Myth of managment
Myth of managment
Making decision
is, om the one hand, one of the most fastinating mamifestations of biological
activity and, on the other hand, a matter of terrifying for the whole of the
human race. Althought this activity is both fascinating and awesome, it is
difficult to find a satisfactory name for it in any of the common languages. In
English we use terms as manager, administrator, executive or simple decision
maker. Yet each of these terms fails someone to capture the true significance
of the human being. Because we need a label to conduct our discussion, I shall
risk choosing the term manager and being to say some things that will
generalize on this term beyond its ordinary usage in English.
The
manager is the man who decides among alternative choises. He must decide which
choise he believes will lead to a certain desired objectives. But his decision
is not an abstract one, because it creates a type of reality. The maneger is
the man with the magic that enables him to create in the world a state of
affairs that would not have occured except for him. We say that the manger is
one who has the authority to make such choices. He is also a person who has the
responsibility for the choises he has made in the sense that rest of his fellow
men may judge wheter he should be rewarded or punished for his choises; he is
the person who justifiably is the object of praise or blame.
So broad a description of the manager makes managers of us all. It is a
common failing of the labels that language applies to things that they may be
generalized to encompass everything, as philosophers have long recognized in
the case of such labels as matter and mind. It takes no great sophomoric talent
to see that the world is basically matter and that everything could be reduced
thereto. Nor does it take any great astuteness to see that everything a human
being recognizes any great astuteness to see that everything a human being
recognizes as natural reality os the product of some mind or collection of
minds. So, too, the label manager may become appropriately applied to
practically everything or at least to every human, once we describe the manager
as someone having the authority and responsibility for making choises. I am
interested in the broad aspect of desicion making, but for present purposes I
want to add one more stipulation that makes the label manager less general.
This is the stipulation that managerial activity take place witthin a “system”:
The manager must concern himself with interrelated parts of a complex
arganization of activities, and he is responsible for the effectiveness of the
whole system...
But even this further stipulation concerning the use of the label
manager permits us to discribe many activities as management. It is true that
in history of England and United States, the term management has often been
narrowed to mean tha managing of mean the managing of industrial activities
especially for the purpose of generating profit for an enterprise. In the
connection management is contrasted with labor. In government actievities our
use of term manager is often labelled administrator, and the term executive is
often used to describe people who are given the legal authority to put into
practice the law of the land. All these activities, wheter they be at the level
of goverment or industry or education or health, or whatever, have a common
groind which we wish to explore. The common ground is the burden of making
choises about system improvement and the responsibility of responding to the
choises made in a human envirovement in which there is bound to be opposition
to what the manager has decided. Thus the head of a labor union, the state
legislator. The head of a goverment agency, the foreman of a shop are all
managers in our sense. So is a man in his own family a manager; so is the
captain of a football team. Probably all of us some time or other in our lifes
become managers when, because of oppointment to a committee or because of our
political activities, we take on the authority and responsibility of making
decisions in complex system. Managing is an activity of which we are all aware,
and its consequences concern each one of us.
I said that managers must bear the burden of the burden of the decisison
they make. I could have added, in more optimistic tone, that they enjoy the
pleasure accompanying to make decisions. And certanly many managers in today`s
society do find a great deal of phychic satisfaction in the role they play
which society so clearly recognizes as important and which it credits with a
great deal of prestige.
Noe managing is a type of behavior, and since it`s a very important type
of behavior, you might expect that we know a great deal about it. But we don`t
at all. We could also explore the many ways in which managers often think they
manage, but observes of their behavior often from them quite radically. The
manager is frequently astonished to hear sociologist`s description of his
activities, which he believes he himself knows so well, and he resent the
inclination on the part of the “detached” scientist to try to describe the
activity that he performs.
Imagine an observes carefully trained to study such activities as bees
in a hive, or fish in a school, or birds in a flock, and suppose such a student
of nature becomes curious about the behavior of judges during a trial. How
might such a scientist describe what the jugde actually does? He might learn a
little bit from some of the reflective judges, and perhaps a little bit more
from the sociologist and other scientists who have attempted to describe legal behavior,
but he would find that most of the activity remains a huge to the whole of
humanity-a mystery that no one has ever felt inclined to investigate in detail.
The whole activity of managing, importrant as it is for the human race,
is still largely an unknow aspect of the natural world. When man detaches
himself and tries to observe what kind of living animal he is, finds that he
knows very little about the things most important to him and precious little
about his role as a decision maker Few managers are capable of describing how
they reach their decision in a way that someone else can understand; few can
tell us how they feel about the decisions once they have been made. Of course,
despite our ignorance about managerial phenomena, a great deal is written on
the subject in popular magazines and managerial journals. It appears that the
less we know about subject, the more we are inclined to write extensively about
it with great cinviction. Some writings describe the variuos rituals folowed in
organizations proir and posterior to the actual managerial decision. But most
of these description pay little attention to the very puzzling question of when
a decision actually occured and who made it. A great deal is said about
committee deliberations and other aspect of organizational rationality that go
into the making of a decision, and the many checks and control that are exerted
to determine whether the decisions have been made properly. Much attention is
paid to these aspect of organizational decision making, because they show up on
the surface, so to speak. But the facts that a committee deliberated for three
hours and then a decision emerged do not tell us who made the decision, how it
was or when it was made. It might be added that the verbal assertion of the
committee often do not tell us what decision is made.
