Many of us are the people who “speak” about change in organizations and also in people, especially in organizational participants; But there are really very few of us who take daily actions to change, who have new visions for the organizations to which we belong and who want to put into practice, and the group of people who is committed to making efforts, using energy and resources is even smaller. own to assist in the processes of individual change (own and others) as well as in organizations and companies.
Many times it seems that top managers and their management team are oriented to - once they feel "secure" in their competitive advantages - to prevent and block all kinds of new interference with the context in which the organization operates. This “desired” sense of security on the part of managers, which is often accompanied by “now being in a comfort zone”, is perceived by those executives at the tactical level, who are usually managers.
The latter - convinced that the strategy "is the correct one" - also have a preference towards "things not changing". It is very common that in the main re-engineering most of the changes begin at the management level as it is assumed that this is the level that resists change the most.
You are already familiar with a definition of who managers are that I have formulated for a long time and have found that it has received a lot of acceptance: “Managers are people who look up for instructions that never come… and that must be implemented by they (the managers) through subordinates who do NOT have much interest in complying with them ”.
When managers (tactical level) find that they do not receive new and necessary directives from the top (managers and strategic level) oriented towards new challenges and challenges, and under the current situation of non-change they find difficulties to achieve results through other who are their subordinates, they prefer not to have the idea of making improvements and changes in their heads. As an Administration and Finance Manager told us: "I already have too many problems with the things that I am in charge of so I don't want to hear of any more changes since this would make my work impossible for now, it is difficult and I don't want it to become impossible ”. Or a Commercial Manager of a service company: “If the above do not change I am not going to make waves in any way. I already have too many problems where I am.At the end of the day, it is the top that receives the best “bonuses” for the results of the firm ”.
So managers make up a very special group within all organizations where they can be perceived as "the ham in the sandwich." The organization's management expects them to introduce improvements and function in this way effectively and efficiently, but they do not always provide them with even the necessary resources to carry out change and improvement. Of course, subordinates often have little interest in accompanying changes. The history of many organizations and companies in Latin American cultures shows that "those who take risk are not always rewarded, but rather many times they can be punished."
There is something that is indisputable today. In the first place, managers have as one of their main functions to develop the skills that allow them to perceive the context from a perspective other than the usual one and also, ideally, to perceive the new context that is in training under both the current perspective and under a new one vision. Managers are the link in the chain that connects what managers have in their heads (metaphorically since it is actually in their minds) with what their subordinates must "do."
In many courses, workshops, seminars and congresses, managers tell us that they are under a lot of pressure - which is absolutely true -, that they do not have all the resources they need assigned - which is also true, and that they cut so much time in that they must achieve the objectives such as the (few) resources that they have been allocated in reality (which is also true). And that all this causes them infinite problems that they must solve and therefore they do not have much time available to "even introduce more changes to improve things further."
Faced with this cataract of concerns that managers experience on a daily basis within organizations - and where a large number of them are true - the manager perceives and sees change as an additional problem and of course then his natural response is: Enough!
But by dint of being honest we must tell and share that:
in reality, they are expected to manage change, assuming that if nothing changes they would not need them; In other words, if today everything remained stable as it was until yesterday and all subordinates acted accordingly, the question that management naturally asks is: What are managers for, or rather, why do we pay our employees? managers? And this is very often the perception of the peak with which managers have to live in their work within organizations.
Managers may or may not like it and therefore do not want to share the above thinking, but until they become managers they may have no choice but to live with it. So you have to get down to work "to change things."
If managers do not make changes, they can be sure that a special mechanism has to be put in place at some point (from company management with or without the help of internal or external consultants) to make things change. Some organizations create functions and units dedicated to dealing with change (Total Quality, Organization and Methods, Training, Customer Service, among others) and even have some "Internal Consultants".
When the stimuli of the context hit and exert pressure on organizations in a way that alters their survival and is perceived by the management, they are mobilized towards making the necessary modifications and changes taking into account the new “reality of the context”. And the changes must be made through the management team, who in turn can receive the collaboration of internal consultants. The signals that are given in the daily actions within organizations should be sufficiently noticeable in the eyes of all, to get involved as a team to change things; but this is not what usually happens. And then, a solution that seems to be in the hands of managers is to hire external consultants.
