History Lesson

In my last post I mentioned the idea that management is a simple mechanical science – insert this much input here, get that much output there, all things you could do with a basic logic circuit, never mind an actual robot. I am often critical of this behavior pattern, both in this space and in my actual job as a management instructor, but even I have to admit it’s an attractive idea. If all management decisions could be made using basic arithmetic there might be no need for me in either my business or academic professions, but there would also never be another management or policy mistake, all companies would be run perfectly all of the time, and no one would ever have to deal with any of the nonsense masquerading as management that have been a staple of my blog…

Much of this kind of thinking is blamed on one of the first management scientists, whom you may or may not have learned about in school: Frederick Winslow Taylor, founder of the school of thought known as scientific management, or occasionally “Taylorism.” Taylor was the first known researcher to actually study the process of work through scientific observation, and the first to suggest concepts like breaking down work into discrete tasks and training employees to do them the same way every time. It’s probably fair to say that Taylor had as much to do with the development of our modern industrialized culture as Henry Ford or either of the Carnegies. But Taylor was a mechanical engineer, not a psychologist, and much of scientific management breaks down along the exact lines we’ve been discussing for the last couple of weeks…

It wasn’t until the 1950s that the field of Industrial/Organizational Psychology really split off from both psychology and sociology, following the work of pioneers like Herbert Simon, James March, Richard Cyert, and Abraham Maslow. I’m not going to get into those theories in detail – partly because I have already made reference to so many of them in this space, and partly because we’re wandering away from business and off into even softer sciences at this point. I call this to your attention because the idea that all of the many management failures we’ve been seeing in recent years are because we don’t know any better is absolute hogwash…

I had over 300 students over the last academic year, and every one of them could have explained how a policy that rewards stubborn, aggressive and combative behavior and effectively punishes cooperation and courtesy will result in horrible customer service without a moment’s hesitation. Granted, they are exceptional students – they’re Spartans, after all – but this isn’t the only business school around. There are thousands, possibly millions, of people in this country who could easily do the same, and there have been since well before I was born. We have decades of data, hundreds of studies, and quite literally hordes of highly trained people in this field, albeit well-dressed hordes carrying briefcases. Yet still this type of idiocy remains not merely entrenched but unquestioned throughout the world of business…

I don’t actually believe that one passable business teacher and one scruffy blogger can change all of that, even if they do happen to be the same person. I do believe, however, that if I can get even one management professional to avoid making such mistakes, then neither my time as a teacher nor my time as a blogger have been wasted…