RESULTS MA-ECONOMICS EXTERNAL PREVIOUS/PART 1- 2013

RESULTS MA-ECONOMICS EXTERNAL PREVIOUS/PART 1- 2013


RESULTS MA-ECONOMICS EXTERNAL PREVIOUS/PART 1- 2013

RESULTS MA-ECONOMICS EXTERNAL PREVIOUS/PART 1- 2013

RESULTS MA-ECONOMICS EXTERNAL PREVIOUS/PART 1- 2013

What is Management By Objectives and what are the steps involved in it?

The concept of management by objectives is a logical extension of Goal Setting theory. The Goal Setting theory studies the processes by which people set goals for themselves and then put in efforts to achieve them. Evidence proves that 90 percent of the time, performance improves with goal setting. Comparatively high achievers set comparatively more difficult goals and they are more satisfied with intrinsic rewards than extrinsic rewards. Management by objectives is an extension of Goal theory as it involves systematic and programmatic goal getting throughout an organization.

The concept of MBO was introduced by Peter Drucker in 1954 as a means of using goals to improve people rather than to control them. Thus this concept of MBO is also known as Goal management. It is based upon the assumption that involvement leads to commitment and when an employee participates in goal setting as well as setting standards for measurement of performance towards that goal then the employees will be motivated to perform better and in a manner that directly contributes to the achievement of organizational objectives. Simply stated, “MBO is a process whereby both managers and subordinates work together in identifying goals and setting up objectives and makes plans together in order to achieve these objectives. Their objectives and goals should be consistent with the organizational goals”.

What are the steps involved in the process of MBO?
The basic steps that are common in all the processes of management by objective (MBO) are:-

1. Central goal setting: defining and verifying organizational objectives is the first step in MBO process. Generally these objectives are set by central management of the organization but it does so after consulting other managers. Before setting of these objectives, an extensive assessment of the available resources is made by the central management. It also conducts market service and research along with making a forecast. Through this elaborate analysis, the desired long run and short run objectives of the organization are highlighted. The central management tries to make these objectives realistic and specific. After setting these goals it is the responsibility of the management that these are known to all members and are also under stood by them.

2. Development and individual goal setting : After organization objectives are established by the central management, the next step is to establish the department goals. The top management needs to discuss these objectives with the heads of the departments so that mutually agreed upon objectives are established. Long range and short range goals are set by each department in consultation with the top management. After the department goals are established, the employees work with their managers to establish their own individual goals which relate with the organization goals. These participative goals are very important because It has been seen that employees become highly motivated to achieve the objectives established by them. These objectives for individuals should be specific and short range. These should indicate the capability of the unit of the individual. Through this process all the members of the organization become involved in the process of goal setting.

3. Revision of job description : In the process of MBO resetting individual goals involves a revision of job description of different positions in the organization which in turn requires the revision of the entire structure of the organization. The organization manuals and charts may also have to be modified to portray the changes that have been introduced by the process of MBO. The job description has to define the objectives, authority and responsibility of different jobs. The connection of one job with all other jobs of the organization also needs to be established clearly.

4. Matching goals : The establishment of objectives can not be fruitful unless the resources and means required to achieve these objectives are provided. Therefore the subordinates should be provided required tools and materials which enables them to achieve the objectives efficiently and effectively. Resource requirements can be measured precisely if the goals are set precisely. This makes the process of resource allocation relatively easy. Resource allocation should be made after consulting the subordinates.

5. Freedom implementation: The task team of manager and his subordinates should be given freedom in deciding the way to utilize their resources and the way to achieve their objectives. There should be very little or no interference by the seniors as long as the team is working with in the framework of organization policies.

