This Peter Drucker’s article entitled
Discipline of innovation obviously focuses on innovation. Drucker defines
innovation as the heart of an entrepreneurial activity, that is, innovation is
“he means by which the entrepreneur creates new wealth-producing resources or
endows existing resources with enhanced potential for creating wealth” (Drucker,
2002). He also enumerates sources of innovation which serves as opportunity
companies: unexpected occurrences; incongruities; process needs; industry and
market changes; demographic changes’; changes in perception; and new knowledge.
These sources of opportunities that resulted from innovations may exist either
within a company or outside the company. In the article, Drucker (2002) stated
that the foundation of a business or entrepreneurship as a practice is the
practice of systematic innovation.
Innovation, based on the article is one factor
that influences strategic planning, organizational behavior and management.
Drucker (2002) emphasized that, although it resulted from opportunities,
innovation may pose risks, difficulty and complexity and is needed to be managed
well. Once innovation opens opportunity for a company, there should be strategic
planning, giving focus on how such innovation can be most effectively implement.
Drucker mentioned that innovation is a means of
creating or enhancing existing resources to create wealth. He did not elaborate
what type of resources he was talking about but with his examples, he was
talking about product innovation. He did not mentioned human resources: human
resources that greatly contribute to the Research and Development of a company
that leads to new product or service development which can create new market or
provides the needs of the emerging market. It is not necessary that innovation
is a company’s new own idea. Innovation also means trying out different ideas,
or to change or improve a product, a situation or an organization. A company may
innovate by adopting other company’s strategy that might work better for them.
Innovation may also imply innovation in the organizational
structure of a company, which Drucker did not emphasize in his article. That is,
the existing organizational structure may be further improve or be innovated
which is also called organizational innovation. Organizational innovation is
basically a new ways of organizing work in different areas such as in dealing
with customers, knowledge management, value chain management, manufacturing, and
others which involves all employees in order to make an organization a
collective resource for innovation to improve competitiveness of the business (Kotelnikov,
2006).
Innovation usually creates changes in the
company. For example, a publishing company wants to innovate to target the
market of computer users thus they planned for electronic publishing of books.
This creates changes in a company: a more capable CIO might be needed; employees
must be well-versed with the use of computers which requires employee
empowerment; and this innovation might need another department within the
company whose focus will be on the e-books. This will also affect the existing
company culture, from being traditional publisher to technology and
knowledge-based publisher. All these changes requires careful strategic planning
to address the changes the company is undergoing and to ensure that innovation
brought positive changes rather than negative changes.
Drucker’s article emphasized that innovation is a
practice but he did not mentioned that this practice encompasses many other
practices. Generally, innovation covers many aspects of a company that once put
into practice, many changes will occur from the organizational structure to the
organizational culture, this innovation should be practice in such a way that it
is used as a defense of a company against its competitors.
Frederick Herzberg, One More
Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?
Herzberg’s article is basically about
managing people through motivation. The article discussed about the different
ways of motivating employees which includes the KITA or the ‘kick in the pants’
strategy and the 9 basic motivations to employees. The author put emphasis on
the importance of motivation as an influencing factor on the organizational
behavior.
Based on the article, the t motivations used by
most companies are not that efficient. These motivations includes reducing time
spent at work; increasing salary; benefits; human relations training;
sensitivity training; communications; two-way communications; job participation;
and employee counseling. A lot of management and organizational behavior
articles discussed these motivations as effective and encouraging to employees
to perform better at work. But Herzberg suggests that all these motivations are
not enough in order to get employees satisfaction. He called these motivations
as myths. However, some may argue that the above mentioned motivations are not
myths. There are also studies that show that one or combinations of these
motivations are effective in various situations depending on the attitude of the
workers. There are workers that are motivated by benefits. For example, a worker
that may retire 5 years from now may be motivated to work harder so that his
benefits will be higher at the time of his retirement. Another example is that
an employee can be motivated by reducing time spent at work: a working mother
will like a work that can give him more time for her family so she will stick
with this work.
He also used a study on the factors affecting job
satisfaction and dissatisfaction and found out that the motivator factors that
are intrinsic to the job provide satisfaction to employees while the what
Herzberg called hygiene that are intrinsic to the job are the those that give
employee dissatisfaction. This motivator factors and hygiene can be considered
as the two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Precht,
2006). Intrinsic motivation are those that comes from within an employee such as
achievement, recognition for achievement, the work itself, responsibility and
growth (Herzberg, 2002) while the extrinsic motivations are those that are from
outside oneself (Precht, 2006) such as company policy and administration,
supervision, interpersonal relationship, work conditions, salary, rewards,
security and others. In his study, it was found out that the extrinsic
motivators actually do not play as motivators but instead provide
dissatisfaction.
This study then suggests that to really motivate
employees, job should be organized in a manner that will result to favorable
attitudes of employee, will lead to efficient operations, and will improve the
organizational climate. Herzberg called this as motivation-hygiene theory which
suggests that job enrichment is the key to improving both the intrinsic and
extrinsic motivations. Enriched job, according to Mohr & Zoghi (2006), job
enrichment meet the psychological and social needs and increases the motivating
potential of work, which simultaneously increases both worker satisfaction and
effort. Mohr & Zoghi (2006) also called motivation-hygiene theory as “motivation
hypothesis”.
