What is a guru? The word guru is from the Christ and its translation is teacher, this term began to be used in Hinduism to name the highest religious authority or spiritual master, as time went by the term was expanding everywhere using it to name the person who recognized himself as an intellectual authority or a spiritual guide. For the Hindu culture the guru had attained enlightenment and was helping his disciple come out of the darkness to find the truth within himself. (Porto, 2009)
In history, there has been a need from the beginning to manage the resources of ancient civilizations, ethnic groups and small societies, which generated the appearance of characters who devised tools and strategies to improve the tasks of resource management; These people are known as administration gurus.
Definition
For the royal Spanish guru academy, he is considered a teacher or spiritual guide who is recognized as intellectual authority. (Spanish Royal Academy, 2016)
Likewise, a character who has skills, intelligence and gifts is known as a guru, so he is recognized as a person trained in a specific subject. (Gómez, 2013)
Throughout history, different characters have emerged who have contributed to the administration, these are currently considered administration gurus. Some of the main gurus of each important period for the administration will be mentioned below.
Gurus of Greece
Plato
He was born in the year 427 BC in the city of Athens to an Athenian aristocratic family, he was a recognized philosopher of ancient Greece, teacher of Aristotle and founder of the academy, a school of philosophy that continued to operate for around nine hundred.
Plato was a great thinker, who created concepts in aid of the construction of administrative thought, among which he postulated that individual characteristics create specialization in work. He also wrote the book "La republica" where he spoke about the specialization of tasks, administration of markets, democracy, the government, among others.
Aristotle
He was born in 384 BC in the city of Stagira located near Mount Athos, at the age of seventeen he went to Plato's academy to study in Athens, so he became his student and one of the great philosophers of the time.
Focused on the ethics of institutions, he wrote the book "Politics" where he designs structures for the administration of governments, and also classifies the government in political spheres such as democracy and monarchy.
Pericles
He was born approximately in the year 495 before Christ, north of Athens in a place called Demo, his father was Jantipo who was a politician of the time, Pericles became an important politician and orator in the golden age of Greece, he was also responsible for the victory over the Persians at the Battle of Micala.
I carry out strategies for the selection of personnel in organizations, I also promote the concept of citizenship to separate foreigners from local people.
Gurus of Rome
Max Weber
He was born in 1864 in Erfurt Germany, he had a family childhood but strongly influenced by politics which led him to become a prominent politician of the National Liberal Party. Likewise, he was a sociologist who put opposite beliefs to political determinism, he wrote "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" in 1905 which favored capitalism in Northern Europe.
Martin Luther
He was born on November 10, 1483 in Eisleben Germany, his original name was Martin Luder but later he was changed to Martin Luther, as he was known in Germany where he supported the development of religious thought; I push for the restructuring of Christian churches in Europe based on the Bible. His contribution was reflected in theories of professionalism that employees must have in organizations governed by capitalism.
Gurus of the feudal age
Nicholas Machiavelli
Born in Florence on May 3, 1469, he was a political philosopher, diplomat, public official, among others. He was also an extremely important character in the Italian Renaissance.
His main ideology was "The end justifies the means", he published his booklet of name "The prince" which deals with the functions of the directors of the organizations, focusing on the leadership and implementation of political tactics in the organizations. (Rodriguez, 2011)
Friar luca paccioli
Fray Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli was born in 1445 in a small city in Italy called Sansepolcro, he was a friar who was passionate about mathematics, he established the bases of probability calculations in his work “Sum of arithmetic, geometry, proportions and proportionality” that He wrote in 1494. He was also a great economist of the time and professor in Naples, Milan, and Rome.
I develop the double entry method and other accounting strategies, I also create control tools in organizations, which represent a great contribution to the administration of their time.
Gurus of the Industrial Revolution
Adam Smith
He was born on June 5, 1723 in Kirkcaldy a fishing town in Scotland, at the age of four he was kidnapped by gypsies but later was recovered by his family, growing up he became a great economist and philosopher in his country and one of the main drivers of the classical economy.
He wrote "The Wealth of Nations" where he published strategies for administration such as the division of labor in companies, concepts of productivity, the importance of the experience of workers in the processes that were the foundations of classical economics.
James Watt
He was born on January 30, 1736 in a place called Greenock in Scotland, his father was a contractor and naval inventor, he was a member of the Lunar society that was a gentlemen's club in England. His main contribution was the invention of the steam engine, this advance revolutionized the industry and gave great advantage in the conditions of production processes, increasing productivity in a considerate way.
The industrial revolution changed the entire world in terms of production and administration, it promoted rail transport which gave many possibilities to the transport of goods.
Scientific administration gurus
Frederick Taylor
On March 20, 1856 Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in Philadelphia, United States of America, Taylor dropped out of law school for eyesight problems to later work at a metallurgical company in Philadelphia, then took night courses to become a major engineer industrialist and economist of the scientific administration.
