MANAGING LIKE ALL OTHER PRACTICES: SCIENCE OR ART?

MANAGING LIKE ALL OTHER PRACTICES: SCIENCE OR ART?


Managing like all other practices whether medicine, music composition, engineering, accountancy, purchasing, marketing or even cricket is an art. It is know-how. It is doing things in the light of the realities of a situation. Yet managers can work better by using the organized knowledge about management. It is this knowledge that constitutes science. Thus managing as a practice is an art, the organized knowledge underlying this practice may be referred to as a science. In this context science and art are not mutually exclusive they are complimentary.

As science improves so should art as has happened in the physical and biological sciences. To be sure the science underlying managing is fairly crude and inexact. This is true because many variables with which managers deal are extremely complex. Nevertheless such management knowledge can certainly improve managerial practice. Physicians without the advantage of science would be little more than witch doctors. Executives who attempt to manage without management science must trust to luck, intuition and past experience.

In managing as in any other field, unless practitioners are to learn by trial and error and it has been said that mangers’ errors are their sub-ordinates’ trials there is no place they can turn for meaningful guidance other than the accumulated knowledge underlying their practice.

The Role of Management theory

In the field of management, then, the role of theory is to provide a means of classifying significant and pertinent management knowledge. In the area of designing an effective organization structure, for example, there are a number of principles that are interrelated and that have a predictive value for managers.

Some principles give guidelines for delegating authority; these include the principle of delegating by results expected, the principle of equality of authority and responsibility, and the principle of unity of command.

Principles in management are fundamental truths (or what are thought to be truths` at a given time), explaining relationship between two or more sets of variables, usually an independent variable and a dependent variable. Principles may be descriptive or predictive, and not prescriptive. That is, they describe how one variable related to another—- what will happen when these variables interact. They do not prescribe what people should do. For example in physics, if gravity is the only force acting on a falling body, the body will fall at an increasing speed; this principle does not say whether anyone should jump off the roof of a high building. Or take the example of Parkinson’s Law: Work tends to expand to fill the time available. Even if Parkinson’s somewhat frivolous principle is correct (as it probably is), it does not mean that a manager should lengthen the time available for people to do a job. As another example in management the principles of unity of command states that more often an individual reports to a single superior, the more likely it is that the individual will feel a sense of loyalty and obligation and the less likely it is that there will be confusion about instructions. The principle merely predicts. It in no sense implies that individuals should never report to more them one person. Rather, it implies that if they do so, their managers must be available of possible dangers and take these risks into account in balancing the advantage and disadvantages of multiple commands.

Like engineers who apply physical principles to the design of an instrument, managers who apply theory to managing must usually blend principles with realities.



Managers get things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals. Managers do their work in an organization. This is a consciously coordinated social unit, composed unit, composed of two or more people that functions on relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. On the basis of this definition, manufacturing and service firms are organizations and so are schools, hospitals, churches, military units, retail stores, police departments, and local, state, and the central government. The people who oversee the activities of others and who are responsible for attaining goals in these organizations are managers although they’re sometimes called administrators, especially in not for profit organizations.

Management Functions

In the early part of the 20th century, A French industrialist by the name of Henri Fayol wrote that all managers perform five management functions: They plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. Today, we have condensed these to four planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

Because organizations exist to achieve goals, someone has to define those goals and the means for achieving them and Management is that someone. The planning function encompasses defining an organization’s goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing a comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate activities.

Managers are also responsible for designing an organization’s structure. We call this function organizing. It includes determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.

Every organization contains people, and it is management’s job to direct and coordinate those people. This is the leading function. When managers motivate employees, direct the activities of others, select the most effective communication channels, or resolve conflicts among members, they’re engaging in leading.

The final function managers perform is controlling. To ensure that things are going as they should, management must monitor the organization’s performance. Actual performance must be compared with previously set goals. If there are any significant deviations, it’s management’s job to get the organization back on track. This monitoring, comparing, and potential correcting is what is meant by the controlling function.’