Let's see below some variables and components related to change in companies and organizations.
When changes occur in a very low or imperceptible way, both man and organizations have at their disposal a greater facility to accommodate and adapt to the context within which they operate. But to the extent that the rate of change is altered, the traditional mechanisms of accommodation, adaptation and assimilation may be insufficient (Charles R. Darwin, Origin of Species, 1859).
We can say that the change in simplified form is a departure from the status quo and implies a displacement from a current situation to a desired situation where it is very likely that there is a need to modify - among other aspects - the objectives, the vision, and the processes. R. Golembiewski ("Ironies in organization Development"; New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990) suggests that different exchange rates can give rise to three exchange rates.
The “Alpha” change where both the variables and the measurements remain constant; the “Beta” change where both the variables and the measurements are altered; and the “Gamma” change where in addition to the change mentioned in “Beta” there is a paradigm shift that implies a greater dimensional leap.
Alvin Toffler ("The creation of a new civilization", Plaza & Janes, 1995) makes reference to the three "T": tradition, transition and transformation, highlighting the need that the organizations of "this new wave" require the ability to develop certain transformational skills to cope with a highly changing context. Peter Senge ("The Fifth Discipline"; Doubleday, 1990) suggests that "successful" organizations are those characterized by having organizational participants who have the skills not only to learn but also to unlearn "traditional" practices and concepts.
Organizational Development is the discipline / science / art that has devoted the most energy to explain - and eventually predict effectively - the behavior of organizations, finding its support and support within the Behavioral Sciences.
A few years ago Eric Gaynor has developed a work for the "Argentine Institute of Finance Executives" that has been published in the "Finance Executives" magazines (May 1996 and November 1997). There he mentioned the difficulty of integrating the different conceptual frameworks (“Best Theories”) with the different practices (“Best Practices”).
Researchers and academics have made an effort to develop conceptual frameworks aimed at predicting how some variables in particular can impact on the results of the organization, and on the other hand, consultants and practitioners have applied “Best Practices” that have been modified over time..
From the diversity of "Best Theories" among themselves, the variability between the "Best Practices", and the lack of integration between the two, the need arises to know the dimension of the dilemma experienced by entrepreneurs, directors and executives of companies who urgently need solutions to the problems that they confront in their daily actions within their organizations.
As the world's leading organization in Organizational Development, “Organization Development Institute”, it highlights that even within the community of experts in Organizational Development it is a divided community (“Organizations and Change”, Published by the International Registry of Organization Development Professionals, The OD Institute: Chesterland, Ohio).
In the work developed by Eric Gaynor for the "Argentine Institute of Finance Executives" which has been published in the magazine "Finance Executives" mention is made of a series of different methodologies and practices developed by consultants and practitioners during the last 30 years during the performance of their advisory interventions, some of them being:
- Total Quality Management Quality Assurance Review Control self-assessment Customer Relationship ManagementEmpowermentSupply Chain ManagementCircles of qualityParticipative decision makingOrganizational CoachingTime ManagementBenchmarkingEmotional IntelligenceCorporate governanceBalanced Score Card managementTelemarketing- Customer service services Process engineering (Business process re-engineering) ISO 9000 Organizational logisticsOrganization developmentConcurrent engineeringQuality function deploymentContinuous improvementJust-in-time manufacturingTime-based managementPay for skillsBroadbandingEmpowermentWarketingNeuro-marketingStrategic managementFuture search conferenceSelf-directed work Theory ZOne-minute managerOrganizational cultureOut-placementDownsizingOrganizational TransformationImplementing CoveyDevelopment of LeadersResizingManagement walking (Management by walking around) Organizational learningOut-sourcingCero base budgetScanlon PlanValue-based managementMentoring-based managementSystem-based managementSystem-based managementSystem-based managementSystem-based managementSystem-based managementSystem-based managementSystem-based managementSystem-based managementSystem-based managementActoring-based management -System-based management SigmaLean ManagementmanagementDashboardActivity Based CostingManagement Information SystemMentoringManagement by ObjectivesAssessment centersFocus groupsNeuro-linguistic programmingCompetency managementSix-SigmaLean ManagementmanagementDashboardActivity Based CostingManagement Information SystemMentoringManagement by ObjectivesAssessment centersFocus groupsNeuro-linguistic programmingCompetency managementSix-SigmaLean Management
In his work, Eric Gaynor Butterfield points out that the average “useful” life of these “Best Practices” is variable and is in the order of 10 years, with a more extended duration as is the case of Management by Objectives and shorter as in the practice of Time Management.
