Noción del enfoque transformador en la Ley de víctimas y sus disposiciones

Christianity, where Kierkegaard’s influence is implicit, together with the early Quaker influences as a bulwark of American Society as recorded by Weber and Tocqueville (see (i) Ethics and (ii) Political, Social and Managerial Society in Chapter 6). Drucker was now applying Christian principles more practically as the ethics of management and as forming part of a fundamental requirement of a manager, which was to have “character” which he brought to the job. It was something that could not be acquired. Although bad manners, incompetence and ignorance may be forgiven, a manager must never lack integrity. Drucker accepted that integrity was difficult to

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define, however; concentration on people’s weaknesses was one of the actions that confirm that integrity was missing. While people’s limitations had to be accepted, they should be seen as a challenge to the manager to make people perform better. The question should always be “What is

right?” To put personality above the requirement of the work “is corruption”. Another danger

was to ask; “Who is Right? (which) encourages one’s subordinates to play safe if not to play

politics. Above all, it encourages them to ‘cover up’ rather than to take corrective action as soon as they find out that they have made a mistake” (1954:155). Management should never appoint a

manager who placed the importance of intelligence before integrity. Integrity of character must prevail, even over education and skill. A manager must put the interest of the enterprise before his own self-interest, but in doing so he must not infringe upon the freedom of the individual

(ibid:370-371, 376). The manager must lead by example and earn respect but he did not necessarily have to be liked (ibid:342). What managers must realise was that they were

employing the whole man, which required that they demanded not merely a fair day’s labour but also that all of the workers develop their potential. The aim was not acquiescence. The aim must be to build an aggressive esprit de corps. All of the foregoing was reflecting the influence of the Christian Protestant work ethic upon Drucker.

Marx’s economics were described as “the last important dupe” for using muscle power as the measured unit of effort (ibid:39). Productivity was no longer based upon this tradition but on all factors of production (ibid:39). There had been inevitability in Drucker’s writing that he would totally reject Marx, of interest is why it took so long? The reason for the inevitability was that Drucker’s acclaim of Stahl was incompatible with tolerance of Marx. The evidence for my conclusion is that Marx was enrolled at Berlin University for his doctorate. Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel (1770-1831) had headed the Philosophy Faculty from 1818 until 1831. Hegel believed in a Christianity of a form where the Universe was the power. Hegel’s philosophical ideas left a choice of either left or right wing of politics, Marx chose the left, and also became an Atheist. The successor to Hegel’s left-wing principles was Eduard Gans (1797-1839) who was the

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head of the Faculty of Law where Marx was enrolled. When Gans died unexpectedly in 1839 he was replaced by “the severely reactionary Stahl”. Stahl and Marx were Jews by birth but were diametrically opposed philosophically, politically and religiously. For these reasons there could be no place in the University for Marx, who transferred to Berlin University. Marx’s family were Christian converts and he was baptised only to reject Christianity whereas Stahl had converted and became a devout Christian (Wheen 1999:1-31).

Schumpeter’s star continued to rise with Drucker and will be dealt with later in the text. Ford had undergone a metamorphosis and will also feature later in the text.

Rathenau’s influence was implicit in the concept of the plant community; Drucker’s development of the concept was to relieve managers of unrewarding jobs by giving them to the workers who would find them rewarding as arranging shift rosters, organising social functions to organise, and the management of benefit schemes that are essential to the organisation. Drucker’s argument for these proposals was that workers would obtain satisfaction from these tasks while conversely, if they were arranged by management, they would only receive criticism from the workers for their performance. The experiences of ‘organising’ these functions would help to develop management vision in the workforce, (1954:301), an essential part of Drucker’s philosophy, as was developing leadership skills (ibid:303). It would also develop motivation, self-control, and participation that would allow workers to become responsible citizens in the plant community (ibid:305). Drucker had tempered his idea that the “autonomous self-governing plant community” is central to the needs of society at large. In fact it can no longer be truly self-governing because, as part of a business, Drucker made clear that the worker could not participate in management decisions because it was only the manager who could manage (ibid:304). Even so Drucker included even this curtailed involvement as part of his manifesto of “Motivating to Peak Performance”

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Owen was not mentioned in the text of Practice although Drucker aligned himself with Owen’s general philosophy that making a profit was the essential to economic performance, as was the advisability of treating workers in a progressive manner.

