BS3916 Thinking about Management

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BS3916 Thinking about Management

• 4 The influence of some management gurus

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Peter Drucker
• Argues in Post Capitalist Society that there is
  a knowledge revolution
• Phase 1 Industrial Revolution (1700-1880)
• Phase 2 Productivity Revolution (1881-post WW2)
• Phase 3 Management Revolution (post WW2-2020)

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Purpose of organisations in a knowledge economy
  is to make knowledge productive
• Organisations will focus on the work their
  specialists do well
• An organisation of knowledge specialists is an
  organisation of equals
• Organisations must be designed for constant change

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• To innovate successfully, the post-capitalist
  organisation will have to de-centralise
• A knowledge economy is a mobile society
• A knowledge society is a competitive society
• Cf. analyses made by
• Daniel Bell The Coming of Post-Industrial
  Society
• Burns and Stalker The Management of Innovation

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Five basic tasks of management
• Setting objectives
• Organising
• Motivating
• Measuring
• Developing people (including him/herself)
• Poor management may increase as organisations get
  larger and more complicated
• Globalisation forces a new breed of manager

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Charles Handy
• Organisations will increasingly federalise with
  a small core
• Smaller units are more flexible, responsive,
  focused etc. (subsidiarity)
• Organisations are not so much systems (inputs,
  processes etc) as networks (cultures and
  networks, influence rather than control,
  leadership not management)

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Handys Shamrock organisation has
  threeleaves
• Core workers (highly trained professionals)
• Contractual fringe (individuals or
  organisations themselves)
• Flexible labour force (but should not be a
  band of cheap casual workers!)
• Do we need to add a 4th i.e. customers ?

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Handys Portfolio concept
• Full-time, permanent jobs with a career for
  life have gone for ever to be replaced by..
• Portfolios in which we combine
• Wage work (money for time)
• Fee work (money for results)
• Home work (domestic)
• Gift work (voluntary)
• Study work (extending knowledge)

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Handys Triple I organisation
• I3Added value where the 3 Is are..
• Intelligence
• Information
• Ideas
• Your organisations will come to resemble
  universities or colleges
• Although universities get more like businesses!

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Tom Peters
• Best known for In Search of Excellence in which
  argued that excellent companies
• had a bias for action
• were close to the customer
• had autonomy and entrepreneurship
• believed in productivity through people
• were hands-on and value-driven /contd

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Excellent companies contd
• stuck to the task in hand
• had a simple form and a lean staff
• had simultaneous loose-tight structures
• Butthe 43 excellent companies did not remain so
  e.g. Peoples Express, Wang, IBM all fell on hard
  times

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Tom Peters..Other key ideas
• MBWA (Management by Wandering About)
• Listening..TeachingFacilitating
• Businessed jobs in which
• Organisations are federalised
• Every employee is turned into a business
  person i.e. given authority for spending
  decisions, quality control, requirement to act
  on own initiative etc

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Peter Senge
• In The Fifth Discipline Senge argues that
  organisations suffer from learning disabilities
  that prevent them recognising threats and
  opportunities
• Senge argues the need to become learning
  organisations in which organisation develop the
  abilities of organisational members to think
  systematically

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• 5 key concepts are
• Systems theory (to help mangers spot
  repetitive patterns
• Personal mastery (spiritual growth)
• Mental models (the basic assumptions of
  people working in the organisation)
• Shared vision (developing from personal vision)
• Team learning (demands dialogue and discussion)

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Common themes to all these thinkers are
• Organisational Size and Organisational
  Structure is critical (i.e. smaller, federal
  structures)
• Importance of knowledge as a product to be
  processed, shared
• Employees need to be flexible, autonomous
• But importance of team working is still
  paramount
• Responsiveness to ideas, markets and customers

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BS3916 Thinking about Management4 The
influence of some management gurus

• Do management gurus have a recipe for success ?
• Many of them were successful for themselves
  i.e. they established a career out of their
  writings
• Do we have good empirical evidence that
  companies have turned themselves around by
  following particular lines of advice ?
• Probably most helpful by getting all of us to
  think the unthinkable i.e. examine
  problem-solving by using a different mental
  model