Except for the self-employed very few workers can avoid the phenomenon of management. The verb “to manage” stems from the Italian maneggiare, which means to handle, and it was especially used to describe the handling of horses. The noun “management” has retained some of the meaning that somebody is leading somebody or something else, although the actual handling at work these days tends to be more verbal than physical.

Exactly when management became a factor in work is a matter of dispute. Some see it as a distinctly modern phenomenon, whereas others stress that some form of management was already part of the organization of work among the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. One can also argue that the military drilling in Spartan and Roman society – in order to maximize efficiency – bears some resemblance to “scientific management”. However, it is clear that work planning became a much more important phenomenon when more and more work was done in factories.

The major breakthrough for the scientific study of management came with F. W. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management (1911), which is probably one of the most influential books of the modern world. It may have had a limited number of readers, but it changed the entire outlook on how work in the modern world should be managed in order to maximize output. Taylor was a notoriously hard worker, getting up at 5am, working from 7am to 5pm, then walking home for dinner before studying until 11pm; he then went jogging before he went to bed and indulged himself with a full five hours of sleep.