This "not-complete" list, to say the least, is in the order of 60. And now it is easy to understand why the resistance of some entrepreneurs and company directors to adopt new and more efficient practices proclaimed by the consultants and practitioners (the seasoned reader will have noticed that other practices / methodologies that have not had as much impact or that their useful life has been shorter have not been included).
It is obvious that if the average duration of these practices has been in the order of 10 years, and that they have been in force for about 40 years, then more than seven of them have subsisted at the same time - that is, simultaneously. ! That is, the consultants' proposals to entrepreneurs and company managers have exceeded the number of seven for the same moment of organizational life, and in general this has happened when the organization has not yet fully benefited from a practice that It is old-fashioned, as the company's own advisers and consultants tend to say.
Therefore, and at a minimum, the consultants have been proposing more than 7 simultaneous methods to entrepreneurs and company managers "as unique solutions and always more efficient than the previous ones that they themselves replaced." If I were an entrepreneur and heard this from a consultant, I must accept that I would be confused too!
The techniques and methodologies mentioned above have been considered as "Best Practices" by their promoters, and have been aimed at prescribing what characterizes an efficient company, mainly choosing an independent variable which would have a significant impact on business results..
Let us now move on to explore the contributions of academics and researchers, which are more linked to a "description" rather than a prescription. Their contributions are generally based on the development of conceptual frameworks and empirical evidence as a result of systematic research. They have also made relevant contributions to organizations and businesses. Let's see some of these “Best Theories”, detailed by author (s), as they have been incorporated into the “state of the art” of behavioral sciences and applied accordingly to improve the management and efficiency of corporations.
Alfred D. Chandler: "Strategy and structure", MIT Press, 1962.
Alfred P. Sloan: "My years with GN", Sidgwick & Jackson, 1965.
Alvin W. Gouldner: "Patterns of industrial bureaucracy", Routledge & Kegan, 1955.
Amitai Etzioni: "Modern Organizations", Prentice Hall, 1964.
Arnold S. Tannenbaum: "Control in organizations", Mc Graw-Hill, 1968.
BF Skinner: "The behavior of organisms"; Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1938.
C. Northcote Parkinson: "Big business", Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1977.
Carl Frost & R. Ruh, J. Wakely: "The Scanlon plan for OD"; MSU, 2001
Charles E. Lindblom: “The policy-making process”, Prentice may 1968.
Charles Perrow: “Organizational Analysis: a sociological view”, Brooks / Cole, 1970
Chester I. Barnard: "The functions of the executive", Harvard University Press, 1938.
Chris Argyris: "Personality and Organization" - Harper & Row, 1957; & Schon, D.: “Organizational Learning: A theory of action perspective”, Addison-Wesley, 1978.
D. Katz & R. Kahn: “The social psychology of organizations”, NY, John Wiley, 1978.
DA Mc Clelland: "Toward a theory of motive acquisition", American Psychologist, 1965.
Daniel Goleman: "Emotional intelligence", Bantam Books, 1995.
David Silverman: "The theory of organizations", Heinemann, 1970.
Derek Pugh and DJ Hickson: "Organizational structure in its context: The Aston program ”, Gower Publishing, 1976.
Douglas McGregor:“ Leadership and motivation ”, MIT press, 1966.
E. Fritz Schumacher: "Small is beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered", Blond & Briggs, 1973.
E. Wight Bakke: "Bonds of Organization", Archon Books, 1966.
Edgar H. Schein: "Organizational psychology ", Prentice-Hall, 1980.
