The Psychology of Effective Management

Strategies for Relationship Building

Fred Voskoboynikov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138655577
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315511276
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Psychology of Effective Management combines basic psychological principles with practical recommendations for building positive and productive manager-employee relations. Each recommendation is based on real-life situations taken from respected scholars in the field, as well as the author's own professional experiences. With particular attention to the human element of management, the practical advice presented in this book is aimed at helping managers create a positive psychological environment in the workplace and lead their employees into a productive and satisfying professional life. The content is presented in an easy-to-follow format so that any manager can put his or her knowledge immediately into practice. By striking a compelling balance between the science and practice of management, this will be an indispensable resource for managers, administrators, and business owners at all levels as well as students of business and management.

1

The Significance of Human Factors

Humans are surrounded by different kinds of environments. Air temperature, noise, and lighting are elements of physical environment. Machines, mechanisms, and the like make for a technical environment. People surrounding humans at work constitutes a social environment. Humans, as biological creatures, have a high degree of adaptability to the surrounding environment and are able to function under a fairly wide range of different conditions. People can work quite productively for a relatively long period of time in conditions of low and high temperatures, in conditions of excessive noise, under poor lighting, and so on. Our body constantly reacts to the changing temperature of the environment and by thermoregulatory processes keeps a comfortable body temperature. Our hearing adapts to the level of sounds and noises. Our eyes adapt to objects located at different distances in the field of vision by the accommodation of the lens. Humans can work productively in an uncomfortable body position, in conditions of time limits and danger, in conditions of subordinating their actions to the regimens of the machines and mechanisms that they operate. The same applies to the social environment. If the social environment evokes negative emotions, people can still perform productively by suppressing negative emotions. However, the degree of adaptation to the surrounding environment in which humans can function without immobilizing the body systems has its limitations. Continuous work in such conditions sooner or later will have a negative impact on human health. Thus the question is not whether people can adapt to the stressful environment and continue to perform but to what level this adaptation is possible without harming their physical and mental being. In other words, what price do people pay, physiologically and psychologically, for such adaptation? In this regard, creating an optimal working environment may not only increase productivity but will have a positive effect on people’s health and longevity.

From the History of Motivation in Industry

Pioneers of the Employee Motivation Movement

The early figures who planted the seeds for the employee motivation movement were British reformer Robert Owen and Scottish doctor Andrew Ure.¹ Robert Owen was one of the first to recognize the importance of human resources and the human needs of employees. Owen is considered a man ahead of his time. Until his era, factory workers were generally viewed much as appendages to machines and equipment. Being a factory owner himself, he improved working conditions for his workers. During his lifetime, he endeavored to improve the health, education, well-being, and rights of the working class. Many of his views are relevant today in their translation to our modern times. Andrew Ure also was a proponent of a humanistic approach to employees’ needs and providing workers with good working conditions. He introduced the human factors as an additional aspect of manufacturing, along with the mechanical and commercial ones. Unfortunately, the attempts of these two pioneers to improve working conditions were not picked up and developed by others. Workers at plants and factories worked long hours under intolerable conditions. Much of manufacturing work was piecework; that is, workers were paid per unit produced. The only method used to motivate workers for better performance was to offer more money.

The Scientific Management Theory

Under the impact of the Industrial Revolution of 1820–1870 and the pressure of growing competition, plants and factories’ owners were looking for ways to increase productivity of labor. In the early 1900s came Frederick W. Taylor, who is considered the earliest advocate of scientific management and who played the dominant role in it in his time. In 1881, he proposed the Scientific Management Theory as a way of making the conduct of work-related activities more efficient. He described his method in The Principles of Scientific Management (1911). The major postulate of the theory was an assumption that individual workers would be willing to work hard for monetary rewards. Taylor introduced wage incentives schemes so that workers could get paid more for increased production. Taylor insisted that workers will be satisfied by this motivational method and that the cost per unit will be reduced.

Workers adapted to the scientific management method positively, and, as a result, productivity was significantly increased. The Scientific Management Theory was taken as some kind of an industrial panacea of the time. History showed, however, that this method of scientific management worked to a certain point. With increased productivity, many owners changed the production standards. That is, the same incentives that gave workers the opportunity to have higher pay hit them hard afterward. Workers realized that “every stick has two ends.” When the productivity exceeded market demand, it led to job insecurity and to temporary layoffs. That, in turn, led to hostility between workers and employers. Hidden sabotage and damage of the equipment was workers’ response to the administration’s “tightening the screws,” that is, increasing production norms for the same pay. Thus scientific management began to encounter failures.

