Pergamon Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theonj, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 49-56, 1996

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F E A T H E R R I V E R I N S T I T U T E 1995

LIBRARY MANAGEMENT: THE LATEST FAD, A DISMAL SCIENCE, OR JUST PLAIN WORK?

WILLIAM FISHER

School of Library & Information Science

San Jose State University

San Jose, CA 95192-0029

Internet: fisher @sjsuvm I .sjsu.edu

Abstract - - This paper traces the development of management as a "science" and into the 1970s as one management "fad" replaces another. A sample of "fads" is dis- cussed and some contrarian viewpoints expressed.

INTRODUCTION

My purpose here today is reasonably simple - - to cover the history of management from the beginning of time until the middle of last week. In the beginning there was authoritarian man- agement: I am the Lord thy God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me! Since then a number of other approaches have been tried. Monarchy, which is just a variation on the theme above was based on the divine right of the monarch; democracy is also a management technique where people get to choose those individuals who manage the government, and our federal government is probably the most complex organization in the world. Slavery looks at management from a very strict economic perspective. I own you; you do what I say. And then there is managing your children, once a rather straightforward process that has gotten totally out-of-hand. Moving right along, there is scientific management, one of the first attempts to introduce into the workplace a "class" or type of worker that was strictly a manager - - that's all these people were supposed to do - - run things. Actually, one rationale for this management group to come into being was to give man- agers the opportunity to think, while the workers did. From scientific management we can move into the human relations or human behavior school of management, which emphasized a concern

49

50 w. FISHER

for people in addition to process. In the post-World War II era, when management really came into its own, we were introduced to concepts like the decision theory school of management and the mathematical model school of management.

In more recent times our organizations and managers have been asked to search for excellence, but only if we could find it in 1 minute; manage for total quality, but only from within a circle; define or create a vision while we reengineer or transform everything; and more recently our orga- nizations have been asked to learn, to utilize this thing called the fifth discipline - - which of course presupposes we know something about the other four disciplines.

MANAGEMENT SCIENCE

Prior to the start of the 20th Century, management was reasonably straightforward - - the boss said do this and the employee either did or was fired. It was, for the most part, a world of unskilled to semiskilled labor intensive organizations with a very large labor pool to draw upon. Most of the managers of that time were owner-operators - - it was their business or the family business, so they had a significant stake in the well-being of the organization. There were few government reg- ulations, not that many competitors, nor a shortage of resources and therefore little concern about things like employee motivation or training, participation, work teams, or any of the other man- agement "techniques" many of us take for granted today.

Management, then, as we know it really began in earnest in the 20th Century. Organizations of all types got larger and more complex, and even though the concept of the owner-operator was still with us, these owner-operators were finding that with these larger organizations they couldn't actively be involved with managing all aspects of the organization. There were a number of rea- sons for this. In the first place, as we began to realize that the industrial revolution was not just a "passing phase," managers found they no longer knew all the aspects of their own businesses, and the "hands-on" management style they were familiar with was no longer possible. Second, those managers that did try to remain actively involved with all aspects of their organizations found they didn't have the time to focus on everything, most especially the long range health of the organiza- tion. Third, the reforms that were introduced in the early part of this century made it more com- plex to operate an organization - - laws were passed, regulations adopted and judicial decisions rendered that all impacted how an organization could operate. And it became a full-time job to keep up with all this and determine how it affected one's organization in particular.

From this perspective, our first real sense of a science of management was developed at the end of the 19th Century and into the early 20th Century. A good deal of what laid the foundation for management science came from the work of three people: Max Weber, Fredrick Taylor, and Henri Fayol. Weber introduced us to the concept of bureaucracy. The significance of this is to look at bureaucracy as more than just a way to structure an organization, but to look at bureaucracy as a rule-driven, impersonal way to manage an organization. Everyone is in his or her box and you only deal with other specified boxes and that's it. Taylor's emphasis was on efficient production, and he helped bring us time-motion studies and the idea of identifying people to do specific tasks to their maximum effort. Fayol was one of the first to systematically identify what he considered to be principles of management, which according to Fayol were 14 in number and applicable to almost any organization (see Table 1).

