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This paper is concerned with some of the often neglected behavioral problems associated with the practice of management by objectives. These include problems relating to managerial style, adapting to change, interpersonal skills, setting objectives, measurement, and management by objectives quality control. The paper concludes with some criticisms of the current state of management by objectives research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project management in functional organizations provides a fertile field for much-needed reexamination of the presumption of dysfunctional conflict when managers and employed professionals interact in organizations. Systematic analysis must indentify the foundations of human conflict and determine the extent to which the implications of such conflict for organizational behavior are functional or dysfunctional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author, applying a business simulation technique finds that attitudes of participants and performance results are directly related to the frequency of feedback on performance. These findings are corroborated by a field study of 134 managers in 59 companies. In both instances participants who received fairly frequent reports tended to have better attitudes, better performance and higher levels of aspiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The titles and authors of 33 well-known and widely cited articles and books related to behavioral scientists' contributions to business management were sent to 200 top executives. They were asked to indicate which they had heard of, actually read, and used in their management jobs. Results show a marked discontinuity between contributions regarded most highly by industrial psychologists and those viewed as significant and useful by the executives replying to the survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate departments of organization are growing in number and importance in American business. These departments can be involved in significant organization changes and perform useful organization analyses for their firms. Organization theory and organizational behavior are of more than theoretical interest to these men. The article reviews the characteristics of these men, and the departmental objectives. It analyzes the departmental activities and discusses two approaches to applied organization analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on an alternative questionnaire strategy for conducting cross-cultural research on managerial attitudes. Previous studies attempted to link managerial attitudes with levels of industrialization. Support for the position was reported in the developing countries of Argentina, Chile, and India where attitudes clustered despite assumed variations in culture. The limitations of that position can be found in scholar D.S. Pugh's discussion of technology theories of organization. There are difficulties in conducting research with a single questionnaire without specifying exactly how the level of industrialization and the broader domain of culture arc expected to influence the managerial attitudes. Such a research strategy offers little in the way of explanation or prediction. Use of a second questionnaire that focuses on cultural traditions outside the field of business vastly improves the potential for explanation and avoids the paradoxes that have resulted from the single questionnaire research strategy. These studies reported that managers do not have a strong belief in the individual's innate capacity for leadership and initiative, yet they do believe in sharing information and encouraging participation and self-control by subordinates.

This article explores the possibility that a leader behaves differently to different subordinates. Furthermore, a number of authors have suggested that it is an over-simplification to regard an effective leader as having a general unitary style of behavior. Supervisory styles are examined and analyzed according to intrapersonal and interpersonal differentiations. Results of the study have indicated that: (1) high Least-Preferred Co-worker (LPC) scoring supervisors are highly discriminating in judgments about their subordinates; and (2) a supervisor's differentiation moderates the behavior and the subordinate's rating of his own performance. Moreover, the failure to support the hypothesis is confronted with methodological problems: (1) self-ratings of performance were used; and (2) the rank-order correlations provide the basic data in the analysis are based upon only five people per group.

Presents a speech by the author on industrial development and the attitude of the industrialists to the world that was delivered at the Golden Jubilee Conference of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology in London, England on November 16, 1971. Views on the National Institute of Industrial Psychology; Circumstances with which people are confronted in the world today; Factors responsible for affecting industrial development and the attitude of the industrialist to the world; Impact of the change in social structure and in the behavior of men on industrial development.

The question of how the events that lead a manager to participate in a training laboratory influence his initial set, his learning in the laboratory, and his subsequent behavior is a very interesting one, about which a number of assumptions exist. This issue has been discussed (see, for example, Schein & Bennis, 1965, Chaps. 15 & 11) and many assumptions have been advanced, but it seems not to have received much systematic attention. In this paper we will analyze and discuss data relating pre-laboratory expectations, laboratory involvement, and follow-up change efforts. The training laboratories studied were the first phase of an extensive organization development program in a large research and development organization (Zand, Steele & Zalkind, 1969). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article cites a study from the U.S. which sought to identify the personality traits of national labor union officials. The purpose of this study is to report on what the national union official thinks he has to put into his job in order to succeed. The researchers investigates national union and the psychological pressures it exercises on it leaders and administrators. This investigation provides evidence of a more systematic nature on national union officials' perceptions of particular personality traits in terms of their perceived importance for job success in national union jobs.

The purpose of this paper was to review the research literature on the relationship between "Consideration," "Initiating Structure," and organizational criteria. The results show a predominance of low to moderate correlations, but almost all of a concurrent validity nature. There is as yet almost no evidence on the predictive validity of "Consideration" and "Initiating Structure" nor on the kinds of situational moderators which might affect such validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the relationship between an organization's environment and managerial attitudes toward subordinates and workers. Canonical correlation as an analytical technique is particularly appropriate when the research interest is in relationships between sets of variables. To the extent that managerial attitudes, perceptions, and consequently, probably, behavior are related to the environment in which the organization operates, the focus on elements of managerial style as independent determinants of human performance in organizations appears to be at least partially misplaced. While it is perhaps appropriate to speak of a pattern of management which is, or is not, consistent with environmental factors, it seems that what is required in an effort to advance our understanding of organizational behavior is an explicit determination of the amount of variance accounted for by environmental determinants, situational factors, and personality variables as well. The analysis indicate that there are some significant relationships between the nature of the organization-set and external influences and managerial attitudes toward subordinates and workers.