers, 1944. • Urwick, Lyndall Fownes. Notes on the Theory of Organization. New York: American Management Association, 1952. • Urwick, Lyndall Fownes and Edward Brech. The making of scientific management. University of Chicago Press Economics Books, 1954/1994. • Urwick, Lyndall Fownes. The Pattern of Management. University of Minnesota Press, 1956. • Urwick, Lyndall Fownes. The Golden Book of Management: A Historical Record of the Life and Work of Seventy Pioneers, 1956 • Gulick, Luther, and Lyndall Urwick, eds. Papers on the Science of Administration. Routledge, 2012. About Urwick • Brech, Edward; Thomson, Andrew; Wilson, John F. Lyndall Urwick, Management Pioneer: A Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. ; == References ==