So, using the functional approach the answer to the question, ‘What do managers do?’ is they plan, organize, lead, and control.

Traditional organization theorists developed certain generalizations which they considered to be principles of organization. These principles are useful first approximates, or guides for thought, in the organizing function. They provide a simple group of intuitive statements that provoke though by both operating managers and researchers in an organization. The most important of these principles are (1) unity of command, (2) exception principle, (3) span of control, (4) scalar principle, (5) organizing departments and (6) decentralization.

One of the traditional principles of organization generally referred to as unity of command states that no member of an organization should report to more than one superior on any single function. This principle appeals to common sense in a pure line organization, in which each superior has general authority; however, it becomes a complex problem in actual cases in which some form of staff and/or functional organization is used. In practice instruction may be received from several sources without loss of productivity. The central problem is to avoid conflict in orders from different people relating to the same subject. One should recognize immediately that the actions of a subordinate may be influenced by many persons who are not recognized in the formal hierarchy of authority. The principle of unity of command may be useful in the planning of an organization if it is interpreted as a tendency toward the simplification of relationship between superior and subordinate; it is not realistic if it is interpreted as an immutable law that would eliminate useful relationships among executives.

A second principle, called the exception principle, states that recurring decisions should be handled in a routine manner by lower level managers, whereas problems involving unusual matters should be referred to higher levels. This principle emphasizes that executives at the top levels of an organization have limited time and capacity and should refrain from becoming bogged down in routine details that can be handled as well by subordinates. Thus, it is an important concept concerning the delegation of authority in an organization.

The exception principle can be very useful to execute by focusing attention on those matters that should receive attention first. It is applicable at all levels and, if kept in mind, can help the inexperienced executive compensate for a human tendency to concentrate on the concrete, immediate, and detailed problems at the expenses of the more fundamental, difficult, and abstract issues. At the same time, attention to the principle can help the lower level managers understand exactly what they are expected to do.

The principle has remained important in modern theory because of the distinction it makes between programmed and non-programmed decisions. Programmed decisions are those tat are repetitive and routine and that can be handled by a definite procedure. Non-programmed decisions involve new, one shot and unstructured elements that require tailored handling by superiors. Programmed decisions may be easily delegated; non-programmed decisions usually need the attention of the superior in handling “exception”.

The structure of organization: Departmental activities

Organization involves the design of a departmental framework. Although there are several principles in this area, one is of major importance.

Principle of functional definition

The more a position or a department has a clear definition of the results expected, activities to be undertaken, and organization authority delegated and has an understanding of authority and informational relationships with other positions, the more adequately the responsible individual can contribute toward accomplishing enterprise objectives.

Process of organizing

The various principles of authority delegation and of department formation are fundamental truths about the process of organizing. They deal with phases of the two primary aspects of organizing—- authority and activity groupings. There are other principles that deal with the process of organizing. It is through their application that managers gain a sense of proportion or a measure of the total organizing process.

Principle of balance

In every structure there is need for balance. The application of principles or techniques must be balanced to ensure the overall effectiveness of the structure in meeting enterprise objectives.

The principles of balance is common to all areas of science and to to all functions of the manager. The inefficiencies of broad spans of management must be balanced against the inefficiencies of long lines of communication. Losses from multiple commands must be balanced against the gains from expertness and uniformity in delegating functional authority to- staff and service departments. The savings of functional specialization in departmentalizing must be balanced against the advantages the advantages of establishing profit responsible semi-independent product or territorial departments. It is apparent, once again, that the application of management theory depends on the specific situation.

Principles of flexibility

The more that provisions are made for building flexibili0ty into an organization structure, the more adequately an organization structure can fulfill its purpose.

Devices and techniques for anticipating and reacting to change must be built every structure. Every enterprise moves toward its goal in a changing environment, both external and internal. The enterprise that develops inflexibilities, whether these are resistance to change, too complicated procedures, or too-firm departmental lines, is risking the inability to meet the challenges of economic, technical, biological, political, and social change.

Principle of leadership facilitation

The more an organization structure and its delegation of authority enable managers to design and maintain an environment for performance, the more they will help the leadership abilities of those managers.