Even though Weber, Taylor, and Fayol did their work in different countries and over a span of many years, they tie together rather well because they are all production-oriented. In other words, as I 've already alluded to, at the turn of the century management's primary concern was maximum production as efficiently as possible. That perspective lead to what Douglas MacGregor would

Library Management 51

T A B L E 1

F a y o r s 14 Principles o f M a n a g e m e n t

I. Division of Work - - when employees specialize, they can do more and do it better with the same amount of effort. 2. Authority and Responsibility - - to be accepted as a leader, the level of an employee's authority and the level of an

employee's responsibility within an organization must be equal. 3. Discipline - - the failure to apply discipline when it is justified will lead to widespread disrespect, disobedience and

insubordination among the employees of an organization. 4. Unity of Command - - confusion, conflict and dysfunction will occur when an employee has to take orders and instruc-

tions from more than one boss within the same organization. 5. Unity of Direction - - the shirking of responsibility is encouraged within an organization when more than one plan is

implemented to achieve the same objective during the same time period, or when more than one person is put in charge of carrying out the same plan.

6. Subordination of Individual Interest to General Interest - - when the activities of the organization serve only the inter- ests of one person or a chosen few, the majority of employees will suffer abuse and exploitation.

7. Initiative - - when decision-making authority is hoarded at the top, the exercise of initiative and the commitment to the achievement of organizational goals and objectives will not occur at lower ranking levels.

8. Stability of Tenure of Personnel - - an employee will not stay with or be loyal to an organization whose goals and objectives are incompatible with the goals and objectives of the employee.

9. Scalar Chain - - the shorter and fewer channels of communication within an organization, the greater the likelihood that work will be properly initiated and efficiently facilitated.

10. Order - - to efficiently and effectively achieve the goals and objectives of the organization requires that everything and everyone he in the right place at the right time when work is to be done.

11. Esprit de Corps - - employees will not he loyal to an organization in which they feel that they are not accepted or to which they feel they do not belong.

12. Equity - - inequity in the treatment of employees within an organization will create jealously, conflict and dysfunction among the employees.

13. Centralization - - decision-making authority will not he delegated when employees in the lower ranking levels of the organization do not demonstrate initiative and decision-making competency.

14. Remuneration of Personnel - - conflict, disloyalty and dysfunction will oeear when the employees of an organization do not receive a fair distribution of the earnings of the organization or when they are not paid from those distributions in accordance with the relative worth of their jobs to the organization.

For a more detailed discussion, see General and Industrial Management by Henri Fayol. London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd., 1967. Translated from the French edition.

later ident i fy as a Theo ry x style o f management , based on the idea that emp loyees were lazy and

un imagina t ive and wan ted to get paid as much as possible for as little effort as possible , so man-

agemen t ' s j o b was to watch the employees l ike a hawk and make sure they work. I f this is man-

agemen t science, i t 's not hard to f igure out how the te rm dismal often gets appl ied to it.

As o rgan iza t ions t hemse lves g rew more complex , and as the w o r k i t se l f g rew m o r e complex ,

m o r e c o m p e t i t i v e , and m o r e r egu la t ed , we f ind a g r adua l sh i f t a w a y f r o m an e m p h a s i s on

unski l led o r semisk i l l ed workers , to a more ski l led workforce . With this also c a m e more atten-

t ion to the needs o f the employees . A ski l led worker was no longer as rep laceab le as an unski l led

worker, so m a n a g e m e n t had to shift its focus f rom on ly be ing conce rned wi th p roduc t ion to also

be ing c o n c e r n e d wi th the health, safety, and wel fa re o f the peop le be ing managed . So the human

re la t ions o r h u m a n b e h a v i o r school o f m a n a g e m e n t was born. At this stage, I be l i eve we beg in to

see the start o f a p r o b l e m that still confronts us today, and that was (and I think still is) l ook ing

at sc ient i f ic m a n a g e m e n t and human relat ions m a n a g e m e n t as opposi tes , l eav ing the o rgan iza -

t ion to m a k e a c h o i c e be tween produc t ion and people . The n o w - f a m o u s Manager i a l Gr id deve l -

oped by B lake and M o u t o n in the 1960s plot ted o n e ' s m a n a g e m e n t s tyle accord ing to conce rn

52 W. FISHER

for production versus concern for people, leaving us with this "either or" mind set, even though Blake and Mouton define the ideal management style as having high concern in both areas [1].

