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2015025127
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I once again dedicate this book to the person who lovingly helps me explore and appreciate life’s wonders: My wife, Ann.
J.R.S.
For Julie, Sammy, Eliana, Jakey, Jessica, Caleb, and Lilah —I love you!
D.G.B.
About the Authors
DR. JOHN R. SCHERMERHORN, JR . is the Charles G. O’Bleness Emeritus Professor of Management in the College of Business at Ohio University. He earned a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Northwestern University, an MBA (with distinction) in management and international business from New York University, a BS in business administration from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Pécs in Hungary and is honorary professor at the National University of Ireland at Galway. He previously taught at Tulane University, the University of Vermont, and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where he also served as Chair of the Department of Management and Associate Dean of the College of Business Administration.
Dr. Schermerhorn’s international experience includes serving as visiting professor of management at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong, Kohei Miura Visiting Professor at Chubu University in Japan, Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Botswana, member of the graduate faculty at Bangkok University in Thailand, and advisor to the LaoAmerican College in Vientiane, Laos. He was on-site coordinator for two years at the Ohio University MBA and Executive MBA programs in Malaysia, and taught residencies for four years at the Ohio University MBA program in Bangalore, India. He teaches a graduate course in strategic leadership and organizational behavior at Universita Politecnicà Delle Marche in Italy, and an organization behavior Ph.D. seminar at Bangkok University and the University of Pécs. He has twice served as Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Ohio University.
A past chairperson of the Management Education and Development Division of the Academy of Management, Dr. Schermerhorn is known to educators and students as senior author of Exploring Management 5e (Wiley, 2016) and Management 13e (Wiley, 2015), and co-author of Organizational Behavior 13e (Wiley, 2014). His research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Organizational Dynamics, Asia-Pacific Journal of Management, and the Journal of Management Education, among other scholarly outlets .
Dr. Schermerhorn’s consultancies include assignments with the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation, Petróleos de Venezuela, American Bankers Association, Corning Glass Works, New England Hospital Assembly, and Vietnam Training Center for Radio and Television.
Ohio University named Dr. Schermerhorn a University Professor, the university’s highest campus-wide honor for excellence in undergraduate teaching. He is a popular guest speaker at colleges and universities and is available for workshops on high engagement instructional approaches, management curriculum innovations, and scholarly manuscript development and textbook writing. His latest projects include video-enhanced e-textbook development for active learning classroom environments.
Courtesy of John Schermerhorn
DR. DANIEL G. BACHRACH (Dan) is the Robert C. and Rosa P. Morrow Faculty Excellence Fellow and Professor of Management in the Culverhouse College of Commerce at the University of Alabama, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in management.
Dr. Bachrach earned a PhD in organizational behavior and human resource management—with a minor emphasis in strategic management—from Indiana University’s Kelley School of
Business, an MS in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a BA in psychology from Bates College in Lewiston Me.
A member of the Academy of Management and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Dr. Bachrach serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Psychology and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes . He is co-editor of the Handbook of Behavioral Operations Management: Social and Psychological Dynamics in Production and Service Settings (Oxford University Press, 2014), co-author of Transformative Selling: Becoming a Resource Manager and a Knowledge Broker (Axcess Capon, 2014), Management 13e (Wiley, 2016), Exploring Management 5e (Wiley, 2015), and senior co-author of Becoming More Than a Showroom: How to Win Back Showrooming Customers (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015) and 10 Don’ts on Your Digital Devices: The Non-Techie’s Survival Guide to Digital Security and Privacy (Apress, 2014).
Dr. Bachrach is the winner of multiple research and teaching awards, including the 2016 John S. Bickley C&BA Creativity and Innovation Award and the 2017 National Alumni Association Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award the OCTA, which is the University of Alabama’s highest honor for excellence in teaching. Dan, who was also named the 2017 Innovation Scholar in Residence for the College of Continuing Studies also has published extensively in a number of academic journals including Organization Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Strategic Management Journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, Decision Sciences, Leadership Quarterly, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, and the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.
Courtesy of Daniel Bachrach
Dear Colleague
If you are using the flipped classroom or are looking for ways to enrich your teaching, this book is tailored from our experiences to make it easy to engage students in active learning—both face-to-face and online.
Welcome to Exploring Management, Sixth Edition. You’ll quickly see that it is a bit different from tradi tional textbooks, we hope in a positive way. It has all the content you expect, but . . .
• The writing voice is “personal”—students are made part of the conversation and asked to interact with the subject matter while reading.
• The presentation is “chunked”—short content sections that fit how students read are followed by study guides that check their learning and prompt career thinking.
• The content is “live”—pages are full of timely examples, news items, situations, and reflection questions that make management real and launch meaningful discussions.
Exploring Management is a reflection of how much we have learned from our students about what they value, where they hope to go, and how they like to study and learn. It’s also a reflection of our desire to bring the real world into the management class, engage students in interesting discussions of important topics, and offer a variety of assignments and projects that promote critical thinking. And if you are using the flipped classroom or looking for ways to enrich your teaching, this book is tailored from experiences to make it easy to engage students in active learning—both face-to-face or online.
Instructors have had a lot of success using Exploring Management to bring high student engagement to their classes. Chances are that you will, too. Take a moment to review the book’s design and built-in pedagogy. Browse some pages to check the writing style, visual presentation, reflection features, and study guides.
Does Exploring Management offer what you are looking for to build a great management course? Could it help engage your students to the point where they actually read and think about topics before coming to class?
As management educators we bear a lot of responsibility for helping students learn how to better manage their lives and careers, and help organizations make real contributions to society. Exploring Management, Sixth Edition, is our attempt to make it easier for you to fulfill this responsibility in your own way, with lots of instructional options, and backed by solid text content. Thanks for considering it.
Sincerely,
John Schermerhorn
Dan Bachrach
What Makes Exploring Management Different?
Students tell us over and over again that they learn best when their courses and assignments fit the context of their everyday lives, career aspirations, and personal experiences. We have written Exploring Management, Sixth Edition, to meet and engage students in their personal spaces. It uses lots of examples, applications, visual highlights, and learning aids to convey the essentials of management. It also asks students thought-provoking questions as they read. Our hope is that this special approach and pedagogy will help management educators find unique and innovative ways to enrich the learning experiences of their students.
Exploring Management Offers a Flexible, Topic-Specific Presentation.
The first thing you’ll notice is that Exploring Management presents “chunks” of material to be read and digested in short time periods. This is a direct response to classroom experiences where our students increasingly find typical book chapters cumbersome to handle.
Students never read more than a few pages in Exploring Management before hitting a “Study Guide” that allows them to bring closure to what they have just read. This chunked pedagogy motivates students to read and study assigned material before attending class. And, it helps them perform better on tests and assignments.
Topics are easily assignable and sized for a class session. Although presented in the traditional planning, organizing, leading, and controlling framework, chapters can be used in any order based on instructor preferences. Many options are available for courses of different types, lengths, and meet ing schedules, including online and distance-learning formats. It all depends on what fits best with course objectives, learning approaches, and instructional preferences.
Exploring Management Uses an Integrated Learning Design.
Every chapter opens with a catchy subtitle and clear visual presentation that quickly draws students into the topic. The opening Management Live vignette hits a timely topic relevant to chapter material. Key learning objectives are listed in Your Chapter Takeaways, while What’s Inside highlights four interesting and useful chapter features—Choices, Ethics Check, Facts to Consider, Hot Topic, and Quick Case.
Each chapter section begins with a visual overview that poses a Takeaway Question followed by a list of Answers to Come. These answers become the subheadings that organize section content. The section ends with a Study Guide. This one-page checkpoint asks students to pause and check learning before moving on to the next section. The Study Guide elements include:
• Rapid Review—bullet-list summary of concepts and points
• Questions for Discussion—questions to stimulate inquiry and prompt class discussions
• Be Sure You Can—checkpoint of major learning outcomes for mastery
• Career Situation: What Would You Do?—asks students to apply section topics to a problem-solving situation
• Terms to Define—glossary quiz for vocabulary development
Exploring Management Makes Active Learning and “Flipping” the Classroom Easy.
Active engagement and flipped classrooms shift the focus from instructors lecturing and students listening, to instructors guiding and students engaging. The first step is getting students to read and study assigned materials before class. When they come to class prepared, the instructor has many more options for engagement. The chunked presentations and frequent Study Guides in Exploring Management, along with its video-enhanced flipped classroom learning package, help greatly in this regard.
Dan Bachrach has prepared an extensive Active Classroom Guide that includes authors’ videos that students can view before class to highlight core content for each section of every chapter. It also provides easy-to-use lesson plans for engaging students in active discussions and interesting assignments based on chapter features. Our goal with Dan’s Active Classroom Guide packaged with the pedagogy of Exploring Management and WileyPLUS—is to give instructors a ready-to-go pathway to implement an active, engaged, and flipped classroom.
Success in flipping the classroom requires a good short quiz and testing program to ensure student learning. Dan has nicely integrated Exploring Management with the advanced WileyPLUS Learning Space online environment to make this easy. Success in flipping the classroom also requires a solid inventory of discussion activities, projects, and quick-hitting experiences that turn class and online time into engaged learning time.
Dan has also prepared instructor’s guides for each feature in every chapter of Exploring Management so that they can be
easily used for flipped classroom activities and discussions, and for individual and team assignments. Imagine the possibilities for student engagement when using features like these:
• Choices—offers timely work scenarios for analysis and asks students to think critically while answering the question What’s Your Take?
Examples include “Want Vacation? Take as Much as You Need,” “Want to Win? Know your Analytics,” “Employers Differ on Hiring and Retention Strategies,” “To Pay or Not to Pay More than the Minimum Wage.”
• Ethics Check—poses an ethical dilemma and challenges students with Your Decision?
Examples include “Social Media Checks May Cause Discrimination in Hiring,” “My Team Leader is a Workaholic,” “Life and Death at an Outsourcing Factory,” and “Social Loafing May Be Closer Than You Think.”
• Facts to Consider—summarizes survey data to stimulate critical inquiry and asks students What’s Your Take?
Examples include “The “Ask Gap”—What It Takes for Women to Get Raises,” “Policies on Office Romances Vary Widely,” “Disposable Workers are Indispensable to Business Profits,” and “Ups and Downs for Minority Entrepreneurs.”
• Hot Topics—presents timely, even controversial, issues framed for debate and discussion, and asks students How About It?
Examples include “The $50,000 Retail Worker,” “Keep Your Career Plan Tight and Focused, or Loosen Up?” “Rewarding Mediocrity Begins at an Early Age” and, “Can Disharmony Build a Better Team?”
• Quick Case—gives students a short, real-life, scenario that puts them in a challenging work situation and asks What Do You Do?
Examples include “New Dads Say it’s Time for Paternity Leave,” “Removing the Headphones to Show Team Spirit,” “16 Hours to J-Burg,” and “It’s Time to Ask for a Raise.”
Exploring Management Uses a Conversational and Interactive Writing Style.
The authors’ voice in Exploring Management speaks with students the way you and we do in the classroom—conversationally, interactively, and using lots of questions. Although it may seem unusual to have authors speaking directly to their audience, our goals are to be real people and approach readers in the spirit of what Ellen Langer calls mindful learning. 1 She describes this as engaging students from a perspective of active inquiry rather than as consumers of facts and prescriptions. We view it as a way of moving textbook writing in the same direction we are moving college teaching—being less didactic and more interactive, and doing a better job of involving students in a dialog around meaningful topics, questions, examples, and even dilemmas.
1 Ellen J. Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning (Reading, MA: Perseus, 1994).
Exploring Management Helps Students Earn Good Grades and Build Useful Career Skills.
