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He theorized and applied a scientific approach to management long before the scientific management era began in the United States. Born in Devonshire, England, the son off wealthy banker, Babbage used his inheritance in a lifelong quest “into the causes of all those little things and events which astonish the childish mind. ” He remarked that his first question after receiving a new toy was invariably, “Mamma, what is inside of it? ” and he also invariably broke open the toy if the answer did not appear satisfactory. The value of his work was recognized by few of his contemporaries, and he was generally considered a crackpot by his neighbors.
His personal traits were not endearing to those who disturbed his cogitations. In retaliation against the ubiquitous English organ-grinders, he blew bugles and created a commotion outside his house to scare them away. One contemporary, perhaps a neighbor, wrote, “He spoke as if he hated mankind in general, Englishmen in particular, and the English Government and organ grinders most of all. ” The First Computer Baggage’s scientific output was phenomenal. He demonstrated the world’s first practical mechanical calculator, his difference engine, in 1822.
Ninety-one years later, its basic principles were being employed in Burroughs counting machines. Babbage had governmental support in his work on the difference engine, but his irascibility cost him the support of government bureaucrats for his analytical engine, a versatile computer that would follow instructions automatically. As early as 1 833 he conceived his analytical engine that could, in effect, scan a stream Of instructions and put them into operation. Touring textile mills in France, he saw looms weaving very complicated patterns from instructions cut into cards.
A silk weaver, Joseph Marie Jacquard, had developed punched cards strung together to make a Hahn and to fall at the appropriate time with a hole signaling the loom to lift a thread and become part of the design, or a blank that stopped a thread. The Jacquard loom anticipated the binary zero/one, off/on system of George Bole’s algebra that formed the principle for modern computer operations. Babbage borrowed Jacquard’s concept, but demonstrated foresight in his use of punch cards for the storage of information as well as the guidance of machine operations.
Half a century later, Herman Hollering invented the earliest practical punched-card tabulating machine, probably building on the ideas of Jacquard and Babbage. In concept, Baggage’s computer had all the basic elements of a more modern version. It had a store (or memory device), a mill (or arithmetic unit), a punch-card input system, external memory storage, and conditional transfer. In retrospect, “Baggage’s genius was not in the calculating power of his engine but in the mechanization of the organizing and logical control of the arithmetic function. Babbage also conceived an “apparatus for printing on paper, one, or if required, two copies of the results” Of the output-?a Victorian version of a modern printer. Babbage was so assassinated with designing his analytical engine that he never built one. One design would suggest an improvement, then another, and another because he could never stop short of perfection. Shortly before his death in 1871 he wrote: “If I survive some few years longer, the Analytical Engine will exist, and its works will afterwards be spread over the world. For more than a century his work would lie dormant, waiting other times and other people to advance his seminal ideas. One of the few bright spots in Baggage’s life was his friendship with Augusta Dad (1 816-1852), countess of Lovelace and daughter f the poet Lord Byron. The countess had a gift for mathematics and engineering and was one of the few who really understood Baggage’s work. She wrote treatises on his work, expressed his ideas better than he could, and wrote programs for the computer.
She warned people against becoming dependent on the computer, which “has no preventions [sic] whatever to originate anything Can would] do whatever we know how to order it to perform. ” Together with Babbage, she developed a surefire system for betting on horses; unfortunately, the horses did not follow the system, and the countess had to pawn her jewels. Undaunted by the countess’s loss of the family jewels (though the count of Lovelace was upset), Babbage continued his 2 work and developed for his computer gaming programs that were a forerunner of modern business gaming techniques.
He limited his research to developing a computer program to play tick-tack-toe and chess, but he saw that the machine (he called it an automaton) could be programmed to make the best possible combinations of positions and moves, including anticipation as far as three moves in advance. Development of this automaton to play chess and tick-tack-toe certainly must have brought him to the fringe of arability theory in programming for player positions and decision alternatives. Analyzing Industrial Operations Inevitably, Baggage’s inquisitive mind and wide interests led him to write of management.
His most successful book was On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, published in 1832. Babbage became interested in manufacturing and management as a result of his problems supervising construction of his own engine, and he visited a wide variety of British and French factories. He described in great detail the tools and machines, discussed the “economical principles of manufacturing,” and, in the true spirit f inquiry for a researcher, analyses operations, the kinds of skills involved, and the expense of each process and suggested directions for improving the tincture practices.
As a management scientist, Babbage was interested in machinery, tools, the efficient use of power, developing counting machines to check quantity of work, and economy in the use of raw materials; these he called the mechanical principles of manufacturing. He developed a “method of observing manufacturers,” which was closely akin to a scientific, systematic approach to the study of operations. The observer prepared a list of questions about the materials used, normal waste, expenses, tools, prices, the final market, workers, their wages, skill required, length of work cycle, and so on.