What happened next? Well, there was the Second World War, which pushed the concern for production back to the top of the list, and if sacrifices had to be made they were for the war effort and that was OK. The war ends (for those of you who missed it on the Today show recently). We then enter a 25-year time span (1945-1970) where most organizations in this country expanded and prospered like never before. The emphasis for most organizations was production-there was so much to be done or that could be done in so many areas and everyone wanted to get on with it. For the most part, resources were plentiful, including skilled labor as educational organizations also "geared-up" production. The lack of concern or emphasis on the employee wasn't seen as anything too drastic because the overall standard of living was better than it had ever been before.

Most organizations rode this wave of prosperity for as long as they could, and then in the early 1970s that wave finally came ashore. For some organizations the shore was a nice, soft, sandy beach, so while the rapid growth and high flying were curtailed things still progressed smoothly. For other organizations, however, the shore was a rugged coastline of steep cliffs and sharp rocks that took their toll. When times are good, we don't need much advice or look to change things. When times are not so good, our perspective changes and by the mid-1970s the rock solid image of the corporate organization was changing and many people in management were looking for new theories or techniques to help them.

MANAGEMENT FADS

What were some of these "new" management theories or techniques that were going to save us? Well there have been many, too many to go into here, so we'll focus on three and see what we can learn from those.

The fast "fad" we'll look at is Theory Z, which gained notoriety in the early 1980s after the publication of a book by the same name. The author, William Ouchi, looked at the way Japanese organizations were structured and operated to see how they were different from American organi- zations in light of the fact that Japanese productivity was the highest in the word, while American productivity was declining (and our economy right along with it). Many management theorists felt much of the difference was cultural and assumed that Japanese techniques were not applicable in this country. Ouchi didn't agree and found seven characteristics which he felt were the difference, since in his analysis these factors were virtually the opposite for Japanese and American organiza- tions [2]. Those seven characteristics were:

Japanese Emphasis On • lifetime employment • slow evaluation/promotion • nonspecialized career path • implicit control mechanisms • collective decision making • collective responsibility • holistie concern

American Emphasis On • short-term employment • rapid evaluation/promotion • specialized career path • explicit control mechanisms • individual decision making • individual responsibility • segmented concern

Ouchi's Theory Z typically described the Japanese organization as one with very long-term goals and objectives and the patience to achieve those goals. This led to the more holistic concern for the entire organization regardless of which department or unit one may be a part of at any given time. Ouchi did correctly note that there were some very good examples of Theory Z type

Library Management 53

organizations in the United States already, so this kind of outlook should work. It is also interest- ing to note that as economic growth has slowed somewhat in Japan some of these characteristics are being put to the test.

The next fad we'll explore is the idea of "Excellence," and the search for it that began in 1982 with the publication of the Peters and Waterman book. For them, excellence was defined by being innovative and effective, as well as demonstrating strong financial performance over a 25-year period, since the initial group of organizations studied were all in the for-profit sector. After polling executives, consultants, members of the business press, and academics, Peters and Waterman compiled a list of 62 companies and then analyzed them to identify a set of eight char- acteristics that were found in these 62 companies [3]. While seen primarily in the context of the for-profit sector, these characteristics can also apply to nonprofit organizations. The characteristics identified were:

• bias for action - - while Peters and Waterman's excellent organizations were analytical in their decision making, they focused on the decision rather than the process and then took action based on the decision(s) reached.

• close to the customer - - excellent organizations listen, intently and regularly, to their clients and get some of their best ideas for new products/services from the people they serve.

• autonomy and entrepreneurship - - the excellent organizations were innovative, and an atmosphere of autonomy and entrepreneurship help foster that innovation.

• productivity through people m the most valuable assets for each of these organizations were their employees and the organizations made that apparent.

• hands on, value-driven - - management knows what is going on within the organization from first-hand experience and contact with staff at all levels, not just from reading reports from the first-line supervisors.

• stick to the knitting m for the business community, this was expressed as "never acquire a business you don't know how to run;" while the nonprofit environment may not have this- concern, some organizations have tried to venture into areas where they had no expertise and learned this lesson the hard way.

• simple form, lean staff - - organizational structures should be as simple as possible and top- level staff should be as lean as possible.

• simultaneous loose-tight properties - - while the excellent organizations championed autono- my and decentralized decision making, they also championed a very centralized, cohesive belief in the vision and values of the organization.

