Estado del arte del "management"

Although the practice of management is really old, its formal study as a theoretical area is relatively new. The study of management, as it happens with the study of people or cultures, has developed together with the changes of perceptions on work, people’s nature or organisations performance. In order to understand the evolution of management it is necessary to consider that we are not talking about an isolated activity which takes place in some specific cultural environment. The evolution of the management thought is due to changes taking place in the environment. The objective of this paper is to summarize some of the main ideas that have developed the management area, highlighting the main trends and studying their evolution over time. The paper mentions particularly the agency theory and the transaction costs theory and introduces the concept of strategic management as a particular development of the management thought.