21 Facts About Lyndall Urwick

Lyndall Fownes Urwick was a British management consultant and business thinker.

Lyndall Urwick is recognised for integrating the ideas of earlier theorists like Henri Fayol into a comprehensive theory of management administration.

Lyndall Urwick wrote an influential book called The Elements of Business Administration, published in 1943.

Lyndall Urwick was educated at Boxgrove Primary School, Repton School and New College, Oxford, where he read History.

Lyndall Urwick saw active service in the trenches during the First World War, rising to the rank of Major, and being awarded the Military Cross.

Lyndall Urwick was then recruited by Seebohm Rowntree, head of the York chocolate company and progressive philanthropist.

Lyndall Urwick's role involved assisting the modernisation of the company, bringing to bear his own thinking, which had two main influences.

Lyndall Urwick attended the second conference of the International Industrial Relations Institute held at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928.

Lyndall Urwick's growing reputation as a British thinker on management and administration won him appointment in 1928 as Director of the International Management Institute in Geneva.

Brech, with whom Lyndall Urwick wrote the Making of Scientific Management trilogy.

In later years, Lyndall Urwick retired to Australia, where he died in 1983.

Lyndall Urwick's papers were donated to the Administrative Staff College, by then renamed Henley Management College.

Lyndall Urwick was the first writer to apply the concept of span of control formally to business.

Lyndall Urwick asserted that the reduction of less important daily duties is essential for enhancing the personal touch that makes a business executive an effective leader.

Lyndall Urwick expanded on these findings to provide the recommendation that "no superior can supervise directly the work of more than five or, at the most, six subordinates whose work interlocks".

Lyndall Urwick countered this criticism by noting that if span of control is appropriately implemented this will not occur.

Lyndall Urwick countered this criticism by noting that too wide a span of control reduces democracy because it prevents subordinates from having meaningful interaction with superiors.

Lyndall Urwick addressed this criticism by noting that in these situations subordinates' work did not overlock.

Lyndall Urwick noted that effective leaders will overcome these failings and begin to lead and not dominate his or her subordinates.

Lyndall Urwick was involved in the very earliest discussions for what would become, in 1948, the Administrative Staff College.

Lyndall Urwick would have preferred something much closer to the model of the American business school, involving a longer course and aimed at pre-experience students.