Rethinking Management - Essay Example

Rethinking Management Section Number of Rethinking Management Introduction When we speak of ‘management’ we,more often than not, have a very strait-jacketed perspective that has been traditionally or conventionally defined as a ‘way of doing things’. People who practice the art of management or managers, as we know them, are supposed to “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 of two or more people that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.” (Robbins, 2002, p. 2) Organizational behaviour (OB) is a multi-disciplinary field that claims to delve deep into the innards of organizations in order to study what goes on within them, their characteristics and their intrinsic processes so that the response of or change in behaviour of organizations to management stimuli can be gauged. This would enable managers to plan their management strategies to make organizations more efficient and streamlined. Organization behaviour in itself is defined as an inter-disciplinary field that seeks to apply the concepts of behavioral sciences in the management of organizations. To do so, it draws heavily from behavioral sciences such as sociology, psychology and anthropology (Duncan, 1981). As organizations grow bigger and bigger and encompass the entire global, they grow in complexity. The conventional principles of Organization behaviour and management fail to offer logical solutions and explanations to the problems that riddle organizations of the modern world. It has therefore become very clear that there is the need to re-examine and rethink the principles on which Organizational Behavior and management are based. The objective of this paper is to assess what actually goes into management, and how it could be very different from the conventional restricted perspective of management that is promoted by text books of organizational behaviour. The role of the conventional manager is thus under scrutiny. Chinks in the Armour It would be a fallacy to accept that Organizational Behaviour, as it is in the present, has been able to encompass all aspects of organizations. In fact it has been argued that organizational behaviour actively promotes the views and perspectives of particular groups of people whose interests is served through the type of management that is advocated. Though organizational behaviour revolves around what can be termed as core organizational features such as organization structure, work and power relationships and workers’ unions, it fails to take into consideration other equally crucial aspects of behaviour such as the influence of sexism, the use of violence, implicit or explicit, racial discrimination or racist approaches and harassment. Even in its basic objectives and the principles that it is oriented around, Organizational Behaviour is influenced largely by the interests of a specific community and not to all the members of the organization as a whole. With rapid development in technology throughout the ages, Organizational Behaviour has adopted various processes such as division of labour, specialization, and more recently, change management and business process re-engineering. All these innovations in approach can however be said to be single dimensional in that they have considered above all the interests of the managing class or the profitability of the management and the owners at the cost of other groups of people who are an integral part of the organization. This approach of Organizational Behaviour has been termed as ‘managerialist’. In fact management has indeed remained more manager-centric, attributing and defining tasks and capabilities which may well be beyond a manager without wholesome and meaningful contribution and participation from other quarters. Organizations that can make the best use of their employees’ talents and energies are the most successful (Heil, Bennis & Stephens, 2000), and it is not necessary that the credit of being able to do so goes to the management only. In the evolving organization, individual, employees and other stakeholders who are not formally a part of the management play an increasingly important role in management. This has been broadly termed as Management through Organization (Hales, 2003). Management redefined The ‘management’ that has been taught to students of management has largely been viewed through a set of blinkers that allow management to be seen as a natural activity or field of work and as something that is transparent and clear in that there is no confusion regarding what the term implies. In this specified universe of what can be called orthodox management, the manager is the ultimate master, and management is limited to only what managers do. Yet, we find that the term ‘management’ itself is interpreted in different ways by different theorists of management. Fayol (1949) describes management in a very abstract way as a function that comprises the activities of planning, organizing, commanding, co-ordinating and controlling. He however does not specify what these activities practically imply. In 1973, Mintzberg attempted to specify what managers actually do. He suggested that managers performed inter-personal, informational and decisional roles, or in other words they maintained relationships between employees, provided the required information and took the required decision in order to make an organization thrive. More importantly, he emphasized on networking and negotiation as key activities of managers. Mintzberg however did not try to find out what it would be like to perform such tasks. In spite of all such attempts to define and formalize the role of managers, studies of the working patterns of managers suggest that they their work is frenetic, chaotic, reactive and non-analytical. Hales (2003) takes a radically