Реферат: Myth of managment

Making decision is, om the one hand,one of the most fastinating mamifestations of biological activity and, on theother hand, a matter of terrifying for the whole of the human race. Althoughtthis activity is both fascinating and awesome, it is difficult to find asatisfactory name for it in any of the common languages. In English we useterms as manager, administrator, executive or simple decision maker. Yet eachof these terms fails someone to capture the true significance of the humanbeing. Because we need a label to conduct our discussion, I shall risk choosingthe term manager and being to say some things that will generalize on this termbeyond its ordinary usage in English.

 The manager is the  man whodecides among alternative choises. He must decide which choise he believes willlead 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 magicthat enables him to create in the world a state of affairs that would not haveoccured except for  him. We say that themanger is one who has the authority to make such choices. He is also a personwho has the responsibility for the choises he has made in the sense that restof his fellow men may judge wheter he should be rewarded or punished for hischoises; he is the person who justifiably is the object of praise or blame.

  So broad a description of the manager makesmanagers of us all. It is a common failing of the labels that language appliesto things that they may be generalized to encompass everything, as philosophershave long recognized in the case of such labels as matter and mind. It takes nogreat sophomoric talent to see that the world is basically matter and thateverything could be reduced thereto. Nor does it take any great astuteness tosee that everything a human being recognizes any great astuteness to see thateverything a human being recognizes as natural reality os the product of somemind or collection of minds. So, too, the label manager may becomeappropriately applied to practically everything or at least to every human,once we describe the manager as someone having the authority and responsibilityfor making choises. I am interested in the broad aspect of desicion making, butfor present purposes I want to add one more stipulation that makes the labelmanager less general. This is the stipulation that managerial activity takeplace witthin a “system”: The manager must concern himself with interrelatedparts of a complex arganization of activities, and he is responsible for theeffectiveness of the whole system...

 But even this further stipulation concerningthe use of the label manager permits us to discribe many activities asmanagement. It is true that in history of England and United States, theterm  management has often been narrowedto mean tha managing of mean the managing of industrial activities especiallyfor the purpose of generating profit for an enterprise. In the connectionmanagement is contrasted with labor. In government actievities our use of termmanager is often labelled administrator, and the term executive is oftenused  to describe people who are giventhe legal authority to put into practice the law of the land. All theseactivities, wheter they be at the level of goverment or industry or educationor health, or whatever, have a common groind which we wish to explore. Thecommon ground is the burden of making choises about system improvement and theresponsibility of responding to the choises made in a human envirovement in whichthere is bound to be opposition to what the manager has decided. Thus the headof a labor union, the state legislator. The head of a goverment agency, theforeman of a shop are all managers in our sense. So is a man in his own familya manager; so is the captain of a football team. Probably all of us some timeor other in our lifes become managers when, because of oppointment to acommittee  or because of our politicalactivities, we take on the authority and responsibility of making decisions incomplex system. Managing is an activity of which we are all aware, and itsconsequences concern each one of us.

 I said that managers must bear the burden ofthe burden of the decisison they make. I could have added, in more optimistictone, that they enjoy the pleasure accompanying to make decisions. And certanlymany managers in today`s society do find a great deal of phychic satisfactionin the role they play which society so clearly recognizes as important andwhich it credits with a great deal of prestige.

 Noe managing is a type of behavior, and sinceit`s a very important type of behavior, you might expect that we know a greatdeal about it. But we don`t at all. We could also explore the many ways inwhich managers often think they manage, but observes of their behavior oftenfrom them quite radically. The manager is frequently astonished to hearsociologist`s description of his activities, which he believes he himself knowsso well, and he resent the inclination on the part of the “detached” scientistto try to describe the activity that he performs.

 Imagine an observes carefully trained to studysuch 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 ofjudges during a trial. How might such a scientist describe what the jugdeactually 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 whohave attempted to describe legal behavior, but he would find that most of theactivity remains a huge to the whole of humanity-a mystery that no one has everfelt inclined to investigate in detail.

 The whole activity of managing, importrant asit is for the human race, is still largely an unknow aspect of the naturalworld. When man detaches himself and tries to observe what kind of livinganimal he is, finds that he knows very little about the things most importantto him and precious little about his role as a decision maker Few managers arecapable of describing how they reach their decision in a way that someone elsecan understand; few can tell us how they feel about the decisions once theyhave been made. Of course, despite our ignorance about managerial phenomena, agreat deal is written on the subject in popular magazines and managerialjournals. It appears that the less we know about subject, the more we areinclined to write extensively about it with great cinviction. Some writingsdescribe the variuos rituals folowed in organizations proir and posterior tothe actual managerial decision. But most of these description pay littleattention to the very puzzling question of when a decision actually occured andwho made it. A great deal is said about committee deliberations and other aspectof organizational rationality that go into the making of a decision, and themany checks and control that are exerted to determine whether the decisionshave been made properly. Much attention is paid to these aspect oforganizational decision making, because they show up on the surface, so tospeak. But the facts that a committee deliberated for three hours and then adecision emerged do not tell us who made the decision, how it was or when itwas made. It might be added that the verbal assertion of the committee often donot tell us what decision is made.

