History of Business Administration
Business Administration is combination of economics, social, behavioral and decision sciences, which addresses the interactions of Business Stakeholders and Business Environment in order to maximize the stakeholders’ value creation in a sustainable manner involving People, Capital and Technology. Since Human Capital is more important and sustainability is important consideration for business organizations, broadly Business Administration may be classified under social sciences.
Jaharkanti Dattagupta1
A Blog Article by Dimitrios Koumparoulis.
Business Administration as an independent science has a comparatively short history. Its origins date back to the times when universities or commercial colleges, such as the ones in Leipzig (1898) and Cologne (1901) where first established. Before, there had merely been a variety of contributions dealing with commercial issues, some of which are listed here:
- 1494: Luca Pacioli, a Venetian Grey Friar and professor of Mathematics is the author of a business mathematics paper entitled “Summa de Arithmetica, Geometrica, Proportioni et Proportionalita”, in which he presents a first approach to accounting among other topics.
- At the end of the 17th century, in the Age of Mercantilism (= the National Economic Policy in the Age of Absolutism from the 16th to the 18th century; the prime objective was the procurement of funds for the purpose of consolidating state power), Jacques Savary, a close confidant of Colbert, the French Minister of Finance in those days, wrote the work “Le Parfait Negociant”, which was also published in German under the title “Der vollkommene Kauf- und Handelsmann” (The Perfect Merchant). Roughly at the same time Paul Jacob Marperger was working on his first draft of a lexical summary of current commercial knowledge.
- From 1752-1756 the five-volume lexicon “Eroffnete Akademie fur Kaufleute; oder vollstandiges Kaufmannslexikon” (Open Academy for Merchants: or A Complete Merchant Encyclopedia” is published in which, for the first time, a conscious distinction between Mercantile Science and Cameralism (= the term for economics sciences in Germany during Mercantilism; the science of public administration) is made.
- The highlight and at the same time the end of commercial science is the work “System des Handels” (The System of Mercantilism) by Johann Michael Leuchs.
- After the foundation of the commercial colleges, Business Administration develops into a science. The work “Allgemeine kaufmannische Betriebslehre als Privatwirtschaftslehre des Handels und der Industrie” (General Economic Principles as a Private Science of Commerce and the Industry) by Heinrich Nicklisch originates from those days.
- Erich Gutenberg gives a particular impetus to Business Administration by identifying the principles of Business Administration in his three-volume work begun in 1951.
- In the 1960s, decision-oriented Business Administration is developed which is derived from the Game Theory developed by J. von Naumann and O. Morgenstern.
- In recent years, Business Administration has received a new impetus due to the increased significance of ecological and social aspects and the advancement of means of communication.
Written by Dimitrios Koumparoulis
Edited by Pablo Markin
Featured Image Credits: Small Business Administration Awards Luncheon, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, April 13, 2012 | © Courtesy of Maryland GovPics/Flickr.
- Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/post/Business_administration_belongs_to_social_sciences_or_humanitarian_sciences. [↩]
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Dimitrios Koumparoulis (November 25, 2018). History of Business Administration. Open Economics Blog. Retrieved November 5, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/si4q