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current expenditure against appropriate pre-determined standards.If one turns to yet another branch of technical industry,to the chemist,management appears primarily as a matter of formula and mixtures,the flow of semi-solids,liquids or gases though a series of plant in which given chemical changes are carried out,and in which the most important requirements are the control of temperatures and pressures,the control of ingredients and of the quality of the emerging mixtures;the chemical manager`s processes are running right if the readings are in accordance with the best standards,and if the samples at various stages of process come up to the formula set.

To pick out the technical bias of managers in a technical field is not to imply criticism of such executive themselves.They have been trained and developed in a given atmosphere:their whole background has been concentrated on aspect of their technology,and,in the absence of any guide as to what management is or means,one cannot rightly blame them if their rise into the higher executive levels finds them unable to depart from the customary technological or professional standards to which they have for so long been subject.

Within the present generation a great deal of attention has been given to the "human factor"- an interest arising out of the wartime need to secure a higher level of labor utilization,emanating primarily from the shortage of man-power.Experience gained in these abnormal conditions taught industrial managers that the productivity of people at work is enhanced by improvements in the physical and social environment of their work and by the promotion of a sense of participation in its achievement - such participation being not only effective performance of the allotted job,but in addition a sense that their contribution is of importance to major objectives and to the well-being of the organization.

Developments in this more human aspect of management have in their turn given rise to yet another specialist bias,this time in the direction of the human being.They have led many persons,erroneously,to the view that the specialist personnel aspect of management should dominate all others,and a new professional field of "personnel management" has emerged to parallel the more factual approach of the engineer and the accountant.

The detached observer can see the true position,that each of these specialist aspects is but a part of management,that all have a contribution to make to the total.The true character of management must be seen as a process or skill compounded of several essential elements,many of which are steeped in the traditional technologies,and each of which has its own contribution to make to the effective working of that process as a whole.

Learn more about this author, Filipe Carrio.
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