Despite the fact that wages are still considered the main motivating factor for increasing productivity, motivation by only economic incentives works for a certain period of time. People see more than just earnings in their work; they also work for reasons other than money. They are filled with thoughts and ideas and want to see them implemented, along with receiving monetary rewards. By the early 20th century, many voices were against Taylor’s scientific management.

The Beginning of the Psychology of Management

Many psychological researchers of that time, both in the United States and other countries, criticized Taylor’s method because it suggested treating people as machines. One of the earliest authors who instigated the psychological aspects of scientific management was Lillian Gilbreth (1914), an engineer and industrial psychologist. In 1914, she, together with her husband Frank Gilbreth, a pioneer of motion study, formed their own form of scientific management, which focused on the human element in management. In her book The Psychology of Management: The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching, and Installing Methods of Least Waste, written the same year (1914), Lillian Gilbreth incorporated concepts of human relations and worker individuality into management principles. It was a major early work in the field of industrial psychology and scientific management. In the book, she expressed the view that scientific management should be built on the principle of recognition of the individual, not only as an economic unit but as a personality, stressing the importance of including the human element in management. For the first time in history, the basic elements of management theory were brought together, including the knowledge of individual behavior, the theory of groups, the theory of communication, and a rational basis for decision making.

The Birth of the Human Relations Movement

Taylor’s scientific management was soon replaced by the Human Relations Movement, proposed by Harvard sociologist Elton Mayo and his colleagues. In the 1920s, Mayo was invited to study jobs at a Philadelphia textile mill after the hired experts unsuccessfully tried to implement Taylor’s scientific management, which only increased the turnover. Mayo made a simple observation that the problem was the result of the monotony of the work. He suggested allowing the workers to take periodical breaks during the working shifts among his other suggestions. The sharp decrease of turnover was a pleasant surprise for the management. In 1928, Mayo conducted a series of experiments at Western Electric. A group of six women workers were selected based on their preference to work together and placed to work in a separate room. Such an environment allowed the experimenter to change the conditions of the experiment whenever needed. The women participated in decisions regarding the changes in the experiments’ conditions. They were allowed to take additional breaks during the shift; they had shorter working hours, free lunches, and some other incentives. In other words, they did not feel like “slaves rowing in a galley” but rather felt elevated to some elite status. As a result, their productivity jumped tremendously. The most interesting thing happened after all favorable conditions were removed. In spite of such a drastic and intentional deterioration of physical and material conditions, their productivity remained quite high. Mayo established that these six women unconsciously formed some tight psychological connections, helped one another, and became friends, that is, they created informal relations within the formal group. This experiment was the beginning phase in studying human relations.

If Taylor saw the worker as a separate individual whose only goal was to get better pay, Mayo suggested a human relations approach in management. His experiments showed that the worker is not a simple tool but a complex personality interacting in a group situation that was hard to deal with and thoroughly misunderstood. The Mayo experiments at Western Electric have gone down in history as classical in the study of motivation in industry. Described in terms of modern psychological language, Mayo’s experiments demonstrated the importance of taking the human element into account in the process of management. It’s worth noting, however, that despite the criticism that Taylor’s scientific management theory has undergone, he was the first one to call attention to the search for production efficiency.

Humans Under the Magnifying Glass of Sciences

The Impact of Technological Progress on Humans

The incredible technological progress of the last century, especially since World War II, has changed the nature of human activity dramatically. All the significant achievements of modern civilization have transformed how humans collaborate with humans. Technical links have wedged between man and the object of labor. That, in turn, gradually and steadily put more weight on mental processes such as perception, concentration of attention, memorization, thinking, decision making, and the like, while the proportion of heavy physical efforts decreased. Technological progress has brought new, previously unknown occupational hazards: informational stress, intellectual strain, sensory and motor monotony, allergenic habitats, lack of exercise, and more.

The state of the organism changes with activity, which is characterized by the cost of internal resources to a certain degree. If the cost is too high, it becomes a real threat to human health. The reason for the increasing cost of internal resources lies in the inadequacy of modern technology to accommodate the physiological and psychological capabilities of humans, as well as the rapid variability of forms of collective cooperation and social communication. The same applies to the micro social environment. If the social environment projects a positive influence, the work process flows with the background of positive emotions and is more productive. The negative social environment evokes an undesirable emotional state, which negatively influences both productivity and human health.