6. Establishing check points: The process of MBO requires regularly meetings between the managers and their subordinates to discuss the progress achieve in the accomplishment of the objective established for the subordinates. For this purpose the mangers need to establish the standards of performance or check points to evaluate the progress of their subordinates. These standards need to be specified as for as possible quantitatively and it should also be ensured that these are completely understood by the subordinates. This practices needs to be followed by all managers and these should lead to an analysis of key results has the targets are represented in terms of the results. The analysis of key results should be recorded in writing and it generally contains information regarding :
(i) The overall objectives related with the job of subordinates.
(ii) The key results which must be achieved by the subordinate to fulfill his objectives.
(iii) The long term and short term priorities, a subordinate needs to adhere to.
(iv.) The extent and scope of assistance expected by a subordinate from his superior and other departmental managers and also the assistance, the subordinates is required to extend to other departments of his organizations.
(v.) Nature of information and the reports receive by the subordinate to carry out self evaluation.
(vi.) The standards use to evaluate the performance of the subordinate.

7. Performance appraisal : An informal performance appraisal is generally conducted in routine by the manager, a periodic review of performance of the subordinates should also be conducted. Periodic reviews are required as the priorities and conditions change constantly and need to be monitored constantly. These reviews help the mangers as well as the subordinates to modify the objectives or the methods whenever require. This significantly increases the chances of achieving the goals and also ensures that no surprises are found at the time of final appraisal. Periodic performance appraisal needs to be based on measurable and fair standards so that these are completely understood by the subordinates and there are also aware of the degree of performance required at each step.

8. Counseling : Periodic performance review helps the subordinates in improving his future performance.

MANAGEMENT THEORY OF MARY PARKER FOLLET: MA-FINAL PAPER IV-E MANAGEMENT ECONOMICS

MANAGEMENT THEORY OF MARY PARKER FOLLET:

Modern management theory owes a lot to a nearly-forgotten woman writer, Mary Parker Follett.

Mary Parker Follett was born in Quincy, Massachusetts. She studied at 

the Thayer Academy, Braintree, Massachusetts, where she credited one of her teachers with influencing many of her later ideas. In 1894, she used her inheritance to study at the Society for Collegiate Instruction of Women, sponsored by Harvard, going on to a year at Newnham College in Cambridge, England, in 1890. She studied on and off at Radcliffe as well, starting in the early 1890s.

In 1898, Mary Parker Follett graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe. Her research at Radcliffe was published in 1896 and again in 1909 as The Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Mary Parker Follett began working in Roxbury as a voluntary social worker in 1900. In 1908 she became chair of the Women's Municipal League Committee on Extended Use of School Buildings. In 1911, she and others opened the East Boston High School Social Center. She also helped found other social centers in Boston.

In 1917, Mary Parker Follett took on the vice-presidency of the National Community Center Association, and in 1918 

published her book on community, democracy, and government,The New State.

Mary Parker Follett published another book, Creative Experience, in 1924, with more of her ideas about the creative interaction of people in group process. In 1926, she moved to England to live and work, and to study at Oxford. In 1928, Follett consulted with the League of Nations and with the International Labor Organization in Geneva. She lived in London from 1929 with Dame Katharine Furse of the Red Cross.

In her later years, Mary Parker Follett became a popular writer and lecturer in the business world. She was a lecturer at the London School of Economics from 1933.

Mary Parker Follett advocated for a human relations emphasis equal to a mechanical or operational emphasis in management. Her work contrasted with the "scientific management" of Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915) and evolved by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, which stressed time and motion studies.

Mary Parker Follett stressed the interactions of management and workers. She looks at management and leadership holistically, presaging modern systems approaches; she identifies a leader as "someone who sees the whole rather than the particular." Follett was one of the first (and for a long time, one of the few) to integrate the idea of organizational conflict into management theory, and is sometimes considered the "mother of conflict resolution."

In a 1924 essay, "Power," she coined the words "power-over" and "power-with" to differentiate coercive power from participative decision-making, showing how "power-with" can be greater than "power-over." "Do we not see now," she observed, "that while there are many ways of gaining an external, an arbitrary power —- through brute strength, through manipulation, through diplomacy —- genuine power is always that which inheres in the situation?"

Mary Parker Follett died in 1933 on a visit to Boston. After her death, her papers and speeches were compiled and published in 1942 in Dynamic Administration, and in 1995, Pauline Graham edited a compilation of her writing in Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management. The New State was reissued in a new edition in 1998 with helpful additional material.