Managerial effectiveness depends to a great extent upon the quality of leadership of those in managerial positions, it is important for the organization structure to do its part in creating a situation in which a manager can most effectively lead. In this sense, organizing is a technique of promoting leadership. If the authority allocation and the structural arrangements create a situation in which heads of department tend to be looked upon as leaders and in which their task of leadership is aided, organization structure has accomplished an essential task.

Establishment of objectives and orderly planning are necessary for good organization as with the other functions of managing. Lack of design in organization is illogical, wasteful, and insufficient for success of an organization. It is illogical because good design, or planning, must come first whether one speaks of engineering or social practice.

The main sufferers from a lack of design in organization are those individuals who work in an undertaking. It is wasteful because unless jobs are clearly put together along lines of functional specialization, it is impossible to train new men (or women) to succeed to positions as the incumbents are promoted, resign or retire. It is inefficient because if management is not based on principles, it will be based on personalities, with the resultant rise of company politics. It is like a machine not running smoothly when fundamental engineering principles have been ignored in construction.

Planning for the ideal:

The search for an ideal organization to reflect enterprise goals under given circumstances is the impetus to planning. The search entails charting the main lines of organization, considering the organizational philosophy of the enterprise managers (e.g. whether authority should be centralized as much as possible or whether the company should divide its operations into semi independent product or territorial divisions), and sketching out consequent authority relationships.

The ultimate form established like all plans, seldom remains unchanged, and continuous remolding of the ideal plan is normally necessary. Nevertheless, an ideal organization plan constitutes a standard, and by comparing present structure with it, enterprises leaders know what changes should be made when possible.

An organizer must always be careful not to be blinded by popular notions in organizing, because what may work in one company may not work in another. Principles of organizing have general application, but the background of each company’s operation and needs must be considered in applying these principles. Organization structure needs to be tailor made.

Modification for the human factor:

If available personnel do not fit into the ideal structure and cannot or should not be pushed aside, the only choice is to modify the structure to fit individual capabilities, attitudes, or limitations. Although this modification may seem like organizing around people, in this case one is first organizing around the goals to be met and activities to be undertaken and only then making modifications for the human factor. Thus, planning will reduce compromising the necessity for principle whenever changes occur in personnel.

The fair sized business is distinguished from the small business in two ways. In the first place the top operating job becomes a fulltime assignment. And the overall business can no longer be set by the man who holds the top operating job. Setting objectives may indeed still be carried on as a part time job; the treasurer, for instance, may handle it in addition to his financial duties. But it is usually better in the fair-sized business to organize objective setting as a separate function to be discharged, for instance, by the functional managers meeting regularly as a planning committee.

The fair sized business therefore always has to have a chief executive team. It always has a problem of the relationship of functional managers reporting to top management.

It is this stage that a decision has to be made concerning which of the principles of organization structure apply. The small business is, as a rule, is organized functionally; and there is no difficulty in meeting the requirement that functional managers report directly to the manager of a genuine business. In the fair-sized business the federal principle of organization becomes both applicable and advantageous.

Finally, in the fair-sized business we encounter for the first time the problem of organizing technical specialists. Staff services by and large are still unknown (with the exception perhaps of a personnel department). But technical specialists are needed in many areas. Their relationship to functional and top management and the objectives of the business therefore have to be thought through.

The next stage is the large business. Its characteristic is that either one or the other of the chief executive jobs has to be organized on a team basis. Either the top action job or the job setting over all objectives is too big for one man and has to be split. Sometimes one job becomes a full time job for one man and a part time job for several other people.

There may, for instance, be a president who is full time chief action executive. But both the manufacturing vice president and sales vice-president may spend a considerable part of their time as top action officers in addition to their functional duties. Similarly, there may be an executive vice-president concerned full time with over all objectives. The chairman of the Board, semi retired from active executive office, may spend practically full time on objectives. At the same time the company’s treasurer, its chief engineer and its personnel vice president may all spend a large part of their time on setting objectives for the company.

