管理心理学-期末英文论文.doc

How To Making Work ProductiveWe speak of unskilled work, skilled work, and knowledge work but this is misleading. It is not the work that is unskilled, skilled, or knowledgeable, it is the worker. Skill and knowledge are aspects of working .The work itself is the same whether it requires no skill or high skill, a lot of knowledge or very little. To make a pair of shoes one used to have to be “highly skilled.” For almost of century now, we have been able to make shoes practically without skill. It would be no great trick to automate shoemaking fully so that it requires no manual work. Yet the shoe itself has hardly changed. Nor has the process. It requires the same steps, from preparing leather, to cutting, forming, stitching, and gluing. The steps are being carried out in the same sequence, to the same requirements and standards, and result in the same finished product. The work of shoemaking remains the same, even though tools and skill requirements have changed drastically. Only an expert could tell whether a shoe had been made entirely by hand and with great craft skill or in an entirely automated process.This may seem to be quibbling. Yet the realization that work is general and generic and that skill and knowledge are in the working rather than in the work is the key to making work productive. The generic nature of work-certainly as far as manual or any other production work is concerned-implies that work can be worked on systematically, if not scientifically.The first step toward making the achieving is to make work productive. The more we understand what the work itself demands, the more can we then integrate the work into the human activity we call working. The more we understand work itself, the more freedom we can give the worker. There is no contradiction between scientific management, that is, the rational and impersonal approach to work, and the achieving worker. The two complement each other, though they are quite different.Whatever study of work has been done so far has confined itself to manual work-for the simple reason that, until quite recently, this was the main work around. In describing what is known about making work productive, this book, therefore, of necessity, focuses on manual work. But the same principles and approaches also apply to any other production work, e.g., to most service work. They apply to the processing of information, that is, to most clerical work. They even apply to most knowledge work. Only the applications and the tools vary. Precisely because work is general and generic, there is essentially no difference among work the end product of which is a thing, work the end product of which is information, and work the end product of which is knowledge.Making work productive requires four separate activities, each having its own characteristics and demands.First, it requires analysis. We have to know the specific operations needed for work, their sequence, and their requirements.Second, we also need synthesis. The individual operations have to be brought together into a process of production.Third, we need to build into the process the control of direction, of quality and quantity, of standards, and of exceptions.Fourth, the appropriate tools have to be provided.One more basic pint needs to be made. Because work is objective and impersonal and a “something”-even if it is intangible, like information or knowledge-making work productive has to start out with the end product, the output of work. It cannot start with the input, whether craft skill or formal knowledge. Skills, information, knowledge, are tools; and what wool is to be applied when, and for what purpose, must always be determined by the desired end product. The end product determines what work is needed. It also determines the synthesis into a process, the design of the appropriate controls, and the specifications for the tools needed.Work is a process, and any process need to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work. Specifically the process of production needs built-in controls in respect to: its direction; its quality; its quantity it turns out in a given unit of time and with a given input of working; its standards, such as machine maintenance or safety; and its economy, that is, the efficiency with which it uses resourcesEach work process needs its own controls. There is no “standard” control, but all control systems have to satisfy the same basic demands and have to live up to same overall specifications.The first thing to know is that controlling the work process means control of the work, and not control of worker. Control is a tool of the worker and must never be his master. It must also never become an impediment to working. The most extreme cases of controls impeding work are not to be found in manufacturing but in retailing and in the hospital. There controls have been permitted to become an end in them to the point where they encroach upon the work and seriously harm it.In the department store a great many controls are undoubtedly required. Each sale has to be recorded. There is need for information for inventory control, billing, credit, delivery, and so on. But in far too many departments stores the salesperson is supposed to provide all the control information. As a result, he or she has less and time to do what he is paid for, that is, selling. In some large American retail stores, two-thirds of the salespersons time is devoted to paperwork with only onethird left for selling. The remedy is a simple one and works wherever tried. Once the salesperson has done his or her job, which is to serve the customer, the entire paperwork is turned over to a separate clerk who services a number of sales people and does the paperwork for them. The impact both on the ability of salespeople to sell and on their morale is astonishing.In the hospital, controls are needed in tremendous number, from medical records to billing to the handling of insurance claims for reimbursement, for the patients personal physician, and so on. Yet to have the nurse handle this paper flood-as is the practice in the typical hospital-is gross misconstrue. It makes the nurse deskbound so that she has less and less time for the patient. Again the remedy is simple: a floor clerk, usually a young management trainee in hospital administration, who takes on the information load including providing the nurse with what she needs herself to do her own job. This is not only economical, since management trainees are paid much less than nurses (and should, of course, be paid less), it is, above all, the proper use of scarce skills.It should always be remembered that control is a principle of economy and not of morality (on this see Chapter 39,”Controls, Control, and Management”). The purpose of control is making the process go smoothly, properly, and according to high standards. The first question to ask of the control system is whether if maintains the process within a permissible range of deviation with the minimum effort. To spend a dollar to protect 99 cent is not control. It is waste.” What is the minimum of control that will maintain the process?” is the right question to ask.Seventy years ago this was clearly understood by the men who built Sears, Roebuck. In the early days of the mail-order business, the money in incoming orders was not counted. The orders were weighted, unopened. (These were, of course, the days when currency was still metallic.) Sears, Roebuck had run enough tests to know what average weights corresponded to overall amounts of money-and this was sufficient control.Many years later, in the 1950s, Marks & Spencer similarly developed a system of minimum controls. The late Lord Marks, it is said, was appalled at the paperwork the found when he visited one of the stores. He forthwith ordered all paperwork to be stopped. Control instead is exercised by frequent small samples-and this greatly increased the ability of the people in the store to sell and with it the profitability of the business. It also increased the morale of the people at work. They were finally able to do their work rather than to waste time and effort on controls which impeded them.The second thing to know about controls is their basic characteristics. Controls have to be preset. There has to be a decision as to the desired performance and as to the permissible deviation from the norm triggers the control. As long as the process operates within the preset standards, it is under control and does not require any action.Third, control has to be by feedback from the work done. The work itself has to provide the information. If is has to checked all the time, there is no control.One implication of this-and a very important one is that inspection is not control. Inspection, especially final inspection, is, of course, needed for both goods and services. But if used as control, it fast becomes excessively cumbersome, excessively expensive, and a drag on the process itself. Above all, it does not really control, even if there is 100 percent inspection, that is, if every product is tested and analyzed. The end result would still be poor quality, excessive defects, and malfunction.Inspection, in other words, is the control of the control system rather than the control system itself. And it too, to be effective, has to satisfy the specifications of control, above all, the principle of economy.The control itself has to be exercised where the malfunction is likely to occur. The control action may then be performed by the machinery itself. The classical example is the governor on Watts steam engine. Another one is the thermostat that runs the central heating unit of the modern home.Or the worker may be alerted to take the proper remedial action-and this is also feedback control. What is important is not who takes the action but what action to take. Equally important is that the action be taken as a result of the working of