Exploring Management is written and designed to help students prepare for quizzes and tests, and build essential career and life skills. In addition to chunked reading and Study Guides, the end-of-chapter Test Prep asks students to answer multiplechoice, short response, and integration and application questions as a starting point for testing success. They are next directed to Steps to Career Learning guide to take advantage of active learning and personal development activities in the endof-book Skill-Building Portfolio. It offers Self-Assessments, Class Exercises, and Team Projects carefully chosen to match chapter content with skills development opportunities. A further selection of Cases for Critical Thinking engages students in analysis of timely situations and events involving real people and organizations.
WileyPLUS
WileyPLUS is an innovative, research-based, online environment for effective teaching and learning. It’s a place where students can learn and prepare for class while identifying their strengths and nurture core skills. WileyPLUS transforms course content into an online learning community whose members experience learning activities, work through self-assessment, ask questions and share insights. As they interact with the course content, peers and their instructor, WileyPLUS creates a personalized study guide for each student.
When students collaborate with each other, they make deeper connections to the content. When students work together, they also feel part of a community so that they can grow in areas beyond topics in the course. Students using WileyPLUS become invested in their learning experience while using time efficiently and developing skills like critical thinking and teamwork.
WileyPLUS is class tested and ready-to-go for instructors. It offers a flexible platform for quickly organizing learning activities, managing student collaboration, and customizing courses—including choice of content as well as the amount of interactivity between students. An instructor using WileyPLUS is able to easily:
• Assign activities and add special materials
• Guide students through what’s important by easily assigning specific content
• Set up and monitor group learning
• Assess student engagement
• Gain immediate insights to help inform teaching
Special visual reports in WileyPLUS help identify problem areas in student learning and focus instructor attention and resources on what’s most important. With the visual reports, an
instructor can see exactly where students are struggling and in need of early intervention. Students can see exactly what they don’t know to better prepare for exams, and gain insights into how to study and succeed in a course.
Student and Instructor Resources
Exploring Management is rich in special materials that support instructional excellence and student learning. Our colleagues at John Wiley & Sons have worked hard to design supporting materials that support our learning and engagement.
• Companion Web Site The Companion Web site for Exploring Management at www.wiley.com/college/schermerhorn contains myriad tools and links to aid both teaching and learning, including nearly all the resources described in this section.
• Instructor’s Resource Guide The Instructor’s Resource Guide includes a Conversion Guide, Chapter Outlines, Chapter Objectives, Lecture Notes, Teaching Notes, and Suggested Answers for all quiz, test, and case questions.
Acknowledgments
Exploring Management, Sixth Edition, began, grew, and found life and form in its first five editions over many telephone conversations, conference calls, e-mail exchanges, and face-toface meetings. It has since matured and been refined as a sixth edition through the useful feedback provided by many satisfied faculty and student users and reviewers.
There wouldn’t be an Exploring Management without the support, commitment, creativity, and dedication of the following members of the Wiley team. Our thanks go to: Lisé Johnson, Executive Editor; George Hoffman, Vice President and Director; Jennifer Manias, Project Manager; Ethan Lipson, Editorial Assistant; Chris DeJohn, Market Development Manager; Valerie Vargas, Senior Production Editor; Tom Nery, Senior Designer; Mary Ann Price, Photo Manager; and Jackie Henry, our Project Manager at Aptara.
Focus Group Participants
Maria Aria, Camden County College; Ellen Benowitz, Mercer County Community College; John Brogan, Monmouth University; Lawrence J. Danks, Camden County College; Matthew DeLuca, Baruch College; David Fearon, Central Connecticut State University; Stuart Ferguson, Northwood University; Eugene Garaventa, College of Staten Island; Scott Geiger, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg; Larry Grant, Bucks County Community College; Fran Green,
• Test Bank The Test Bank consists of nearly 80 true/false, multiple-choice, and short-answer questions per chapter. It was specifically designed so that the questions vary in degree of difficulty, from straightforward recall to challenging, to offer instructors the most flexibility when designing their exams. The Computerized Test Bank includes a test-generating program that allows instructors to customize their exams.
• PowerPoint Slides A set of interactive PowerPoint slides includes lecture notes and talking points. An Image Gallery, containing .jpg files for all of the figures in the text, is also provided for instructor convenience.
• Management Weekly Updates These timely updates keep you and your students updated and informed on the very latest in business news stories. Each week you will find links to five new articles, video clips, business news stories, and so much more with discussion questions to elaborate on the stories in the classroom. http://wileymanagementupdates.com
• Darden Business Cases Through the Wiley Custom Select Web site, you can choose from thousands of cases from Darden Business Publishing to create a book with any combination of cases, Wiley textbook chapters, and original material. Ask your local Wiley Account Manager for more information.
Pennsylvania State University, Delaware County; F. E. Hamilton, Eckerd College; Don Jenner, Borough of Manhattan Community College; John Podoshen, Franklin and Marshall College; Neuman Pollack, Florida Atlantic University; David Radosevich, Montclair State University; Moira Tolan, Mount Saint Mary College.
Virtual Focus Group Participants
George Alexakis, Nova Southeastern University; Steven Bradley, Austin Community College; Paula Brown, Northern Illinois University; Elnora Farmer, Clayton State University; Paul Gagnon, Central Connecticut State University; Eugene Garaventa, College of Staten Island; Larry Garner, Tarleton State University; Wayne Grossman, Hofstra University; Dee Guillory, University of South Carolina, Beaufort; Julie Hays, University of St. Thomas; Kathleen Jones, University of North Dakota; Marvin Karlins, University of South Florida; Al Laich, University of Northern Virginia; Vincent Lutheran, University of North Carolina, Wilmington; Douglas L. Micklich, Illinois State University; David Oliver, Edison College; Jennifer Oyler, University of Central Arkansas; Kathleen Reddick, College of Saint Elizabeth; Terry L. Riddle, Central Virginia Community College; Roy L. Simerly, East Carolina University; Frank G. Titlow, St. Petersburg College; David Turnipseed, Indiana University— Purdue University, Fort Wayne; Michael Wakefield, Colorado State University, Pueblo; George A. (Bud) Wynn, University of Tampa.
Reviewers
M. David Albritton, Northern Arizona University; Mitchell Alegre, Niagara University; Allen Amason, University of Georgia; Mihran Aroian, University of Texas, Austin; Karen R. Bangs, California State Polytechnic University; Heidi Barclay, Metropolitan State University; Reuel Barksdale, Columbus State Community College; Patrick Bell, Elon University; Michael Bento, Owens Community College; William Berardi, Bristol Community College; Robert Blanchard, Salem State University; Laquita Blockson, College of Charleston; Peter Geoffrey Bowen, University of Denver; Victoria Boyd, Claflin University; Ralph R. Braithwaite, University of Hartford; David Bright, Wright State University-Dayton; Kenneth G. Brown, University of Iowa; Diana Bullen, Mesa Community College; Beverly Bugay, Tyler Junior College; Robert Cass, Virginia Wesleyan College; Savannah Clay, Central Piedmont Community College; Paul Coakley, Community College of Baltimore County; Suzanne Crampton, Grand Valley State University; Kathryn Dansky, Pennsylvania State University; Susan Davis, Claflin University; Jeanette Davy, Wright State University; Matt DeLuca, Baruch College; Karen Edwards, Chemeketa Community College; Valerie Evans, Lincoln Memorial University; Paul Ewell, Bridgewater College; Gary J. Falcone, LaSalle University; Elnora Farmer, Clayton State University; Gail E. Fraser, Kean University; Nancy Fredericks, San Diego State University; Tamara Friedrich, Savannah State University; Larry Garner, Tarleton State University; Cindy Geppert, Palm Beach State College; Richard J. Gibson, Embry-Riddle University; Dee Guillory, University of South Carolina, Beaufort; Linda Hefferin, Elgin Community College; Aaron Hines, SUNY New Paltz; Merrily Hoffman, San Jacinto College; Jeff Houghton, West Virginia University; Tammy Hunt, University of North Carolina Wilmington; Debra Hunter, Troy University; Kimberly Hurnes, Washtenaw Community College; Gary S. Insch, West Virginia University; Barcley Johnson, Western Michigan University; Louis Jourdan, Clayton State University; Brian Joy, Henderson Community College; Edward Kass, University of San Francisco; Renee King, Eastern Illinois University; Judith Kizzie, Howard Community College; Robert Klein, Philadelphia University; John Knutsen, Everett Community College; Al Laich, University of Northern Virginia; Susan Looney, Delaware Technical & Community College; Vincent Lutheran, University of North Carolina, Wilmington; Jim Maddox, Friends University; John Markert, Wells College; Marcia Marriott, Monroe Community College; Brenda McAleer, Colby College; Randy McCamery, Tarleton State University; Gerald McFry, Coosa Valley Technical College; Diane Minger, Cedar Valley College; Michael Monahan, Frostburg
State University; Dave Nemi, Niagara County Community College; Nanci Newstrom, Eastern Illinois University; Lam Nguyen, Palm Beach State College; Joelle Nisolle, West Texas A&M University; Penny Olivi, York College of Pennsylvania; Jennifer Oyler, University of Central Arkansas; Barry Palatnik, Burlington County Community College; Kathy Pederson, Hennepin Technical College; Sally Proffitt, Tarrant County College; Nancy Ray-Mitchell, McLennan Community College; Catherine J. Ruggieri, St. John’s University; Joseph C. Santora, Essex County College; Charles Seifert, Siena College; Sidney Siegel, Drexel University; Gerald F. Smith, University of Northern Iowa; Wendy Smith, University of Delaware; Howard Stanger, Canisius College; Peter Stone, Spartanburg Community College; Henry A. Summers, Stephen F. Austin State University; Daryl J. Taylor, Pasadena City College; Ann Theis, Adrian College; Jody Tolan, University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business; David Turnipseed, Indiana University—Purdue University, Fort Wayne; Robert Turrill, University of Southern California; Vickie Tusa, Embry-Riddle University; Aurelio Valente, Philadelphia University; Michael Wakefield, Colorado State University, Pueblo; Charles D. White, James Madison University; Daniel Wubbena, Western Iowa Tech Commun ity College; Alan Wright, Henderson State University; Ashley Wright, Spartanburg Community College.
Class Test Participants
Verl Anderson, Dixie State College; Corinne Asher, Henry Ford Community College; Forrest Aven, University of Houston Downtown; Richard Bartlett, Columbus State Community College; John Bird, West Virginia State University; Dr. Sheri Carder, Florida Gateway College; Susie Cox, McNeese State University; Robert Eliason, James Madison University; Trent Engbers, Indiana University; Shelly Gardner, Augustana College; Ann Gilley, Ferris State University; Janie Gregg, The University of West Alabama; Jay Hochstetler, Anderson University; Tacy Holliday, Montgomery College; David Hollomon, Victor Valley College; Cheryl Hughes, Indiana University; David Jalajas, Long Island University; Angelina Kiser, University of the Incarnate Word; Cindy Murphy, Southeastern Community College; Chandran Mylvaganam, Northwood University; Greg Petranek, Eastern Connecticut State University; Tracy Porter, Cleveland State University; Renee Rogers, Forsyth Technical Community College; Richard Sharman, Lone Star College–Montgomery; Catherine Slade, Augusta State University; Susan Steiner, The University of Tampa; Donald Stout, Saint Martin’s University; Alec Zama, Grand View University; Nancy Zimmerman, The Community College of Baltimore County.
