The question for each organisation is to assess where they are relative to the evolution of our management thinking. Is their application of management in the mainstream of management thinking or are they residing in some distant backwater?

Professor David McClelland of Harvard University identified what he called Primary Social Motives of Achievement, Affiliation, and Power. In the early Protestant times and in the development of the industrial revolution, right up to the 1890s he argued that our society was high in achievement motivation, we were task orientated. Come the latter parts of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries we become concerned with the welfare of our fellow human beings (Affiliation). The welfare state emerges right through to the "Flower Power" era of the 1960s. However, as a society we may now have moved onto Power motivation where self-actualisation is the prime consideration of the individual. With his ‘yuppie’ phone is the individual more concerned with the impression that he portrays than the actual substance of his contribution to the organisation and society? Is the high profile of ‘spin doctors’ indicative of a society more concerned with influence rather than truth, and task achievement?

Stephen Covey regrets our present day ‘personality’ ethic, which he says is concerned with techniques such as: how to influence, assertiveness, positive mental attitude etc. He calls for a return to ‘character’ ethics of industry, integrity, honesty, modesty etc.

An associated problem with our movement to "Power" motivation may be our susceptibility to Crisis Management or Firefighting - a widespread problem within the UK business culture. We tend to go into action long before adequate plans have been prepared and strategies fully thought through. As observed by Peter Senge, our managers feel uncomfortable if they are not in the action mode. Our culture equates work with action – it does not consider contemplative thought as a necessary prerequisite of action. In contrast the eastern cultures have a regard for meditation; there is therefore a greater willingness to allocate the contemplative thought necessary before action is taken.

Our busyness also restricts our willingness to learn from the past. Our thinking and structures are short term. The ‘Stock Market’ and our political system encourages the short-term perspective. Annual budgets and annual appraisals also encourage short-termism. We become desperate for the ‘quick fixes’ and are repeatedly conned by false promises. We fail to learn from the errors of the immediate past.

Management Scholars have consistently talked about the need to examine the theoretical base of our management principles. Fredrick Taylor and Henri Fayol (1900s) Douglas McGregor (1950s) Edwards Deming (1990s) and many others stress the importance of theoretical foundations. Our managers do not hear these exhortations and are therefore slow to learn. They carry on managing from the same basis as they have always managed and get the results they have always got.

The landmark work of Douglas McGregor "The Human Side of Enterprise" (1960) highlighted that our organisational thinking is still dominated by the thinking prevalent in McCallum’s time (1850s) – that the employees are resistant to work and responsibility, and there is a need to instruct and direct the workforce. He labeled this perception ‘X Theory’ and contrasted it with ‘Y Theory’ where the basis of organisational thinking evolves out of the appreciation that employees are trustworthy and motivated. In the 1990s we find that our organisations are still dominated by ‘X Theory’ thinking – except we now call it ‘command and control’

‘Systems Thinking’ is not on the whole appreciated by our organisations. Hierarchical command and control structures still predominate and individuals, rather than the systems, are thought to be accountable.

In contrast to the argument that that our present management style has been evolving over centuries, the eminent management scholar Edwards Deming considers that our present style is a modern invention.

In the Thatcherite years competition was seen as the solution. While the present government gives lip service to co-operation and the development of the win-win situation we have yet to dismantle the competitive structures within our organisations. We still seek promotion at the expense of our colleagues and we still look to our suppliers to compete through the tendering process.

There is very little understanding of variation and few companies appreciate Statistical Process Control. The use of the techniques to appreciate variation developed by Shewhart in the 1930s is not widely used except in the Pacific Rim. Most companies produce their performance measures in tabulated form and consequently make frequent errors of interpretation.

It is widely acknowledge that what the Americans taught the Japanese in the 1950s through Deming, Juran etc was not being practiced in the West. Our economy was very buoyant in those years and disciplines such as Systems Thinking and Statistical Process Control, which are used extensively in Japan, fall into disrepair in western organisations.

From the 1980s we seek to learn from the Japanese manufacturing success and start to copy (without understanding) such techniques as Quality circles, TQM, JIT, Kaizen etc. The techniques are not a success because they are layered over our existing command and control assumptions. We fail to absorb the real lessons from the success of Japanese manufacturing.

There is undoubted relevance in Alfie Khon’s (Punished by Rewards) claims that we fail to challenge the validity of ‘positive reinforcement.’ He describes positive re-enforcement with the phrase ‘do this and you will get that.’ The problem that he identifies is that our thinking and commitment moves from the ‘this’ – the task – to the ‘that’ the reward. The use of rewards within our society is widespread and examples of its failure abound. Bonus and commission systems that have to be redesigned every two or three years, PRP is widely acknowledged to have added complexity without any improvement in performance. (Will Hutton in ‘The State We Are In’)

In addition there are the more subtle systems of rewards at work undermining our society. We use Performance Measurement to judge, and in the process become more concerned with the measurement than the task at hand. Budgets are set and then data is quite openly adjusted to comply with budget. We use examinations to judge learning and now find that our universities and colleges focus on pass rates and external assessment – they cease to be concerned with facilitating thought and learning. Our Universities provide qualifications rather than education and thinking ability. We are trapped in the ‘quick fix’ of setting targets and then using rewards to motivate people to meet those targets.

