THE ART OF MANAGING MEN
   By Dipankar Banerjee

The transformation of our society since independence has been breath taking. We have progressed from a basically Agrarian society to a moderately, Industrial society with a comparative higher level of education and standard of living, particularly in the urban and semi urban areas and some of the vast rural areas, than what was ever thought to be possible. In addition our scientific and technical advancement has also become commendable.

However, this progress has not been without its "other side". At times when we should be rejoicing our success, we find ourselves swallowed in conflicts of various types including conflict between the management and workers.

These problems that we face cannot be solved by scientific and technical skills alone; they will require social skills. Many of our critical problems are not in the world of " things", but in the world of "people". Men's greatest failure has been his inability to secure co-operation and understanding with others. Shortly after World War II, Elton Mayo recognised this problem. He reflected, "The consequences for society of the imbalance between the development of technical and all social skills have been disastrous".

However, in order to deal with this subject, in this brief paper, I would like to confine myself in dealing with the behavioural and managing process within an organisational set up so that more meaning can be derived out of this. Managers have existed for throughout the civilization process, for the purpose of accomplishing pre-determined goals. Some of the earliest recovered documents written by the Sumarian Temple priests about 5000 BC offered tangible evidences of managerial practices. Through out history, managers have played a vital role in every aspect of society. Nevertheless, practising managers were not initially recognised in academic circles. For example in the works of Adamsmith, a founding father of Economics, only Land, Labour and Capital were viewed as specific source of production. It was not till J B Say added entrepreneurial concept as a ingredients of production. Say's requirements for the entrepreneurial role sound like a job description for a modern executives i.e. Modern managers of men. He felt that the necessary qualities were: - Judgement, perseverance and the knowledge of the world as well as business. He is called upon to estimate, with tolerable accuracy, importance of the specific products, probable amount of demand and the meaning of these productions. At one time he needs, a great number of hands in the world i.e. he needs the skill of superintendence and administration. Coming down to today, we shall define management as working with and through individuals and groups to accomplish organisational goals.While looking at the 90's, we have to recognise that we are experiencing various types of explosion, i.e. :

• Communication explosion
• Technical explosion
• Political explosion
• Knowledge explosion
• Expectation explosion

Therefore, while looking at the people whose job involves around, managing people, it must be clearly understood that it does not apply only to business or industrial organisations. Management as defined is applicable to all organisations whether it is business, educational institutions, hospitals, political organisations or even families. to be successful, we require their managerial person to have interpersonal skills. Therefore, the achievement of organisational objectives through leadership is management. Thus every one is a manager in at least certain portion of his life.

Therefore, what we are proposing is that managing men is a comparatively simplistic process of trying to identify what are the needs of the people, what are the kind of source of dissatisfaction and satisfaction and how we create a motivating environment where people can engage with tasks and derive satisfaction. In India till recently, the emphasis of management was to pay the workers less, keep them unsecured, while on the other side, the workers were making desperate effort to make them secured and get more financial benefits. This was the basis of wastage of time, both of the management and of workers and the major source of union verses employer’s conflicts. Hardly there was any opportunity for the workers to learn the job, in a better manner, improve upon skills and do it more productively.

The concentration remained on the " battle field" i.e., demand for money and security - which the union was demanding and the employers were trying to deny and the " virgin ground" of productivity increases i.e., self-actualisation was ignored both by the workers and the employers. They had hardly any time and opportunity to think about it.

A time came, when the union verses management conflicts were settled, but at that time, the productivity of the company was disturbed to such an extent that it became difficult for the organisation to survive even with high compromise by both the sides. Lock out or closures of operation were generally due to such incedences. That is why the modern trend is to lay primary focus on training and development i.e. to concentrate on the basic instinct of self actualisation of the workers, ignoring the other factors such as not allowing the financial benefits to the workers, making them unsecured or terminating their services etc. which are practically peripheral problem, whereas the central issue is high productivity as a result of better skilled and motivated working. In fact, the modern management starts making desperate efforts for self actualisation of the workers at the initial stages, much before any "storms" are foreseen.

We also find that Herz Berg found that clue to motivation were, that good feeling keyed to the performance better than money, security, working conditions and relationship with the superiors. These conditions were termed by Herzberg as Hygiene factors and are important to build morale but powerless for motivation. Traditional bread and butter motivators and sophisticated human relations did not motivate. They bring tolerable condition - satisfied but unexcited level of motivation.

Freedom to exercise one's own initiative, ingenuity handling one's own problems, control of work rather than tangible reward of work have been found to motivate the people.

Hygiene Factors are more required for those workers whose jobs are of repetitive nature but for the knowledge workers promotion, job satisfaction, challenging work, increased responsibilities and affiliation are the motivators. In fact, the man who finds his job challenging, exciting, satisfying will probably tolerate even a difficult superior.

Factors, such as, company policy and administration, money or income, security of service, status and working conditions satisfy the workers and if this satisfaction is found lacking, any efforts to motivate them with a challenging job or other measures are not likely to be effective. Therefore it is recommended strongly that these factors should first be fulfilled moderately before any efforts are made to motivate the workers.

We cannot motivate a worker keeping him dissatisfied and therefore, the first consideration of any manager or entrepreneur should be to remove the "dissatisfiers". There are some workers who are nagging by nature or may be born dissatisfied . These are difficult cases to deal with because basically, the profile of the men was not taken care of, at the time of selection.

Therefore, looking at the profile of human being in general in totality, we find that the participative approach hinges around possible features to human being and his attitude towards work. The average human being does not inherently dislike work. Depending upon controllable conditions, work may be a source of satisfaction (which will be voluntarily performed) or a source of punishment (which will be avoided, if possible). Normally, the average man voluntarily wants to perform.

External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about effort towards organisational objectives. Man will exercise self-direction and self control in the service of objectives to which he is committed.