In the large business the federal principle of management organization is always the better one. In most large businesses it is the only satisfactory one. This raises a problem of the relationship between top management and the autonomous managers of federal businesses.

The last stage of business size is the very large business. It is characterized first by the fact that both the action and the over all objective setting part of the chief executive job must be organized on a team basis. And each job requires the full time services of several people. Secondly, it can only be organized on the federal principles of management structure. The business is too big and too complex to be organized another way. Finally, the organization of the chief executive and its relationship to operating management tend to become major problems which engage the attention and energy of top management people before everything else. It is in the very large business that systematic organization of the chief executive job is both most difficult and most needed. —

The first principle of manager development must therefore be the development of the entire management group. We spend a great deal of time, money and energy on improving the performance of a generator by 5%. Less time, less money and less energy would probably be needed to improve the performance of managers by 5% and the resulting increase in the production of energy would be much greater.

The second principle is that manager development must be dynamic. It must aim at replacing what is today’s managers their jobs, or their qualifications. It must always focus on the needs of tomorrow. What organization will be needed to attain the objectives of tomorrow? What management jobs will that require? What qualifications will managers have to have to be equal to the demands of tomorrow? What additional skills will they have to acquire, what knowledge and ability will they have to possess?

The tools of manager development as commonly used today will not do. Not only is the back up man inadequate; job rotation which in most companies is the favorite tool of manager development, is not enough either.

Job rotation takes one of two forms as a rule. A man who has come up as a specialist in one function is put into another function for a short while often into several functions, one after another. Or the man is put into a special training job, since he does not know enough about any other function to carry a regular management job in it. An announcement made a short while ago by one of the large electrical manufacturer states, for instance: Men in the promotable group will be rotated into special jobs in functions they are not familiar with, each job assignment to last six months to two years.

But what business needs is not engineers with a smattering of accounting. It needs engineers capable of managing a business. One does not come broader by adding one narrow specialty to another; one becomes broader by seeing the business as a whole. One can learn of a big area such as marketing or engineering in six months probably the terminology and a little more. A good course in marketing, or a good reading list on the subject, teaches many times more. The whole idea of training jobs is contrary to all rules and experience. A man should never be given a job that is not real job that does not require performance from him.

In fine, manager development must embrace all managers in the enterprise. It must aim at challenging all to growth and self development. It must focus on performance rather than on promise, and on tomorrow’s requirements rather than on those of today. Manager development must be dynamic and qualitative rather than static replacement based on mechanical rotation. Developing tomorrow’s managers mean in effect developing today’s managers all of them to be bigger men and better managers.

The job of developing tomorrow’s managers is both too big and too important to be considered a special activity. Its performance depends on all factors in the managing of managers. A man’s job is related to his superior and subordinates, the spirit of the organization, and its organizational structure. No amount of special manger development activities will, for instance, develop tomorrow’s managers in an organization that focuses on weakness and fears strength, or in one that scorns integrity and character in selecting men for managerial appointments. No amount of activity will develop tomorrow’s managers in a functionally centralized organization; all that it is likely to produce are tomorrow’s specialists. Conversely, genuine federal decentralization will develop, train and test a fair number of managers for tomorrow without any additional manager development activity as such. —

Organization structure must apply one or both of two principles.

It must whenever possible integrate activities on the principle of federal decentralization, which organizes activities into autonomous product businesses each with its own market and product, and with its own profit and loss responsibility. Where this is not possible it must use functional decentralization, which sets up integrated units with maximum responsibility for a major and distinct stage in the business process.

Federal decentralization and functional decentralization are complementary rather than competitive. Both have to be used in almost all businesses. Federal decentralization is the more effective and more productive of the two. But the genuinely small business does not need it, since it is entirely an “autonomous product business”. Nor can federalism be applied to the internal organization of management in every large business; in a railroad, for example, the nature of the business and its process rule it out. And in practically every business there is a point below which federal decentralization is no longer possible, below which there is no “autonomous product” around which management can be organized.