1.1 What Does It Mean To Be a Manager? 2
Organizations Have Different Types and Levels of Managers. 2
Accountability Is a Foundation of Managerial Performance. 4
Effective Managers Help Others Achieve High Performance and Satisfaction. 4 Managers Are Coaches, Coordinators, and Supporters. 4
1.2 What Do Managers Do, and What Skills Do They Use? 7
Managers Plan, Organize, Lead, and Control. 7
Managers Perform Informational, Interpersonal, and Decisional Roles. 9
Managers Use Networking and Social Capital to Pursue Action Agendas. 9
Managers Use Technical, Human, and Conceptual Skills. 10 Managers Should Learn from Experience. 12
1.3 What Are Some Important Career Issues? 14
Globalization and Job Migration Have Changed the World of Work. 14
Failures of Ethics and Corporate Governance are Troublesome. 15
Respecting Diversity and Eliminating Discrimination Are Top Social Priorities. 16
Talent Is a “Must Have” in a Free-Agent and On-Demand Economy. 16
Self-Management Skills are Essential for Career Success. 17 Personal Career Readiness Must Be Developed and Maintained. 17
2.1 What Are the Lessons of the Classical Management Approaches? 23
Taylor’s Scientific Management Sought Efficiency in Job Performance. 23
Weber’s Bureaucratic Organization Is Supposed to Be Efficient and Fair. 25
Fayol’s Administrative Principles Describe Managerial Duties and Practices. 26
2.2 What Are the Contributions of the Behavioral Management Approaches? 28
Follett Viewed Organizations As Communities of Cooperative Action. 28
The Hawthorne Studies Focused Attention on the Human Side of Organizations. 29
Maslow Described a Hierarchy of Human Needs with Self-Actualization at the Top. 30
Argyris Suggests That Workers Treated As Adults Will Be More Productive. 31
2.3 What Are the Foundations of Modern Management Thinking? 34
Managers Use Quantitative Analysis and Tools to Solve Complex Problems. 34
Organizations Are Open Systems That Interact with Their Environments. 35
Contingency Thinking Holds That There Is No One Best Way to Manage. 36
Quality Management Focuses Attention on Continuous Improvement. 37
Evidence-Based Management Seeks Hard Facts About What Really Works. 38
3 Ethics and Social Responsibility 42
3.1 How Do Ethics and Ethical Behavior Play Out in the Workplace? 43
Ethical Behavior Is Values Driven. 43 Views Differ on What Constitutes Moral Behavior. 44 What Is Considered Ethical Can Vary Across Cultures. 46 Ethical Dilemmas Are Tests of Personal Ethics and Values. 47
People Have a Tendency to Rationalize Unethical Behavior. 48
3.2 How Can We Maintain High Standards of Ethical Conduct? 50
Personal Character and Moral Development Influence Ethical Decision Making. 50
Managers as Positive Role Models Can Inspire Ethical Conduct. 51
Training in Ethical Decision Making Can Improve Ethical Conduct. 52
Protection of Whistleblowers Can Encourage Ethical Conduct. 52
Formal Codes of Ethics Set Standards for Ethical Conduct. 53
3.3 What Should We Know About the Social Responsibilities of Organizations? 55
Social Responsibility is an Organization’s Obligation to Best Serve Society. 55 Perspectives Differ on the Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility. 56
Shared Value Integrates Corporate Social Responsibility into Mission and Strategy. 56
Social Businesses and Social Entrepreneurs are Driven by Social Responsibility. 57
Social Responsibility Audits Measure the Social Performance of Organizations. 57
Sustainability Is an Important Social Responsibility Goal. 58
4 Managers as Decision Makers 63
4.1 How Do Managers Use Information to Solve Problems? 64
Managers Use Technological, Informational, and Analytical Competencies to Solve Problems. 64
Managers Deal with Problems Posing Threats and Offering Opportunities. 65
Managers Can Be Problem Avoiders, Problem Solvers, or Problem Seekers. 65
Managers Make Programmed and Nonprogrammed Decisions. 66
Managers Use Both Systematic and Intuitive Thinking. 66
Managers Use Different Cognitive Styles to Process Information for Decision Making. 67
Managers Make Decisions under Conditions of Certainty, Risk, and Uncertainty. 67
4.2 What Are Five Steps in the Decision-Making Process? 70
Step 1—Identify and Define the Problem. 70
Step 2—Generate and Evaluate Alternative Courses of Action. 71
Step 3—Decide on a Preferred Course of Action. 71
Step 4—Take Action to Implement the Decision. 72
Step 5—Evaluate Results. 73
Ethical Reasoning Is Important at All Steps in Decision Making. 73
4.3 What Are Current Issues in Managerial Decision Making? 75
Creativity Drives Better Decision Making. 75
Group Decision Making Has Advantages and Disadvantages. 76
Judgmental Heuristics and Other Biases May Cause Decision-Making Errors. 76 Managers Must Prepare for Crisis Decision Making. 78
5 Plans and Planning Techniques
82
5.1 How and Why Do Managers Use the Planning Process? 83
Planning Is One of the Four Functions of Management. 83
Planning Sets Objectives and Identifies How to Achieve Them. 84
Planning Improves Focus and Flexibility. 84
Planning Improves Action Orientation. 85
Planning Improves Coordination and Control. 85
Planning Improves Time Management. 86
5.2 What Types of Plans Do Managers Use? 89 Managers Use Short-Range and Long-Range Plans. 89 Managers Use Strategic and Operational Plans. 89 Organizational Policies and Procedures Are Plans. 90 Budgets Are Plans That Commit Resources to Activities. 90
5.3
What Are Some Useful Planning Tools and Techniques? 93
Forecasting Tries to Predict the Future. 93
Contingency Planning Creates Backup Plans for When Things Go Wrong. 93
Scenario Planning Crafts Plans for Alternative Future Conditions. 94
Benchmarking Identifies Best Practices Used by Others. 94
Goal Setting Aligns Plans and Activities. 95 Goals Can Have Downsides and Must Be Well Managed. 96
6.1 How and Why Do Managers Use the Control Process? 102
Controlling is One of the Four Functions of Management. 102
Step 1—Control Begins with Objectives and Standards. 103
Step 2—Control Measures Actual Performance. 103
Step 3—Control Compares Results with Objectives and Standards. 104
Step 4—Control Takes Corrective Action as Needed. 104
6.2 What Types of Controls Are Used by Managers? 106
Managers Use Feedforward, Concurrent, and Feedback Controls. 106
Managers Use Both Internal and External Controls. 107 Managing by Objectives Helps Integrate Planning and Controlling. 108
6.3
What Are Some Useful Control Tools and Techniques? 111
Quality Control is a Foundation of Management. 111 Gantt Charts and CPM/PERT Improve Project Management and Control. 112
Inventory Controls Help Save Costs. 113
Breakeven Analysis Shows where Revenues will Equal Costs. 113
Financial Ratios Measure Key Areas of Financial Performance. 114
Balanced Scorecards Keep the Focus on Strategic Control. 115
7 Strategy and Strategic Management
119
7.1 What Types of Strategies Are Used by Organizations? 120
Strategy Is a Comprehensive Plan for Achieving Competitive Advantage. 120
Organizations Use Corporate, Business, and Functional Strategies. 121
Growth Strategies Focus on Expansion. 122
Restructuring and Divestiture Strategies Focus on Consolidation. 123
Global Strategies Focus on International Business Opportunities. 123
Cooperation Strategies Focus on Alliances and Partnerships. 123
E-Business Strategies Use the Web and Apps for Business Success. 124
7.2 How Do Managers Formulate and Implement Strategies? 127
The Strategic Management Process Formulates and Implements Strategies. 127
SWOT Analysis Identifies Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. 128
Porter’s Five Forces Model Analyzes Industry Attractiveness. 129
Porter’s Competitive Strategies Model Identifies Business or Product Strategies. 129 Portfolio Planning Examines Strategies Across Multiple Businesses or Products. 131
Strategic Leadership Ensures Strategy Implementation and Control. 131
8 Organization Structure and Design
136
8.1 What Is Organizing as a Managerial Responsibility? 137
Organizing Is One of the Management Functions. 137
Organization Charts Describe Formal Structures of Organizations. 138
Organizations Also Have Informal Structures. 138 Informal Structures Have Good Points and Bad Points. 139
8.2 What Are the Most Common Organization Structures? 141
Functional Structures Group Together People Using Similar Skills. 141
Divisional Structures Group Together People by Products, Customers, or Locations. 142 Matrix Structures Combine the Functional and Divisional Structures. 144
Team Structures Make Extensive Use of Permanent and Temporary Teams. 145
Network Structures Make Extensive Use of Strategic Alliances and Outsourcing. 145
8.3 What Are the Trends in Organizational Design? 149
Organizations Are Becoming Flatter and Using Fewer Levels of Management. 149
Organizations Are Increasing Decentralization. 149
Organizations Are Increasing Delegation and Empowerment. 150
Organizations Are Becoming More Horizontal and Adaptive. 151
Organizations Are Using More Alternative Work Schedules. 152
9 Organizational Cultures, Innovation, and Change 157
9.1 What Is the Nature of Organizational Culture? 158
Organizational Culture Is the Personality of the Organization. 158
Organizational Culture Shapes Behavior and Influences Performance. 159
Not All Organizational Cultures Are Alike. 159 The Observable Culture Is What You See and Hear As an Employee or Customer. 160
The Core Culture Is Found in the Underlying Values of the Organization. 161
Value-Based Management Supports a Strong Organizational Culture. 162
9.2 How Do Organizations Support and Achieve Innovation? 164
Organizations Pursue Process, Product, and Business Model Innovations. 164
Green Innovations Advance the Goals of Sustainability. 164 Social Innovations Seek Solutions to Important Societal Problems. 165
Commercializing Innovation Turns New Ideas into Salable Products. 165
Disruptive Innovation Uses New Technologies to Displace Existing Practices. 166
Innovative Organizations Share Many Common Characteristics. 166
9.3 How Do Managers Lead the Processes of Organizational Change? 168
Organizations and Teams Need Change Leaders. 168 Organizational Change Can Be Transformational or Incremental. 168
Three Phases of Planned Change Are Unfreezing, Changing, and Refreezing. 169 Times of Complexity Require Improvising in the Change Process. 170
Managers Use Force-Coercion, Rational Persuasion, and Shared Power Change Strategies. 171
Change Leaders Identify and Deal Positively with Resistance to Change. 172
10 Human Resource Management 177
10.1 What Are the Purpose and Legal Context of Human Resource Management? 178
Human Resource Management Attracts, Develops, and Maintains a Talented Workforce. 178
Strategic Human Resource Management Aligns Human Capital with Organizational Strategies. 179
Laws Protect Against Employment Discrimination. 179 Laws Can’t Guarantee That Employment Discrimination Will Never Happen. 180
10.2 What Are the Essentials of Human Resource Management? 183
Psychological Contracts Set the Exchange of Value Between Individuals and Organizations. 183
Selection Makes Decisions to Hire Qualified Job Applicants. 185
Onboarding Introduces New Hires to the Organization. 186
Training Develops Employee Skills and Capabilities. 186
Performance Reviews Assess Work Accomplishments. 187
Career Development Provides for Retention and Career Paths. 188
10.3 What Are Current Issues in Human Resource Management? 190
Demands Are Increasing for Job Flexibility and Work–Life Balance. 190
More People Are Working as Independent Contractors and Contingency Workers. 190
Compensation Plans Influence Recruitment and Retention. 191
Fringe Benefits Are an Important Part of Compensation. 192
Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining Are Closely Governed by Law. 193
11 Leadership 198
11.1 What Are the Foundations of Effective Leadership? 199
Leadership is One of The Four Functions of Management. 199
Leaders Use Power to Achieve Influence. 200
Leaders Bring Vision to Teams and Organizations 201
Leaders Display Different Traits in the Quest for Effectiveness. 202
Leaders Display Different Styles in the Quest for Effectiveness. 202
11.2 What Can We Learn from the Contingency Leadership Theories? 205
Fiedler’s Contingency Model Matches Leadership Styles with Situational Differences. 205
