Specialization and productivity in production systems

Productivity, Participation and Leadership

We will begin by focusing attention on the different positions on what productivity implies.

As we mentioned initially, Peter Drucker (1955) states that each employee must focus on work and task, eliminating all those that distract from their performance; In this way, it will be able to increase its productivity, thus disregarding the importance that the author gives to performance.

Let us not forget that his work was born as a continuation of Henri Fayol's school (1949), for whom the individual is not motivated, is lazy, irrational, incapable of self-discipline and self-responsibility; exclusively concerned with personal interest.

We must nevertheless make a disquisition: Although Fayol was in favor of specialization, he did so by relying on certain assumptions regarding the individual; that is, the basic mistrust towards them, and in turn considered that there were a few who could be responsible and therefore have control over others; while Drucker supports specialization for technical reasons; that is, efficiency, productivity and concentration at work.

Max Weber also developed the bureaucratic model of organization, taking into account the division of labor and as a tool to achieve productivity and efficiency. Thus, the rationale for contributing to the division of labor is, in all three cases, different. However, all come to the result of achieving individuals who only dedicate themselves to their task of doing and others to that of making others do (plan and control).

This separation between who does and who thinks is assumed by his critics: Kenneth Blanchard postulates that the team leader must be a person trainer and team facilitator, but not only as an effective leader of the group, but also as an effective member of it.

For W. Edwards Deming and his postulates on quality, productivity and competitiveness, productivity is given naturally and inevitably by quality improvement, based on the reduction of reprocesses. This is not achieved by eliminating those tasks that do not correspond to the main activity of the position –as Drucker proposes-, but those that do not contribute to the value chain.

This implies that there are activities that would not have to do specifically with the task of a person, but that serve and even become essential to ensure the relationship between that task and those carried out by other people or departments, but that belong to the same process value aggregation.

In this way, through the active participation of the employee in specific actions that contribute to continuous improvement, he is proud of his work. But to achieve this job satisfaction, the employee must be recognized for the ability to exercise self-control in their tasks. Furthermore, an important part of his job will be to control the process in his charge so that, through records that he keeps, he can learn about the behavior of said process and, from there, actively get involved - individually and / or collective- in the search for continuous improvement through the virtuous circle of planning, doing, controlling and acting (also known as the Deming Cycle).

From this it follows that it is impossible for someone to get involved in something where they cannot contribute their thinking, and also the need for the organization to have records of experiences in each position or task and other records that can help in the future and for decision making, process evaluation, redesign, prevention and improvement, etc.

In return, and going back to the opening sentence of Drucker that motivates this essay, all these tasks of releasing information and participating in improvement actions in the workplace would not be specific to the job and therefore do not contribute to productivity either.

Toyota System: Another point of view

In the same vein as Deming, the Toyota production system investigated and disclosed by Yasuhiro Monden also attempts to increase productivity and reduce manufacturing costs. Unlike other systems closer to Drucker's perspective, it achieves its objectives without infringing on the human dignity of the worker and going one step further: placing respect for the human dimension as one of the three sub-objectives to consider for the cost reduction along with quantitative control and assured quality.

As a basis for the achievement of the three sub-objectives and, through them, the general objective, it establishes four key concepts of which the most popular is the just-in-time one. But the other three, which are the ones that interest us most for our analysis and are placed by the author at the same level of importance as the one cited, are:

• Self-control (Jidoka).

• Flexibility at work (Shojinka).

• Creative thinking (Soifuku).

Let's start with the first one (Just in Time), Drucker raises the need to limit himself to doing each individual task in the most productive way, that is, doing as many specific things as possible in the shortest time.

Just in Time diametrically means the opposite: doing nothing more than what is going to be needed when it is necessary and not before. People who are idle will use their versatility to assist the tasks that are required at that time to achieve the objectives of the whole process.

As for Self-control, we are not going to expand on it because it has been sufficiently worked on in previous paragraphs with which Monden coincides.

Flexibility at Work, as we have seen, is complementary to Just in Time: versatility will be oriented to the person dedicating himself to tasks that add value and this is possible only when necessary, not performing the same task in isolation because This, according to Monden, would only increase stocks that cannot be used and subtract human resources where they are needed.

