Historical Management Styles
Frederick W. Taylor (1947) recognised a quality in employees which he referred to as initiative. His conclusions were that old styles of management depend almost entirely upon getting the initiative of the worker, and it is indeed a rare case in which this initiative is really attained. He goes on to state that under scientific management, initiative (hard work, goodwill and ingenuity) is obtained with absolute uniformity. This solution from Taylor required a greater managerial effort to provide control and over the years encouraged a conditioned response to most aspects of work-life. It must also be said that the use of the word initiative in the second quote is actually a misuse as the process of obtaining uniformity positively discourages any initiative. This method of management was based on control and particularly suited the stable market conditions which were a feature of the times. The old set of myths about management had to do with the use of hierarchy and controls, the authorising of power and authority in top management, and the separation of management functions from worker functions. This can be encapsulated as: The lower levels serve the higher levels of the organisation. This sentiment was presented in the form of a paradigm by Robert H. Hayes and Gary P.Pisano (1994), The following ideas (in the traditional mindset) were accepted as dogma:work was done more effectively when divided up and assigned to specialists;managers and staff experts should concentrate on the thinking so that workers could concentrate on the doing;every process was characterised by a certain amount of variation, hence an irreducible rate of defects;communication should be tightly controlled and should proceed through a hierarchical chain of command.This approach, according to Hayes and Pisano (ibid), has existed in organisations since the development of mass production in the mid 1800's; the way they buy, make, sell and deliver their products is embedded within the work life of all organisation members. This way of working is not appropriate in today's environment where the new paradigm suggests that companies must be:flexible, enough to adjust quickly to changing market conditions;lean, to beat competitors' price;innovative, to keep products technologically fresh;committed to delivering maximum quality and customer service.Thompson (1990) states that some changes are reactions to external threats; others are proactive attempts to seize opportunities. This is helpful in considering the context for change: whilst change can be a reactive response to threats from the environment managers can also be proactive in making changes which capitalise on opportunities identified in the environment . When contemplating change managers must first decide which methodology is appropriate in their own organisation. Whilst most techniques share a number of common themes, such as customer focus, there is a fundamental difference described by Wilson and Rosenfeld (1990) as incremental Vs quantum turnaround. As an example: TQM stresses continual incremental improvement, called kaizen by the Japanese whilst Business Process Reengineering seeks breakthroughs not by enhancing existing processes, but by discarding them (Hammer 1993). In stating that starting corporate renewal at the very top is a high risk strategy not employed by the most successful companies Michael Beer (1990) had discovered that the worst performers in achieving change were the companies with the biggest and most elaborate change programmes, the best performers being companies without a change programme. The best performing companies were revitalised by a series of bottom up changes initiated by line management. Whatever fundamental decision is made the new strategic change paradigm must relate to the shopfloor (by this is meant the shopfloor in its traditional sense plus the offices, the procedures and the routine) as generally strategic change makes a proposition that the shopfloor adopt a new configuration (Nicholson 1991). One technique which is aimed at involving all members of the organisation is TQM.