The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Model Matches Leadership Styles with the Maturity of Followers. 206
House’s Path-Goal Theory Matches Leadership Styles with Task and Follower Characteristics. 207
Leader–Member Exchange Theory Describes How Leaders Treat In-Group and Out-Group Followers. 208
The Vroom-Jago Model Describes How Leaders Use Alternative Decision-Making Methods. 208
11.3 What Are Current Issues and Directions in Leadership Development? 211
Transformational Leadership Inspires Enthusiasm and Great Performance. 211 Emotionally Intelligent Leadership Handles Emotions and Relationships Well. 212
Interactive Leadership Emphasizes Communication, Listening, and Participation. 213
Moral Leadership Builds Trust Through Personal Integrity. 214
Servant Leadership Is Follower Centered and Empowering. 215
12 Individual Behavior 219
12.1 How Do Perceptions Influence Individual Behavior? 220
Perception Filters Information Received From Our Environment. 220
Perceptual Distortions Can Hide Individual Differences. 220
Perception Can Cause Attribution Errors. 221 Impression Management Influences How Others Perceive Us. 222
12.2 How Do Personalities Influence Individual Behavior? 225
The Big Five Personality Traits Describe Important Individual Differences. 225
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Is a Popular Approach to Personality Assessment. 226 Personalities Vary on Personal Conception Traits. 226
People with Type A Personalities Tend to Stress Themselves. 227
Stress Has Consequences for Performance and Health. 228
12.3 How Do Attitudes, Emotions, and Moods Influence Individual Behavior? 230 Attitudes Predispose People to Act in Certain Ways. 230
Job Satisfaction Is a Positive Attitude Toward One’s Job and Work Experiences. 231
Job Satisfaction Influences Work Behaviors. 231
Job Satisfaction Has a Complex Relationship with Job Performance. 232 Emotions and Moods Are States of Mind that Influence Behavior. 232
13 Motivation 237
13.1 How Do Human Needs Influence Motivation to Work? 238
Maslow Describes a Hierarchy of Needs Topped by Self-Actualization. 238
Alderfer’s ERG Theory Discusses Existence, Relatedness, and Growth Needs. 239
McClelland Identifies Acquired Needs for Achievement, Power, and Affiliation. 240
Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory Focuses on Higher-Order Need Satisfaction. 241
The Core Characteristics Model Integrates Motivation and Job Design. 242
13.2 How Do Thoughts and Decisions Affect Motivation to Work? 245
Equity Theory Explains How Social Comparisons Motivate Individual Behavior. 245 Expectancy Theory Focuses on the Decision to Work Hard, or Not. 246
Goal-Setting Theory Shows that the Right Goals can be Motivating. 248
13.3 How Does Reinforcement Influence Motivation to Work? 251
Operant Conditioning Influences Behavior by Controlling its Consequences. 251
Operant Conditioning Uses Four Reinforcement Strategies 252 Positive Reinforcement Connects Desirable Behavior with Pleasant Consequences. 253 Punishment Connects Undesirable Behavior with Unpleasant Consequences. 254
14
Teams and Teamwork 258
14.1 Why Is It Important to Understand Teams and Teamwork? 259
Teams Offer Synergy and Other Benefits. 259 Teams Can Suffer from Performance Problems. 260 Organizations Are Networks of Formal Teams and Informal Groups. 260
Organizations Use Committees, Task Forces, and Cross-Functional Teams. 261 Virtual Teams Use Technology to Bridge Distances. 262
Self-Managing Teams Are a Form of Job Enrichment for Groups. 263
14.2 What Are the Building Blocks of Successful Teamwork? 265
Teams Need the Right Members to Be Effective. 266 Teams Need the Right Setting and Size to be Effective. 267
Teams Need the Right Processes to be Effective. 267 Teams Move Through Different Stages of Development. 268
Team Performance Is Influenced By Norms. 270 Team Performance is Influenced by Cohesiveness. 270
Team Performance is Influenced by Task and Maintenance Activities. 271
Team Performance is Influenced by Communication Networks. 272
14.3 How Can Managers Create and Lead High-Performance Teams? 275
Team Building Can Improve Teamwork and Performance. 275
Teams Benefit When They Use the Right Decision Methods. 275
Teams Suffer When Groupthink Leads to Bad Decisions. 276
Teams Benefit When Conflicts Are Well Managed. 277
15.1 What Is Communication, and When Is It Effective? 283
Communication Helps to Build Social Capital. 283
Communication Is a Process of Sending and Receiving Messages With Meanings Attached. 283
Communication Is Effective When the Receiver Understands the Sender’s Messages. 284 Communication Is Efficient When it Is Delivered at Low Cost to the Sender. 285 Communication Is Persuasive When the Receiver Acts as the Sender Intends. 285
15.2 What Are the Major Barriers to Effective Communication? 288
Poor Use of Channels Makes It Difficult to Communicate Effectively. 288
Poor Written or Oral Expression Makes It Difficult to Communicate Effectively. 289
Failure to Spot Nonverbal Signals Makes It Difficult to Communicate Effectively. 290
Information Filtering Makes It Difficult to Communicate Effectively. 290 Overloads and Distractions Make It Difficult to Communicate Effectively. 291
15.3 How Can We Improve Communication With People at Work? 293
Active Listening Helps Others to Say What They Really Mean. 293 Constructive Feedback Is Specific, Timely, and Relevant. 294 Office Designs Can Encourage Interaction and Communication. 295 Transparency and Openness Build Trust in Communication. 295 Appropriate Online Behavior Is a Communication Essential. 296 Sensitivity and Etiquette Improve Cross-Cultural Communication. 296
16 Diversity and Global Cultures 301
16.1 What Should We Know About Diversity in the Workplace? 302
Inclusion Drives the Business Case for Diversity. 302 Multicultural Organizations Value and Support Diversity. 303 Diversity Bias Exists in Many Situations. 303 Organizational Subcultures Create Diversity Challenges. 305 Managing Diversity Is a Leadership Priority. 306
16.2 What Should We Know About Diversity Among Global Cultures? 308
Culture Shock Is Discomfort in Cross-Cultural Situations. 308
Cultural Intelligence Is an Ability to Adapt to Different Cultures. 308 The “Silent” Languages of Cultures Include Context, Time, and Space. 309 Cultural Tightness and Looseness Varies Around the World. 311
Hofstede’s Model Identifies Value Differences Among National Cultures. 311 Intercultural Competencies Are Essential Career Skills. 313
17 Globalization and International Business 318
17.1 How Does Globalization Affect International Business? 319
Globalization Increases Interdependence of the World’s Economies. 320
Globalization Creates International Business Opportunities. 321
Global Sourcing Is a Common International Business Activity. 321
Export/Import, Licensing, and Franchising Are Market Entry Forms of International Business. 322
Joint Ventures and Wholly Owned Subsidiaries Are Direct Investment Forms of International Business. 323
International Business Is Complicated by Different Legal and Political Systems. 323 International Businesses Deal with Regional Economic Alliances. 324
17.2 What Are Global Corporations, and How Do They Work? 327
Global Corporations Have Extensive Operations in Many Countries. 327
The Actions of Global Corporations Can Be Controversial. 327
Managers of Global Corporations Face Ethics Challenges. 328
Planning and Controlling Are Complicated in Global Corporations. 330
Organizing Can Be Difficult in Global Corporations. 330 Leading Is Challenging in Global Corporations. 331
18 Entrepreneurship and Small Business 335
18.1 What Is Entrepreneurship, and Who Are Entrepreneurs? 336
Entrepreneurs Are Risk Takers Who Spot and Pursue Opportunities. 336
Entrepreneurs Often Share Similar Characteristics and Backgrounds. 338
Entrepreneurs Often Share Similar Personality Traits. 338 Women and Minority Entrepreneurs Are Growing in Numbers. 339
Social Entrepreneurs Seek Novel Solutions to Pressing Social Problems. 340
18.2 What Should We Know About Small Businesses and How To Start One? 343
Small Businesses Are Mainstays of the Economy. 343 Small Businesses Must Master Three Life-Cycle Stages. 343 Family-Owned Businesses Face Unique Challenges. 344 Many Small Businesses Fail Within 5 Years. 345 Assistance Is Available to Help Small Businesses to Get Started. 346
A Small Business Should Start With a Sound Business Plan. 346
There Are Different Forms of Small Business Ownership. 347 There Are Different Ways of Financing a Small Business. 348
SKILL-BUILDING PORTFOLIO / CASES FOR CRITICAL THINKING / CASE REFERENCES / TEST PREP ANSWERS / GLOSSARY / ENDNOTES / NAME INDEX /ORGANIZATION INDEX / SUBJECT INDEX
CHAPTER 1
Managers and the Management Process
Everyone Becomes a Manager Someday
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is into happiness. He strives “to set up an environment where the personalities, creativities, and individuality of all different employees come out and shine.”
Management Live Gaming Skills Can Be Résumé Builders
Do managing large guilds and leading raids while playing World of Warcraft belong in your résumé and online recruiting profiles? Heather Newman thinks so. In a “Leisure/Volunteer Activities” section she highlighted how gaming enhanced her skills at organizing teams of volunteers and communicating. That said, she landed a job as director of marketing and communications for a university. One hiring manager says putting gaming experience on a résumé can be a “conversation starter,” but another dismisses it as “all make-believe.”
WHAT’S INSIDE
Choices
Want vacation? Take as much as you need.
Ethics Check
Social media cues may cause discrimination in hiring
Facts to Consider
Tech industry no role model for employment diversity
Hot Topic
The $50,000 retail worker
Insight
Self-awareness and the Johari Window
Your Thoughts?
Can Newman’s strategy pay off for you? What “hidden” experiences—not just gaming—might you describe as skill builders on your résumé?
Quick Case
Team leader faces disruptive team member
YOUR CHAPTER 1 TAKEAWAYS
1. Understand what it means to be a manager.
2. Know what managers do and what skills they use.
3. Recognize timely and important career issues.
Brad Swonetz/Redux Pictures
A manager is a person who supports and is responsible for the work of others.
Takeaway 1.1 What Does It Mean To Be a Manager?
Answers to Come
• Organizations have different types and levels of managers.
• Accountability is a foundation of managerial performance.
• Effective managers help others achieve high performance and satisfaction.
• Managers are coaches, coordinators, and supporters.
In a book called The Shift : The Future of Work is Already Here, scholar Lynda Gratton describes the very dynamic and interesting times in which we live and work. “Technology shrinks the world but consumes all of our time,” she says, whereas “globalization means we can work anywhere, but must compete with people from everywhere; there are more of us, and we’re living longer; traditional communities are being yanked apart as people cluster in cities; and there is rising energy demand and fewer traditional resources.”1
What does all this mean in terms of planning for career entry and advancement? At a minimum, there are few guarantees of long-term employment. Jobs are increasingly earned and re-earned every day through one’s performance accomplishments. Careers are being redefined along the lines of “flexibility,” “free agency,” “skill portfolios,” and “entrepreneurship.” The fact is: Career success today requires lots of initiative and self-awareness, as well as continuous learning. The question is: Are you ready?
Organizations Have Different Types and Levels of Managers.
You find them everywhere, in small and large businesses, voluntary associations, government agencies, schools, hospitals, and wherever people work together for a common cause. Even though the job titles vary from team leader to department head, project leader, president, administrator, and more, the people in these jobs all share a common responsibility—helping others to do their best work. We call them managers—people who directly supervise, support, and activate work efforts to achieve the performance goals of individuals, teams, and organizations. In this sense, I believe you’ll agree with the chapter subtitle: Everyone becomes a manager someday.
