Behavioral Approach to Management - A study by Artur Victoria

In recent years human problems and concerns have taken precedence over other societal pressures. For many years technology had dominated. Now it is generally acknowledged that the pendulum of technology has swung too far out of balance with more basic human concerns. In the so-called future-shock type of environment that exists today, society is no longer asking what technology can do but instead what it should be allowed to do. leia todo o artigo

The Traditional Model of Human Behavior at Organizations - A study by Artur Victoria

The Traditional model owes its existence to three major streams of thought relevant to administration. First, an important component of the Traditional approach is drawn from the writings of nineteenth-century philosophers and classical economists. The philosophical doctrine prevalent at that time, Social Darwinism, argued that the fittest survive (and should survive), and that it was their duty to guide those of lesser ability. Combine this belief with the classical economist's notion that leisure was man's preferred state and work his required state, and one has the makings of a theory that organizations were populated with a multitude of basically inept individuals who had to be forced to work through monetary incentives. leia todo o artigo

Managing Wage Incentives - A study by Artur Victoria

Many companies attempt to motivate people by paying them by results, and it is usually thought that the most efficient schemes are those which link an individual earnings to his own output. Many supervisors like such incentive schemes, saying that they increase motivation, make people look for work instead of waiting until they are given it, and so make the supervisor job easier. There is no doubt that many wage incentive schemes have increased the pace of work, but it is unsatisfactory to rely on them alone for motivation, as this is to accept that people are interested in the pay and not the job. There is of course nothing wrong in being interested in being well paid; even supervisors work for pay, as does the managing director. But if the system associates pay and work too closely, it can adversely affect performance in one or more of the following ways: leia todo o artigo

Management Authority - A study by Artur Victoria

The formal lines of management authority give a misleading picture of how good management works. There must be an organization structure, but the formally defined relationships of which it is composed are no more the reality of management than the rules of football are the game itself. Organization charts are necessarily based on the definition of responsibilities, and taken by themselves give the impression that management consists of instructions handed down by superiors to subordinates. In practice good management does not work like this, it works through co-operation among members of teams. The manager is not so much an order giver as a co-coordinator of the skills of the members of his team.

He has the formal authority to overrule members of the team because in the last resort he is responsible for what is done, but if his normal approach is authoritarian he cannot be using his subordinates abilities to full advantage. There is a distinction between employee-centered and job-centered supervision. Job-centered supervision proceeds by breaking the total operation into simple components, selecting people to do them, training these people, supervising them to see that they do the work properly, and wherever possible providing a monetary incentive scheme to get the required motivation. In this system the initiative and decisions rest with management and operatives are merely required to carry out instructions. leia todo o artigo

Achieving Efficient Employment Relations - A study by Artur Victoria

In the best of all possible worlds, what would lead to economically efficient employment relations? We focus on three basic categories:

1. Efficient adaptation and coordination. The circumstances facing a firm change. Old opportunities go away and new opportunities appear. Employees discover both talents and shortcomings. Clearly, it benefits the firm (in the sense of producing value) if employees can be deployed and redeployed in ways that take advantage of these changing circumstances and new information. Moreover, because production is often interdependent, the actions of employees have to be coordinated. (When we write "have to be coordinated," it sounds as if we implicitly mean by the bosses. But we don't mean that; employees can, in some cases, do a very good job of coordinating themselves.)

2. Investing in productive human capital. Employer and employee can and sometimes do take actions that improve their ability to work productively together. For instance, the employee may take time and effort to build up a network of useful contacts in the organization, or he may try to acquire skills that are particularly useful in his current job. The employer can subsidize the employee's training, and she can provide opportunities for network building.leia todo o artigo