In essence it was the same procedure that an operations analyst or a consultant would use in approaching an assignment. Babbage emphasized the difference between “making’ products (which could be done in small workshops) and “manufacturing,” operating on a larger scale, which necessitated the careful arrangement of the “whole system of [the] factory’ to reduce the cost of production. In this early concept of economies of scale,
Babbage also recognized that a competitive market called for “ingenuity,” innovation and improvement, if a firm was to remain viable. On the human side, he recalled the Ululated movement and pleaded with workers to recognize that the factory system worked for their betterment: “It is of great importance that the more intelligent amongst the class of workmen should examine the correctness of these views; because the whole class may be led by designing persons to pursue a course, which is in reality at variance with their own best interests. His attempts to show the mutuality of interests between the worker and the actors owner were somewhat similar to what Frederick Taylor said seventy- five years later. According to Babbage, the prosperity and success of the master manufacturer is essential to the welfare of the workman whilst it is perfectly true that workmen, as a class, derive advantage from the prosperity Of their employers, I do not think that each individual partakes of that advantage exactly in proportion to the extent to which he contributes to it t would be of great importance, if … He mode of payment could be so arranged, that every person employed should derive advantage from the success of the whole; and that the profits of each individual should advance, as the factory itself produced profit, without the necessity of making any change in wages. Baggage’s profit-sharing scheme had two facets: that a portion of wages would depend on factory profits, and that the worker “should derive more advantage from applying any improvement he might discover,” that is, a bonus for suggestions.
Workers would receive a fixed salary based on the nature of their task plus a share in the profits, and the suggestion system would use a committee to determine the proper bonus for production savings. Babbage saw a number of advantages in his proposal: (l) each worker would have a direct interest in the firm’s prosperity, (2) each would be stimulated to prevent waste and mismanagement, (3) every department would be improved, and (4) 3 “it would be the common interest of all to admit [hire] only the most respectable and skillful [workers]. In effect, the work group, operating under a profit-sharing plan, would act to Screen out undesirables who would reduce its share. Finally, Babbage saw his scheme as removing the necessity for combinations of workers because their interests would be the same as those f the employers. With this mutuality of interests between worker and manager, neither would oppress the other, and all would prosper. Beyond his significant scientific contributions, Charles Babbage made significant advancements in understanding the problems of the emerging factory system.
His analytic, scientific approach to the study of manufacturing, his recognition of the need for new incentives to enlist the cooperation of the worker, and his search for new harmonies between manager and worker placed him as a person of vision in management. Bernard, Chester Irving (1886-1961 ) (UP. 22-330) Chester Irving Bernard was a sociologist of organizations without a portfolio. Born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1886, he personified the Horopito Alger ideal of the farm boy who made good. 39 On a scholarship at Harvard University, he supplemented his income by tuning pianos and conducting a small dance band.
He studied economics at Harvard, completing all but one degree requirement in three years (1906-1909). Lacking a laboratory science, he was not allowed to graduate. Even without a bachelor’s degree, he did well enough to earn seven honorary doctorates for his lifelong efforts to understand the nature and purpose of organizations. Bernard joined the statistical department of the American Telephone and Telegraph (AT) system in 1 909 and in 1927 was named president of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company.
His unbounded enthusiasm for public service was reflected in his volunteer work for many organizations. He assisted David E. Alienated in developing operational policies for the Atomic Energy Commission; he served the New Jersey Emergency Relief Administration, the New Jersey Reformatory, the United Service Organization (president for three years), the Rockefeller Foundation (president for four ears); and he was president of the Bach Society of New Jersey.
Bernard was a self-made scholar who applied the theories of Vilified Parent (whom he read in French), Kurt Lenin, and Max Weber (whom he read in German) and the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead in the first in-depth analysis of organizations as cooperative systems. By the time of his death in 1 961, this Harvard dropout had earned a place in history as a management scholar. The Nature of Cooperative Systems Barnyard’s best-known work, The Functions of the Executive, was an expansion of eight lectures given at the Lowell Institute (Boston) in November and December of 1937.
His explicit purpose in presenting the lectures was to develop a theory of organizations and to stimulate others to examine the nature of cooperative systems. To Bernard, the search for universals in organizations had been hampered by too much emphasis on the nature of religious and government institutions and their differing views on the origin and nature of authority. He complained that most research focused on social unrest and reform and included “practically no reference to formal organization as the concrete social process by which social action is largely accomplished.