Smith was given a by-line (ibid:385) but his relevance was discounted as being part of an economy where the businessman was a ‘trader’ (ibid:11). Keynes was not referred to in the text but was criticised by implication with those economists who saw the businessman as “a concept of

the ‘investor’ or the ‘financier’ rather than the manager” (ibid:11). Drucker believed that the

great store which economists placed upon primacy of the “rate of capital formation” was in fact a secondary factor as far as productivity was concerned. The fundamental factor in economic development had to be the rate of brain formation (ibid 4:40) [Idea: The Knowledge Society]. Drucker accepted that the standard advice of economists - to make capital investments in economic troughs and to invest in a boom - was common sense. But economists now doubted whether there were real economic cycles. In any event the business cycles were too short in duration for heavy industry capital investments to be made only during the positive phase of the cycle because heavy industry had to work on fifteen to twenty-five year programme. Even “The

greatest of modern economists, the late Joseph A Schumpeter, laboured mightily for twenty-five years…” and could find cycles only in retrospect (ibid:86-87). {Schumpeter in his 1939 book,

Business Cycles: A Theoretical Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process

confirmed this conclusion. The reason that Schumpeter could not draw concrete conclusions was because for him it was impossible to predict major external factors or political decisions (Ibid 1939:1048)}. Drucker further criticised accountants. He cited accountants’ inability to measure worker’s attitude and failures by specific managers, or to acknowledge the intangibles of

managers’ performance and development of public responsibility. For Drucker it was the

economist and accountants’ bad luck that such items could not be quantified mathematically, but that this was no argument for them not being considered (1954:60-61). Drucker’s criticism of “old” economists did not prevent him from recognising a new school of economists who were

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included in Practice. Their contribution will be considered later together with Schumpeter’s main contributions of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Stahl’s influence continued implicitly as Drucker contributed to enabling democratic and

economic change to take place without causing a violent revolution. Berle & Means, Dimock and Young’s, views on divorce of ownership and control were not repeated but accepted as a fact of life, as Drucker referred to management, and labour, rather than capital and labour (ibid:4).

Taylor was further examined and it was noted that few individuals had looked at work

systematically until Taylor c1885. Scientific Management’s contribution on how we viewed work and how it could be studied analysed and improved, was a lasting American contribution to

Western society, as were the thoughts embodied in the “Federalist Papers” since which there have been few, if any, new insights. Since Taylor’s testimony before the “Special Committee of the

House of Representatives” there had been few, if any, insightful thinkers on the subject despite

“oceans of paper”. “There are of course exceptions - especially Mrs Lillian Gilbreth and the later

Harry Hopf”. Lillian Gilbreth’s contribution was not identified but Hopf’s was. Drucker wrote

that Taylor’s insight, “as so often happens within the history of ideas is only half an insight”. There were two faults. First, his insistence that work must be divided into a series of individual, mostly simple motions each carried out, if possible, by different workers. Possibly Taylor saw the need to integrate them, Hopf certainly did. As a case study Drucker used the analogy of the alphabet where words are the integration of letters. Drucker’s contention was that where the analysis of work was concerned, man was an ineffectual machine and to use him as such was not utilising his specific qualities (ibid:274-276).

