Пойгина Л.Б., Туринова Л.А. - English for Masters. Management Part 1 (1175658), страница 6
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In a volatile, hightechnology environment those organizations whose structure fosters creativity sometimesacquire an enormous competitive advantage. Being first to market with a state-of-the-artcomputer product, for example, may greatly increase the revenue side of the productivityequation.However, in other situations a highly centralized structure may be more productive.For example, it has historically proven the most effective approach for large-scale militaryoperations. By minimizing confusion in communication and maximizing precision ofresponse, it facilitates coordinating the activites of many thousands of men.The recessionary economy of the late 1970s also caused many organizations to take ahard look at how big certain parts of their structure really ought to be.
A recent study ofmanagement practices of successful American companies found that corporate staff was keptsmall to avoid "bureaucracies." Peters and Watermannoted that the best managed companies,even those employing 35,000 to 55,000 employees, rarely had a corporate staff of over 100people.Responsibility. Experience shows that if top management wants the organization to dosomething, it must assign responsibility for the task to a specific person or subunit anddelegate adequate authority to accomplish the task. More and more organizations concernedwith productivity are creating teams and task forces for productivity that transcend subunitand level lines.
Small teams tend to work more quickly and efficiently than large units ofpeople. Including people from several subunits and levels helps obtain a better range ofinformation and ideas related to problems and solutions, facilitates coordination between19 subunits, and should make it easier to gain cooperation from all units during implementation.The authority delegated to any individual or group with responsibility for productivity mustinclude authority to spend money.
The group's funds and money for implementation must bebudgeted during the planning process and not penalized during control.III. ______________________________Quality ofWorklife. We have noted often that failure to take into account humanresponse to change and technology and to develop the organization's human resources is amajor reason for poor effectiveness and efficiency. There seems to be a relationship betweenquality. productivity and quality of work life.
Peters and Waterman found that a commoncharacteristics of the best managed American companies "is the completeness of the peopleorientation in the excellent companies. " Willaim Ouchi and RichardPascale and AnthonyAthos reached similar conclusion. According to Ouchi , such successful American companiesas IBM, Eastman Kodak, Procter &Gamble , and Hewlett Pachard practice the theory Zapproach to management. Their includes such practices as: (1)a policy of no layoffs, (2)involving both managers and nonmanagers in decision making that affects their job, (3)career development programs that rotate people through different functional areas, ratherthan advancing them only within a specialized functional area , and (4) showing trust and abroader concern for the welfare of all employees.Robert Patchin, Northgroup's director of productivity improvement programs,suggests that today's employee is better educated than his counterpart in the past and actuallywants to be involved.
In Patchin's judgment the authoritarian management approach is not aseffective with today's employee, who tends to be inquisitive and unwilling to accept thingsthat are not explained. Northgroup put these views into action at its Hawthorne, Californiaplant, which manufactures the Tigershark filter plane. There, engineers work on theproduction line. This removal of the physical barriers between engineersand productionworkers helps get problems resolved much more quickly. As a result, the second Tigersharkwas made in 30 percent fewer work-hours than the first and, even more dramatic, the thirdhad zero defects on the fuselage.Payand Promotion.
Fringe benefits and quality of worklife play an important role inbuilding an organizational ambiance that favors productivity. However, the organization'straditional motivators - pay and promotion - are still the dominant influences on performance.For management to create sustained improvements in productivity, it may clearly tie pay andpromotion to productivity rather than short-term output.This requires commitment and consistency at all levels of the organization.Measurable objectives for productivity are needed along with objective controls that measuredegree of performance toward these objectives to form a basis for deciding who should berewarded.
Management has to ensure that the reward system does not penalize long-termproductivity efforts because of short-term negative consequences. This is especially true oftop-management incentives. As economist Lester Thurow said, "What short-term CEO willtake a long-run view when it lowers his own income? Only a saint, and there aren't very manysaints."Riggs and Felix offer the following suggestions for modifying performance toencourage productivity:Wages can act as disincentives for productivity.
Slow work performance is frequentlyrewarded by overtime pay. Departments that go over their budget in one year are likely to beawarded a higher budget the next year. Salary goes up for an empire builder who hires more20 people than are really needed. Just spending more time or dollars is not an automatic indicatorof more work accomplished, but compensation arrangements too often treat it so.The behavior to encourage is that which contributes most to productivity. If products arerolling out the door at a satisfactory rate but material costs are frightening, no genius isneeded to concentrate on material waste reduction. Yet inflexible incentive plans maycontinue to award only faster output.Rewards should be tied to well-understood activities.
If you do this, then that will happen.For instance, if a worker is neither absent nor tardy for a month, then the worker's name isdropped in the hat for a monthly $100 lottery.Scheduling is a critical factor in behavior modification. The reward, whether a pat on the backor a bonus, should be provided as soon as possible after the desired event has occurred. Rewards should be frequent enough to sustain interest. Fast feedback is important.IV. _____________________________Controlling plays a major role in productivity both directly by evaluating progress toward objectives and indirectly by influencing behavior.
Objective productivity measurement,a function of the control process, is needed both to ensure that objectives are being met and toprovide a fair basis for rewarding people for productivity improvements.Quality Control. Quality management has been one of the most rewarding areas forimproving productivity in Japanese and now American organizations. American qualitycontrol typically has been limited to inspecting for defects in finished products and,sometimes, inspecting for defects in key supplies when they arrive. Both the expense ofinspection and the fact that the defective unit has already used resources lower productivity.Also, inspection often simply doesn't work well, so that products with defects reach theconsumer. The experience of successful firms shows that effective quality control requires anintegrated approach that goes far beyond the traditional focus of production managementHighly productive Japanese firms and U.S.
companies like IBM try to manage qualitybefore and during the production process to avoid squandering resources on defects. One waythey do so is by intervening in the external environment to control the quality of inputs beforethey reach the organization. Often, these big firms have their own quality control people onthe premises of their major suppliers. Communicating with customers to identify the needsbefore a product is built is a form of preliminary control that improves productivity byimproving effectiveness.Instead of trying to catch defects after they occur by inspection, successful Japaneseand American firms usually rely on workers to assess quality throughout the productionprocess.V.
_____________________________Informational Society. According to Megatrends, the best-seller on trends transformingsociety, we are in the process of moving from a postindustrial society to an informationalsociety. The information sector and the percentage of total work involving information isbecoming an increasingly greater percentage of the whole. The exact size of the informationsector is difficult to determine because so many jobs, especially in the service sector, have aninformation component.
But it clearly is growing rapidly.Growth of the information sector is only one reason why effective management of thecommunication process is becoming even more critical to productivity. Technologicalinnovations in information processing—computers, satellites, global telephone, and21 television—have radically increased the quantity of information in circulation and drasticallydecreased the information float. Information float is the term Naisbitt uses to describe theinterval between the transmission of a message and its reception.
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