Management Style and Productivity
This is an excerpt from the paper...
This study examined the relative merits of a directive versus a participative management style with respect to the improvement of organizational productivity in the contemporary and future work place environments. At first blush, one might be tempted to question such an investigative focus within an economy that for decades has seen the participative management concept in all of its various forms extolled as the enlightened and most productive management style. The appointment by President Clinton in December 1993 of Retired Admiral Bobby Inman as Secretary of Defense, however, flies in the face of such accepted contemporary wisdom, as his reputation is that of a hardnosed, authoritarian leader. Inman certainly is not the only such manager around. A substantial proportion of the managers found in the American economy approach their tasks with a directive style, and many of the organizations thus managed are highly productive.Productivity is a major concern in the 1990s of all profitoriented organizations, regardless of size (Rothschild, 1993, pp. 1718). Productivity levels within an organization are the product of a combination of physical, financial, and human resource inputs (Miles and McCloskey, 1993, pp. 4045). A concern with organizational performance, thus, is one of the more significant of the problems that confront organizational managers in the last decade of the twentieth century (Hakim, 1993, pp. 4649). The costs to
. . .
rts" (Ackoff, 1986, p. 332).
A business organization, as an example, is both a conceptual system, and a physical system. It is a physical system, because it is a physical entity. It is not a physical system, however, within the context of physics or chemistry. The business organization is a conceptual system, in that the behavior of its parts may be measured and controlled. The behavior within such a system "consists of a set of interdependent acts which constitute an operation" (Ackoff, 1991, p. 332).
Systems may be either closed or open. A closed system is one which "does not depend on its environment; it is autonomous, enclosed, and sealed off from the outside world. It has all the energy it needs, and can function without the consumption of external resources" (Daft, 1991, p. 10). By contrast, an open system is one which "must interact with its environment to survive; it both consumes resources and exports resources to the environment. It must continually change and adapt to the environment" (Daft, 1991, p. 10).
Business organizations, thus, are open systems. The organization's "set of interrelated elements . . . acquires inputs from the environment, transforms them, and discharges outputs into the external environ
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Organizational Environments, Salancik Pfeffer, Chrunden Sherman, Summary Study, Power Organizations, ParisiCarew Blanchard, Theory Theory, Paul Lawrence, Definition Terms, Hickson Wilson, management style, organizational conflict, organizational environments, participative management, application power, power organizations, decision process, organizational subordinates, style management, development organizational, development organizational conflict, application power organizations, journal management studies, participative management style, salancik pfeffer 1974,
Approximate Word count = 9125
Approximate Pages = 37 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Management Style and Productivity
|