 So there is a great mystery of the naturalworld: the who, when, how, and what of man`s decision making.

 But even if we were to succeed in discoveringa great deal more than we have about management, the result would be at bestdescriptive. 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 littleabout management? After all, most of us are quite willing, even eager, to priseand complain. We don`t hesitate to say that some men are better managers thanothers. We are constantly criticizing our political leaders. Biographers areaccustomed to choose the most “outstanding” leaders of the age as the subjectof their texts. These leaders may be great political leaders, leaders ofindustry, leaders of social movement, of religion, and so on. What is thequality these men of success have that less successful colleagues lack? Sincewe believe we can identify “successful” leaders, surely we also believe we knowa great deal about what a manager should decide. For example, in the case ofthe President of the United States, we are told in our school-boy text that wecan readily recognize that some of these Presidents were “great” and some ofthem far from great. What is the quality of greatness that we are led toascribe to some of these presidents?

 A ready answer is at hand-the succesful andgreat Presidents were those who made decisions that today we clearly recognizeto be correct, and those who made these decions in the face of severeopposition. We are led to believe that the activity of great presidents is amarvelous example of succesful decisin making in large complex systems.

 But the skeptics among us will find thisanswer quite unsatisfactory as an explanation of what constites greatness in aPesident. In the first place, history has no record of what would have happenedhad the opposition`s point of view succeeded or if serious modifications hadbeen made in the choises of the so-called great Presidents. What if the Unionhad not been saved, or or our independence declared? History seems only to haverecorded the episodes that followed upon the particular decision that was madeand does vot provide us with an analysis of event that might have occured if analternative had been adopted.

 More curios still is theimplict that assumption that a successful President made his great decision onthe basis of his own particular abilities. Since evidence is so often lackingthat great Presidents of the past had these abilities, there is a naturalinclination on the part of many of us to ascribe either determinism orrandomness to the activities of so-called successful managers. In the case of determinism, we mightargue that the events of the world occur by the accidental conglomeration ofmany forces unknown to man these forces produce “decision” that man in hisinnocence believes that he himself makes. The decision of independence in 1776was, according to this view, simply the outgrowth of many complex human andphysical interrelationships. Those who adopt the idea of randomness simply addto the physical determinism of events a random fluctuation of the sort occuringin a roulette wheel or in the shuffling of cards. The would then be willing toadmit that other decision might have been made in 1776 or later, but that thesedecision would be very much like the outcome of another spin of the roulettewheel. In either event, wheter we choose to describe the world of decisionmaking as determinism or as randomness, we conclude that ascribing greatness tothe decision makers in Independence Hall would be a mistake unless one meant bygreatness some recognizable features of the determined or randomevents occuringin the world. By analogy one might say that the man who spins the roulettewheel is its “manager” who decides nothing about the outcome of spins; amultitude of hidden physical forces determine where the wheel will stop.Calling a President great is like calling the spinner of a roulette wheel thathappens to have a satisfactory result a great spinner.

 This is certainly a crass and impolite way todescribe the great managerial minds of the past. Surely we can do more fortheir memories than describe them as irrelevant aspects of the history ofsociety. We might try ro look into the story og their lives to find evidencethat they really had superior methods of deliberation. We might try to showthat they had the sort of brilliance and courage that creates an ability tohandle confusing pieces of information and to reach approprite decisions.Perphaps the great manager is an extremely adept information processor who canact so rapidly that he himself is not even aware of the comparisons andcomputations he has made.

 Indeed, this last is more or less the thepopular image of the great manager. For example, many scientists who advicepoliticians, corporate msnsgers, and other decision makers often state thatthey cannot possibly attempt to tell such men what decision should be made. Atbest they can merely tell the decision maker about certain outcomes if thedecision are adopted. Thus the more among the advisers believe that they havemo intent of   ‘replacing’ the managersthey advise. And yet if these scientific advisers are capable of discering atleast some aspects of the managerial decision, what is it they luck? What arethey incapable of doing that the politician and corporate manager are sosuccesful in accomplishning? What is this secret ingredient of the greatpresident of vorporations, universities, and countries that no scientiat orordinary man could ever hope to acquire?

