Abstract
M.Com.
"Once in a generation, perhaps, something happens that profoundly
changes the world and how we look at it. Business is no different.
From time to time, someone develops a new way of operation that
spreads from industry to industry. Those who adopt and adapt,
prosper: those who do not, disappear. Well-known examples of such
processes include the adoption of the factory system in the 18th
century and the assembly line in the 20th century. Without quest ion,
Total Quality Management (TQM) is an innovation on this scale"
(Gilks, 1990:17-20}.
Since the time of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth
century, countries within the Western world have regarded themselves
as being the experts in most fields of Industry and specific~lly mass
production. Although it was thought at first that increasing
mechanization would lessen industry's dependence on human labour,
this was often not the case with labour productivity being found to
be crucial to the overall productivity of manufacturing concerns.
Increasingly ingly there was a search for answers on how to optimally
utilize the Human Resource with the aim of achieving higher
productivity (Sperotto, 1991 :27-33).
Enderle (1992:13) writes that with more and more research being
undertaken and published about this field, a new management science
was established: Organizational behaviour and structuring, as well
as job design. Its main objective was to find out more about human
psychological needs and aspirations and how this information would be
put to use in the wordplay. This particular school of thought is
known as the "scientific management" or 'socio-technical" approach.