Charles Cox

The foundations of success

Compares the development and characteristics of three groups of highly successful British senior executives – self‐made entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, and a group of intrapreneurs who are members of the family owning the company for which they work, but not the company′s founder. One important common factor within the first two groups (which distinguishes them from the third group) is the overcoming of adversity in childhood. This seems to set a pattern of behaviour throughout life which contributes to their success by giving them the ability to cope with and learn from different situations and setbacks during their careers. Other factors which discriminate between the groups are the degree of risk taking, innovation and political style. All three groups have much in common. They are all good communicators who work extremely hard and are intrinsically motivated.

Changing Behaviour at Work : A Practical Guide

1. History and Background 2. Traditional Approaches to Management 3. The Behavioural Approach to Management 4. Managing Yourself and Other Individuals 5. Managing Groups 6. Managing at the Organizational Level 7. Applying the Behavioural Approach

Managing the Boss

Understanding how to manage the boss requires an awareness of the different types of bosses, their personality and their management styles. Describes six different types of manager: the bureaucrat, the autocrat, the wheeler‐dealer, the laissez‐faire manager, the reluctant manager, and the open manager. Suggestions are given, using behaviour modification as a framework, as to how each of these can best be influenced by a subordinate.

Overcoming Dependence with Contingency Contracting

There is a discernible trend for organizations to be moving away from directive and authoritarian management styles, towards a more participative approach, which involves subordinates in taking more responsibility. This is linked to a move from bureaucratic role cultures to a more integrated style of organization. This poses the problem of how to move the individual from the dependence engendered by authoritarian systems to a relationship, between managers and subordinates, which is characterized by interdependence, a move which is very difficult to make. Transitional contingency contracting, a technique which gradually transfers control from the manager to the subordinate, is suggested as a process which can develop interdependence, while reducing the risk of becoming stuck in mutual dependence or generating rebellion (or counter dependence).

Structures of Organizations

The structures of organizations can be thought of as falling into two categories: micro and macro. The micro aspect of organizational behaviour deals with the behaviour in organizations of individuals, groups and inter-group activities (Chapters 2–9). These areas are often thought to be the special domain of the psychologist. The macro aspects of organizational behaviour, the central concern of this chapter, deal with the global behaviour of an organization as a social system. These aspects include the structure, the influence of the technology used by the organization, and the relationship of the organization to the environment.

Quality behaviour for quality organizations

Goal setting and feedback techniques have previously been used to improve safety behaviour. Describes a pilot study of the application of a behaviour‐based quality improvement process in a continuous process production plant with a particular focus on certain aspects of the organizational structure and climate which might be conducive to the changes necessary to facilitate this approach. Since “quality improvement”, unlike “safety improvement”, is more likely to be contingent on interactions with other people, the need to optimize communication and interpersonal relationships at work are important. Suggests that an internal customer, linking‐pin model provides the optimal conditions required, and ensures a high level of employee participation in the process of continuous quality improvement.

Communication and Attitude Change

Practically everyone is familiar with the old, old anecdote from the First World War where the message transmitted from the trenches urgently asked for reinforcements for an impending advance, but the message received at company headquarters baffled all the brigadiers by asking for three and fourpence because the unit was going to a dance. The failure, of course, was a failure of communication. Similar failures occur during every minute of every industrial day: a microchip factory is brought to the edge of bankruptcy because the ventilating engineer fails to communicate the correct grade of air filters and the resulting atmospheric dust reduces the reliability of the chips to the point where their main customer withdraws his orders; an apprentice loses his right testicle because the safety officer’s talk contained too many facts for him to assimilate; and an employee emerges from a disciplinary interview with the conviction that, despite actual words, his boss does not have any really serious objection to him arriving late for work. These are a few examples of failures of communication in industry.

Applying American Organizational Sciences in Europe and the United Kingdom

Until the 1970s, much of European thought, research, and action in the organizational sciences came across the Atlantic from the United States. Graduate students and scholars in the fields of management and organizational behavior from England, France, Holland, West Germany, and many other countries, internalized American concepts of “participation,” organizational development, and so forth, without seriously considering their transplantation and applicability to European culture. This was in parallel with a general increase in American influence in Europe, after World War II, in all aspects of life—economic, cultural, and particularly entertainment. By the mid-1970s, however, it was becoming obvious that many of the concepts in American organizational sciences were irrelevant, particularly in their American format, to the problems, concerns, and cultures of organizational life in Europe. Although many of the conceptualizations and action plans from U.S. organizational and management scientists have “face validity,” they have not proved to be the radical alternatives that Europe needed to solve its most pressing problems.

Participation and Technology

We have heard a great deal recently about the need to democratize or humanize the work-place in industry, to improve the quality of working life by providing the industrial worker with greater participation in the decisions involving work — participation has been a term constantly used throughout this book. Generally participation can be achieved by including employees on Boards of companies and involving them in the long-term policy-making issues of the organizations or by increasing their participation in the decision-making processes of their work-group by allowing them greater freedom in deciding how to organize and conduct their own jobs. These two approaches to industrial democracy, which, it might be added, are not mutually exclusive, have been termed by Strauss and Rosenstein (1970) as distant and immediate participation respectively.

Personality and Learning in Organizations

What is the personality? In 1937 one well-known psychologist (Gordon Allport) found fifty definitions in the literature. Today there would be many more. Not all writers think highly of the term. Brown (1964) calls it ‘rather a regretable word’. And Lazarus (1971) says: When the layman thinks about personality, he is likely to view it as the impression one makes on others; he is likely to be concerned with such things as having a ‘good’ or ‘effective’ personality … When the psychologist thinks about personality, however, he sees it as the study of the stable psychological structures and processes that organize human environment.