Antecedents and current situation of humanistic management

Abstract

Humanistic management is generally presented as an alternative perspective to the economic paradigm in management and organisational theories. We find both humanism and economicism in the first stages of modern management, and they still persist at the beginning of the 21st century. This paper reviews the antecedents and current situation of humanistic management. Although economicism is still dominant, it has received severe criticism and several management approaches discussed here can contribute to further development of humanistic management. These include person-organisation fit, peoples’ involvement in organisations, the consideration of business as a human community, comprehensive approaches to decision-making, stakeholder management, values-based management, as well as ethics and corporate responsibility in management, personal competencies and positive organisational scholarship.Â