So there is a great mystery of the natural world: the who, when, how,
and what of man`s decision making.
But even if we were to succeed in discovering a great deal more than we
have about management, the result would be at best descriptive. It would be
merely the background of the basic problem before us, namely, the question of
how the manager should decide.
Am I right in claiming that we know so little about management? After
all, most of us are quite willing, even eager, to prise and complain. We don`t
hesitate to say that some men are better managers than others. We are
constantly criticizing our political leaders. Biographers are accustomed to
choose the most “outstanding” leaders of the age as the subject of their texts.
These leaders may be great political leaders, leaders of industry, leaders of
social movement, of religion, and so on. What is the quality these men of
success have that less successful colleagues lack? Since we believe we can identify
“successful” leaders, surely we also believe we know a great deal about what a
manager should decide. For example, in the case of the President of the United
States, we are told in our school-boy text that we can readily recognize that
some of these Presidents were “great” and some of them far from great. What is
the quality of greatness that we are led to ascribe to some of these
presidents?
A ready answer is at hand-the succesful and great Presidents were those
who made decisions that today we clearly recognize to be correct, and those who
made these decions in the face of severe opposition. We are led to believe that
the activity of great presidents is a marvelous example of succesful decisin
making in large complex systems.
But the skeptics among us will find this answer quite unsatisfactory as
an explanation of what constites greatness in a Pesident. In the first place,
history has no record of what would have happened had the opposition`s point of
view succeeded or if serious modifications had been made in the choises of the
so-called great Presidents. What if the Union had not been saved, or or our
independence declared? History seems only to have recorded the episodes that
followed upon the particular decision that was made and does vot provide us
with an analysis of event that might have occured if an alternative had been
adopted.
More curios still is the implict that assumption
that a successful President made his great decision on the basis of his own
particular abilities. Since evidence is so often lacking that great Presidents
of the past had these abilities, there is a natural inclination on the part of
many of us to ascribe either determinism or randomness to the activities of
so-called successful managers. In the case of determinism, we might argue that
the events of the world occur by the accidental conglomeration of many forces
unknown to man these forces produce “decision” that man in his innocence
believes that he himself makes. The decision of independence in 1776 was,
according to this view, simply the outgrowth of many complex human and physical
interrelationships. Those who adopt the idea of randomness simply add to the
physical determinism of events a random fluctuation of the sort occuring in a
roulette wheel or in the shuffling of cards. The would then be willing to admit
that other decision might have been made in 1776 or later, but that these
decision would be very much like the outcome of another spin of the roulette
wheel. In either event, wheter we choose to describe the world of decision
making as determinism or as randomness, we conclude that ascribing greatness to
the decision makers in Independence Hall would be a mistake unless one meant by
greatness some recognizable features of the determined or randomevents occuring
in the world. By analogy one might say that the man who spins the roulette
wheel is its “manager” who decides nothing about the outcome of spins; a
multitude of hidden physical forces determine where the wheel will stop.
Calling a President great is like calling the spinner of a roulette wheel that
happens to have a satisfactory result a great spinner.
This is certainly a crass and impolite way to describe the great
managerial minds of the past. Surely we can do more for their memories than
describe them as irrelevant aspects of the history of society. We might try ro
look into the story og their lives to find evidence that they really had
superior methods of deliberation. We might try to show that they had the sort
of brilliance and courage that creates an ability to handle confusing pieces of
information and to reach approprite decisions. Perphaps the great manager is an
extremely adept information processor who can act so rapidly that he himself is
not even aware of the comparisons and computations he has made.
Indeed, this last is more or less the the popular image of the great
manager. For example, many scientists who advice politicians, corporate
msnsgers, and other decision makers often state that they cannot possibly
attempt to tell such men what decision should be made. At best they can merely
tell the decision maker about certain outcomes if the decision are adopted.
Thus the more among the advisers believe that they have mo intent of
‘replacing’ the managers they advise. And yet if these scientific advisers are
capable of discering at least some aspects of the managerial decision, what is
it they luck? What are they incapable of doing that the politician and
corporate manager are so succesful in accomplishning? What is this secret
ingredient of the great president of vorporations, universities, and countries
that no scientiat or ordinary man could ever hope to acquire?