Finally, we'll look at the idea of the Fifth Discipline and the "learning organization," as intro- duced by Peter Senge in 1990. Senge's contention is the one thing that will differentiate one orga- nization from another is the organization's ability to learn, and learn as an organization or at least as teams or components of the organization. Learning organizations result from practicing five dis- ciplines, which Senge defines as "a body of theory and technique that must be studied and mas- tered to be put into practice" [4]. Those five disciplines are:

• team learning - - the idea that we learn and grow as a team more rapidly than as individuals; the whole is greater than the individual parts.

• shared vision - - a shared picture of the future that leads to real commitment rather than compliance.

• mental models - - subconscious ways of looking at our environment and how we respond to that environment; mental models impact our thought and behavior whether we realize it or

54 w. FISHER

not. In the learning organization we try to identify those models to see what affects our models may have; a team working with conflicting mental models is in many respects work- ing against itself.

• personal mastery - - individual commitment to achieve the highest level of proficiency possi- ble. This sets the individual off on a path of life-long learning, which is the foundation for any learning organization.

• systems thinking - - this is what Senge calls the fifth discipline, the idea that ties the other four disciplines together. The essence of systems thinking is the big picture and the knowl- edge that everything is connected in some fashion. By just focusing on their own little part of the picture, organizations are losing sight of how things fit together, only seeing pieces of change rather than whole patterns of change.

Ouchi, Peters and Waterman, and Senge are by no means the only management "gurus" of the past 25 years. It seems as though every time you go to a bookstore or look at the best seller lists someone else has found "the answer" to all our management concerns. Rather than try to identify all of those and discuss their advantages and drawbacks, I 'd like to summarize some things I found in a 1992 work by Martin Smith titled Contrarian Management: Commonsense Antidotes to Business Fads and Fallacies [5]. Smith's work comprises a series of brief chapters, each of which starts with the "Conventional Wisdom" followed by the "Contrarian Reality." So, the first conventional wisdom we'll evaluate deals with organizational structure and design, stating that "there are certain 'rules' to follow when establishing organizations. These rules, contained in most texts on organizations, show how to select and implement that type of organization best suited for any single company" [6]. The contrarian reality states, "there is no one single best organization for any company" [7], which recognizes that organizational needs change over time in response to changes in the environment. This leads to the next conventional wisdom which says "constant organizational change is detrimental to getting the job done" [8]. The contrarian reality is that organizations must change to respond to both external and internal environmental changes. Another conventional wisdom states that "quality, which for many years was not under- stood or appreciated by corporate managers in the United States, is finally coming into its own" [9]. Smith's contrarian reality tells us "despite the awareness of quality spurred by Japan and other competitors, and despite the overabundance of quality practitioners in the United States, quality has yet to achieve its potential in terms of both customer satisfaction and reduced costs" [10]. The next conventional wisdom deals with the composition of the workforce and the demise of blue-collar industrial workers. The contrarian reality is that these workers will still be with us, they will just be different from what we are familiar with. Yesterday's workers thought in terms of monotonous factory work, having little to do with other parts of the organization, and letting supervisors tell them everything to do. Today's factory workers are more highly skilled using automation rather than heavy equipment, they understand the need to communicate with other parts of the organization, and want to govern themselves rather than be told everything to do. This leads to the next conventional wisdom which predicts the demise of first-line supervisors. The contradan reality tells us that first-line supervisors will still be needed, only today this super- visor will be more concerned with training, helping employees get needed resources, and provid- ing support. The last conventional wisdom states that organizations must continually seek new responses (new systems, techniques, and methods) to old problems. The contrarian reality is that there is nothing new in management techniques, even the most popular management "fad" fades away only to reappear later in some new form. It's all cyclical. As Smith puts it, "if you live long enough you can watch some fads reappear three or four times, each time under a new name, hailed as the savior of business" [11].

