With another management game in the line-up, we realize we are in for a treat today at Dr. Mandi's lecture with a plethora of management mantras.
I admire the way he brings money into the picture and not feel shy about it, as it always is the main objective of any business.
A bidding is done to decide the person to carry out the task of assembling as many small cubes over one another. As is often the case, under-projecting the target, the person is able to assemble 22 cubes against 14 cubes committed. Here the lesson lies in not setting the target too low, and at the same time not under-delivering.
As adversities increase, people lower their expectation when they should be backing themselves to perform better. This was proven by a second exercise, with the same bidding process, a blindfolded person had to assemble the cubes with the directions from a manager, who was not allowed to help physically. It was demonstrated that with increased managerial influence, an employee can deliver much better with added adversities. This strengthened the belief in the New school of thought, where it is always an improvement of the business process upon adding managerial influence and simplifying processes.
In modern times, businesses are transforming from Old school methods of management (conventional methods of production) involving decision making at the lower most level to a New School model (Modern methods of production, where standards and procedures are defined for each task/activity/troubleshooting) at the lower level with supervisory roles assigned to senior managers.
Organizations with the help of this model aim to streamline their business processes and achieve standardization in the dynamics of production. As sectors and businesses grow,as does the need to transform them into a manager friendly and controllable vector.
As we see the Multi-national Companies across the world have more and more systems in place to standardize their operations and reduce the lower rung employees to their specific domain, it becomes easier to bring about changes and rotations in policies in an effective manner.
As Indian economy grows and companies expand, it is becoming imperative for companies to adopt such policies of business transformation, to achieve the required control and regulated growth of their businesses.
@Old school to New School post: Standardization is not something new, at least not at the operating level. Frederick Winslow Taylor, proverbially called the father of scientific management, pioneered it - in late 1890s.
ReplyDeleteIt basically entailed standardizing every human action - how a laborer should move his hands, say on a spinning wheel; what route should he take to move from 1 machine to another; standardization of how much time every movement should take; and then making your salary contingent on these standards. Since standardization means increase in overall productivity, both profit and salaries increase. But neo-Marxists called it physical & mental violence on labor, as it took the pride of workmanship away (though material rewards improved, of course not even comparable to return over capital).
However, it has been eventually discarded as the holy grail of management thought. Psycho-social factors, pioneered by Mayo in 1930s, threw a light on how people actually function rather than a prescription of how they should (like cogs in a machine). Social relationships, grievance redressal, pride in workmanship are as good motivators as money. This initiated a 'job enrichment' school of thought, that me & you so value while deciding which career to pursue. Managerial influence, in the same way, now extends to 'consulting' & 'selling' ideas to employee rather than 'telling' what to do - backbone of standardization.
So standardization gradually waned away, in the light of labor union movements & cold war (for communism presented an alternate production system without such mental & physiological violence, in theory at least. On another note, Taylor's work was most famous in Russian organizations.)
Now it has resurfaced in a new avatar called neo-managerialism, courtesy Soviet collapse. But it is different in a way that it does not take away individual freedom (by standardizing time for every process & motion - which Taylorism did) but rather by stressing on result oriented management. So performance standards are set and your material rewards & continuation of employment are contingent upon reaching those standards. And even this is under attack because it does not work well in unstable environments (where you cannot standardize, say in a rural sanitation project); in white collar jobs (you cannot apply standardization to a consultancy firm); and not in public management (which inherently involves serving people as its basic motive rather than profit).
So essentially, when you talk of standardization, I guess you're primarily concerned with mass based production organizations - and not generic management.
On the concept of motivation that you highlighted, it is what is called 'cognitive evaluation theory' - basically performance is related to the set targets. Hence managers need to set high yet achievable targets, for if targets are not achieved it results in low morale.
It is a theory which I personally appreciate, and is based upon my experiences of the manufacturing sector and how I see it being applied there. With the degree of standardization that can vary from company to company, sector to sector, each entity may have numerous levels of standardization, from simple procedure standardization to management level standardization. And yes thanks for enlightening me with the history of standardization.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to commenting upon how successful this theory is or was, you clearly know more in this topic, but all I can say is, with India having evolved from the 1990s to the current scenario, where we have taken giant leaps, our manufacturing sector requires reinforcing old ideologies to an extent, with a combination of newer theories. With what I could myself experience at Reliance, I see how standardization has helped in refining industry, today majority of refiners in the world use procedures and theories developed at Reliance. In India, there is a need for standardization as was felt when compared with global manufacturing units, like Dupont and Shell, they have achieved tremendous levels in degree of micromanaging their businesses with the help of standardizations. Standardization not only helps in improving the core manufacturing units, but the management levels across the floor. It gives accountability, accuracy, cheaper costs, better regulation and discipline across an organization.