Functional decentralization is universally applicable to the organization of management. But it is second choice for any but the small enterprise. It has to be used in all enterprises sooner or later, but the later it can be resorted to, the stronger the organization.

Decentralization whether federal or functional has become so prevalent in industry during the last few years it has become a household word. Its practice goes back at least thirty years. DuPont, General Motors, Sears and General Electric all, started to develop their decentralized organization before 1929.

Yet organization theory has paid little attention to it. General Motors in 1946 was the first to consider decentralization as a distinct principle of organization.

The reason for this lag is that conventional organization theory starts with the function inside a business rather than with the goals of a business and their requirements. It takes the functions for granted if not for God-given; and it sees in the business nothing but a congeries of functions.

Moreover, conventional theory still defines a function as a group of related skills. And it considers this similarity of skills to be both the essence of functionalism and its major virtue. If we look at well-organized functional units, however, we shall find no such “bundle of skills”. The typical sales department, for instance, includes selling activities, market research, pricing, market development, customer service, advertising and promotion, product development, often even responsibility for relationships with governmental bodies and trade associations. And the typical manufacturing department covers an equally wide range. No greater diversity of skills, abilities or temperaments could be imagined than that needed in these “functional” organization. Indeed, no greater variety exists in the business as a whole. If functionalism were really, as the books say, organization by skill-relationship, the typical sales or manufacturing department would be absurd if not totally unable to function. But they work indeed, they work much better than units organized on similarity of skills because they bring together all the specialized activities needed in one fairly sharply delimited stage of the work. That they require different skills and different temperaments is irrelevant; what matters is that they bring together what is objectively needed for performance. The first principle of good production organization is to bring the machines to the work rather than the work to the machines. It is cheaper to have the work flow according to its own inner logic, even if it requires a few more machines, than to cart materials around. Similarly, we must always bring the special activity to the work, never the work to the special activity. For ideas and information cost even more to cart around than materials.

The stress on functional organization by related skills is thus a misunderstanding of what functional organization properly should be organization by stage of process. This is illustrated by the unsatisfactory experience with those functions that are typically organized as bundles of skills: accounting and engineering. The typical accounting department is in constant friction with the rest of the organization. The typical engineering department has constant difficulty working out its objectives or measuring its performance. Neither condition is an accident. —

Certain basic ideas are useful in the development of a control system.

1.Strategic Point Control: Optimum control can be achieved only if critical, key, or limiting points can be identified and close attention directed to adjustments at those points. An attempt to control all points tends to increase unnecessary efforts and to decrease attention to important problems. This principle of control is closely related to the exception principle of organization. Both emphasize the discrimination between important and unimportant factors. Good control does not mean maximum control, for control is expensive. For example, the development of a good fire control program in a forest depends upon the strategic placement of towers on hills. The haphazard addition of a large number of devices and people in the forest cannot yield an equal degree of control.

2.Feedback: The process of adjusting future actions on the basis of information about past performance is known as feedback. Although applications of the idea date back to controls on windmills, the fly-ball governor of Watt’s steam engine, and the steering of steamships, recent developments in electronic hardware of automatic control have reinforced the importance of this principle. The electrical engineer refers to a closed loop system of feedback when the information of actual performance is fed back to the source of energy by electrical or mechanical means in an endless chain. An open-loop system of feedback involves human intervention at some point in the flow. Management has many uses of the feedback principle in areas that, at first, appear to be unrelated.

3.Flexible Control: Any system of control must be responsive to changing conditions. Often, the importance of a control system demands that it be adaptable to new developments, including the failure of the control system itself. Plans may call for an automatic system to be backed up by a human system that would operate in an emergency; likewise, an automatic system may back up a human system.

4.Organizational Suitability: Controls should be tailored to fit the organization. The flow of information concerning current performance should correspond with the organizational structure employed. To be able to control overall operations, a superior must find a pattern that will provide control for individual parts. Budgets, quotas and other techniques may be useful in controlling separate departments.

5.Self control: Units may be planned to control themselves. If a department can have its own goals and control system, any of the detailed controls can be handled within the department. These subsystems of self-control can then be tied together by the overall control system.