Edward E. Lawler III:" Pay and organization development ", Addison-Wesley, 1981.
Elliot Jaques:" A general theory of bureaucracy ", Heinemann, 1976.
Elton Mayo:" The social problems of an industrial civilization ”, Routledge & Kegan, 1949.
Eric Trist & others:“ Organizational choice ”, Tavistock, 1963.
Fred E. Fiedler:“ A theory of leadership effectiveness ”, McGraw Hill, 1967.
Frederick Herzberg:“ Managerial choice: to be efficient and to be human ”, Dow Jones - Irwin, 1976.
Frederick W. Taylor: "Scientific Management", Harper & Row, 1947.
Geert Hofstede: "Cultures and organizations: software of the mind" Mc Graw-Hill, 1991.
Geoffrey Vickers: "Value systems and social process", Tavistock publications, 1968.
Harry Braverman: "Labor and monopoly capitalism", Monthly review press., 1974.
Henri Fayol: "General and industrial management", Pitman, 1949.
Henry Mintzberg: "Structures in fives: designing effective organizations", Prentice-Hall, 1983.
Herbert A. Simon: “The new science of management decision”, Harper & Row, 1960.
James Burnham: “The managerial revolution”, Penguin, 1962.
James D. Thompson: “Organizations in Action”, Mc Graw-Hill, 1967.
James G. March: “Decisions & organizations”, Blackwell, 1988.
Jeffrey Pfeffer & Gerald, R. Salancik: “The external control of organizations: a resource dependence perspective”, Harper & Row, 1978.
Joan Woodward: “Industrial organization: theory and practice ”, Oxford U. Press, 1965.
John Kenneth Galbraith: “The new industrial state”, Penguin, 1969.
Karl E. Weick: “The social psychology of organizing”. Addison-Wesley: 1969.
Kenneth E. Boulding: "The organizational revolution", Harper, 1953.
L. Festinger: "" A theory of cognitive dissonance "; Row-Peterson, 1957.
Lawrence P. & Hull; R.: "The Peter principle", William Morrow, 1969.
Lyndall Urwick & Edward Brech: "The making of scientific management", Pitman, 1950.
Mary Parker Follett: “Creative experience”, Longmans, 1924.
Max Weber: The theory of social and economic organization ”, Free Press, 1947
Michael T. Hannan & John H. Freeman:“ Organizational Ecology ”Harvard University Press, 1988.
Michel Crozier: “The bureaucratic phenomenon”, Tavistock publications, 1964.
Oliver E. Williamson: “Economic organization”, Wheatsheaf books, 1986.
Paul R. Lawrence & Jay W. Lorsch: “Organizations & Environment”, Harvard, 1967.
Peter F Drucker: "The practice of management", Harper & Row, 1954.
Philip Selznick: "TVA and the grass roots"; Berkeley, 1949.
Raymond E.Miles & Charles C. Snow: “Organizational strategy, structure and process”, Mc Graw-Hill, 1978.
Rensis Likert: "New patterns of management", Mc Graw-Hill, 1961.
Robert Michels: "Political parties", Dover, 1959.
Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton: "The managerial grid III", Gulf Publishing, 1985.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter: "The Change Masters: Corporate entrepeneurs at work", Allen and Unwin, 1984.
Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman: "In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America 's best-run companies, " Harper & Row, 1982.
Tom Burns: “Industry in a new age”, New society, 1963.
Victor H. Vroom: “Organization Theory”, Penguin Books, 1990.
Victor Thompson: “Modern Organization”. New York: Knopf, 1967
Wilfred Brown: "Exploration in management", Heinemann educational books, 1960.
William H. Whyte: “The organization man” Penguin, 1960.
William Ouchi: “Theory Z: How American business can meet the Japanese challenge”, Addison-Wesley, 1981.
During the Organizational Development Congress held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1999 under the auspices of the “Organization Development Institute” under the presidency of Dr. Donald Cole, Eric Gaynor made reference to the large number of “best practices” mentioned above as well also to the excellent and transcendental contributions of the academics and researchers included in the previous paragraph under the name of "Best Theories". Each of these authors has made significant contributions to behavioral science, organizational behavior, and organizational development as well.