 The answer usually given is that the presidenthas information about many different aspects of the world and has ability toput these aspect together in a way that no analysis could possibly do. In otherwords, he has a vision of the whole system and can relate the effectiveness ofthe parts to the parts effectiveness of the whole. The hidden secret of thegreat manger, so goes the myth, is the ability to solve the puzzling problemsof whole systems that we have been discussing so far.

 This answer is myth, because it is totallyunsatisfactory to reasoning of intellectually curious person. Are ‘great’managers fantastically high speed-data processors? Do great managerial mindsoutstrip 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 usesvery much of the information he has received from various sources. It is alsodoubtful wheter the manager scans many of the alternatives open to him… Wedescribe how the scientist, when he comes to grips with the problems of decisionmaking, discovers that they can only be reperesented by fairly complicatedmathematical models. Even in fairly simple decision-making situations we havecome to learn how complicated is the problem of developing a sensible way ofusing available information. It seems incredible that the so-called succesfulmanagers really have inbuilt models that are rich and complicated enough toinclude the subtleties of large-scale systems.

 Suppose for the moment we descend from thelofty heights of the decision makers in Independence Hall and the White Houseand begin to describe a very mundane and easily recognized managerial problemcencerning the nember of tellers that should be available to customers in abank. All of us have experienced the annoyance of going into a bank in a hurryand spending a leisurely but frustrating half hour behind the wrong line. Howshould the manager decide on the allocation of tellers at various times of theday?

 This is fairly simple managerial problem amdits 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 shouldtry to answer the managerial question by considering both the inconvenience ofthe customers who wait in the lines and the possible idle time of the tellerswho wait at their stations when no customers. Thus the “succesful” manager canbe identified in an objective way, and we need not take a poll of greatness orlack thereof to ascertain wheter the manager has performed well. The succesfulmanager will be someone who has properly balanced the two costs of theoperation of servicing customers in a bank: the cost of waiting customers and thecost of idle tellers. He will insist that the cost of a nimute`s waiting of acustomer in a line must be compared to a minute`s idle time of the teller. Onthe basis of this comparison, together with suitable evidence conserning thearrival rate of customers and the time service each customer, the succesfulmanager will determine the policy concerning allocation of tellers to variosstations during the day. Perhaps no one will feel inclined to write thebiography of so ordinary a man as the manager of a branch of a local bank, butin any case if this manager decides according to the rational methods justoutlined, his biographer may at least be honest about his “greatness”.

 Nevertheless, the analysis just outlinedleaves much unanswered. For example, an idle teller need not be idle whilewaiting at a station where are no customers. Instead he may be occupied withother routine matters requiring attention in the administration of the bank.Consequently, if the manager can design the entire operation of his bank’s manyfunction properly, he may be able to decrease the cost of idle time ofprofessional who are servicing customers. If we look on the othwer side of thepicture, that is, the inconvenience to a customer, we may find that in factwaiting in line is not an inconvience at all if the customer happens to meet anacquaintance there. Perhaps the manager should serve coffe and doughnuts towaiting customers. Furthermore, if the manager could somehow or other hope tocontrol the behavior of his customers, he might be able to recognize theirarrivals in such a way that inconvenience costs are vastly reduced. Add tothese considerations other innovations that might be introduced: For example,in many cases banks set up Express Windows to handle customers who wouldnormally have very low servoce times. Hence, an overall average waiting timemay not make senese if there are different types of service tailored to thevarious needs of the customers.

 But then another, broader consideration occursto us: Handling the public’s financial matters by branch banking methods may becompletely wrong. Modern technology may of developing financial servicingmethods far cheaper for both bank and customer. After all, handling cash andchecks is an extremly awkward way for a person to acquire goods at a price.With adequately designed information centers, the retail markets need onlyinput information about a customer purchase, and the customer’s employers needonly inputinformation about his income. Thus every purchase would become simplya matter of centralized information processing as woulod a man’s weekly ormonthly paycheck. There would therefore be no real need for any of us to carrymoney about and no need to go to a bank and stand patintly in line. But thisidea of automated purchasing and income recording is followed by anotherthought. We realize that any such automated finacial sysytem would probably endin eliminating a number of clearical and managerial jobs. Consequently we mustexamine the social problems of displaced personnel and the need for retraining,otherwise total social costs of automated banking might be far greater than theconvenience gained by introducing new technology.

 Before we can decide whweter the manager ofthe branch bank is performing “satisfactorily”, we must decide a much broaderissue-wheter the particular system that the manger operates is an appropriateone. This question leads to deeper consideration concerning the potential ofmodern technology and their inplications with respect to automation, jobtraining, and the future economics of many lives.