Creative Thinking: coinciding with the continuous improvement proposed by Deming, which requires the permanent search for new and better ways, an activity that according to Drucker would make the task less efficient.

As an illustration to this topic we want to include the following contribution by Jorge Bucay:

“Once upon a time there was an axman who came to work in a lumberyard. The salary was good and the working conditions even better; so the axeman decided to play a good role.

On the first day he presented himself to the foreman, who gave him an ax and designated a zone for him.

The excited man went out to the woods to chop.

In a single day he cut eighteen trees.

I congratulate you- said the foreman - keep it up.

Encouraged by the foreman's words, the axman decided to improve his own performance the next day; so he went to bed early that night.

In the morning he got up before anyone else and went to the forest.

Despite all his efforts, he was unable to cut more than fifteen trees.

I must have gotten tired - he thought and decided to go to bed at sunset.

At dawn, he got up determined to beat his own brand of eighteen trees. However, that day did not even reach half.

The next day was seven, then five, and on the last day he spent the whole afternoon trying to turn his second tree.

Restless at the foreman's thoughts, the woodcutter came to tell him what was happening to him, and to swear and perjure him that he would push himself to the limit of fainting.

The foreman asked him:

When did you sharpen your ax last time?

Sharpen? I didn't have time to sharpen, I was very busy cutting trees. »

Integration, Participation and Versatility

At Toyota, the conflict between productivity and humanism has been sought to be resolved with sufficient success through improvements in each unit of work carried out by small groups called Quality Circles. Here, the unit of work is not the task but all the tasks that are carried out in the same area. This method assumes that there are tools or systems that can be applied to minimize the negative effects of improvements in productivity, regarding human aspects of workers. And the time invested in training, in problem solving tools and team decision-making, essential for this achievement, could not, according to Drucker, be considered another distraction to productivity?

In addition, for Drucker an increase in productivity will be achieved by increasing specialization, and therefore by creating other functions to handle the tasks that are no longer done in specialized functions. On the contrary, in the Toyota system, productivity is given by the versatility of the workers, which implies that the number of jobs required does not increase, but rather decreases.

But this implies, of course, that each worker knows not only how to do his specific task, but also all the others that require versatility, as well as the needs and parameters to self-control the quality of his work in all of them; a situation contrary to what Drucker seems to propose to us with a "shoemaker in his shoes" where, we might think, one would only dedicate himself to doing "his own thing".

Deming's position and the Toyota System coincides with the one proposed by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman: «You have to treat workers as adults, as partners; they must be treated with dignity, with respect. They must be treated as the primary source of improvements in productivity. These are key lessons to be learned from research at great companies. In other words, if you want productivity and the resulting financial rewards, you have to treat workers as the most important assets. "

As it appears from the analysis of these authors, the individual is the source of productivity and must be "incorporated" into the organization. You must feel part of it, in this way your personal objectives will be consistent with those of the organization, being interested and motivated yourself to achieve productivity on your own initiative. According to Peters and Waterman, attention to employees, and not to the working conditions themselves, is what produces the greatest impact on performance; something that Elton Mayo (1933) had already discovered in his famous Hawthorne studies. They also support versatility, to the point of considering that Productivity Teams (Quality Circles, Improvement Teams, etc.) are more innovative and productive than any other form of Organization.

As they expose, «In this sense the psychologist Ernest Becker, for example, has formulated an important thesis, although most of the administration's analysts have not listened to it. He maintains that man is driven by an essential "duality": he needs both to be part of something and to excel; You both need to be a member of a winning team and be a top figure in your own right. Man accepts non-freedom (a large dose of conformity) as the price of self-perpetuation; In other words, he voluntarily submits to the eight-hour-a-day routine, whenever he considers the cause to be great. The company can really produce the same resonance as the exclusive club or the honor society. ”

Coinciding with this point of view, we find other important theorists of the organization, such as Eugene Enriquez and Durkheim himself, who emphasize the coercive character of the institutions; René Kaes also maintains that in exchange for the security that the institutions offer us of being integrated into a social whole, men cede to them a large part of our freedom. This behavior responds to man's need to feel integrated into a social group. This integration in turn provides learning and helps develop personality, that is, we accept it in order to build our identity in this way

Without pretending to be repetitive, in this new contribution, elements that, according to the initial phrase of Drucker that motivates this analysis, are enemies of efficiency and productivity are also postulated as critical aspects for success in the organization.