The answer usually given is that the president has information about
many different aspects of the world and has ability to put these aspect
together in a way that no analysis could possibly do. In other words, he has a
vision of the whole system and can relate the effectiveness of the parts to the
parts effectiveness of the whole. The hidden secret of the great manger, so
goes the myth, is the ability to solve the puzzling problems of whole systems
that we have been discussing so far.
This answer is myth, because it is totally unsatisfactory to reasoning
of intellectually curious person. Are ‘great’ managers fantastically high speed-data
processors? Do great managerial minds outstrip any machinery now on the market
or contemplated for decades to come? From what we know of the brain and its
capabilities, the answer seems to be no. Indeed, it is doubtful whweter the
great manager in reaching decisions uses very much of the information he has
received from various sources. It is also doubtful wheter the manager scans
many of the alternatives open to him.... We describe how the scientist, when he
comes to grips with the problems of decision making, discovers that they can
only be reperesented by fairly complicated mathematical models. Even in fairly
simple decision-making situations we have come to learn how complicated is the
problem of developing a sensible way of using available information. It seems
incredible that the so-called succesful managers really have inbuilt models
that are rich and complicated enough to include the subtleties of large-scale
systems.
Suppose for the moment we descend from the lofty heights of the decision
makers in Independence Hall and the White House and begin to describe a very
mundane and easily recognized managerial problem cencerning the nember of
tellers that should be available to customers in a bank. All of us have
experienced the annoyance of going into a bank in a hurry and spending a
leisurely but frustrating half hour behind the wrong line. How should the
manager decide on the allocation of tellers at various times of the day?
This is fairly simple managerial problem amd its like is encountered by
thousands of middle managers every day. Furthermore, this problem has been
studied quite extensively in operation research and its “solution” is often
found in the elementary texts. The texts say that the scientist should try to
answer the managerial question by considering both the inconvenience of the
customers who wait in the lines and the possible idle time of the tellers who
wait at their stations when no customers. Thus the “succesful” manager can be
identified in an objective way, and we need not take a poll of greatness or
lack thereof to ascertain wheter the manager has performed well. The succesful
manager will be someone who has properly balanced the two costs of the
operation of servicing customers in a bank: the cost of waiting customers and the
cost of idle tellers. He will insist that the cost of a nimute`s waiting of a
customer in a line must be compared to a minute`s idle time of the teller. On
the basis of this comparison, together with suitable evidence conserning the
arrival rate of customers and the time service each customer, the succesful
manager will determine the policy concerning allocation of tellers to varios
stations during the day. Perhaps no one will feel inclined to write the
biography of so ordinary a man as the manager of a branch of a local bank, but
in any case if this manager decides according to the rational methods just
outlined, his biographer may at least be honest about his “greatness”.
Nevertheless, the analysis just outlined leaves much unanswered. For
example, an idle teller need not be idle while waiting at a station where are
no customers. Instead he may be occupied with other routine matters requiring
attention in the administration of the bank. Consequently, if the manager can
design the entire operation of his bank’s many function properly, he may be
able to decrease the cost of idle time of professional who are servicing
customers. If we look on the othwer side of the picture, that is, the
inconvenience to a customer, we may find that in fact waiting in line is not an
inconvience at all if the customer happens to meet an acquaintance there.
Perhaps the manager should serve coffe and doughnuts to waiting customers.
Furthermore, if the manager could somehow or other hope to control the behavior
of his customers, he might be able to recognize their arrivals in such a way
that inconvenience costs are vastly reduced. Add to these considerations other
innovations that might be introduced: For example, in many cases banks set up
Express Windows to handle customers who would normally have very low servoce
times. Hence, an overall average waiting time may not make senese if there are
different types of service tailored to the various needs of the customers.
But then another, broader consideration occurs to us: Handling the
public’s financial matters by branch banking methods may be completely wrong.
Modern technology may of developing financial servicing methods far cheaper for
both bank and customer. After all, handling cash and checks is an extremly
awkward way for a person to acquire goods at a price. With adequately designed
information centers, the retail markets need only input information about a
customer purchase, and the customer’s employers need only inputinformation
about his income. Thus every purchase would become simply a matter of
centralized information processing as woulod a man’s weekly or monthly
paycheck. There would therefore be no real need for any of us to carry money
about and no need to go to a bank and stand patintly in line. But this idea of
automated purchasing and income recording is followed by another thought. We
realize that any such automated finacial sysytem would probably end in
eliminating a number of clearical and managerial jobs. Consequently we must
examine the social problems of displaced personnel and the need for retraining,
otherwise total social costs of automated banking might be far greater than the
convenience gained by introducing new technology.
Before we can decide whweter the manager of the branch bank is
performing “satisfactorily”, we must decide a much broader issue-wheter the
particular system that the manger operates is an appropriate one. This question
leads to deeper consideration concerning the potential of modern technology and
their inplications with respect to automation, job training, and the future
economics of many lives.
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