First-Line Managers and Team Leaders
Take a look at Figure 1.1 . It describes an organization as a series of layers, each of which represents different levels of work and managerial responsibilities.2
Hot Topic
The $50,000 Retail Worker
Looking for a job in retail?
Want to avoid minimum wage employers? Head for The Container Store.® Its front-line, full-time workers are paid about $50,000 per year for starters, with the potential to earn more if they receive positive annual performance reviews. Chairman and CEO Kip Tindell says it’s central to his business strategy—hire great people, extensively train them,
“One great person can easily do the business productivity of three good people.”
and empower them by paying 50–100% more than what other retailers might pay them. He calls it the “One Equals Three” Foundation Principle. “One great person can easily do the business productivity of three good people,” he says. And he believes other retailers should follow The Container Store’s lead. “Better pay,” he argues, “leads to higher profitability.”
How About It?
Why would CEO Kip Tindell place so much emphasis on hiring and retaining retail workers for his stores? Is the Container Store’s wage policy sustainable in the ups and downs of competitive business? If better pay leads to higher productivity, why do so many employers—think fast-food industry—stick with the minimum wage?
Courtesy The Container Store
TYPICAL BUSINESS Board of directors
Chief executive officer President Vice president
Division manager
Regional manager
Plant manager
Department head Supervisor Team leader
Top managers Middle managers
First-line managers
Nonmanagerial workers
TYPICAL NONPROFIT Board of trustees
Executive director
President, administrator Vice president
Division manager
Regional manager
Branch manager
Department head
Supervisor Team leader
A first job in management typically involves serving as a team leader or supervisor in charge of a small work group. Typical job titles for these first-line managers include department head, team leader, and unit manager. For example, the leader of an auditing team is a first-line manager, as is the head of an academic department at a university. Even though most people enter the workforce as technical specialists such as auditors, market researchers, or systems analysts, eventually they advance to positions of initial managerial responsibility. And they serve as essential building blocks for organizational performance.3 Consider the words of Justin Fritz as he describes leading a 12-member team to launch a new product at a medical products company: “I’ve just never worked on anything that so visibly, so dramatically changes the quality of someone’s life.”4
Middle Managers Look again at Figure 1.1 . This time, consider how Justin may advance in his career. At the next level above team leader, we find middle managers—persons in charge of relatively large departments or divisions consisting of several smaller work units or teams. Middle managers usually supervise several first-line managers. Examples include clinic directors in hospitals; deans in universities; and division managers, plant managers, and regional sales managers in businesses. Because of their position “in the middle,” these managers must be able to work well with people from all parts of the organization—higher, lower, and side-toside. As Justin moves up the career ladder to middle management, there will be more pressure and new challenges, but also rewards and satisfaction.
Top Managers Some middle managers advance still higher in the organization, earning job titles such as chief executive officer (CEO), chief operating officer (COO), chief financial officer (CFO), chief information officer (CIO), president, and vice president. These top managers, or C-suite executives, are part of a senior management team that is responsible for the performance of an organization as a whole or for one of its larger parts. They must be alert to trends and developments in the external environment, recognize potential problems and opportunities, set strategy, craft the internal culture, build a talent pool, and lead the organization to success.5 The best top managers are future-oriented thinkers who make good decisions in the face of uncertainty, risk, and tough competition.
Boards of Directors It would be great if all top managers were responsible and successful—always making the right decisions and doing things in their organizations’ best interests. But some don’t live up to expectations. They perform poorly and may even take personal advantage of their positions, perhaps to the point of ethics failures and illegal acts. Who or what keeps CEOs and other senior managers ethical and high performing?
Figure 1.1 shows that even the CEO or president of an organization reports to a higher-level boss. In business corporations, this is a board of directors, whose members are elected by stockholders to represent their ownership interests. In nonprofit organizations,
FIGURE 1.1 What Are the Typical Job Titles and Levels of Management in Organizations? The traditional organization is structured as a pyramid. The top manager, typically a CEO, president, or executive director, reports to a board of directors in a business or to a board of trustees in a nonprofit organization. Middle managers report to top managers, and first-line managers or team leaders report to middle managers.
First-line managers are team leaders and supervisors in charge of people who perform nonmanagerial duties.
Middle managers oversee the work of large departments or divisions.
Top managers guide the performance of the organization as a whole or of one of its major parts.
Members of a board of directors are elected by stockholders to represent their ownership interests.
Governance is oversight of top management by a board of directors or board of trustees.
such as a hospital or university, top managers report to a board of trustees. These board members may be elected by local citizens, appointed by government bodies, or invited to serve by existing members.
In both business and the public sector, board members are supposed to oversee the affairs of the organization and the performance of its top management. In other words, they are supposed to make sure that the organization is being run right. This is called governance, the oversight of top management by an organization’s board of directors or board of trustees.6
Accountability Is a Foundation of Managerial Performance.
Accountability is the requirement of one person to answer to a higher authority
An eff ective manager helps others to achieve high performance and satisfaction in their work.
Quality of work life is the overall quality of human experiences in the workplace.
The term accountability describes the requirement of one person to answer to a higher authority for performance achieved in his or her area of work responsibility. This is an important aspect of managerial performance. In the traditional organizational pyramid, accountability flows upward. Team members are accountable to a team leader, the team leader is accountable to a middle manager, the middle manager is accountable to a top manager, and the top manager is accountable to a board of directors.
Let’s not forget that accountability in managerial performance is always accompanied by dependency. At the same time that any manager is held accountable by a higher level the manager is dependent on others to do the required work. In fact, a large part of the study of management is about learning how to best manage the dynamics of accountability and dependency.
Effective Managers Help Others Achieve High Performance and Satisfaction.
This discussion of performance accountability and related challenges may make you wonder: What exactly is an effective manager? Most people, perhaps you, would reply that an effective manager is someone who helps people and organizations perform. That’s a fine starting point, but we should go a step further. Why not define an effective manager as someone who helps others to achieve both high performance and satisfaction in their work?
Placing importance not just on work performance, but also on job satisfaction calls attention to quality of work life (QWL) issues—the overall quality of human experiences in the workplace. Have you experienced a “high QWL” environment? Most people would describe it as a place where they are respected and valued by their employer. They would talk about fair pay, safe work conditions, opportunities to learn and use new skills, room to grow and progress in a career, and protection of individual rights. They would say everyone takes pride in their work and the organization.
Are you willing to work anywhere other than in a high-QWL setting? Would you, as a manager, be pleased with anything less than helping others to achieve not only high performance, but also job satisfaction? Sadly, the real world doesn’t always live up to these expectations. Talk to parents, relatives, and friends who go to work every day. You might be surprised. Too many people still labor in difficult, sometimes even hostile and unhealthy, conditions—ones we would consider low QWL.7
Managers Are Coaches, Coordinators, and Supporters.
We live and work in a time when the best managers are known more for “helping” and “supporting” than for “directing” and “order giving.” The terms “coordinator,” “coach,” and “team leader” are heard as often as “supervisor” or “boss.” The fact is that most organizations need more than managers who simply sit back and tell others what to do.
The upside-down pyramid view of organizations puts customers at the top and being served by nonmanagerial workers, who are supported by team leaders and higher-level managers.
Figure 1.2 uses the notion of an upside-down pyramid to describe a new mind-set for managers, one guided by the key words “serve” and “support.” All managers—from first-level team leaders to top-level executives—should find that this mind-set offers a real expression of what it means to act as a coach rather than an order giver.
Sitting prominent at the top of the upside-down pyramid are nonmanagerial workers. Performing individually and in teams, they interact directly with customers and clients or produce
products and services for them. The key word driving their work is “serve.” Located just below them are team leaders and managers. Their attention is focused on helping others to serve the organization’s customers. The key word driving their work is “support.”
Top managers and executives are at the bottom of the upside-down pyramid. Their focus is on clarifying the mission and crafting strategies that help team leaders and managers to take care of their teams and workers. Once again, the key word driving their work is “support.”
Picture top managers going to work, looking up, and seeing an entire organization balanced on their outstretched hands and depending on them for vital support. Wouldn’t you agree this is
Choices
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
How about a job with “unlimited” vacation? Sounds unreal, doesn’t it? But don’t be too fast to dismiss the idea. Some fashion-forward employers are already doing it. Netflix is one.
Netflix prizes what CEO Reed Hastings calls its “freedom and responsibility culture.” One of the things that brings this culture to life is how vacation time is handled. Hastings says this about the Netflix culture and vacation policy: “We want responsible people who are self-motivating and self-disciplined, and we reward them with freedom. The best example is our vacation policy. It’s simple and understandable: We don’t have one. We focus on what people get done, not on how many days they worked.”
Netflix used to follow what Hastings calls a “standard vacation model,” but finally realized it was just “an industrial era habit.” He
FIGURE 1.2 How Do Mind-Sets Change When the Organization Is Viewed as an Upside-Down Pyramid? If we turn the traditional organizational pyramid upside down, we get a valuable look at how managerial work is viewed today. Managers are at the bottom of the upside-down pyramid, and they are expected to support the operating workers above them. Their goal is to help these workers to best serve the organization’s customers at the top. The appropriate mind-set of this supportive manager is more “coaching” and “helping” than “directing” and “order giving.”
wonders why employers should track vacation days when people don’t keep track of the number of hours they work? And he sets the example. “I make sure to take lots of vacation . . . ,” says Hastings, “and I do some of my creative thinking on vacation.”
The Society for Human Resource Management reports that only about 1% of employers offer unlimited vacation time. Many of them are smaller organizations. Red Frog Events is an entertainment organizer with 80 full-time employees who get to take vacation when they want. The firm’s HR director hasn’t found any major abuses. Dov Seidman, CEO of the 300-employee firm LRN, also gives unlimited vacation time. He says: “People are a lot more honest and responsible when they are trusted.”
What’s Your Take?
Is this approach to vacation time something that more employers should be planning? Is it the next hot thing sought by new college graduates? What are the risks and limits for employers, if any? How about the “motivation” issues? Would this be a turn-on for you, something that would keep you productive and loyal? If unlimited vacation time is such a good idea, why aren’t more employers doing it?
“We want responsible people who are self-motivating and selfdisciplined, and we reward them with freedom.”
quite a change of mind-set from that of traditional managers who view themselves standing comfortably on top of the pyramid while those below take care of them?
The upside-down pyramid view leaves no doubt that the organization exists to serve its customers. And it leaves no doubt that team leaders, managers, and executives are there to help and support the people whose work makes that possible. As the Container Store’s CEO Kip Tindell says: “If employees aren’t happy, customers aren’t happy and then shareholders won’t be happy.”8
Look again at Figure 1.2 and consider the power of the words “serve” and “support.” Isn’t this a pretty strong endorsement for team leaders and managers at all levels to try flipping the organizational pyramid upside-down?
Study Guide
Takeaway 1.1 What Does It Mean To Be a Manager?
Terms to Define
Accountability
Board of directors
Effective manager
First-line managers
Rapid Review
managers Quality of work life
managers Upside-down pyramid
• Managers support and facilitate the work efforts of other people in organizations.
• Top managers scan the environment and pursue long-term goals; middle managers coordinate activities among large departments or divisions; and first-line managers, such as team leaders, supervise and support nonmanagerial workers.
• Everyone in an organization is accountable to a higher-level manager for his or her performance accomplishments; at the highest level, top managers are held accountable by boards of directors or boards of trustees.