Her work was mostly forgotten in America, and is still largely neglected in studies of the evolution of management theory, despite the accolades of more recent thinkers like Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker called her the "prophet of management" and his "guru."

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Background

Born in Massachusetts to a well-off Boston family, Follett was a brilliant scholar who graduated at 12. She was educated at the Thayer Academy, Boston, and Radcliffe College, Massachusetts. At 20, she attended an annexe of Harvard University called the Society for Collegiate Instruction of Women. In 1890, as a student of 22, she spent a year at Newnham College in Cambridge, England and went on to Paris as a postgraduate student. Graham describes Follett as a polymath, and records that she read law, economics, government and philosophy at Harvard, and history and political science at Newnham.

While at Cambridge, Follett gave a paper which she later developed into her first book, The House of Representatives. This was taken seriously enough to be reviewed by Theodore Roosevelt in the American Historical Review of October 1896.

Follett's family life was difficult. Her father, to whom she was close, died when she was in her early teens. Her mother was an invalid with whom Follett did not get on very well. From an early age Follett ran the household, and later she also ran the family housing business. Eventually, Follett broke all family ties and went to share a home with her friend, Isobella Briggs. Over the next 30 years, Isobella provided a stable domestic background, while her social connections were helpful to Follett's work. When Isobella died in 1926, Follett lost her home life as well as her closest friend.

Later that year she met Dame Katherine Furse, an English woman who was strongly involved with the Girl Guide movement. Follett later moved to England to share a house in Chelsea with Furse.

Follett the social worker

Follett was expected to become an academic, but instead she went into voluntary social work in Boston, where her energy and practicality (as well as her financial support on occasions) achieved much in terms of community-building initiatives. For over 30 years, she was immersed in this work, and proved to be an innovative, hands-on manager whose practical achievements included the original use of schools as out-of-hours centres for community education and recreation. This was Follett's own idea, and the resulting community centres became models for other cities throughout America.

Follett set up vocational placement centres in Boston school centres, and represented the public on the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Board. From 1924, she began to give regular papers relating to industrial organisation, especially for conferences of the Bureau of Personnel Administration in New York. She became, in effect, an early management consultant, as businessmen began to seek her advice about their organisational and human relations problems.

In 1926 and 1928, Follett gave papers for the Rowntree Lecture Conference and to the National Institute of Industrial Psychology. In 1933, she gave an inaugural series of lectures for the new-founded Department of Business Administration (now the Department of Industrial Relations) at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Later in 1933, Follett returned to America, where she died on the 18th December of that year, aged 65.

Key texts

The New State was written during 1918, and argues for group-based democracy as a process of government. Through this book, Follett became widely recognised as a political philosopher. It was based on her social work experience rather than on business organisation, but the ideas it contains were later applied in the business context.

The New State presented an often visionary interpretation of what Follett viewed as a progress of social evolution, and the tone is occasionally infused with religious poesy. The text argues that democracy 'by numbers' should give way to a more valid process of group-based democracy. This form of democracy is described as a dynamic process through which individual conflicts and differences become integrated within the search for overall group agreement. Through it, people will grow and learn as they adapt to one another's views while seeking a common, long-term good.

The group process works through the relating of individuals' different ideas to each other and to the common interests of the group as a whole. Appropriate action would, Follett held, become self-evident during the consultation process. This would eventually reveal a 'law of the situation', representing an objective which all could see would be the best course for the group as a whole to pursue. Conflict or disagreement were viewed as positive forces, and Follett considered social evolution to progress through the ever-continuous integration of diverse viewpoints and opinions in pursuit of the common good.

The New State envisages the basic group democratic process following right through to the international level, feeding up from neighbourhoods via municipal and state government levels into the League of Nations. Sometimes, Follett refers to an almost autonomous group spirit, which develops from the community between people, as the group process begins to work.