Library Management 55

MANAGEMENT WORK

So where does this leave us? While some of Smith's comments ring true, they are still just the opinion of one person - - just as Senge had his view, Peters and Waterman had their view, and even Fayol had his view. This gets us back to the original question: is management a dismal sci- ence, the latest fad, or just plain work? I think a big part of the answer comes from looking at a definition of management - - and you can take your pick of available possibilities. My definition of choice is that management involves the accomplishment of a specified set of goals/objectives through and with people. Accomplishing goals/objectives is hard enough as it is; accomplishing them with other people is where the fun begins for no two people are alike, have the exact same set of standards and values, are motivated by the same things, or function the same way. This then, is to me the real challenge of management - - to accomplish tasks and work with others success- fully at the same time. With this definition in mind, let's go back to our options. People are fasci- nating and the accomplishment of goals/objectives very rewarding, so I don't think management can be considered dismal; maybe some of the specific tasks managers need to perform, but not the function of management as a whole. At the same time people are reasonably perceptive and you can't depend on continued accomplishment through fads, gimmicks, or slogans. So by now you've realized that we're running out of options and are left with "just plain work."

And work is what it is. You need to work at developing an ongoing set of goals/objectives that will help the organization meet the needs of its clients and deliver the necessary products/services at the desired time/place. Remember that we are doing this against a backdrop of change in today's world, so work is also involved in keeping the goals/objectives up-to-date to reflect changes in clientele, products/services, and times/places. And that is the "easy" part of the work. The more challenging part of the scenario is dealing with the people - - supervisees, peers, and supervisors alike - - who will help the organization accomplish its goals. These people will change as well. Not only will they actually change as in job turnover, but also over time the same people will change with regard to their interests, what motivates them on the job, and the like. And it may be more difficult to recognize and deal with the latter kind of change than the more straightforward change of one person leaving to be replaced by another. Successful managers, then, are the ones who can develop a positive relationship with a work group as a whole, as well as positive relation- ships with the individual members of the work group. Does this make a difference? I relate what one of my students just wrote in his final paper for the management class I was teaching. The assignment asked the students to look at previous managers they had worked with and determine why good managers were good and bad managers were bad. In this one student's analysis, the big difference he saw between managers he had worked with was the time and effort the "good" man- ager took to know something about the student as an individual and how that made the student want to deliver the best possible service to the library's clients. This student was fortunate to have a supervisor who was willing to work, to put out the effort needed to get this kind of commitment from an employee.

CONCLUSION

So the bottom line is that successful management is a lot of work. This surprises people, I think, because the very good managers don't appear to be working at managing at all. You can also say this about poor managers, and of course, you'd be right! There are a number of analogies that can be drawn about good management, but the one I favor is that management is like con- ducting a symphony. The orchestra (library) comprises different sections (units or depamnents)

56 W. FISHER

and the conductor (manager) needs to follow the score (goals/objectives) to know when to empha- size or work with one section over another or perhaps multiple sections at the same time. And how you might resolve a problem with the reed section (cataloging) will be different from how you resolve a problem with the percussion section (reference). Yet the good conductor or manager can do this and make it look effortless to get the entire orchestra playing together as one organiza- tion following the same score.

The other thing to remember is sometimes one member of the orchestra may want to play something different, or we find that what may motivate most people in the orchestra doesn't work for some others. This is where the conductors really earn their keep. Not only must they know their orchestra members well enough to know what motivates them, but they must also know how to get everyone to play together as a group whether those motivators are present are not. There's nothing very mysterious about it or even all that exciting w it involves some give and it involves some take, and each situation will determine when and how much of one or the other to utilize. When you can do that, whether it's with one group that comprises a unit or department of the library or whether it's with the entire library, then you have everyone "in tune." If you can accom- plish that, then you can create your own management fad - - Harmonious Management, as devel- oped at the Feather River Institute, May 1995. (And if that doesn't do it, try the saxophone; it seems to work for President Clinton.)

REFERENCES

1. Blake, R. D. and J. S. Mouton. The New Managerial Grid. New York: Gulf publishing, Co., 1978. 2. Ouchi, William. Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge. New York: Avon Books, 1982,

pp. 48-49. 3. Peters, Thomas and Robert Waterman, Jr. In Search of Excellence: Lessons From America's Best-Ran Companies. New

York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1982. 4. Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Currency Doubleday,

1990, p. 10. 5. Smith, Martin. Contrarian Management: Commonsense Antidotes to Business Fads & Fallacies. New York: AMA-

CON, 1992. 6. Ibid., p. 218. 7. lbid., p. 218 8. Ibid., p. 216. 9. Ibid., p. 226.

10. Ibid., p. 226. 11. Ibid., p. 41.