The present "New Labour" government has set more targets than another previous UK government. This is despite the readily available knowledge that targets are counterproductive. The same applies with their concept of league tables

The ‘quick fix’ of insisting that suppliers be accredited to the ISO 9000 standard is a further example. As we have mentioned the government in wishing to encourage businesses to adopt ‘quality’ methods, marketed the standard by suggesting that it would be required if the company was to be on tender lists. While many companies have now secured accreditation, most have been sucked in by the carrot of easing the way onto tender lists. Very few have used the standard to improve quality and profit. The result in many many cases has seen the standard increase bureaucracy with no improvement in quality of service. (See our article on ISO 9000 and John Seddon’s (1997) book The Case Against ISO 9000)

A major flaw with our application of ISO 9000 is that it is a ‘systems’ model. It follows the flow of work through the organisation. If it is applied from the ‘command and control’ mindset, auditing and compliance becomes the prime consideration, not flow nor improvement.

While the evidence of the misuse of ISO 9000 is all around us we fail to learn. We develop new ‘systems’ models such as IIP and The Business Excellence Model (from EFQM and The Baldridge Award) and proceed to market and audit them from the same basis that was used for ISO 9000.

We are still influenced by the Greek gang of three – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – we break down problems into parts, attempt to optimise each element and lose sight of the whole – the inter-relationships and interdependencies that are so important in the make up of the whole. We also still seek to find the one truth through argument (House of Commons)

Our view of organisations is still mechanistic – it is still trapped in the concepts of Newton and Laplace in that we consider that we can find the one person who is responsible for a failure. Accountability is a common word in our organisations, and it is the person who is seen as accountable not the system. There is very poor appreciation of variation, chaos and dynamic systems. With accountability we couple the tendency to blame. Our society is now more than ever before prepared to blame – and sue. Litigation is big business in the USA and we, in Britain, seem to be following suit.

Delvigne and Robertson in their book ‘Deming’s Profound Changes’ compares the Scientific Management principles of Taylor at the beginning of this century with the Profound Knowledge concepts of Deming at the end. There are many interesting comparisons but their main finding is that our management thinking has regressed from the time of Taylor. Taylor would study the system, redesign it and only then blame people if things went wrong. Deming etc was advocating the continual study of the system and that people were rarely to blame. But today our management practice are so simplistic that we do not even pause to consider the system; we simply set a target and then blame people if it is not achieved.

And of course with the fear of blame comes defensive strategies employed by the individual – and their unwillingness to take risks and responsibility.

Blame and the accompanying stress has become a powerful negative effect on our society. Our newspapers are negative in the extreme; their representation of truth is no longer of primary concern. Positive thinking is seen as a self-help tool rather than an organisational or societal objective.

High stress and low morale has become the norm. The following is an extract from a Royal College of Nursing paper – A Profile of Qualified Nurses in Scotland" (1996)

Low morale though most acute in government concerns is widespread. Over 50% of our senior executives seek retirement before the age of 60. There is little joy in work.

In an environment where performance measurement and accountability are dominant it is the accountants who flourish. There is, however, little development beyond Father Luca Pacioli’s accounting measures. Balance sheets for companies still do not include measures of the ‘soft’ issues such as morale and knowledge. Tenders are invariably given to the lowest price.

While most managers will be aware of the work on motivation by Maslow, McGregor, and McClelland, few organisations are structured around their findings. Our management language is littered with means to secure due diligence from our staff. – budgets, accountability, staff appraisals, career progression, disciplinary procedures, auditing etc. There appears to be little organisational acceptance that we could actually enjoy work.

As Noel Barker suggests we do suffer from paradigm paralysis. The success of our past blinds us to the opportunities of the future. We see the omissions from our present management foundations but appear to be unable to appreciate the alternatives that are being presented to us.

In summary therefore we would consider that our organisations are characterised by:

• A ‘command and control’ or X theory management culture
• Little appreciation of our theoretical assumptions
• Crisis management and the never ending search for the quick fix.
• A society that has moved from ‘achievement’ and ‘affiliation’ motivation into ‘power’
• The use of targets and rewards/punishment relative to those targets – blame
• Defense mechanisms relative to blame – therefore poor ability to learn.
• No appreciation of systems – nor dynamic systems
• Little understanding of variation
• Little use made of research into motivation
• Paradigm paralysis

home