In Barnyard’s opinion, social failures throughout history were due to the failure to provide for human cooperation in formal organizations. Bernard said that the “formal organization is that kind of cooperation among men that is conscious, deliberate, and purposeful. ” Bernard believed that by examining formal organizations, it was possible to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of such cooperation.
He sought to understand how to (1) ensure the survival of an organization by the “maintenance of an equilibrium of complex character in a continuously fluctuating environment of physical, biological, and social materials, elements, ND forces” within an organization; (2) examine the external forces to which an organization must adjust to achieve such equilibrium; and (3) to analyze the functions performed by executives at all levels in an organization. Barnyard’s focus on maintaining internal equilibrium while confronting external environmental forces was seen as novel as compared to more conventional thinking.
He rejected the 4 traditional view of organizations having fixed boundaries and as being comprised of a defined set of employees. In considering the larger environment in which an organization was situated, Barnyard’s analyses went ended earlier thinking to also include investors, suppliers, customers, and others whose actions contributed to an organization, although technically they were not employees of the organization. Barnyard’s view of organizations as cooperative systems began with individuals as discrete beings; however, he noted that humans did not function except in interacting with other humans in social relationships.
As individuals, people could choose whether or not they would enter into a specific cooperative system. They made this choice based on their motives (meaning purposes, desires, and impulses of the moment) or by considering whatever action alternatives were available. As described by Bernard, organizations, through their executive function, seek to modify individuals’ motives and action alternatives through influence and control. Bernard recognized that attempts at influence and control were not always successful in attaining the goals sought by both organizations and their members.
The disparity between personal motives and organizational motives led Bernard to distinguish between “effectiveness” and “efficiency. ” A formal system of cooperation required an objective or purpose, and if cooperation was successful and the objective was attained, the system was effective. Bernard saw the matter of efficiency differently. He felt cooperative efficiency was the result of individual efficiencies, because individuals cooperated only to satisfy “individual motives. Efficiency, then, was the degree to which an individual’s motives were satisfied, and only the individual could determine whether this condition had been met. As viewed by Bernard, cooperation within formal organizations afforded possibilities for expanding the power of groups beyond what individuals could accomplish alone; for example, moving a tone, producing an automobile, or constructing a bridge. Individuals cooperated to do what they could not do alone; and when their purpose for cooperating was attained, their efforts were deemed effective.
Individuals, however, also had personal motives, and the degree to which individuals continued to contribute to a formal organization was a function of the satisfaction or dissatisfaction they personally derived from their membership in an organization. If members’ motives were not satisfied by a formal organization, they withheld efforts or participation, and from their point of IEEE, the organization was inefficient. Bernard contended that in the final analysis, “the only measure of the efficiency of a cooperative system is its capacity to survive. For Bernard, this meant that an organization must offer inducements necessary to satisfy individual motives in the pursuit of group purposes to ensure its continued survival. Viewed in modern terms, a formal organization must renew its energy or import negative entropy by offering net satisfactions to contributing members. An inefficient organization cannot be effective and, therefore, cannot survive beyond its store of negative entropy. For Bernard efficiency and effectiveness were irrevocable and universal requirements for all formal organizations.
Formal Organizations: Theory and Structure Bernard defined an organization as “a system Of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons. ” He intended for this definition to encompass all such systems, including military, fraternal, religious, academic, business, or whatever, irrespective of variations in terms of physical or social environment, number and kinds of members, or the nature of members’ activities. Bernard treated such systems “as a whole because each part is elated to every other part included in it in a significant way. 46 He noted that different levels of systems existed, ranging from departments (subsystems) in a commercial firm to systems forming society as a whole. Regardless of level, Bernard held that all systems contained three elements: (1) willingness of members to cooperate, (2) a common purpose, and (3) members able to communicate with each other. As for the first of these elements, Bernard reasoned that an organization could not exist without members. Further, a willingness to cooperate to accomplish a common purpose was indispensable.
He recognized that the intensity and timing of this willingness would naturally fluctuate because it was based on the satisfaction or dissatisfaction experienced or anticipated by each individual member. An organization, thus, had to provide adequate inducements, both physical and social, to offset the sacrifices individuals made by forgoing membership in alternative systems. Bernard further 5 reasoned that, for individuals, willingness was the joint effect of “personal desires and reluctances” to participate; for an organization, it was the joint effect of “objective inducements offered and burdens imposed.
Inducing individuals to cooperate involved an “economy of incentives,” which consisted of two parts: (1 ) offering objective incentives and (2) changing subjective attitudes through persuasion. Objective incentives were material (e. G. , money), immaterial (e. G. , prestige, power), and associational (e. G. , social compatibility, participation in decision making). Persuasion involved changing attitudes by precept, example, and appeal to individual motives.