3. Specialization - Concentration

Peters and Waterman also offer their own version of "shoemaker to your shoes", but not focused on individual function as Drucker suggests, but on the organization as a whole. According to these authors, the company that wants to be productive must focus its attention and resources on what it knows best to do, and outsource the other tasks to specialized external providers, who are specifically better in each of them.

Organizations that diversify without losing sight of their main skills are the most successful. While those that claim to cover many different fields tend to fail. From what we infer that diversification is an accepted practice to achieve stability through adaptation, but if this practice is not a strategy of the organization as a whole, the opposite effects will be obtained.

Contribution from other sciences: Groups or Teams - Participation

In the last authors analyzed to contrast Drucker's position, common denominators appear that can give indications of a whole management current opposed to the traditional school. This stream is nourished by the gathering of contributions from two different sources: on the one hand, the total quality management model and, on the other, the great authors of the behavioral sciences. From this current a new organizational paradigm emerges, as stated by Kenneth Blanchard:

«With the rapid social, technological and information changes that are taking place, society is facing new tensions. Companies are more complex and competitive. They no longer depend on a few great entrepreneurs to take the lead. If they are to survive, they must imagine new ways to penetrate the creativity and potential of people at all levels.

Adding to these changes a transforming population, a change in values ​​and in the traditional work ethic will obtain an increasing demand for modern organizational structures and a new definition of leadership.

All the social actors belong to some group. Groups are groups of social actors in whom interaction is intensified. Groups, structural units, operate in social reality and interact with each other. They are characterized by having group consciousness, cohesion in action and mutual integration.

As we have been analyzing, the need to respond to these changes quickly and efficiently is revealed. We consider that for this it is essential to use all the resources available in the organization, which includes the contributions of ideas that could arise from all levels of its structure, and not as suggested by the current followed by Drucker, limit these contributions only to managers or executives of the Organization, in their planning and control functions.

As a result, a movement so intense in terms of participation and involvement in administrative practices has emerged that it is called the third revolution. A new organizational structure begins to form: the team that increases corporate participation and responsibilities fosters creativity and skills. Today's leader needs to be a person trainer and a team facilitator, but not just as an effective group leader but also as an effective group member.

We need managers who favor teamwork, facilitate group problem solving and focus the group's attention and enthusiasm on continuous improvement. In today's world, group productivity is often more important than the fulfillment of individual tasks.

In addition to the idea of ​​participation of all levels of the structure in the generation of proposals and improvements, the appearance of two elements is necessary: ​​A leader capable of uniting the personal objectives of each member of the group with those of the Organization; and a change in the traditional structure that favors the actions of this leader with a view to taking advantage of the group's synergy.

The systems that oppose "player to player" should be modified so that the priority of each team member is the achievement of the group's objective. To do so, managers should relinquish much of the control they exercise over their subordinates. If that happened it would create a feeling of group power and the group would develop pride from high-quality accomplishments.

We will never hear "this work is not mine" in a company where teamwork is practiced. When groups function well they can solve more complex problems, make better decisions, unleash more creativity and develop more individual capacities and responsibilities than when individuals work alone, this is what we know as synergy. "

4. Synergy - Cooperation

The concept of synergy, which we observed was not considered by the stream of traditional administrative thought followed by Drucker, it seems to us that it is very enriching of the relations of the employee with his work, as well as that of cooperation, understood as the collective behavior that that the actors jointly process their resources, knowledge and skills and even their emotions; since it gives the latter a global vision of the process and its results, providing the organization with the necessary information to make the quick decisions demanded by its environment, in addition to giving each member of the team, individually and in groups, the feeling of satisfaction, belonging and recognition in relation to the task carried out, motivating him to continue making his best contributions to the process.

But then, couldn't they destroy productivity? Certainly, if they were not well managed. That is why we say that today's leader needs to be a trainer of people and a facilitator of groups.