• Effective managers help others to achieve both high performance and high levels of job satisfaction.
• New directions in managerial work emphasize “coaching” and “supporting,” rather than “directing” and “order giving.”
• In the upside-down pyramid view of organizations, the role of managers is to support nonmanagerial workers who serve the needs of customers at the top.
Questions for Discussion
1. Other than at work, in what situations do you expect to be a manager during your lifetime?
2. Why should a manager be concerned about the quality of work life in an organization?
3. In what ways does the upside-down pyramid view of organizations offer advantages over the traditional view of the top-down pyramid?
Be Sure You Can
• explain how managers contribute to organizations
• describe the activities of managers at different levels
• explain how accountability operates in organizations
• describe an effective manager
• list several ways the work of managers is changing from the past
• explain the role of managers in the upside-down pyramid
Career Situation: What Would You Do?
When people are promoted to managerial positions, they often end up supervising friends and colleagues. Put yourself in this situation. As a new manager of a team full of friends, what can and should you do to quickly earn the respect of others and build a smoothly functioning work team?
Takeaway 1.2 What Do Managers Do, and What Skills
Do They Use?
Answers to Come
• Managers plan, organize, lead, and control.
• Managers perform informational, interpersonal, and decisional roles.
• Managers use networking and social capital to pursue action agendas.
• Managers use technical, human, and conceptual skills.
• Managers should learn from experience.
The managers we have been discussing are indispensable to organizations. Their efforts bring together resources, technology, and human talents to get things done. Some are fairly routine tasks that are repeated day after day. Other tasks are challenging and novel, often appearing as unexpected problems and opportunities. A manager’s workday can be intense, hectic, and fast paced, with lots of emphasis on communication and interpersonal relationships.9 Today, we add the constant demands of smartphones, e-mail and voice mail, instant messages, and social media alerts to the list of managerial preoccupations.10
Managers Plan, Organize, Lead, and Control.
If you are ready to perform as a manager or to get better as one, a good starting point is Figure 1.3. It shows the four functions in the management process—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. The belief is that all managers, regardless of title, level, and organizational setting, are responsible for doing each of these functions well.11
Planning In management, planning is the process of setting performance objectives and determining what actions should be taken to accomplish them. When managers plan, they set goals and objectives and select ways to achieve them.
There was a time, for example, when Ernst & Young’s top management grew concerned about the firm’s retention rates for women.12 Why? Turnover rates at the time were much higher among women than among men, totaling some 22% per year and costing the firm about 150% of each person’s annual salary to hire and train a replacement. At the time, the current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Philip A. Laskawy responded to the situation by setting a planning objective to reduce turnover rates for women.
The management process is planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the use of resources to accomplish performance goals.
Planning is the process of setting objectives and determining what should be done to accomplish them.
FIGURE 1.3 What Four Functions Make Up the Management Process? The management process consists of four functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Planning sets the direction as performance objectives. Organizing arranges people and tasks to do the work. Leading inspires others to work hard. Controlling measures performance to make sure that plans and objectives are accomplished.
Facts to Consider
Tech Industry No Role Model for Employment Diversity
Fortune magazine put it this way: “White and Asian men dominate. Everyone else—women, blacks and Hispanics—is severely lacking.” Lack of diversity in the technology industry is under fire. One early Facebook employee, Kate Mosse, describes the phenomenon this way: “‘Culture fit’ comes to mean, subconsciously, ‘people like me’, where ‘me’ is usually a young male founder. This is how the diversity data can become so skewed towards white technical men without the companies realizing it.” Google is tackling the problem with training in “unconscious bias.” Megan Smith, Google X vice president, says: “As a manager you need to be conscious that a whole bunch of people are going to be running at
Organizing is the process of assigning tasks, allocating resources, and coordinating work activities.
Leading is the process of arousing people’s enthusiasm and inspiring their eff orts to achieve goals.
“‘Culture fit’ comes to mean, subconsciously, ‘people like me,’ where ‘me’ is usually a young male founder.”
you who might not be as qualified as the person who is not raising their hand.” Here are a few recent facts:
• African Americans hold fewer than 5% of jobs in large technology firms.
• Female engineering graduates in computer and information science are paid 77% of what their male counterparts get.
Your Thoughts?
What do these tech industry findings mean for you more generally? Is unconscious bias something that you might be facing now or expect to face in the future? What issues and contradictions in employer commitment to diversity have you experienced or heard about? What are the implications for job seekers, job holders, and managers alike?
Controlling is the process of measuring performance and taking action to ensure desired results.
Organizing Even the best plans will fail without strong implementation. Success begins with organizing, the process of assigning tasks, allocating resources, and coordinating the activities of individuals and groups. When managers organize, they bring people and resources together to put plans into action.
At Ernst & Young, Laskawy organized to meet his planning objective by convening and personally chairing a Diversity Task Force of partners. He also established a new Office of Retention and hired Deborah K. Holmes, now Americas Director of Corporate Responsibility, to head it. As retention problems were identified in various parts of the firm, Holmes created special task forces to tackle them and recommend location-specific solutions.
Leading The management function of leading is the process of arousing people’s enthusiasm to work hard and inspiring their efforts to fulfill plans and accomplish objectives. When managers lead, they build commitments to plans and influence others to do their best work in implementing them. This is one of the most talked about managerial responsibilities, and it deserves a lot of personal thought. Not every manager is a good leader, but every great manager is one for sure.
Holmes actively pursued her leadership responsibilities at Ernst & Young. She noticed that, in addition to the intense work at the firm, women often faced more stress because their spouses also worked. She became a champion of improved work–life balance and pursued it relentlessly. She started “call-free holidays,” where professionals did not check voice mail or e-mail on weekends and holidays. She also started a “travel sanity” program that limited staffers’ travel to four days a week so they could get home for weekends. And she started a Woman’s Access Program to provide mentoring and career development.
Controlling Controlling is the process of measuring work performance, comparing results to objectives, and taking corrective action as needed. As you have surely experienced, things don’t always go as planned. When managers control, they stay in contact with people as they work, gather and interpret information on performance results, and use this information to make adjustments.
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
At Ernst & Young, Laskawy and Holmes regularly measured retention rates for women at the firm and compared them to the rate that existed when their new programs were started. By comparing results with plans and objectives, they were able to track changes in work–life balance and retention rates and pinpoint where they needed to make further adjustments in their programs. Turnover rates for women were, and continue to be, reduced at all levels in the firm.13
Managers Perform Informational, Interpersonal, and Decisional Roles.
When you consider the four management functions, don’t be unrealistic. The functions aren’t always performed one at a time or step by step. The manager’s workday is often intense, fast paced and stressful. The reality is that managers must plan, organize, lead, and control continuously while dealing with numerous events, situations, and problems.
INFORMATIONAL ROLES
How a manager exchanges
INTERPERSONAL ROLES
How a manager interacts with other people
To describe how managers actually get things done, scholar and consultant Henry Mintzberg identified three sets of roles that he believed all good managers enact successfully.14 As shown in the small figure, a manager’s informational roles focus on the giving, receiving, and analyzing of information. The interpersonal roles reflect interactions with people inside and outside the work unit. The decisional roles involve using information to make decisions to solve problems or address opportunities.15 It is through performing these roles that managers fulfill their planning, organizing, leading, and controlling responsibilities.
Managers Use Networking and Social Capital to Pursue Action Agendas.
SITUATION: An executive is heading to a staff meeting. She encounters a manager from a different department in the hallway. After an exchange of “hellos,” she initiates a quick two -minute conversation. She (a) asks two questions and receives helpful information, (b) compliments the other manager for success on a recent project, and (c) gets the manager’s commitment to help on another project.
Can you see the pattern here? In just two short minutes, this general manager accomplished a lot. In fact, she demonstrates excellence with two activities that management consultant and scholar John Kotter considers critical to succeeding with the management process—agenda setting and networking.16
Agenda Setting Agendas are important in management, and it is through agenda setting that managers identify clear action priorities. These agendas may be incomplete and loosely connected in the beginning. But over time, as the manager uses information continually gleaned from many different sources, the agendas become more specific. Kotter says the best managers always keep their agendas in mind so they can quickly recognize and take advantage of opportunities to advance them. What might have happened in the prior example if the manager had simply nodded “hello” to the staff member and continued on to her meeting?
Networking and Social Capital
Much of what managers need to get done is beyond their individual capabilities alone. The support and contributions of other people
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child who wrote the constitution for the class organization. Such “social introspection” is as rare an intellectual quality as it is valuable.
The history classes in the lower grades use sand-tables to reproduce the topography of the localities which are being studied, or to describe the progress of some battle or invasion. One of the pupils in 1912 constructed with his own hands in the wood-working shops a miniature Roman temple about five feet in length, the plans of which he had worked out from the descriptions in the histories. These classes often engage in debates, and the written reports which are sufficiently interesting are read in “auditorium,” and often printed in the local newspapers. Bulletin boards are placed in the hall for displaying important clippings. The pupils bring these, and classify them under the headings,—foreign news, American news, state, city, and county news, pictures and cartoons, and items on the special topics that are being studied. The history classes have charge of a small historical museum in the corridors, which contains a loan collection of Indian relics and of pottery from Central America.
The teaching of science occupies a unique place in the Gary schools. Just as the history and geography are taught as clues to the social and political world around the pupil, so the science is used to acclimatize him to the natural world. The theory is that children should commence the study of the sciences while their minds are still plastic and their interest in natural phenomena keen. The persistent questions which the child asks are attempts to get an understanding of the world he lives in. Unless these questions are answered, his interest is apt to wane as he grows older. And unless he acquires a familiarity with nature that is accompanied by true scientific information, he is apt to get only a satisfied feeling of knowledge without any true appreciation.
Science in the Gary schools, consequently, goes beyond the simple nature-study taught now in most elementary schools. The child has experience with the laboratory at an early age. The smaller children from the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth grades go into the chemistry, physics, botany, and zoölogy laboratories as “helpers” or “observers” to the work of the high-school classes. On the theory that “children are natural scientists” they are allowed contact with
apparatus and materials. It is said, in fact, that experience shows the smaller children to be as careful as the older, and actually to cause less breakage and damage.
The science classes in the lower grades are taught neither in formal recitation nor in formal laboratory work, but in a combination which the instructors describe as “experience meetings.” Pupils and teacher meet on common ground to exchange ideas about their experiences in dealing with natural phenomena. The outside world is treated as a great laboratory, and these “experience meetings” are used to interpret the children’s experiences in terms of scientific principles. There are demonstrations by the children, assisted by the teacher; a little individual laboratory work; and considerable vocal reading from textbooks and scientific story-books.
The Gary science instructors believe that much time and money have been wasted in the teaching of science in high schools, owing to the elaborate methods which have treated the students as if the purpose was to make professional scientists of them all. Children, it is believed in Gary, cannot resort to the detailed research methods of scientists, but must have quick answers and quick results. There is a waste of energy in trying to duplicate in the laboratory the fundamental experiences of life which the children are constantly seeing outside in the great laboratory of nature.
The care of the flowers and plants and gardens, the care of the animals in the zoo, and the study of their habits offer endless concrete material for building up the theoretical side of botany and zoölogy. The pupils are trained to observe and to write down what they see. One class in zoölogy last year made an illustrated booklet descriptive of the school zoo. The text was written by the pupils, the photographs prepared by them, and then the booklet was tastefully printed in the school printing-shop by the pupils themselves. The result was a charming brochure, in which not only the pupils themselves, but the whole school could take pride and pleasure. Such scientific study becomes an intimate and vital part of the entire school life.
