Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
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Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
#2Management theorists for managing slaves and servants. Take the lessons you want from that.
But, that’s why the majority of us are called “wage slaves”, I guess. Hoarding of wealth by the owning class helps keep everyone else needing to work for cheap, simpler economy to have workers take care of their own housing and food in exchange for the needed money.
I doubt they were the first. This is just history being written by those who write it down, pre-written-historic is not pre-social (though writing expanded the social groups you could theorize about.)
Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
#3No post body was provided.
Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
#4First management theorists or first recorded management theorists? I feel like there are similarly (or nearly as) advanced cultures in this approximate era for whom we unfortunately have significantly less recorded material - and often what we do have was created by other civilizations (such as Rome itself or Greek city-states) who interacted with said people. These persons surely had theories of management for their assets, which undoubtedly would include slaves and indentured servants.
Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
#5First management theorists or first recorded management theorists? I feel like there are similarly (or nearly as) advanced cultures in this approximate era for whom we unfortunately have significantly less recorded material - and often what we do have was created by other civilizations (such as Rome itself or Greek city-states) who interacted with said people. These persons surely had theories of management for their…
A semantic pedantry argument could be made that recorded material is what separates the theorist from the practitioner. Easily countered of course by remarking that records getting lost over the course of a few millennia shouldn't make a theorist less of a theorist.
Personally, I'm fine with adding an implicit "that we know of" to every "first".
Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
#6First management theorists or first recorded management theorists? I feel like there are similarly (or nearly as) advanced cultures in this approximate era for whom we unfortunately have significantly less recorded material - and often what we do have was created by other civilizations (such as Rome itself or Greek city-states) who interacted with said people. These persons surely had theories of management for their…
> These persons surely had theories of management for their assets, which undoubtedly would include slaves and indentured servants.
Yes, exactly. I'm sure the Egyptian pharaohs who built the pyramids a thousand years earlier had some theories regarding management.
Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
#7First management theorists or first recorded management theorists? I feel like there are similarly (or nearly as) advanced cultures in this approximate era for whom we unfortunately have significantly less recorded material - and often what we do have was created by other civilizations (such as Rome itself or Greek city-states) who interacted with said people. These persons surely had theories of management for their…
A semantic pedantry argument could be made that recorded material is what separates the theorist from the practitioner. Easily countered of course by remarking that records getting lost over the course of a few millennia shouldn't make a theorist less of a theorist. Personally, I'm fine with adding an implicit "that we know of" to every "first".
Oral traditon is a kind of lossy recording on oddly volatile media.
Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
#8I was taught that management theory sprung from army management. These were the first organizations that required coordinating very large groups of people - in the life or death situations of war, and in the brutal monotony of peace.
I doubt that there were enough slaveowners or slaves in charge to contribute anything substantial to the management profession. It is an interesting tale in today's sentiment of antiwork.
Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
#9Wow, management theorists have more to answer for than I thought!
Re: Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
#10What a strange piece.
Putting the reader in the master's perspective certainly is a choice.
It fails to investigate that almost anyone in its ostensible audience of corporate managers is both a "master" and "slave" (mangers have managers).
An incredibly grim takeaway as well. It acknowledges the exploitation in both systems, but doesn't ask you to do anything about it or interrogate it deeper. There's no way that you're being exploited, just the poor saps that work for you. It's not wrong to exploit, just honest.