Lyndall Fownes Urwick MC (3 March 1891 – 5 December 1983) was a British management consultant and business thinker.

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

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

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

[5] The Institute was short-lived, closing in 1933,[9] but it provided Urwick the opportunity not only to lecture widely but to produce his books The Meaning of Rationalisation (1929) and The Management of Tomorrow (1933).

[5] Urwick also produced and disseminated the first European study of Elton Mayo's research at the Hawthorne Works in Chicago while at the IMI.

It included a comprehensive number of profiles of leading proponents of management theory, from early pioneers such as Charles Babbage and Frederick Winslow Taylor, to those such as Seebohm Rowntree and Mary Parker Follett who innovated and refined their concepts.

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.

[19] Using the work of General Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton, Urwick maintained that limiting the number of subordinates reporting to an executive ( i.e. restricting the span of control) can do the following: improve executive effectiveness; reduce pressure, inefficiency and incompetence; produce better employee co-operation; and build morale and sense of unity within the organisation.

Herbert A. Simon questioned the theoretical soundness of the concept and suggested that a restricted span of control would produce excessive red tape.

[19] 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.

Three primary "human failings" are described including: the failure of business to distinguish rank or status from function; cost-consciousness of businessmen; and the cherishing of the stereotype of the efficient executive.

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