Management and Leadership

The most important implications for managers is that they need to be good diagnosticians. They should be flexible enough to vary their own behavior in relation to the need to treat in an appropriate way particular subordinates in particular situations. They may require to use any of the economic, social, or self-actualizing models. They may use "scientific management" in the design of some jobs but allow complete group autonomy for the workers to organize themselves in others. They would thus use a "contingency approach," as exemplified by Lawrence and Lorsch (see p. 53) and Vroom (see p. 126), among others.

(Pugh 149) - Edgar Schein

For Mayo, one major task of management is to organize spontaneous cooperation, thereby preventing the further breakdown of society. As traditional attachments to community and family disappear and as the workplace increases in importance, the support given by traditional institutions must now be given by the organization. Conflict, competition, and disagreement between individuals are to be avoided by management's understanding its role as providing the basis for group affiliation. From the end of the Hawthorne project to his death, Mayo was interested in discovering how spontaneous cooperation could be achieved. This has been the basis of the human relations movement - the use of the insights of the social sciences to secure the commitment of individuals to the ends and activities of the organization.

(Pugh 141) Elton Mayo and Hawthorne Investigations

1. Don 't panic in the face of disorder. Some degree of disorder is necessary so that disorderly, ambiguous information can be taken in and coped with, rather than tidily screened out.

2. You never do one thing all at once. Whatever you do has many ramifications, not just the one you have in mind. And whereas some consequences happen right away, others show up indirectly and much later.

3. Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction. When someone says, "What shall I do?' and is told, "I don't know, just do something," that is probably good advice. Because sense is made of events retrospectively, an action, any action, provides something to make sense of. Inaction is more senseless.

4. The most important decisions are often the least apparent. Decisions about what is to be retained in files, in databases, in memories indeed, provide the basis for future action. Such decisions may not be conspicuous, yet they sustain the past from which the future is begun.

5. There is no solution. Because there are no simple answers and because rarely is anything right or wrong, learn to live with improvisation and just a tolerable level of reasonableness.

6. Stamp out utility. Good adaptation now rules out some options for the future. Concentrating overmuch on utility now can rule out sources of future utility. Resources and choices are used up. Better to retain some noise and variability in the system, even at a cost to present efficiency, so that fresh future repertoires of action may be opened up.

7. The map is the territory. When the manager's map of what causes what, drawn from past experience, is superimposed on the future, it becomes for the user the territory that it maps. Simplification though it is, such a map has been worked over more than any other product has, and is as good a guide as can be had.

8. Re chart the organizational chart. Do not be boxed in by its conventional form. See things as they work out and people as they are to you. See the chart in the way it functions. For example, in the box on the chart for chairperson, write "hesitancy"; in the box for general manager, write "assertiveness"; and so on as people come over to you.

9. Visualize organizations as evolutionary systems. See what is evoking and what you can and should change. Likewise, recognize what is not and what you cannot.

10. Complicate yourself. Consider different causes, other solutions, new situations, and more complex alternatives and take pleasure in the process of doing so.

(Pugh 114- 115) - Karl Weick

The excellent companies treat the ordinary members of the organization as the basic source of quality and productivity gains. They do not regard capital investment and labor substitution as the fundamental source of efficiency improvement. They strongly oppose an "us-them" attitude in industrial relations, and they treat workers as people. They are not soft; the people orientation has a tough side. They are very performance conscious, but the personal achievements stem from mutually high expectations and peer review, rather than from exhortation and complicated control systems.

(Pugh 101) - Thomas J Peters and Robert H Waterman

1. To forecast and plan (in the French, pr6voymce): "Examining the future and drawing up the plan of action"

2. To organize: "Building up the structure, material and human, of the undertaking"

3. To command: "Maintaining activity among the personnel"

4. To coordinate: "Binding together, unifying and harmonizing all activity and effort"

5. To control: "Seeing that everything occurs in conformity with established rule and expressed command"

(Pugh 87) - Henri Fayol

Managers most frequently are faced with intrapersonal, interpersonal, and inter-group conflict. Therefore, these forms of conflict