Group phenomena are considered by this new trend from a more moral and emotional perspective, and not only from a role or function. In our opinion, it is a more adequate position regarding the consideration of the individual, in relation to their work, their needs, desires, objectives, satisfaction, belonging, etc. The whole of the individual joins the Organization, including his personality, contrary to the guidelines followed by Drucker, who mentions that the individual should limit himself to developing his work, being particularly interested in the productive aspect of the individual and his specialization in work, suggesting that everything else (his emotions, personal values, morals, etc.) must remain outside the Organization, determining man's alienation.

5. Communication - Coordination

To illustrate the need for communication, coordination or relationship, internal customer and supplier, teamwork and synergy as components as important to the achievement of organizational objectives as the exclusive skills of each position, we can stop to analyze the following graph and ask ourselves on what the results would be if these concepts were not applied.

If we analyze the preceding illustration we could say that if each individual in particular limits himself to satisfactorily carrying out "his work", in Drucker's terms we could be facing two highly productive individuals.

But the illustration also allows us to observe that, for each product made by a system where each one limits himself to doing "his part" well, three undesirable by-products are simultaneously involuntarily manufactured:

• waste

• Rework, and

• Stress, that although it is not perceived in a tangible way we can all recognize that it is there: The stress arisen, fundamentally, from the helplessness felt by the workers when they perceive that, no matter how hard they try, they will not fulfill their mission… and things seem to get worse and worse, although not everyone perceives that this is not a fortuitous situation, but the systematic result of a way of working that produces products but also problems. Or as Deming calls it: "the ghost company."

And in specific terms of rework, in our opinion we can clearly infer that many times an unnecessary job or task is "created", with the characteristics of a "patch"; and that it could be eliminated through proper coordination and teamwork.

To combat this problem, it is necessary, in the first instance, adequate communication between the individuals involved in the process, as well as between them and the coordinator or manager and, finally, with the environment. Workers must be informed about what is expected of their work, who are their clients and internal suppliers, they must be given an integrated vision of the process, so that they "see" their participation in it and can identify with the final result, achieving thus motivation and personal and group satisfaction.

Based on our personal experiences, we can say that from there, and by mere «decantation», improvements will continually emerge, increased productivity, and the achievement of objectives. All this as a result of the synergy of the group through activities that, according to Drucker's phrase, would undermine productivity.

Leadership, Styles and Change

For William Ouchi, not only is there a third type of leadership that extends and exceeds the X and Y styles proposed by Douglas McGregor (1960), but with him a new company philosophy is born; company Z has a whole baggage of values, priorities and foundations that make it unique and different from the traditional school.

This theory suggests that humanized conditions not only increase company productivity and profits, but also employee self-esteem.

For him, company Z balances social relations with productivity because, in any case, the two are closely linked: society and economy. If the social body does not function properly, then the economic body will suffer. He considers economic organization a social invention, which like any social system implies a subtle form of coordination between its individuals.

According to this position, organizations do not need managers or operatives who work more intensively, but rather that their coordination mechanisms between them are tuned to the point where all the subtleties of relationships are understood, which are essential for joint productivity.

All this clearly shows that Theory Z defines productivity in the opposite direction to Drucker, since it assumes that it is impossible without team participation, participatory leadership, reconciliation of personal and organizational interests, self-control, versatility, communication and motivation., among others.

And while not specifically dedicated to Drucker's thinking, the following letter of criticism from Konotsuke Matsushita, founder of Panasonic asks traditional business leaders to reveal the assumptions on which they base their management, who take up positions aligned with the school. to which Drucker himself contributed.

"We are going to win and the West is going to lose: you can already do very little to avoid it, because the defeat is yours. Their organizations are Taylorian; but the worst thing is that their heads are too. You are totally convinced that you manage your companies well by differentiating the bosses on the one hand and the performers on the other; on the one hand those who think, on the other those who screw.

For you, management is the art of properly passing the ideas of the bosses into the hands of the workers. We are post-Aylorians: we know that business has become so complicated, so difficult, and the survival of such a problematic firm in an increasingly dangerous, unexpected and competitive environment, that the company must mobilize every day all the intelligence from all over the world. world to have a chance to save himself. For us, management is precisely the art of mobilizing and coordinating all that intelligence of all at the service of the company's project. Because we have been able to appreciate better than you the magnitude of the technological and economic challenges, we know that the intelligence of a few technocrats - brilliant as they are - is from now on insufficient to face them.