All of them “would have acted as consultants and practitioners” on different roadmaps in their efforts to increase organizational efficiency and effectiveness. The choice they make regarding their respective main “independent” variables is different, and in most cases so are their moderating or intervening variables.
Eric Gaynor suggests that if each of these authors were to undertake a consulting intervention, their choice of “entry point” for said intervention is distinctive as well as their perspective and orientation towards change - organizational development. We have made mention of more than 60 notable authors, some of them having made contributions of enormous caliber, such as Herbert Simon (1958) who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for a work on “microeconomics”.
Every day we become familiar with the practices of company consultants who regard Frederick Taylor's contributions as superficial without taking into account that possibly no one ever equaled Taylor's work in "rewarding different people differently." The theory on bureaucracy is erroneously applied by most of the consultants who even ignore which are the main two dimensions on which Max Weber has developed his work.
In this Congress, Eric Gaynor has shown evidence that the vast majority of directors and executives of companies in Latin America know no more than 5% of the conceptual frameworks corresponding to the different authors mentioned under "Best Theories". Even in the case of knowing the name of the author, no more than a quarter fully knows the important contribution they make.
We have a long way to go. In this short article we want to share with the reader the importance of going to the sources of both the “Best Practices” and the “Best Theories”, and show the complexity of the “observable phenomenon”, which makes it necessary to treat a complex situation and varied - as is the organization - in a complex and varied way. At this point, an experienced reader who takes into account the number of intervention practices and combines them with the different academics and researchers has surely come to the conclusion that there are a large number of options to follow in the process of selecting the best Development intervention. Organizational.
If we have succeeded in alerting the reader to the importance of learning “from the sources” the different options available to them when carrying out their consulting intervention, we should be flattered. It's a good start. The enormous number of interventions and consultancy work in companies where it has not been successful - over 50% in the cases of reengineering - shows the need for the consultant himself to learn from the available stock of knowledge to which he can have access. If business consultants continue to ignore the "Best theories" they are heading towards meager results that must be highly visible to their Clients. They are still in time to be recognized for the exercise of their profession of change and organizational development,although paradoxically the change and development of the Client possibly has more to do with “their own change and development” than with that of the Client.
- An effort to integrate the "conceptual" with the "Best Practices"
In the United States of North America, what is known under the name of "Organizations with a high level of Involvement and Commitment" has originated, which belongs to the "Quality of Life at Work" movement that emerged in the 1970s. Last century.
Within the "Organizations with a high level of Involvement and Commitment" (AIC) a series of management practices are included aimed at eliminating or at least reducing the traditional approach that confronts the needs of the people with those of the organization.
One of the main management practices that was adopted was called “Job Enrichment” (Enrichment at Work). We are now going to go to the history of Job Enrichment that has among its ancestors “Job Specialization”, “Job Rotation” and “Job Enlargement”.
Frederick Taylor ("The principles of scientific management"; Harper & Row - 1911) did a monumental work oriented very strongly towards the improvement of productivity and performance within companies, mainly industrial, which were achieved as a consequence of a strong job specialization.
However, the deteriorations and many of the negative consequences of extremely high specialization began to show that there was a “limit” beyond which a specialization and division of labor negatively affected both the productivity and the health of individuals. CR Walter and R. Guest (“The man in the assembly line”; Harvard University Press - 1952) carried out in the 50s of the last century a study related to the satisfaction of workers within the automotive industry and found that the Most of them were reasonably satisfied with the pay they received, as well as with the general conditions at work and the quality of treatment they received from their superiors.However, a large majority of these same workers expressed a very high degree of dissatisfaction "with the work that they themselves were doing."
A natural conclusion of this and other works made many directors and managers in organizations begin to recognize that specialization at work can be strongly related in a positive way with productivity and effectiveness, but that as specialization was carried more Beyond a certain limit, it could also lead to many negative and dysfunctional consequences.