The Creative Experience was also written during 1918, and again focused on democratic governance, using examples from business to illustrate ideas. Dynamic Management - The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett and Freedom and Co-ordination were both published posthumously and edited by L Urwick. Freedom and Co-ordination collects together six papers given by Follett at the LSE in 1933, and these represent the most developed and concise distillation of her thoughts on business organisation.

Follett's business writings extended her social ideas into the industrial sphere. Industrial managers, she saw, confronted the same difficulties as public administrators in terms of control, power, participation, and conflict. Her later writings focused on management from a human perspective, using the new approach of psychology to deal with problems between individuals and within groups. She encouraged businessmen to look at how groups formed and how employee commitment and motivation could be encouraged. The participation of everyone involved in decisions affecting their activities is seen as fundamental, in that Follett viewed group power and management through co-operation as the obvious route to achievements that would benefit all.

Follett's views on power, leadership, authority and control

Follett envisioned management responsibility as being diffused throughout a business rather than wholly concentrated at the hierarchical apex. Degrees of authority and responsibility are seen as spread all along the line. For example, a truck driver can act with more authority than the business owner in terms of knowing most about the best order in which to make his drops. Leadership skills are required of many people rather than just one person, and final authority, while it does exist, should not be over-emphasised. The chief executive's role lies in co-ordinating the scattered authorities and varied responsibilities that make up the organisation into group action and ideas, and also in foreseeing and meeting the next situation.

Follett's concept of leadership as the ability to develop and integrate group ideas, using 'power with' rather than 'power over' people, is very modern. She understood that the crude exercise of authority based on subordination is hurtful to human beings, and cannot be the basis of effective, motivational management control. The power of single individuals, Follett considered, could erode overall organisational and social achievement, and she advocated the replacement of personal power with the authority of task or function and with the 'law of the situation' as revealed through group process consultation. Partnership and co-operation, she sought to persuade people, was of far more ultimate benefit to everyone than hierarchical control and competition.

Follett viewed the group process as a form of collective control, with the interweaving experience of all who are performing a functional part in an activity feeding into decision-making. Thus, control is realised through the co-ordination of all functions rather than imposed from the outside.

Follett's four fundamental principles of organisation

Follett identified four principles that she considered basic to effective management co-ordination:

1. Coordination as the 'Reciprocal Relating' of all factors in a situation - relating the factors in a situation.
2. Coordination by direct contact - direct communication between all responsible people involved, whatever their hierarchical or departmental positions.
3. Coordination in the early stages - involving all the people directly concerned, right from the initial stages of designing a project or forming a policy.
4. Coordination as a continuing process - keeping co-ordination going on a continuous basis, and recognising that there is no such thing as unity, but only the continuous process of unifying.

The context of evolutionary progress

Follett's thinking was ahead of her time, yet was founded on a conviction of social, evolutionary progress which, from our hindsight perspective, is flawed by the course of subsequent history. She lived through momentous times, when social and technological change seemed to make a new order inevitable. The destruction caused by the First World War also seemed to dictate the clear need for a determined effort to create a social order which would not break down so disastrously. Simultaneously, the war created pressures in both England and America to include labour participation in management, and led to a growth in internationalist ideas and to the birth of the League of Nations. Like other writers of the time, Follett made leaps of the imagination that grew out of the factual changes that were actually taking place. Her view was rational and progressive, and she could not know the degree to which some things would remain constant, undermining the apparently inevitable dynamic of social 'progress'.

From the end of the same century which Follett saw begin, we have only too full a knowledge of the Second World War, and countless other conflicts, of the discrediting of Russian Communism, and of worsening ethnic divisions and continuing human barbarities. The progressive, internationalist vision seems to be, from our contemporary perspective, a fast-receding dream.

Yet, while Follett's optimistic expectation of radical social change were largely mistaken, she drew from it the imaginative vision to transform at least some of her convictions into ideas about ways of living and working that have contributed much to both social and management practice. In fact, it is almost disheartening to read Follett and realise that she clearly and strongly stated, so many years ago, ideas that are being proffered as 'new' today and that are still rarely practised in any sustained way.