Only the intelligence of all its personnel can enable a company to face the turbulence and the demands of its new environment. This is why our large firms provide their staff three to four times more training than yours. That is why they have such a dense dialogue and communication within them; that is why they constantly ask for everyone's suggestions; and that is why above all they demand, outside of them, the national educational system, the preparation of a growing number of high school graduates, of enlightened generalist engineers and cultured, indispensable farmland for an industry that must feed on permanent intelligence ».

As we analyze what Drucker proposed in relation to productivity, coordination, training and communication actions are not specific to the function, which would make them unnecessary and unproductive, while for Matsuchita they are essential and essential for management.

From this it follows that far from opposing the division of labor, Matsushita opposes the alienation that this current suggests. We believe that not all of them will be able to be directors of the company, but they will all be able to feel like such and in this sense contribute beyond what their job description or position attributions require.

For this, an integration of the individual into the organization is necessary, which is not possible without the corresponding congruence of interests and objectives. Such integration supposes a work in pursuit of a unified organizational objective and its elemental orientation and follow-up, which leads us to believe that coordination is essential, which cannot be authoritative in any way.

On the other hand, the constant and vertiginous changes that companies face today make it more than ever necessary to rethink the actions to be carried out and to make decisions that are increasingly important and faster.

The course of these changes can lead to changes in the strategies and even the course of the organization, with which it is not feasible that the tasks remain constant and the individual can refine them over time, as Drucker suggests. We understand that the classic model proposed by him would only work in classic organizations closed to their environment, which would lead them productively to disappear.

These changes, the speed with which they occur and the urgent need for information for decision-making, make the organization have records, experiences and other records that can help in the future. For the rational-economic current -Fredrick Taylor (1911); Henri Fayol (1943), and for Drucker in particular, the execution of non-job-specific tasks should be eliminated so as not to undermine productivity.

Information Management

This shows that for Drucker (in confrontation with the most accepted business thinking today) managing information about processes and preventive systems would only increase the paperwork. If we followed these guidelines in practice and did not invest in intelligent and comprehensive information management, we would find ourselves in situations similar to those illustrated below:

Several people needed to carry out an investigation on an animal, for them unknown. But they had a problem: they were blind, and the size of it prevented that only one of them could individually cover the investigation. Since they had no other alternative at hand, they decided that the investigation should be done yes or yes, replacing vision with the other four senses. During the return trip, each one overturned the collected data as best they could.

When confronted with the information, everyone initially agreed: the "object of study" smelled very bad, kept moving and occasionally made somewhat aberrant sounds. And, although it seemed lined with mattresses, its shape was similar to a known object.

The problem was to specify what object it resembled:

- Four of them agreed that it was a column (the legs)

- Another disagreed, claiming that it looked like a drainpipe (the trunk)

- Two others, surprised by the above descriptions, spoke of slightly rounded wooden stakes (tusks).

They also mentioned a very thick hose (the trunk), large screens or fans (the ears), a feather duster (the tail)… and obviously they did not reach any agreement.

Without pretending to question the veracity or usefulness of the data on which they base their work, the success of a team where each one of them wants their part to define the whole would be as feasible as the following challenge:

a) Get: 4 columns; 1 drain pipe; 2 wooden stakes (slightly rounded); 2 screens or fans (the largest you can find); 1 duster and 1 hose (as thick as possible).

b) Cover all these elements with mattresses.

c) With these materials… make an elephant. Let it move, stick… and smell like one.

The above, although innocent, without great aspirations and even apparently silly, can nevertheless be an interesting example to think about the data we use to do our work. In this case, the elephant will again represent the reality of the organization, and our perceptions the only source of information available so far about it.

When we start working together, our situation resembles that of the 'blind' and the elephant. What this short story alerts us to is the dangers of biased information - what here would be the "way out" of each task performed individually.

As obviously in a company - following Drucker's proposal - nobody is especially interested in monitoring information that is not specific to their task, routine data, are generally oriented to the objectives of that sector, of that department: of that blind man. who is only in touch with YOUR reality.

In another sense, the changes have led companies to think about their objectives and strategies in global terms, delegating to the lower levels the search for operational improvements that respond to these changes. This requires a continuous analysis of the needs of current and / or potential clients, either due to the change in demands by them or due to increased competition.