For the physics classes, the lighting, heating, and ventilating systems of the school afford a practical textbook. In the Jefferson School, where the industrial shop is built around the boiler-room, the heating plant becomes an integral part of the shop. The physics classes study the climate and the weather. They study particularly the principles of the machines used in the different shops. Each shop may thus act as an extension of the physics laboratory. Classes of even the smaller children are sent to take apart machines like the bicycle, cream-separator, lawn-mower, and explain the construction. The automobile and motor-cycle provide many practical lessons. An old automobile which needs tinkering up is considered in the Gary school to be almost a physics laboratory in itself. The writer witnessed a physics class of twelve-year-old girls who, with their nine-year-old “helpers,” were studying the motor-cycle. With that disregard for boundaries which characterizes all Gary education, the hour began with a spelling-lesson. The names of the parts and processes of the machine were rehearsed orally and then written. After the words were learned, the parts of the machine were explained by the instructor while the class spelled the words over again. Their memory of certain physical principles, such as vaporization, evaporation, were called again into play. Then the instructor set the motor-cycle going, the girls again describing its action. When this had been thoroughly gone over, the class copied from the blackboard sentences describing the processes and parts, but omitting certain crucial words which the pupil had to supply. The intense vivacity and interest of the little group, the intelligence with which these small children grasped the principles involved, made the lesson seem a model of expert teaching. It was an excellent illustration of the way concrete processes may be used to build up scientific knowledge. It is interesting to notice that no distinction is made between boys and girls in their science work.
This lively interest in scientific processes may have unexpected results. The story is told of a high-school boy who, while the board of education was discussing means of fire-prevention, made an investigation of methods and processes which was so excellent that it was forthwith adopted by the board.
This incident is typical of the way in which the scientific work in the schools may correlate with the wider social community. Just as the history classes may bring the pupil into touch with the political life outside the school, so the physics and chemistry class may connect him with the industry of the community and with those public services into which scientific processes enter. A boy, for example, brings to the chemistry class a bag of low-grade iron ore which he has found in the vicinity. The class, under the direction of the teacher, constructs a simple electric furnace and reduces the ore. This experiment is then used as the basis for a study of the great steel industry upon which the city of Gary is founded.
A part of the chemistry work makes a direct contribution to the city. Gary has the good fortune, or the good sense, to have as chemistry teacher in the Emerson School the man who acts as municipal chemist for the city. As a result, the school laboratory becomes an extension of the municipal laboratory. The high-school chemistry pupils assist the chemist just as the smaller children assist them. With the chemist-instructor the pupils test the city water and the various milk supplies. Under the sanitary inspector they visit, as part of their “application” work, dairies, factories, bakeries, food-stores. Last year the class issued a “Milk Bulletin,” containing general information, with reports of their tests. The various articles were recorded as part of the English composition work, and the bulletin was printed by the pupils in the school printing-shop. In quality these bulletins seemed scarcely inferior to what an agricultural school might issue. On their inspection rounds, the class takes samples of sugars and candies from the various shops of the town, and tests them in the laboratory for purity and for the use of harmless coloring matter. Another class experiments with the soft drinks sold in the town, testing their composition, and studying physiological effects. The children are practically deputy food-inspectors, and make their reports on the official blanks. It is said that the result of this sort of inspection is that in a prosecution for violation of the pure-food laws in Gary a case has never been lost.
The children test also the materials supplied to the schools, the coal, cement, etc., to see if they come up to the specifications. They
are not only using the things around them for practical textbooks, but they are able to turn their knowledge immediately into work which is immensely beneficial, not only to themselves, but to the whole community. The value of enlisting pupils in this inspection work, of training them to observe and criticize and test the physical conditions under which they live, is incalculable. For even a small proportion of children to get this scientific-deputy-inspector habit, and to get used to thinking in terms of qualitative and quantitative tests, would evidently have some effect upon political and social conditions. Such scientific training makes science an integral part of life, not only a knowledge of how natural forces and materials behave, but also a command of technical resources in making them behave in desirable ways. The pupils in such a school, from their earliest years, get a correct appreciation of the value of science in ameliorating conditions and in improving the healthfulness and security of the community in which they live.
The Gary curriculum seems to represent a determined effort to break down the distinction between the “utilitarian” and the “cultural.” All the subjects are taught, as far as possible, in concrete ways which shall draw upon familiar experience and teach the child by making him do something. That something is made, as far as possible, an activity which will enhance the life of the school community, or contribute to the social community. These activities are “utilitarian,” but they are at the same time profoundly educative. Principles are never lost sight of in practice. The artistic and academic work take equal rank with the manual. Both “cultural” and “utilitarian” are, in fact, subjected to the “social.” This is the key note of the Gary education.
VII
DISCIPLINE: THE NATURAL SCHOOL
T problems of discipline in a Gary school are essentially different from those of public schools run on the usual semi-military plan. The large degree of coöperation between teachers and pupils and between pupils, the emphasis on laboratory, shop, and “application” work, where freedom of movement and conversation is essential, produces a more natural atmosphere, and a certain amount of genuine if unconscious self-government. The children in the Gary schools are generally conscious of the unique features of their school; they understand what the school is trying to do. This sense, and their pride in its fame, cultivate an admirable school spirit denied to those schools which are operated on conventional lines.
The organization of the Gary school permits the reduction of formal discipline to a minimum. It allows the teachers to dispense with disciplinary rules against whispering, with formal punishments, with formal marks or demerits for conduct. The frequent change of activity, with opportunities for exercise throughout the day, prevents the children from becoming nervously overwrought. They thus escape irritability and aimless boisterousness when left to themselves. The “application” and shop work compel attention, so that the child is kept busy and interested, and the mischievousness that arises from idleness or distracted attention is avoided. As
Professor Dewey says, “Trained in doing things, the child will be able to keep at work and to think of the other people around him when he is not under restraining supervision.” When the teacher’s rôle changes from preceptor to that of helper, it is obvious that what is needed in the classroom is not so much perfect quiet and military order as freedom of expression and spontaneity.
Visitors to the Gary schools bear witness to the peculiarly beneficial effects of this absence of formal discipline. The free and individual way in which the children move about to their tasks and the spontaneous way in which they talk to visitors make a marked impression. In classroom or laboratory or shop, it is usual to find about as much whispering as in a concert audience, with the same motives, freed of “rules of order,” for quiet. A natural atmosphere of orderly and tolerant conduct seems to be formed in such a school.
The writer witnessed an interesting study in spontaneous discipline in one of the Saturday voluntary classes at the Froebel School. The wood-working shop was filled with little boys who were fussing over the scraps left by the week’s work and trying to make toys and knick-knacks out of them. The teacher was in the room, but was exercising no control over the children. Yet each little boy worked on his own little job as indefatigably as if he were under a drill-master. If any of them became weary and was moved to interfere with another small worker, he was apt to be brushed off as if he were an irritating fly. The theory at the back of such freedom is that rules in the school tempt to infraction, and school discipline is, as a result, largely an attempt to solve problems which the rules directly manufacture. Some visitors, appalled by the freedom of the Gary schools, look about for signs of depredation. But they do not seem to find any. The visitor gets the impression that these schools have acquired a “public sense.” The schools are the children’s own institution, and are public in the same broad sense that streets and parks are public. The tone is of a glorified democratic club, where members are availing themselves of privileges which they know are theirs. One expects children, unless they are challenged to inventive wickedness, no more to spoil their school than a lawyer is likely to deface the panels of his club. The children seem in such a school
unaffectedly to own it, and to use it as a mechanic uses his workshop or an artist his studio. The halls in the Gary school become really school streets. Benches are built by the pupils along the walls, where children are seen informally studying together. Or one comes upon a table where a boy is drawing a map, having been excused from recitation, on the theory that it is not necessary for every child to be exposed to every exercise of the class when he might do something more important outside. The children come with their parents to night school and play and run about the broad halls quite unwatched. The visitor gets the idea that children come to such a school, not because education is compulsory or because their parents send them there to get rid of them, but because what is done there is so interesting that they will not stay away. The equipment, used so freely, makes the school a substitute for the defects, not only of the poorer homes, but of the well-to-do also, in supplying activities for children.
One might say that only in a free and varied school like this was such a thing as effective discipline possible. When school activities are as attractive as they are in the Gary school, deprivation means a distinct punishment. There is ready at hand an instrument for inculcating reason into the refractory which is as powerful as the stoutest disciplinarian could wish. The ordinary school has its difficulties with discipline largely because it tries to keep up a military system of conduct without any means, now that corporal punishment is generally abolished, of punishing infractions. Marks prove ineffective, “keeping in” punishes the keeper as well as the kept, and being sent home is too often a pleasure. But in the Gary school, “being sent home” would mean being sent to a place infinitely less interesting, and being deprived of school play or any special activity would mean a real hardship. The free and spontaneous discipline of the Gary school does not mean that there is no discipline at all. Unruly cases are sometimes punished severely by the executive principal. But there is little talk about “mischievous and unruly boys.” Children who, in spite of everything, are “not adapted to our kind of a school,” may go to the school farm. This, however, is not a reform school for juvenile delinquents. Delicate children may be sent there for a vacation or classes go for a holiday. The farm contains a
hundred acres, with a model dairy, good orchards, and substantial farm buildings. A graduate from one of the state universities is in charge, and is working to bring the farm up to a high pitch of cultivation and production. One group of boys who were there for a while, some of whom had come from homes surrounded by unwholesome conditions, others of whom wished to try farming for a livelihood, built themselves living quarters and a clubroom. They were provided with a teacher, and school work went on with the farm work. The boys received fifteen cents an hour for their work, and earned enough to pay their board and make something besides. These boys finally drifted back to the Emerson School or to work in the factories. But the farm remains as a valuable adjunct to the schools. Efforts are being made to make it a source of income and an object lesson to farmers in the vicinity.
Freedom of discipline is obtained in the Gary schools without the methods of “self-government” and “honor systems” which prevail elsewhere. Where the teachers retain all authority, such schemes can be little more than a humiliating pretense. For a time an elaborate self-government plan was tried in the Emerson School under the name of “Boyville,” with a sort of parody of municipal functions. But it seems to have been too unreal to last. It has been superseded by a “students’ council,” elected by the pupils of the upper grades, and exercising control over athletics, social, and other student affairs. This students’ council has executive charge of the “auditorium” periods, for which it elects a presiding officer and secretary, alternately a boy and a girl, every month. The elections for councilors are conducted in regular form, with ballots printed by the pupils in the school printing-shop. Booths are erected, judges appointed, and the election carried through, after a campaign, in which the parties meet, nominate a boy and girl for each office, and appoint a campaign manager who arranges a program for the campaign. The candidates make speeches, giving their views and the arguments for their policies.
Like everything in the Gary schools, this political practice is put into effect on a broader scale. During a recent campaign the students’ council in the Emerson School arranged a public meeting
at which prominent men of the city appeared and argued for their respective parties. The meeting was entirely organized and managed by the pupils. Such practical application seems far more real and instructive than the usual play at self-government.
Student organization in the Gary schools grows out of real work. Athletic teams and sports of various kinds are connected directly with the gymnasium work and organized play. Glee clubs and orchestras grow out of the music work. A monthly paper is conducted by the high-school pupils as part of their English work, and printed by them in the school printing-shop. There are, strictly speaking, no “extra-curricular activities” in the Gary schools. The curriculum deliberately provides for all wholesome activities, and the student interests grow out of it. Problems of “fraternities” and of the control of school athletics, which confront so many schools, are thus avoided. The students do not get into the habit of thinking of their clubs and teams as something outside of the school community life.
An example of how spontaneous organization may spring up is that of the boys’ ninth-grade English class last year in the Emerson School, which formed itself into the Emerson Improvement Association. It tries to suggest civic improvements for the school community, and the speaking and writing necessary to the conducting of the affairs of the organization provide the basis for the English work.