“The Second blind spot of Scientific Management is the ‘divorce of planning from doing’” (ibid:277) Taylor’s discovery that planning was different from doing was one of his “most

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rests the entire structure of modern management. From Taylor’s idea flowed our ability “to speak

seriously and with meaning of management by objectives”. But it did not follow that the planner

and doer had to be different people. They were separate parts of the same job, not separate jobs. For Drucker, Taylor’s divorce of planning from doing allied him to the philosophy of anti-

democratic elitism that swept the world before World War I (ibid:278), as mentioned previously. Drucker concluded that the full benefit of Scientific Management was derived when doing and planning were integrated. He illustrated his argument with a comprehensive case study of International Business Machines Corporation, which was dispersed throughout Practice and considered later. Drucker re-identified Ford as one of the most thorough practitioners of Scientific Management, even though he had never heard of Taylor. Drucker reached the same conclusion on Ford’s application of Scientific Management as on Ford’s management ideas, which were, that from the time that Ford determined them, they remained static. Once an idea was engineered for work it remained unchanged (ibid:277-281).

Mooney & Reiley were not included in the text but were included in the Selected Bibliography. Their ‘Social Organisation’ and ‘vital spark’ were integrated into Drucker’s ideas. Barnard also made it into the Selected Bibliography but not in the text, while for Drucker, leadership was still a vital part of a manager’s skills, as he concluded from his analysis of Cyropaedia by Xenophon (c 430-335BC) (ibid:156) that our knowledge of leadership has advanced little since c.360BC.

Gantt was identified as a prime example of one of the early pioneers of “Scientific Management” who demanded cartelisation in an attempt “to make the world safe for professional management”. His ideas were part aligned with the German “Rationalization” movement of the 1920s, which were derived from Rathenau although Drucker did not mention him by name (ibid:10). Gantt was linked with Taylor, Fayol and the Gilbreths in a list of insightful thinkers on Scientific

Management up to the 1920s. General Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton (1853-1947) was not mentioned by name but his influence pervaded on the need for esprit de corps, which would later

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be subsumed into Drucker’s definition of motivation. Also Hamilton and Span of Control was examined with Drucker giving some support to the conflicting idea of “Span of Responsibility”, later to be known as Span of Managerial Responsibility. Urwick et al was included in Selected Bibliography for his writing on Follett. {Lyndall Fownes Urwick (1891-1983) agreed generally with Hamilton on “Span of Control” but recognised the need for flexibility in application} (See Urwick in Chapter 5). Sir Cyril Ludowic Burt (1883-1971) received no further mention but he could now be regarded as having been rejected, as Drucker concluded that IQ tests were based upon a shaky theory. Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916) after making a considerable contribution in the development of psychology also received no comment and could be regarded as being

replaced by Mayo’s and the other’s later work. Tead’s influence was referred to previously. Knight despite his extensive output and previous high rating, was not mentioned.

The Unions were still a negative but powerful outside force. Drucker devoted the minimum of references to them in the text and referred to Society where he carried out a full analysis.

Management was criticised for not managing the Union element of the business and of leaving the initiative on labour relations to the Union (ibid:79). Drucker’s conclusion was that management must learn how the Unions work and anticipate their demands to make them more beneficial to management. The focus should be on returning the initiative to management (ibid:80).

Presumably Drucker meant that management must not only anticipate the Unions’ demand but present them to the workforce as a management initiative not wait until the Unions make their demands so that they can claim the credit.

Drucker’s position on ‘communication’ had not moved as “common understanding and common

language … is usually lacking” (ibid:123). But Drucker now accepted how difficult

communication was; even with the best efforts management must continue to make in the interest of the enterprise. Management was reminded that conventional data presented in the conventional way meant nothing to workers. New techniques of communication were needed, as lack of

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information resulted in lack of incentive and performance (ibid:301). Drucker recommended through a case study the use of a management letter as follows [which is a Smiddy idea]: that subordinates write to their manager twice a year defining the subordinates’ own job and that of the manager. The letter set out what a subordinate had to do to attain their own goals and what they expected from his manager to enable them to achieve their results. Once agreed it became the charter under which they operated (1954:126-128). This letter of mutual commitment between the supervisor and their manager was, in this writer’s opinion, one of the cornerstones of making MbO work as intended by agreeing the individual’s objectives in a manner that they are a personal commitment of performance.