A common purpose, the second required element of a formal organization that Bernard identified, was a corollary to the third required element-?a willingness of embers to cooperate. Bernard contended that willingness to cooperate could not be induced unless members knew what efforts would be required of them and what incentives they would receive as a result. This thus required that an organization inculcate in its members a common purpose or objective. Bernard believed that it was not what an organization’s purpose meant personally to its members, but what they perceived the purpose to mean to the organization as a whole.
As noted earlier, Bernard recognized that the motives of an organization and its members logically differ, and embers cooperated not because their personal motives were the same as an organization’s, but because they felt that personal satisfaction would result from contributing to an organization’s success in achieving its goals. Bernard considered communication, the third required element Of a formal organization, to be the process by which common purpose and willingness to cooperate become dynamic.
He felt that all interpersonal activity was based on communication. He stated that (1) “channels of communication should be definitely known”; (2) “objective authority requires a definite formal channel f communication to every member of an organization,” that is, everyone must report to or be subordinate to someone; and (3) “line[s] of communication must be as direct or short as possible” to speed dissemination and reduce distortions caused by transmission through multiple channels.
Having identified elements essential to formal organizations, Bernard sought to do the same for informal organizations. By informal organization, he meant “the aggregate of the personal contacts and interactions and the associated groupings of people” that were not a part of nor governed by a formal organization. Without structure, and often without unconscious recognition of a joint purpose, informal groupings arose from job- related contacts and, in turn, established shared attitudes, customs, and norms.
Bernard noted that informal organizations often create conditions leading to formal organizations and vice versa. He identified three necessary functions served by informal organizations: (1) they are a means of communication, (2) they further cohesiveness among an Organization’s members, and (3) they protect informal group members’ personal integrity. The Acceptance Theory of Authority One of Barnyard’s most unusual ideas related to his theory of authority.
He fined authority as “the character of a communication (order) in a formal organization by virtue of which it is accepted by a contributor to or ‘member’ of the organization as governing the action he contributes. “46 According to this definition, authority had two aspects: (1) “the subjective, personal accepting of a communication as being authoritative,” and (2) “the character in [a] communication by virtue of which it is accepted. According to Bernard, the source of authority did not reside in persons of authority, or those who gave the orders, but in the acceptance or noncompliance of the authority by subordinates. In essence, Bernard held that the real “source of authority lies in the members of an organization, that they confer authority upon their superiors by deigning to accept and act upon commands, that they may, if they wish, decide to accept orders seriatim [i. E. One after another], and that they may withdraw conferred authority at any time by refusing to obey the commands of their superiors. Barnyard’s thinking in this regard was antithetical to all previous concepts of authority, which held that authority resides in “persons of authority’ or “those who issue orders. ” Whereas Foulest argued for diversification authority and obeying the law of the situation, Bernard held that authority originated at the bottom of an organization and flowed upward. In this sense, formal authority becomes real only when it is accepted by those who are subject to it.
For Bernard, individuals needed to assent to authority and WOUld accept a communication as authoritative if four conditions were 6 simultaneously met: (1) they understand the communication; (2) they believe the communication is consistent with an organization’s purpose; (3) they believe the communication is compatible with their personal interests; and (4) hey are mentally and physically able to comply with the communication. To explain how an organization could function according to his notion of authority, Bernard used the phrase “zone of indifference” to describe that set of communications that an individual would rarely challenge.
This zone of indifference might be narrow or wide, depending on the degree to which inducements outweighed the burdens and sacrifices of complying with a communication. If an employee, for instance, felt that a communication ran counter to a personal moral code, the benefit of accepting the communication would be weighed against the discomfort created by acting morally and whether or not the accompanying organization sanctions were sufficiently strong enough to induce compliance. Some communications are accepted without deliberation, but others may require considerable thought.
Such discretion would pertain to what Bernard identified as the first or us objective aspect Of authority. The second, or objective, aspect of authority that Bernard identified, was more closely akin to traditional conceptions of authority. It rested on the presumption that communications were authoritative and had a “potentiality of assent” when they came from individuals in subordinate positions. In one case, a communication from a higher-up might be accepted because it came from a “person of authority’; this was formal authority, or the authority of position.
In another instance, a communication might be accepted because a subordinate had respect for and confidence in a superiors personal ability, Irrespective of the superiors rank or position; Bernard called this the “authority of leadership. ” When authority of leadership was combined with authority of position, the zone of indifference became exceedingly broad. Nevertheless, Bernard stressed, “the determination of authority remains with the individual. In a free society, individuals always have discretion in defining what is and is not acceptable communication.