DRAWING FROM A MODEL AT THE EMERSON SCHOOL
Notice frieze on wall designed and painted by the children themselves
This illustrates the way that effort is made to take advantage of all the spontaneity and initiative which pupils display in organization. The moral effects of this active form of education are clearly great. Professor Dewey thinks it is a mistake to consider that an interesting and free school “makes things too easy for the child.” In the ideal school the interests and needs of the child are identical. It is a mistake, he says, to think that interesting things are necessarily easy. They may be hard, but the interest overcomes the difficulty, and it is in the overcoming that the moral value lies. Irksome tasks may be valuable, but it is not in their irksomeness that their value lies. Work that appeals to pupils as worth while, that holds out the promise of resulting in something to their own or the school’s interests, involves just as much persistence and concentration as work given by the sternest advocate of disciplinary drill.
Most of the visitors to the Gary schools bear witness to the excellent tone of the pupils, “the free and natural way,” to quote one authoritative teacher, “in which pupils govern themselves without the rigorous discipline found in other systems.” Dr. Harlan Updegraff, of the Federal Bureau of Education, says, “The pupils of the Gary schools seem to display greater self-control, more self-respect, and more thoughtful consideration for others than the pupils of the same age in most of the better school systems of to-day. I am inclined to think that it comes largely from their games and play, but a part of it is due to the organization of the school, and to the practices that have evolved in its administration. No child in Gary has a single teacher who is the object of his hero-worship, upon whom he tends to become more or less dependent, or his arch-enemy whom he detests with a growing hatred. The Gary pupil has several teachers, each of whom affects him in a different way. He becomes more conscious of his individuality in this way, and learns to determine for himself what he should do and become. Under such a system the influence of fellow pupils becomes relatively stronger than in the ordinary school. It is, therefore, highly important that care be taken to further the development of right ideals in the student body. Organized play has its great value here. Self-control, coöperation, courage, self-respect, consideration for others, and a sense of justice have been developed in the Gary youth to a noticeable degree, largely, it seems to me, through the spirit that prevails in consequence of the administration of the physical training department. Pupils who love their school better than the streets, who have a good physical tone through their play and physical exercises, and who have good self-control and independence of thought, must naturally have a more favorable attitude toward school work.”
Such a school will evidently train character as a by-product. Selfactivity, self or coöperative instruction, freedom of movement, camaraderie with teachers, interesting and varied work, study, and play, a sense of what the school is doing, social introspection,—all combine to give an admirable moral training and to produce those desirable intellectual and moral qualities that the world most needs to-day. Not obedience but self-reliance does such a school cultivate.
VIII
CRITICISMS AND EVALUATIONS
T criticisms directed against the Gary schools by superintendents and teachers are criticisms rather of the whole educational philosophy behind the institution than objections to the detailed working-out of the philosophy. Those who follow Professor Dewey’s philosophy find in the Gary schools—as Professor Dewey does himself—the most complete and admirable application yet attempted, a synthesis of the best aspects of the progressive “schools of to-morrow.”
Concrete criticisms almost all concern the alleged additional burdens laid upon the public, the teacher, and the pupil. As far as the public goes, the fact has been brought out that the Gary school is actually a cheaper kind of a school than is the ordinary public school, even when run in the most economical and scientific manner The charge that the Gary schools are aided by private corporation enterprise has already been discussed. The facts are, of course, that the schools are all supported in the usual way, by local and state appropriations. The city of Gary is not overtaxed to support its schools, neither does the United States Steel Corporation pay more than its proportionate share of the local taxes. Nor is there any truth in the impression that the operation of the Gary plan is confined to the two larger school plants of the city. Although these two plants
accommodate three quarters of the children of the city, the Gary plan is in operation in all the schools. In the two larger schools, Emerson and Froebel, the academic work extends from the kindergarten through all twelve grades. In the other schools there are no highschool students. Four of the other schools have eight grades, one has six, one is only for children in the kindergarten and first two grades. These schools have no high-school department because they are too small and the schools with high-school departments are easily accessible. All the schools have real shopwork, though in not all of them is the apprentice-repair feature possible. All the schools have play and recreation facilities. The smaller schools lack swimming-pools, but the children use the well-equipped Y.M.C.A. All the schools have “auditorium,” science, music, and expression work. All the schools either contain a branch of the public library or else use the main building near by. All the schools have an eight-hour day.
The charge that the Gary schools are too costly for imitation cannot be sustained. We have seen the ingenious efforts of the various features of the Gary plans to reduce costs, and there is a wealth of figures to show in detail the greater economy of the Gary plan. Superintendent Wirt has made an estimate that for an outlay of $6,000,000, “part-time” could be wholly abolished in the New York City public schools by an adoption of the Gary plan. The requisition of the board of superintendents in 1914 was for an appropriation of $40,000,000, simply for new buildings, which would require large sums for operation and maintenance and lack the equipments of the Gary plan. By the multiple use of facilities, Superintendent Wirt has shown that the number of school plants in New York could actually be reduced and yet the part-time of 132,000 children abolished. At the same time that this was done, the school day would actually be increased and the facilities more than doubled. A comparison between the per-capita costs of instruction in the Gary and New York City schools, figured in average daily attendance for 1913-14, has been made by Mrs. Alice Barrows-Fernandez. (The Jefferson School in Gary is used for the comparison because it is more like the elementary schools in New York than any other school in Gary.)
Pupil per-capita cost for Jefferson School, Gary, including instruction and supplies
Pupil per-capita cost for elementary schools in New York City, including instruction and supplies 40.24
Pupil per-capita cost for the two Gary schools which have kindergarten, elementary school, and full vocational shops
with one third of the school highschool pupils
with twelve per cent high-school pupils
“In other words,” says Mrs. Barrows-Fernandez in her report, “in the Froebel School, which is typical of the average school because only twelve per cent of its pupils are in high school, twelve years in elementary school and high school costs the city for one pupil twelve times $32.85, or $394.20. In New York, eight years in elementary school costs the city for one student eight times $40.24, or $329.92, and four years in high school costs four times $104.74, or $418.96; or for the twelve years, $748.88. In Gary for the $394.20, a student could also get more vocational training than is given in a separate trade school. The New York boy would get none of this in the elementary school. Even if we make allowances for the fact that the average salary of teachers in elementary schools and high schools in New York City is one third higher than in Gary, it is obvious that the balance of economy is immensely in favor of Gary as against a large typical city school system operated on the conventional lines.”
It seems established that the Gary plan imposes no burdens upon the public, either in Gary or in the communities who imitate the plan, but rather provides increased facilities at reduced cost, besides immense facilities for adults. As for the burden upon the teacher,
much has been said to the effect that the Gary plan is unpopular among teachers because of the extra work it entails. In connection with this criticism, it must be remembered that the Gary plan postulates an educational philosophy different from that of the ordinary public schools. Teachers trained in schools managed with rigid administrative and disciplinary methods naturally find adjustment difficult in a system which repeatedly calls upon them for initiative, alters their relations to their pupils, and requires a more practical attitude of “application” toward the subject-matter of instruction. Experience seems to show that many teachers who at first found this adjustment burdensome have later come to prefer the Gary plan. One teacher with a fine scholastic training, who had taught for many years under the traditional form of organization, is quoted by Dean Burris as saying, “I did not like it when I came here a year ago, but I begin to like it and see what it is all about, so I am going to stay.”
This attitude would seem to be typical of the intelligent teacher who comes to appreciate what it is all about and the valuable educational advantages which the system provides for the teacher herself. And although the problem of securing teachers has been somewhat difficult in Gary, owing to the newness of the town, the large factory population, and the relative absence of organized social life, most visitors are impressed by the unusual personal caliber of the head teachers.
It is difficult to see where the Gary plan involves extra burdens for teachers. The teaching period is only four hours a day, with an hour for “auditorium” and an hour for “application.” This is certainly no more exacting than the five-hour teaching day of the ordinary teacher. All “home work” and “paper work,” moreover, is supposed to be done by the Gary teacher during school hours, so that her school day is over when the bell rings. This makes her real school day actually shorter than that of the teacher in the ordinary school, whose afternoons and evenings must often be spent in correcting papers, etc. The Gary teacher is supposed to have leisure and to behave in school and out of school as a good citizen actively interested in the community welfare. The Saturday school work, for
which the teachers are called upon in turn, is paid for at a rate of one dollar an hour. The care and work involved in the “register-teacher” plan is certainly offset by its valuable educational value for the teacher herself.
It should be clear that the various features of the Gary plan tend to relieve the teacher of burdens and particularly of nervous strain. The teaching of special subjects by special teachers relieves the grade teacher of the obligation of teaching, under the exacting direction of supervisors, subjects like music and drawing with which she may be little acquainted. The departmentalizing of subjects down through the lower grades gives a breadth to the teachers’ work, and enables them to concentrate on the subjects which interest them, rather than diffuse their attention among many. The absence of uniform standards, the absence of formal term examinations for which a whole class must be prepared, the promotion of children by subjects rather than whole classes, as well as the division of grades according to rate of progress,—all this makes for a great saving in the teacher’s nervous energy. She does not have the strain of passing her whole class in every subject, of finishing her course on schedule time, of cramming for examinations. She has some freedom in the division of her time and a voice in the making of the course and curriculum. The less experienced teacher has in her classroom the assistance and advice of the senior teacher, as well as of the head teacher of her subjects in the head school. Teachers are not rivals, but colleagues as in a college faculty.
The freer methods of discipline are much to the teacher’s advantage. When the ideal is no longer to keep the classroom in a rigid military silence, a large part of the teacher’s energy may go into teaching which formerly went into the maintenance of discipline. Where “interest” and “application” and “learning by doing” are the keynotes, and where every one—teacher and pupil alike—is at some time in the course both teaching some one and learning from some one, the teacher is no longer interested in “making the child obey,” or “commanding his respect.” No official gulf is set between teachers and pupils. It is discipline that wears out most teachers,—and
children too,—and a greater flexibility makes for the lessening of nervous strain on both.
The custom of “helpers and observers,” the emphasis on discussion rather than formal recitation, even take a certain amount of actual teaching out of the hands of the teachers. The teacher, as in the Montessori method, becomes the guide and mentor rather than direct preceptor. She is no longer so much concerned with predigesting subject-matter and presenting it in logical form to the pupil, only to draw it from him again in recitation and written examination. She is rather concerned with directing the large amount of practical work which the Gary child does in every course, and in devising methods of “application,” or in turning the work into practical value for the school community. Those classes where the “helper and observer” system obtains are, to a large degree, self-instructing. The older child tells the younger what he is doing in shop or laboratory, etc., and when the younger child comes to take up the work, he is already familiar with materials and apparatus and the significance of the course. Raw new classes thus do not have to be constantly broken in by the teacher. This means a very large saving of labor for the teacher, while it makes for the more thorough understanding on the part of the pupil. In the physical education work and in the organized play, the older pupils are enlisted as assistants to the teachers. Superintendent Wirt’s new plans involve the employment throughout the different departments as teachers’ assistants of a class of older pupils, selected for their interest and ability Such work not only gives the student the best possible training for developing leadership, initiative, and the ability to assume responsibility, but it also relieves the teachers and makes possible many small classes without extra teachers and without extra rooms.
From the teachers’ point of view, then, the numerous ways in which the Gary plan relieves the nervous strain and actual responsibility of teaching, and removes the pressure of outside work, more than compensate for the slightly longer actual time during which the teacher must be in the school plant. And since this longer time means increased salary, it is clear that the teacher under the Gary plan is the gainer in every direction.
