Michael Curry
The industrial revolution was made possible due to organizations could be built and managed in an effective manner. In present times, the initial problem in business has been creating the organization in the right manner.
Foremost, the GDP estimates go back a significant length of time. However, most of human history would be rather uneventful from an economic point of view.
Secondly, the slump around 1300 AD has been due to the ‘Black Death’ plague. It killed almost one-third of the world population. Europe was hit in a bad way.
After the plague, the productivity bounced back with the population and began to improve as the world kept getting a little better at what they did. However, you may wonder about what made productivity shoot up significantly in the 19th century.
It was the time of the industrial revolution.
Advancement in technology
There have been latest and more sophisticated machines that made large scale manufacturing relatively possible. There has been power available for running these machines. The textile industry has been popular with everyone. The production of cloth used to be largely a domestic enterprise and at times a cottage industry.
The wives of the farmers would spin the cotton at home and the men would weave it into cloth. Usually, it would take nearly four to eight spinners for supplying a single handloom weaver. With the beginning of the industrial revolution, apart from the textile industry looking forward to investing the Power Loom and the Flying Shuttle, the steam engine was also under the invention. It was relatively quickly when the two came together to enable huge factories using stream-powered machines completing the work of numerous people.
The forming of organizations
An important aspect of the industrial revolution was the rise of the business organization along with the management as a function.
It would not be wrong to suggest that the initial technological advancement led to the creation of several businesses, they were still run by one or a few owners or partners looking forward to doing everything.
You may not be able to determine similarity with startups in the present times. However, it would not be accurate as people do have access to management tools. In earlier times, it did not exist. The railroad companies lead the practice and science of management. It became the latest organizations and needed huge numbers of people across various aspects of the entire operation to act as a single unit. They look forward to organizing into departments and appoint managers who planned tasks and supervised the workers carrying out those tasks.