The basic concept of motivation-hygiene theory is
motivation through the work itself; that is to improve the intrinsic motivations
because these are those that can provide satisfaction to employees by improving
the extrinsic motivation. For example, for an engineer, growth and advancement
provide satisfaction while work environment and relationship with subordinates
give him dissatisfaction. In job enrichment, work environment can be improved by
having a good relationship with subordinates. Good relationship with
subordinates can be improved by conducting employee development which includes
seminars on improving teamwork and interpersonal skills, leadership skills and
knowledge sharing so that employees can work as a team. The engineer may
increase accountabilities of his subordinates so that his subordinates will be
motivated by responsibility and recognition.
In the motivation-hygiene theory, Herzberg has
found the right and effective way of improving organizational behavior. However,
there are some critics that disagree on job enrichment. These critics argue that
workers may dislike enrichment because it is accompanied by “intensification of
work” (Kelly 1982; Pollert 1991 on Mohr & Zoghi, 2006). That is, some workers
may prefer narrowly defined jobs wherein performance standards are defined and
workers are ensured not to be asked to do tasks outside of the job’s definition
(Mohr & Zoghi, 2006).
This argument may be further investigated by
human resource management of a company. That is, it is up to them to decide on
how they should motivate their employees. Motivation is an important factor that
influences the behavior of workers in an organization. The more the employees
are motivated the better for a company because increased workforce motivation
contributes to increased productivity an innovation, creative problem solving,
reduced turnover and decreased absenteeism which are all very important to
business success (Precht, 2006).
As a cliché said, “people are the best asset of a company”.
This could mean that a company’s way of motivating its employees are also one of
its strategies thus employee motivation is one of the considerations in
strategic planning. A well-managed and motivated workforce results to a
well-managed organization and business.
Harry Levinson, Management by
Whose Objectives?
In this article, Levinson critically assessed and
investigates on the shortcomings of management by objectives (MBO) process. MBO
was originally proposed by Peter Drucker in 1954 but in the 1990s, he himself
stated that MBO is just another management tool but it is not the great cure for
management inefficiency (Kotelnikov, 2006). MBO is guided by the principle that
everybody within the organization should have a clear understanding of the aims,
goals and objectives of the organization and must be aware of their
responsibilities in achieving these aims (Kotelnikov, 2006). It focuses on the
results and not on the activity.
In Levinson’s article, he did not criticize the
MBO itself but the process involved with it. He identified the problems
associated with the MBO process. First, he said an employee’s job description is
irreducible to few sentences because there are times that job becomes more
complex so the objectives set for this employee can not be merged to only few
objectives. Second, as job becomes more complex, employees tend to perform job
beyond what are indicated in his job description. The problem is that employee
evaluation is based on the areas defined so employee evaluation is not very
reliable.
Levinson also included failure to maximum integration of
units that would lead to greater teamwork within the organization; and failure
to incorporate the entire situation that the employee and superior are operating
in. He also mentioned that qualitative measures are missing in the process such
as measures on how well employees work with their co-employees and the quality
of employees’ performance.
The first two problems laid by Levinson is agreeable but the
problem that he mentioned that MBO process failed to integrate units and promote
teamwork within an organization can be questionable if that is really a problem
with MBO. Contrary to failure to promote teamwork, MBO actually create teamwork
since the managers shared the objectives to his subordinates rather than just by
giving their job description without telling them why should they perform such
tasks. Setting objectives promotes a team looking for one direction and aiming
at the same objectives.
In 1995, Drucker formulated the three basic parts of MBO
Strategy. The firsts of which is that “all individuals within an organization
are assigned a special set of objectives that they try to reach during a normal
operating period; these objectives are mutually set upon and agreed upon by
individuals and their managers”. If these objectives are mutually set and agreed
upon, then teamwork does exist in an MBO process. But since created this article
in 1970, the three basic parts of MBO Strategy was not yet formulated.
Levinson stated that MBO process failed to
measure quality performance while according to Kotelnikov (2006), a review of
the organization’s objectives enables leaders to measure the performance of the
managers as well as employees in the key result areas such as marketing,
innovation, human organization, financial resources, physical resources,
productivity, social responsibilities and profit requirements.
This can be likened to benchmarking or setting standards:
objectives are the standards to be met and the performance of each employee will
be measured in relation to the standards. For example, the set objective of the
R & D department of a company is to develop 2 products this year to improve
their performance last year when they developed only one product. This means
that if the department is able to develop 2 products this year, the department’s
performance is good but if it is able to develop more than two products, the
department’s performance is excellent.
Levinson also commented that personal goals of the employee
should be incorporated into MBO process, considering questions such as “what are
the managers’ personal objectives?’ and “what do they need and want to get out
of their work?” (Levinson, 2003). He suggests that organization’s objectives
should also be aligned with the employees’ personal goals because employees are
more motivated when while working at the company’s goals, he is at the same time
also working towards his personal goals. This problem can be addressed by
participative decision making when setting objectives.
