Failure to delegate authority properly can result in a breakdown of the managerial structure of an enterprise. Studies have shown that a major reason for managerial failure is poor delegation of authority. The problem isn’t a lack of understanding about what delegation actually is, but is with personal attitudes toward delegation on the part of managers. It’s these attitudes that make it impossible for delegation to be successful.
There are several attitudes a manager must develop in order to achieve successful delegation of authority:
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An executive is a top-level member of management who’s responsible for the performance of the total organization or of a major segment of its activities. As a decision maker, an executive must possess understanding and the ability to use these three basic management skills:
1. Technical skills – the ability to use the methods, equipment, and techniques involved in performing specific tasks within the organization.
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A manager’s responsibilities vary from job to Job and from organization to organization. For example, in one organization, a manager will be responsible for hiring, whereas in another organization, a manager at the same level and with similar status won’t.
To perform as a manager in your organization, you must know what your responsibilities are relative to what you thank they should be. In many organizations you’re expected to “get a fix” on your responsibilities by yourself. Companies just don’t prepare even general lasts of what they expect from their managers. There are several reasons why upper management won’t do so.
Some organizations believe that managers should know their responsibilities without having them spelled out. They reason that the person has already shown, as a worker, that he or she can meet responsibilities. Why not give them a chance to show their capabilities as managers? This thinking represents the ages old sink-or-swim technique. Sometimes the managers can swim, but very often-too often-they sink.
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The study of management has been approached from both scientific and behavioral points of view. Taylor, for example, was concerned with the scientific implications of task management; Mayo was concerned with the behavioral aspect of human resource management. A definition of management will help you focus more clearly on the objectives of good management.
“Management is getting things done through people.”
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Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915) is considered the ”Father of the modern scientific management movement.” Born in Philadelphia, he took a job as a laborer in the Midvale Steel Company. From this initial position he progressed all the way to chief engineer. Taylor was a man who hated to see an idle lathe or an idle man, and he became concerned mainly with the efficiency of workers and managers in the manufacturing and production processes.
He believed that a major difficulty in labor relations was the lack of expression by managers of what they expected from the laborers. This, coupled with the resultant lack of understanding on the part of the employees, made management ineffective. It was customary for the workers to plan their own work, generally follow-up a pattern that they learned by watching others. In so far as it wasn’t dictated by the nature of the job, the order in which the operations were performed and the selection of tools was left entirely up to the worker. This slowed productivity. Taylor sought to find the ”one best way” for all the workers.
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As the twentieth century approached, a new industrial society arose. There’s no exact date for the appearance of this new society. It was brought about by the mechanical genius of such men as Richard Arkwright, Eli Whitney, and Thomas Newcomb, who initiated technical ideas in the 18th century that triggered the expansion of heavy industry in the 19th and 20th centuries. Coal and the steam engine, and (later on) electricity and the internal-combustion engine were the basis for this new industrial society. The formal use of managers in business first appeared about 1830. Canal corporations, such as the Delaware, Hudson, and Lehigh, were expanding westward; hundreds of new employees were hired. Managers had to be employed since the new hires were working hundreds of miles from company headquarters.
The idea of using managers as foremen and supervisors worked so well for the transportation companies that by the 1840s these companies employed managers at progressively higher levels. Such titles as vice-president, general manager, general freight agent, and general passenger agent were added. Meanwhile, enterprises owned by such families as the Mellons, DuPonts, McCormicks, and Rockefellers were expanding. They also required the services of managers to carry out the responsibilities of their growing corporations. Until the 20th century, management, in one form or another, was practiced but not thought about. One historian suggests that this lack of thought or writing throughout the Industrial Revolution reflects the lack of recognition of management as a technology or learnable set of skills.
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“Here we don’t have management and we don’t have law. We have teams. And the have what you call consensus. Everything’s a group decision. In the last seven months, I’ve only had a few days off here and there. But this is where I want to be. This is living heaven. You work through breaks and you work through lunch. You’re here all hours and even sometimes Saturdays. And you don’t mind. Because no one’s making you do it.”
Alton Smith, tool and die maker
From an ad for Saturn Automobiles
Newsweek October 15, 1990
Utopian as it sounds, the above advertisement is promoting much more than cars. The ad is promoting the kind of work environment that business and industry have been striving for throughout the long history of organizational enterprise. An environment where the workforce is committed to teamwork and is based on equality and initiative, a workforce that is productive without regard for distinctions such as management and labor. (It would be very interesting to visit the Saturn plant, in the twenty-first century to see how well Alton Smith and his teammates are doing.) In the meantime, as we make the transition from one century to the next, an investigation of the historical development of the management concept reveals two important observations:
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