In theoretical medicine, the health of a population is considered an indicator of the nation’s well-being, as a factor that has a direct impact on the productivity and overall economic performance of the society. This integrated approach is reflected in the definition of health from the World Health Organization (WHO) as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being” and not merely the absence of diseases. That is, it should be looked at not only from the medical perspective but from the psychological perspective as well because it involves the reaction of the individual to the impact of adverse factors. Whenever there is an excessive reaction of the organism to stressors, the neurotic syndromes of pathological, emotional, or psychosomatic problems take place. These disorders adversely influence not only individuals but also their families. People’s psychological health is one of the basic criteria for the social stability of every individual and society as a whole.

Fields of Science Studying Human Activity

The accomplishments of the applied fields of science studying human activity—such as work physiology and work psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, social psychology, engineering psychology, and ergonomics—are a powerful force in creating better quality of people’s life. Physiological and psychological studies are conducted for the purpose of determining the influence of various environmental factors (light, noise, temperature, etc.), for the design features of machinery and equipment, for ascertaining the effects of monotony, working posture, and many other conditions on such human characteristics as perception, attention, thinking, reaction speed, precision movements, and so on. The purpose of these studies is to create an optimal working environment, to improve the quality of work, to increase safety, to reduce and eliminate emergency situations, and so on. All of that positively influences workers’ mental and physical state and their satisfaction with the work process. The study of the physiological and psychological capabilities of human activity and integrating this knowledge into practice help create an optimum environment for people in the workplace with the purpose of increasing productivity and preserving human health.

Before briefly considering these relatively new (in the history of humankind) fields of study of human activity, it should be noted that all of them are closely intertwined, and some of the names are often used interchangeably. For example, industrial psychology is sometimes used to describe work psychology, ergonomics as human factors, and so on. Although the work in the respective fields somewhat differs, there are some similarities between them. But the most important thing is that these fields of science share same objectives, which are to optimize the effectiveness and efficiency of human activity and to improve the general quality of people’s life.

Work Physiology and Work Psychology

Humans and Tools

Over the centuries, humans have used primitive tools for their labor activity, which were gradually changed and improved. However, for a very long time, practically until the beginning of the 20th century, human functions in relation to the use of tools and primitive machinery remained fundamentally the same. Namely, people mostly used their muscular force in manipulating tools. The harmonization of humans with tools was mainly based on consideration of anatomical (anthropometric) and physiological features of humans in designing tools. On the scientific level, the influence of the physical working environment on human performance was studied in the framework of work physiology. Work physiology studies physiological changes in the human organism during working activity and develops a physiological rationale of the work processes that contributes to the long-term workability at the optimal level. For example, by creating and maintaining optimum conditions of the physical environment, such as temperature, lighting, humidity, and the like, it’s possible to positively affect people’s performance and satisfaction with the work process.

Humans and Technology

Due to the incredible technological progress of the 19th and 20th centuries, new types of work activity emerged. Operating trains, cars, planes, and other modern machinery and technical devices required entirely new qualities from people, basically psychological, such as concentration of attention, memorization, thinking, decision making, reaction speed, and the like. To perform these kinds of activity, humans had to subordinate their actions to the working regimens of the machinery and modern technology that they control and operate. The emergence of new types of working activity led to the necessity of studying human physiological and psychological capabilities in the process of interaction with new technology. That has led to the development of a new scientific discipline—work psychology. Work psychology is a branch of psychology that studies the characteristics of different kinds of work in their dependence on the sociohistorical and specific production conditions, on training methods, and on the psychological qualities of people.

The purpose of physiological and psychological studies is to determine the impact of various factors of the production environment (lighting, noise, air temperature effects, etc.)—the design features of machinery and equipment, working posture, monotony factors, and others—on such human characteristics as perception, attention, thinking, reaction speed, precise movements, and so forth. These factors affect workers’ state, their mood, and their satisfaction with the work process, which in turn have an effect on performance and human health. Creatin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Prologue
• 1 The Significance of Human Factors
• 2 What We Have in Common and What Makes Us Different
• 3 Personality Features and Performance
• 4 What’s Going on in Groups?
• 5 Management Is Like Conducting an Orchestra
• 6 Additional Considerations
• 7 Your Image Is in Your Hands
• 8 Learn to Control Yourself: 51 Illustrated Psychological Recommendations for Optimizing Manager–Employee Relations
• Index