different approach to management as a means to explore ideology and control, differences in management and to understand why managing is problematic and contested. He advocates that Managing Through Organization (MTO) would imply the need to plan, allocate, motivate, co-ordinate and control. It is however to be noted that these functions of management were there even in classical or mechanistic management approaches, but they meant very different things. While in classical management, planning would imply a centralized system with the management distinctly separated, in modern or organic management, it would imply a decentralized system with partial separation or ‘de-separation’ of management. In classical management, allocation would mean complex division of labour, while in modern management; allocation of work is achieved through group discussions. Similarly, in classical management motivation is external to the system, whereas in modern management through organization motivation is internalised and manifested as deferred rewards from the career of the person concerned. In classical management co-ordination is achieved through physical flow of work, but in modern MTO co-ordination comes through teamwork and is mutual between the parties involved. Finally, control in classical management is brought about by the imposition of rules which the usually unwilling employee has to abide by, in modern MTO control is sought to be interwoven into the organization through norms that are institutionalised in policy. Tapping Management Resources MTO is all about managers taking the help of non management employees in managing organizations. Management can no longer be authoritarian, and the trend is more towards workplace democracy that promotes participatory management (Collins, 1997). This type of management encourages decentralization so that people at all levels are able to contribute towards effective and efficient management. The modern-day manager has to be aware of the managerial support that could be available outside the strict domain of defined management. To be able to tap this readily available resource could be the deciding factor in his or her performance as a manager. Employee participation and participatory management are strategies that any manager could employ to reap huge benefits in terms of organizational performance and accountability. “Employee Participation is generally defined as a process in which influence is shared among individuals who are other wise hierarchically unequal. Participatory management practice balances the involvement of managers and their subordinates in information processing, decision making and problem solving endeavours.” (Bhatti & Qureshi, 2007) Studies have confirmed that the best way to improve productivity is by establishing common goals for employees and managers. This is possible only with the participation of employees in management processes so that their inputs can be considered in the development of mission statement and formulating important policies and procedures. This ensures the involvement of employees in the organization because the overall gaols and objectives of the organization reflect the desires and wishes of the employees. In the past also, studies have shown that employee participation is positively related to the productivity, performance and satisfaction of employees (Wagner, 1994). Employee participation as a strategy for management through organization can only is realized through employee empowerment. The extent of empowerment of employees is however a matter of debate. A cynical observation is that employee empowerment is usually a tool which is used by the management for control and manipulation of employees, while softer view of human resource management holds that employee empowerment is essential for the realization of maximum organizational potential. Nevertheless there is no doubt that empowerment of employees would be a crucial and essential factor of any form of employee participation of participatory management through the organization. Conclusion Organizational Behaviour is not an exact science and therefore cannot claim to provide a distinctive and clear picture of how to best manage an organization. In the course of development of management, managers have been accorded the role of the knight in shining armour who provides solutions to all management problems. The Management through Organization (MTO) approach seeks to take a more practical path by pooling in all management resources that could be available within an organization irrespective of the fact whether they belong to the formally defined management or not. References -01 Bhatti, K., K., Qureshi, T., M., 2007, Impact of Employee Participation on Job Satisfaction, Employee Commitment and Employee Productivity, International Review of Business Research Papers, Vol. 3, No. 2. Collins, D., 1997, The Ethical Superiority and Inevitability of Participatory Management as an Organizational System, Organization Science, Vol. 8, No. 5, School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison Duncan, W., J., 1981, Organizational Behaviour, 2nd Edition, Houston Miffin Harcourt. Fayol, H., 1949, General and Industrial Management, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, London Hale, C., 2000, Managing through Organization: The Management Process, Forms of Organization and The Work of Managers, Cengage Learning Heil, G., Bennis, W., Stephens, D., C., 2000, Douglas McGregor Revisited. New York, John Wiley and Sons. Robbins, S., P., 2002, Organizational Behaviour, 9th Edition, San Diego State University, Prentice Hall International, Inc. Wagner, A., J., 1994, Participation’s effects on performance and satisfaction: A reconsideration of research evidence, Academy of Management Review, vol.19. Read More