In the article, Levinson proposed steps and considerations to
improve the MBO process. He suggested motivational assessment, group actions,
appraisal of appraisers, and employee self-evaluation and introspection as
additional steps in the MBO process. Levinson was very focused on employee
motivation and satisfaction. He was not against MBO but he just wanted employee
motivation to be incorporated in the MBO process.
The article implies that objective setting also an
influencing factor in organizational behavior. That is, a company’s objectives
have impact on the organizational behavior at the same time that organizational
behavior impacts the company’s achievement of its objectives: dissatisfied
employees can be hindrance to company’s achieving of goals since employees are
the actuators of such goals. Thus in setting objectives, a company must consider
and incorporate motivation on its objectives such as mutual prosperity or mutual
development.
Bennis, Warren & Thomas, Robert: Crucibles of Leadership
The article entitled Crucibles of
Leadership discusses about the lives of different leaders that have been
developed as strong and effective leaders by the hardships or what is called in
the articles crucibles that they experienced. Bennis and Thomas interviewed and
reviewed the lives of extraordinary leaders from different industries and
institutions that had experienced trials and hardships before they have acquired
or developed the skills of a true leader.
In the article, different kinds of crucibles that
were experienced by different leaders are presented. There was as story of a
company executive that has found a practice called participative management when
he noticed rebellion among his workers. There was also a story of a woman
engineer that has learned how to cope up and deal with company issues such a
cultural and gender differences. There was also a leader who had emerged as a
strong leader out of religious issue in a company; a leader that has become more
professional, more educated and more refined because of a strict and almost
perfectionist mentor; and a leader that emerged out of racial discrimination and
criticism.
Included also in the article is a story of a
leader named Sidney Rittenberg who chose to experience more hardships and trials
in order to let his hidden capabilities and skills surfaced. In the prison, he
learned how to develop relationship that had made him adapt to his confinement
and how to have a different outlook in life; learning that happiness is not a
function of circumstance but a function of outlook in life (Bennis & Thomas,
2002 p. 8).
Basically, the article emphasized that great
leaders emerged in times of hardship and ordeal. That is, a good leader has the
ability to find meaning in negative events and learn from even the most
difficult circumstances (Bennis & Thomas, 2002 p. 5). True leadership can be
seen and tested in times of difficulties. This implies that a good leader is not
pessimistic rather optimistic who has a good outlook in life. A good leader has
the ability to turn bad experience into a learning experience with an
expectation that something good will come out of bad ones.
According to Bennis and Thomas (p. 10-11), there
are four essential characteristics that great leaders possess. The first
characteristic is the ability to engage other is shared meaning. This is true
with participative management that encourages employees to take part and become
involved in the company. A good leader has the ability to motivate his
employees, making them an effective part of a company.
The second characteristic is a distinctive and
compelling voice. A good leader has an authoritative but convincing and
motivating voice that whatever he said will be respected and followed. Third is
having a sense of integrity including a strong set of values. Leaders should be
well-respected not because of his position but because of his personality and
values. Good leaders are honest and reliable, just and upright.
The fourth characteristic of a good leader is
adaptive capacity or the ability to transcend adversity and to emerge stronger
than before (Bennis & Thomas, 2002 p.11). This is the ability of leader to be
still and strong even in difficult circumstances. Leadership involves giving
strength to employees and assuring them that everything will be fine. Adaptive
capacity is further categorized into two qualities: ability to grasp context and
hardiness. The ability to grasp context is also the ability to weigh factors and
to decide which is the most important, which is fair and which is not, to put
people and situations in perspective. This ability helps a leader to become
decisive. Hardiness can be defined as being hopeful, tough, courageous, and full
of perseverance even if the situation is difficult and demanding. All these
attributes make up a good leader, a tried and tested leader that can turn
ordeals into opportunities and can make a company survive even in the most
challenging environment.
References:
Bennis, W &
Thomas, R (2002) Crucibles of Leadership,
Harvard Business Review, September
Drucker, P.
(1995) Managing in Time of Great Change on Kotelnikov, V.
Management by Objectives accessed online on June 30, 2006
<
http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/mgmt_mbo_main.html>
Drucker, P.
(2002) Discipline of innovation, Harvard Business Review.
Volume 80, No,8 August
Herzberg, F.
(2003) One more time: How do you motivate employees?
Harvard Business Review (January): 87-96.
Kotelnikov,
V., Organizational Innovation: How to Manage the Complex Process
of Organizational Change. Accessed Online on June 29, 2006
<http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/change_organizational.html>
Levinson, H.
(2003). Management by whose objectives?
Harvard Business Review (January): 107-116
Mohr, R. &
Zoghi, C. (2006) Is Job Enrichment Really Enriching?
BLS Working Papers Working Paper 389
Precht, A.
Motivating Employees accessed at ThinkAvenue online
Date: June 30, 2006
<http://www.thinkavenue.com/articles/hr/article14.htm>
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