For Drucker, always according to the initial phrase that motivates this essay, this type of approach is also negative if for the individual it is not a formally assigned task. On the contrary, the experience of many organizations seems to indicate that a supplier-client approach of the "melee" type is necessary at all levels of the organization.

In terms of the necessary information, for proper management, which includes decision making, coordination and planning; if each employee is dedicated only to his work (with a limited vision of the process), if those who are in contact with the clients who are only the sellers and the "front line" assume the same position limiting themselves only to selling, and if records are not kept because they are considered unproductive tasks, the following question arises:

How does the information related to the true and changing needs of customers get within the Organization?

In addition, if the changes happen so quickly and affect both the orientation and strategy of the organization as well as the tasks that individuals perform in it; It may happen that if I limit myself to "my part" I am doing my job very well but that it no longer makes sense because it is no longer necessary, so my individual efficiency can become one of the worst enemies of the achievements of the whole.

6. Management Standards

Analyzing the Quality Management Standards, a current topic and massive dissemination in our environment, we find that the ISO 9004-1: 1994 Standard, for Quality Management Systems, at point 18.3 determines that the motivation of the staff It begins with understanding the tasks you are expected to do and your contribution to global activities.

This supposes a group behavior as well as a fluid communication between the members of the organization and a shared leadership and commitment, when proposing awareness of the personnel through programs for this purpose and recognition of the corrective and preventive measures; and it also proposes the dissemination of measurements and surveys, whether individual and / or group.

If we consider the incredible adhesion that the Norms have had in different branches of economic activity in the world, at least in their conceptual face, we should infer that the companies of the 21st century are oriented to the modern thought of administration, closer to the «oriental »Or the Z theory.

Administrative Thought

From what we have seen, there are currently two streams of administration, one of which follows Drucker's principles and the school he represents (known as the traditional school), and an alternative model based on the Z theory, which allows us (following to Ouchi) establish the following comparative table:

Linking the leadership concepts mentioned above, we see that traditional organizations operate according to the guidelines proposed by Douglas McGregor through his theories X and Y, which we describe below.

"Theory X holds that workers are irresponsible and unwilling to work, they must be persuaded to carry out their obligations. The approach to organization applied to management based on this theory is to structure work, closely supervise, reward or punish performance.

It fosters a task and reward system, a hierarchically controlled approach to management, and is based on compliance and short-term benefit.

This theory is based on social control - extension of the socialization process, understood as the use of means and methods to induce social actors to act according to the expectations that the organization has of them.

If social control is effectively applied, the behavior of the actors will be consistent with that expected.

If we promote "productivity" through a system of individual rewards and incentives, we will be in front of a reward method that manipulates the behavior of the individual through material incentives but without providing the training tools to achieve such productivity; that is, far from strengthening the whole, we provoke a "Tupac Amaru syndrome", where the whole succumbs because each one only throws himself.

This may lead to "boycott" or unfair competition behaviors, which would probably lead to "autism" and to think of others with the sense of looking for ways to harm them so that they do not achieve the reward. It will be done as possible because the other fails and get the prize yourself. Obviously, this behavior would be detrimental to the productivity desired by this system.

Theory Y managers create an environment that fosters self-control and the willingness to take responsibility. They assume that employees want to work and don't have to be forced to do a good job. They react positively to this style, they want autonomy, recognition and an opportunity to display their competence, creativity and commitment.

To our knowledge, there is no organization in which the principles of theory Y are applied, although its administrators are convinced that they do so, it is rather that they support this theory, but in practice they adhere to X.

We understand that this is because theory Y is too permissive, informal, extreme, theoretical and even utopian; In the sense that, in order to provide its members with autonomy, recognition and the opportunity to deploy their competence, it is inevitably necessary when trying to put it into practice to remove attention from the coordination, direction and control exercised by their managers in pursuit of the achievement of organizational objectives, so it is not strange then that managers accept their postulates but do not put them into practice.

The structures

We understand by structure: "the relatively stable set of interrelations or interactions between its various parts, plus the distribution of these parts according to a dynamic order."

On the other hand, we see that the guidelines of theory X determine that organizations must have a pyramid-like structure, as illustrated below.

In them, decision-making is slow and is in the hands of one person, the needs of end customers must travel throughout all levels of the organization and most of the time they arrive at the wrong time with the consequent undesired results.