He is known as the father of scientific administration, his main contribution was the increase in the production of organizations by improving the efficiency of the tasks of the processes based on the scientific procedure.
Frank Gilbreth
Born in Fairfield, Maine on July 7, 1868, Gilbreth studied until high school, when he moved to Boston working as a bricklayer, then a contractor, then an inventor, and finally an engineer. He married Lilian Everlyn Moller and they had twelve children.
Feank and Lilian were the first to take videos to analyze the manual movements of workers, they developed the micro timer to be able to measure movements more precisely, they focused on work organization, especially on the human factor.
Classical administration gurus
Henry Fayol
On July 29, 1841 in Istanbul in a bourgeois family, he lived through the great phenomena of the industrial revolution and the Second World War, at the age of nineteen he graduated as a mining engineer to later work in a metallurgical organization where he made all his contributions.
Fayol is known as the main driving force behind modern administration. He defined administration as the functions that include planning, organization, direction, coordination and control. He classified the production area into six areas: technical, commercial, financial, security, and accounting., administrative. (Robbins, 2005)
Wilfrido Pareto
He was born on July 15, 1848 in Paris, his father was an exiled Marques in France, where he spent his childhood later to go to study in Italy, once he graduated from a railway company, consequently he became interested in the social sciences and finally he was recognized as an important sociologist and economist in Italy. His greatest contribution to the administration is the well-known Pareto principle, which explains how only twenty percent of the variables caused eighty percent of the results. (Gómez, 2013)
Gurus of the behavioral sciences
Michael Porter
Michael Eugene Porter was born on May 23, 1947, in the city of Ann Airbor in the United States, he is an electrical engineer and economist. Currently a professor at Harvard Bussiness School and a writer, he is president of the HBS Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness.
He has made several contributions of utmost importance to the administration from the point of view of the social environment of the organizations, among the most outstanding are, value chain, development of the five forces, design of strategic groups, the concepts of competitive advantage.
Peter F. Drucker
On November 19, 1909 Peter Ferdinan Drucker was born in the city of Vienna, his parents were Jews, he grew up in an intellectual environment surrounded by politicians and scientists. He graduated as a lawyer at the University of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Drucker is considered one of the main characters in administrative thought as well as an important philosopher of administration in the 20th century, he wrote several books on administrative topics such as: organization management, information systems for decision-making, among others.
Gary S. Becker
Born on December 2, 1930 in the city of Pottsville in the United States, he was an important economist as well as a professor at the University of Chicago, in 1992 he received the Nobel Prize in economics for expanding the study of microeconomics from the perspective of human behavior.
He is also a recognized representative of economic liberalism, some of his main works are: "Economia de la discrimination" published in 1957, "Human capital" published in 1964 and "Treaty on the family in 1981.
Mexican gurus
Isaac Guzmán Valdivia
He was born in the city of Guanajuato in Mexico in 1906, he graduated as a law graduate and notary public, he was also a key part of creating industrial relations careers where his main contributions were:
- The country is in a situation that is affected by any power group Security and freedom support the development of people with decorum or personal property protect the country's production
José Antonio Fernández Arena
Born in Mexico City, he completed his studies as an accountant and business administrator at the Autonomous University of Mexico. Among his main contributions is having transformed the traditional structure of teaching based on modular education.
José Antonio defines administration as a social science that has institutional goals as its purpose, and to reach those goals there must be a well-planned and coordinated work. He also proposed an administrative process that consists of three different stages; planning, implementation and control.
Miguel F. Duhalt Krauss
Krauss was born in the city of Veracruz Veracruz, he graduated from the career of public administration in the faculty of political and social sciences, focused on strategies for the preparation of procedure manuals, which he considered necessary documents for the organization of companies.
Likewise, he developed characteristics of public administration and wrote about the development in Mexico of administrative communication techniques. I also carry out analysis of administrative graphs such as: o Process table o Work diagram o Influx graph o Flow graph o Procedure graph o Flow diagram
Francisco Laris Casillas
This character thought that the administration was somewhat scientific and not very artistic, the first of these is because it has a scientific structure with well-defined concepts such as responsibility, coordination, centralization, normalization, standardization and division of labor, and artistic because the manager or person in charge applies his experience, intuition and abilities to manage the human factor.
Bibliography
- Cardona, CR (2002). Administration Fundamentals. Madrid: ECOE. Gómez, D. (November 14, 2013). Gestiopolis. Obtained from Administration Gurus: http://www.gestiopolis.com/los-gurus-en-administracion-ysus-aportaciones/Porto, JP (June 5, 2009). Definition of. Obtained from Guru: http://definicion.de/guru/Real Academia Española. (January 9, 2016). Royal Spanish Academy. Obtained from Guru: http://dle.rae.es/?id=Ju4WKQLRobbins, S. (2005). Administration. Mexico: PEARSON.Rodriguez, H. and. (2011). Introduction to administration. Mexico: McGrawHill.Witzel, M. (2014). History of administrative thought. Mexico: PATRIA.