As a way to reduce these negative effects, the practice of "Job Rotation" arises almost immediately after these jobs, which basically consists of rotating workers in different positions, taking into account the basic assumption that people have a certain reasonable time in which we can carry out very routine, repetitive and highly specialized jobs. It should be noted that rotation at work means that highly specialized tasks continue to be done even within one main function - such as placing a washer “after” the screw is placed - or placing the nut after the washer has been placed..
Until then, the only thing the worker did was place washers after “someone” had placed a bolt, and another worker placed the nut after someone placed the washer. The rotation at work consisted of the person putting in the washers stopping and moving on to putting the nuts, which was a change but by no means radical. Although many organizations in the United States of America adopted this best practice, they did not always achieve the expected results as in the case of Ford Motor Company and Prudencial Insurance (Rick W. Griffin: “Task design: an integrative approach”; Scott-Foresman - 1982).
We can conclude that job rotation can be useful in that people "know" what others do and what is related to "other tasks" in the organization, but we should not assume that by itself we have to achieve improvements in the organization. productivity, especially in the medium and long term.
Naturally, a new way of visualizing the relationship between people and work appears, which consists of “Extending the Work” which means a step beyond specialization in work and job rotation. Under the practice of "Extending the Work" a couple of tasks are integrated in a single person; Following the previous case, the same person under this new practice would now place the washer and “also” place the nut. In practice it means that workers now have more tasks to perform than they did before and efforts to implement - as has been the case at AT & T, among other large corporations - did not always meet expectations. See: H. Conant and M. Kilbridge “An interdisciplinary analysis of job enlargement: technology, cost,and behavioral implications ”; Industrial and Labor Relations Review - 1965.
Undoubtedly, both job rotation and job lengthening had some kind of beneficial effect on high job specialization, but the visible results did not excite managers and superiors too much; the workers did not feel that their work had really been enriched. It was like "something more of the same."
This is how the excellent work of Frederick Herzberg & others ("The motivation to work"; Wiley and Sons - 1959) arises, which is known under the name of "Job Enrichment" or enrichment at work. See also: Frederick Herzberg: "Work and the nature of man"; World Publishing Co. - 1966 and “One more time: How do You motivate employees?”; Harvard Business Review - 1968). Under this Herzberg approach the idea is not to add more tasks to your work which represents a horizontal load but to enrich your work that is oriented more towards a vertical load.
We must not forget that Frederick Herzberg draws on the monumental contribution of James March and Herbert Simon (“Organizations”; Wiley & Sons - 1958) who identified some aspects on which Herzberg built his model of enrichment at work. For March & Simon, the people who are linked to the organization usually make two different types of decisions:
to. that of concurring that is linked to the levels of satisfaction of the organizational participant, their relative (low) turnover of staff and their tendency to remain in the company; which contrasts with
b. the decision to produce that can be linked to certain levels of dissatisfaction.
To which must be added the questioning made by these two excellent authors regarding the relationship between the variable "employee satisfaction" and the "performance" level. Until then, many were interested in increasing the level of performance satisfaction under the basic hypothesis that a satisfied employee was a productive employee, while for March and Simon this relationship is not so clear or univocal. Certain degrees of dissatisfaction are sometimes associated with high degrees of productivity, and it is also possible that it is rather the most productive employees who are the satisfied employees.
Turning now to Frederick Herzberg we identify that this vertical workload that the author conceives instead of the horizontal load to which they were subjected under “job rotation and work elongation” includes the following aspects (Moorhead & Griffin: “Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations ”; Houghton Mifflin - 1995):
1. Staff must be accountable for what they do. Notice that we are talking about one word - Anglicism - which is Responsibility and which is NOT a misprint. We do not mean responsibility but rather responsibility that is related to having to answer for what we do not do correctly. (It is very likely that within Latin American cultures many people do not answer for the wrong things they do in their companies to Clients, due to the fact that we do not have an appropriate word. Within the English language there is a clear distinction between responsibility (responsibility) and accountability.
2. Workers must be convinced that they are doing something important that is related to the David A. Mc Clelland Achievement orientation (“Toward a theory of motive acquisition”); American Psychologist - 1965).