Followers of Theory Y support the belief that there is no need for a formal structure containing individuals, nor for any surveillance or control systems. Below we graph how its structure would be.

Instead, followers of the Z theory support the belief that a flatter structure is necessary; that facilitates, by having less hierarchical levels, fluid communication between them, and a greater approach to the needs expressed by end customers, being able to provide immediate responses as decision-making is an agile and joint process for all areas of the organization.

This means that modern management concepts are applied in this type of organization, such as teamwork, versatility, multidirectional communication, and participative leadership, among others. All this tends to provide the end customer with a correct and prompt response to their needs, as well as a better work environment for their staff.

This would be, approximately, the representation of its structure:

With all that is outlined in this work, we believe that the analysis alternatives regarding the topic, reason for it, are not exhausted; and we agree on the observations made by Ana Catalano and Marta Novick, particularly when they say that there is still little research carried out on the company as a social unit, as a carrier and generator of a new productive logic, despite the development achieved in the organizational analysis., psychology, and sociology of organizations.

Even so, we then develop the following conclusions.

7. Conclusions

The changes that have taken place in the world, the speed with which they take place and the impossibility of stopping to think too much about them, on pain of not being able to adapt and thus being relegated from the modern world, leads us today that we are all in a state of continuous alert.

This adaptation, as we have seen, is possible to achieve through the application of different tools proposed by the management model born from the conjunction between Total Quality and Behavioral Sciences.

Just during the development of this work we tried to mark the significant differences between this model and the traditional, rational-economic one, to which Peter Drucker adheres.

And from this analysis the differentiating tools are clearly emerging, and the advantages that each of them entails.

Thus we see that the social actor, the individual, the worker, needs to feel integrated into a social group, wants to belong, to the point of giving up part of his freedom in exchange for this, and that to deny this is to expose him to alignment.

We also observe that, from the point of view of the organization, and the productivity desired by it, this aspect of group formation leads to obtain greater benefits than any position that focuses on individual work, in response to the cooperation and synergy that in the group it occurs.

It would be foolish to say that so many scholars of the new administration trend were wrong in the central lines of their theories; while it is more feasible to accept that the changes happened more quickly, and perhaps in different senses, to those assumed by Drucker and on which he bases his visionary analysis and so appropriate for his time.

As we saw during development, this work in teams or groups is favored, and at the same time provides, by the transfer of information; ideally, each member of the group has enough information to carry out any of the tasks assigned to the group, that is, versatility.

At the same time, the existence of this information is an important tool, so that each actor has a complete vision of the process, the product, the company and its result, and so that the administrator can use it in prevention, planning, coordination, decision making etc.

Other concrete tools, which include the principles proposed by P. Drucker (productivity and specialization), are the Just in Time method, from the Toyota system, and the outsourcing proposed by Peters and Waterman, with the difference that such concepts are applied at the Organization level and not for each position in particular, in addition to being complementary to the elements mentioned above such as versatility. For the successful application of Just in Time it is essential to provide the individual with self-control, versatility and flexibility; being that for P. Drucker these concepts would be detrimental to productivity. The result of this method is an increase in productivity through the synergy of the groups, as well as cooperation and coordination between specialized organizations.

We also saw that these new currents require new styles of leadership that incorporate a new approach to the concepts already studied by Drucker, the one that considers the human element. Among the actions of this new leader are those of informing, training and coordinating the members of the organization, as well as being a good member of the team, in addition to the traditional ones of planning and controlling.

We are aware that in today's world, which we intend to make global, there is still much to change, within companies, which, being social organizations, have totally different facets from each other.

In our opinion, there is not yet a perfect model applicable to any type of organization, they should always be "aligned" with the particular characteristics of their environment and its components.

Likewise, we do not believe that the development of the different models has a sequential continuity pattern, but that each one arises at a different time as an alternative, but it is not necessarily exclusive of the previous ones, but rather an adaptation with improvements of the existing ones..

We agree that the model proposed by Peter Drucker tends to become obsolete, due to the speed with which social, economic, political, demographic, etc. changes take place, and we believe that the guidelines and principles close to Theory Z respond more adequately. to the integration of the human and economic aspects that organizations must attend to today.

8. Bibliography