The American worker’s will to work and his willingness to make an unqualified commitment had been previously identified as being complex and was further examined in case studies. The enterprise had to “employ the whole man” and should be able to expect commitment, fairness, willing dedication and a willingness to accept change. Acquiescence was not what was required but a preparedness to help to build an esprit de corps and accept responsibility (1954:262-263). “We know that regarding security of continuing employment it is the one really important security

to most employees” (1954:309). Since Society Drucker had discovered working examples to

support these ideas and had resolved his outstanding issues regarding employment conditions with his major case study of IBM. Despite IBM’s proven solution Drucker did not believe that it could be applied nationally. Drucker warned against doing nothing, because the “guaranteed annual

wage” was only a few years’ away, which would hurt both the worker and the enterprise

(1954:309). He concluded that there could not be a national guaranteed wage, which was a change from his previous position. But what could be given and was needed was life insurance for workers. This idea was supported by a reference to the Resistoflex Corporation (1954:307) but the article in Personnel to which Drucker refers could not be traced. In comparison, Resistoflex insurance policies for personnel, as Drucker reported them, were nominal compared with IBM.

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Drucker saw Automation replacing the old mass production methods (1954:20, 280), as giving an opportunity to integrate work and its planning, which was something that IBM has achieved. See IBM case study (ibid:279). He rejected the speculation from “the advocates of controlled

economy and central planning - especially in Europe” (1954:17) that workers and all but a few

managers would be replaced by “the push button factory of the future” (1954:17).

Drucker believed the best preparation for management was a general education through formal schooling “Or, as so many of the best have always done, he may educate himself” (1954:368). [Idea: of responsibility for Continual Self-Development by Learning]. Drucker did not believe that young people could be taught how to manage. Management needed experience and maturity to assess and take risks (ibid:369). A case reference was made to the Jesuits’ professional

training, where it was found that it did “not take” until experience made advanced studies meaningful (ibid:37). As all managers needed further advanced education for tomorrow’s tasks, they had to continue studying on the countless “advanced management programmes”. Drucker was identifying ‘continual education’ (ibid:370).

Drucker continued to reject the Army inspired “line and staff” function in business, which he linked to the warning of the danger of staff empires that confused workers and demonstrated authority without responsibility. The military system was designed for security first, with economic considerations secondary, and was not a starting point for management (ibid:7-8). Drucker admitted that specialists were needed and so were specialist services, but he believed that central office staff should be as small as possible and staffed by people with operational

experience, answerable to an executive or executives (ibid:237-238).

Drucker set the scene for the need for a practice of management. He believed that the Free World was effectively dependent on the skills of management for its survival, particularly those of the management of big organisations because of their capacity to produce for national defence at

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practically an instant’s notice (ibid:4-5). On management’s place in society, management was now a pivotal player in social history. It was a distinct leading institution since its emergence during the turn of the century. Seldom, if ever, in human history had a new institution proved so indispensable and been established with so little controversy (ibid:4).

Society made two types of basic demand on management, social and economic. It expected management to anticipate social demands and maintain employment as close to stability as

possible (ibid:365). This included allowing for demographic changes by creating opportunities for workers and not excluding people unnecessarily on educational grounds. Old and disabled people should not be prevented from working as a policy (ibid:380) although it was necessary to ensure that they did not block progress and employment for younger workers (ibid:378). [Idea: It will have to be accepted that many people in the future will want to work beyond what was previously considered retirement age]. Management responsibility was not only for the enterprise itself and its own members (ibid:377), but must also act in the public interest (ibid:384). [Idea:

Stakeholders]. While having the interest of society at large and of its own members, in particular, the enterprise should not take on the role of the state and should respect a pluralistic society (ibid:383). Nor should it assume paternal authority and demand the exclusive loyalty of its

members (ibid:381). In Drucker’s earlier works he had been moving towards advocating a mutual