6.Direct Control: Any control system should be designed to maintain direct contact between the controller and the controlled. Even when there is a number of control systems provided by staff specialists the supervisor at the first level is still important because of having direct knowledge of performance.

7.Human factor: Any control system involving people is affected by the psychologist’s manner in which human beings view the system. A technically well-designed control system may fail because the human being reacts unfavorably to the system. For example, a dynamic and imaginative leader tends to resist control. Controls for such a person demand special attention to the human factor.

The essentials of any control system and the principles of control provide a sound basis for a manager; planning is a prerequisite for this important managerial function.

In the current context of international business manufacturers implementing controls in various functional areas must evaluate the costs of control through the concerned managers so as to determine the direct financial implications on the entire manufacturing operations of the production set up for a particular control. If the financial implication is cost advantageous then certain controls of this nature must be introduced. —

Research on small groups has indicated several principles of group participation that provide guides for group interaction.

1.The physical layout, size of group, and general atmosphere are important factors determining the effectiveness of problem solving. For example, a meeting located n the boss’s office will be entirely different from one held in a “neutral” conference room. If the committee has only three members, it may not have enough “interaction”; if the committee has thirty members, it is not possible for each member to participate freely.

2.Threat reduction is an important objective in the planning for group action so that the group will shift from interpersonal problems to group goals. Any tendency to put a member “on the spot” or to force him to “take sides” will increase the debating society feeling and will result in an increase of tension.

3. The best group leadership is performed by the entire group and is not the job of the “chairperson”, “secretary,” or other formal leader. A group that functions well tends to function informally, with no single person providing all the leadership. Leadership may shift, and different types of leaders may evolve. One member may serve as the social leader another may serve as “questioner,” another may act as “clarifier” or “summarizer” and so forth.

4.Goals should be explicitly formulated by the group. The group should refrain from being “fenced in” by predetermined rules. The objective is to increase the involvement of each member in the decision making process.

5.An agenda should be formulated by the group but should be changed as new goals develop from new needs. Preplanning for meetings should retain flexibility so that the group maintains its ability to meet issues as it perceives them.

6.The decision making process should continue until the group formulates a solution upon which it can form a consensus. If the group action results in a minority opinion, the group has failed to maximize its effectiveness. In a group that emphasizes this principle, there is no formal voting. Discussions continue until no one in the group can add any improvements to the solution.

7.Any group should be made aware of the interaction process by which the group arrives at solutions. In this manner, the skill of being a member of the group becomes a distinguishable skill that the executive can develop. This principle leads to the idea that group action is an important subject for study; continual evaluations should be made of group processes.

Note that these principles were derived from research in the 1950s in the United States; however, not many American firms seriously attempted to apply them until recently. But with the obvious success of their practice in Japan, American firms are eager to try Japanese approaches especially quality circles and the stress on seeking consensus. The Japanese ringi system of decision making has received less attention. This approach involves the horizontal participation by a number of middle mangers prior to consideration by top management, represents a device for knitting together as many people as possible in decision making.

In 1985, prior to the construction of the new Saturn plant in Tennessee, General Motors Corporation reached an agreement with the United Automobile Workers union that radically changed organization structure and joint decision processes with management and labor. All levels involve committees with both management and labor participants. At the top is a strategic advisory committee composed of middle management joint committees, business units, work unit modes as well as a work unit of 6 to 15 workers led by an elected UAW counselor. After 30 years practicing mangers are recognizing the value of group-decision processes and many of the principles outlined above. The immediate cause for this change was the desire to reduce the several thousand dollar cost advantage held by the Japanese in the production of small cars.

Decisions vary as to their complexity and importance, whether they are made primarily by individuals or by groups. The more complex and important is a decision, the greater the need for useful decision rules. The complexity of a decision increases as the number of variable to be considered increases, as the degree of uncertainty increases, and as more value judgments are required. The importance of a decision increases when more decisions are dependent on it, when more subordinates are involved, and when the financial consequences are more critical. —