3. Every organizational participant must receive feedback directly and clearly regarding his performance and in relation to the expectations that were had of him. (See: "Professional Suicide or Organizational Murder" by Dr. Donald W. Cole and Eric Gaynor Butterfield; Ed. The Organization Development Institute International, Latinamerica - 2003).
4. It has been shown that people are more productive to the extent that they themselves can have some measure of their own pace of work, level of activation, and level of “own and stimulating” stress. Of course this is not always possible but the standards to which the staff are usually accustomed can be improved.
5. All work requires a series of resources that are essential for the effective execution of their work. And one of the tasks that management and superiors have is to provide the resources that are really necessary.
6. People in general can live with a very painful past and also with a present that is not ideal, but in any case we need to “glimpse our desired future” (Eric Gaynor Butterfield: Congress of Organizational Development; Argentina - 1997). Therefore, and in relation to this point, superiors must take into account the needs and opportunities that their staff has in terms of learning new skills, new jobs and training to face the challenges and opportunities in the future.
With the purpose of punctually illustrating the conception and appropriate practice referred to by Frederick Herzberg, the following is the author's article in Harvard Business Review - 1987 that was included in Moorhead & Griffin (already cited), where reference is made to the “ vertical load at work ”which is reproduced literally and in English (there are 7 principles and each one of them is accompanied by some motivational factors or motivating forces:
“Principle A: Removing some controls while retaining accountability. Motivators involved: Responsibility and personal achievement
Principle B: Increasing the accountability of individuals for their own work. Motivators involved: Responsibility and recognition.
Principle C: Giving a person a complete natural unit of work (module, division, area and so on). Motivators involved: Responsibility, achievement, and recognition.
Principle D: Granting additional authority to an employee in his activity; job freedom. Motivators involved: Responsibility, achievement and recognition.
Principle E: Making periodic reports directly available to the worker itself rather than to the supervisor. Motivators involved: Internal recognition.
Principle F: Introducing new and more difficult tasks not previously handed. Motivators involved: Growth and learning.
Principle G: Assigning individuals specific or specialized tasks, enabling them to become experts. Motivators involved: Responsibility, growth and advancement.
Different researchers have found disparate results as a consequence of their evaluations of Enrichment programs at work. A work developed in Texas Instruments (E. Weed: “Job enrichment cleans up at Texas Instruments”; New perspectives in job enrichment - 1971) shows improvements in cost reduction, performance improvement in some indicators, and less turnover in the work of part of the workers. But on the other hand, positive results were not achieved in other companies (Griffin & McMahan: “Motivation through job design”).
In the book by Moorhead & Griffin (already cited), mention is made of some criticisms regarding this managerial practice of job enrichment, which are reproduced below, also literally and in English:
Other specific criticisms of job enrichment include the following:
1. Many reports of the success of job enrichment programs have been evangelical in nature; that is, the authors of these studies overstate the potential benefits of job enrichment and minimize its pitfalls.
2. Evaluations of job enrichment programs often have been methodologically flawed. Many studies have been poorly designed, making the results subject to alternative explanations.
3. Few failures have been reported in the literature, although some job enrichment programs have probably not achieved their goals. Without information about these failures, developing a full understanding of job enrichment is difficult.
4. Situational factors seldom have been assessed. Some situations probably are more favorable to job enrichment efforts than others. Unfortunately, we have not developed an understanding of the factors that lead to success or failure.
5. Economic data pertaining to the effectiveness of job enrichment are rare. Because job enrichment often is an expensive proposition, managers need a carefully developed procedure for evaluating the technique's costs and benefits. Such procedures have not been developed ”(J. Richard Hackman:“ On the coming demise of job enrichment ”; in Man and work in society - 1975).
We have other management practices linked to the approach of "highly involved and committed organizations", such as participation in decision-making, self-directed teams, total quality management, innovative compensation plans, elimination of hierarchical levels, and elimination or reduction of bureaucratic practices, among others.
We are going to take a few minutes - a break of no more than 15 minutes - and on our return we have to carry out some dynamics to try to link this knowledge shared during this day with experiences and experiences of you, the participants.
And we may have to leave the application of the other management practices mentioned above until tomorrow.
Thank you very much for sharing. And have a good rest, albeit short.
