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Presents news and announcements pertinent to the Western Speech Communication Association (WSCA). Candidate for office proposed by the Nominating Committee of the WSCA; Program highlights for the 1974 WSCA Convention; Rules for the Annual Executives Club Debut Papers Award.

This paper holds that the Du Pont Company has been one of the earliest and most important contributors to the advancement of systematic management. The development of this concept is traced through different stages of management—"Caesar," successorship, nonconformist, and adaptive management—beginning at the plant level of Repauno Chemical and Eastern Dynamite and rising ultimately to the administration of the entire Du Pont organization. The paper also examines the conditions of success of top-management group work at Du Pont. It finds that these conditions seem to be the result of a felicitous combination of a rationalist approach and a pragmatic approach, carried out by a carefully selected group of men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents commentary about a paper written by Keith V. Smith and John C. Schreiner (S&S) entitled "A Portfolio Analysis of Conglomerate Diversification," which appeared in a 1969 edition of the "Journal of Finance." In that paper S&S developed a variable for measuring the effectiveness with which conglomerate firms diversify their businesses, but noted that their approach omitted the impact of management. The author of the current paper contends that S&S's variable actually does encompass managers' forecasting abilities. Consequently, S&S's conclusions are in error.

This paper reports some research, ideas, and theory about managerial decision making. The first research projects dealt with are aggregate production and employment scheduling. From this is developed the idea that management's own (past) decisions can be incorporated into a system of improving their present decisions. Decision rules are developed, with the coefficients in the rules derived from management's past decisions (rather than from a cost or value model). Half a dozen test cases are used to illustrate and test these ideas (theory). Some rationale about decision making in organizations and criteria surfaces is supplied to help interpret the major ideas presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes information collected on more than eighty British companies and on about 800 senior managers working in them. It is in two parts. Part I starts by outlining problems involved in identifying influences on company performance. It then describes the sources of data analysed in the paper. The remainder of Part I examines the view that certain managerial and organizational attributes will tend to raise levels of performance whatever the type of company and its operating circumstances. Another approach takes the view that what makes for good performance is contingent upon the type of company and the prevailing situation. This is examined against our data in Part II of the paper. Part II concludes with an assessment of present knowledge on the managerial and organizational concomitants of company performance and the practical implications to be drawn from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to define long-range planning as the organized process of making entrepreneurial decisions. It tries to answer three questions asked by managers and management scientists when they hear the phrase "long-range planning": What long-range planning is and what it is not; why it is needed; and what is needed to do long-range planning. The paper concludes with a brief statement why long-range planning can be considered a major opportunity for, and challenge to, Management Science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management theorists and practitioners have developed various rationales for the adoption of participative management. In recent years empirical evidence has pointed to the increasing importance of the lateral dimension in the managerial role. The growing emphasis on a manager's lateral interactions provides new justification for the use of participative management. This article examines the relationship between participation and lateral relations and establishes a new rationale for the adoption of participative management. Participative management has been described variously as "a subtle means of having employees think they are a more important part of the organization" or as "group decision-making." The exact dimensions of this concept are not of major importance for this paper; but, for purposes of clarity, participative management is defined as the participation of employees in the managerial role. This includes decision-making, planning, controlling, and any of the other management functions. A possible side benefit of a more judicious use of the participative style of management is the reduction of time spent interacting horizontally in the organization. The participative approach can also get the subordinate involved in some aspects of lateral relations.

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Five themes have been developed in this paper. First, the gunslinger behavior of financial managers has not been characteristic of the profession overall. In the area in which financial excesses were supposed to have been greatest, conglomerate mergers, empirical evidence demonstrates that on the average a useful economic function was performed. Second, the finance function in its most meaningful definition is effective interaction with the operating and planning activities in the firm. The newer emphasis on the systems approach is incomplete in characterizing the finance function as "designing the metasystem." The correct emphasis of a systems approach is recognizing the interactions of the many parts of a firm to achieve overall optimization. Third, the new theory of finance provides an improved framework for understanding the role of the instruments and institutions of finance. It extends and illuminates economic theory as well. The various branches of finance are unified in the new theory. Fourth, because world economic developments have introduced new instabilities. anticipating and adjusting to changes in the financial environment are of increased importance. The international dimension has become integral to managerial finance. Fifth, the closed systems approach of finance must move to recognize even broader environments in an open systems framework. The objective function to be maximized has become multi-valued, including social criteria. The principles of finance are increasingly recognized to be applicable to a wider range of purposive organizations other than business firms: these include health care delivery, education, mental hospitals, religious institutions, prisons, and protest organizations of various kinds. Finally, the financial managerial expertise is increasingly required for application to broader social problems. Some may disagree, asserting that these are temporary fads. But the underlying forces seem to be fundamental and will incr... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a theory of cultural marginality is used in examining the role behavior of American business executives in an Argentine community. The data presented verify the hypothesis that although these executives are accepted in their limited roles as workers and guests within the country, they are marginal in that they are not accepted as people willing to share in its culture. The findings suggest that contrary to the charges of some critics, these executives are clearly not manipulating the power structure of the host community, even though a sizable proportion of adults in Argentine City believe that they are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In exploring the thesis that attitudes and values are basic determinants of career patterns, this paper empirically identifies and analyzes differential definitions of career success held by top-level executives and first-line supervisors. The executive, needing esteem and personal accomplishment, regards the achievement of high position essential for success. The supervisor, with a lower level of aspiration and less mobility drive, defines success in terms of security, respect, and happiness. While the executive is motivated toward continually higher achievement, the supervisor does not establish successively higher goals after attaining his modest ambitions. Implications for current theory concerning job motivation and morale are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model of trust and its interaction with information flow, influence, and control, and reports on an experiment based on the model to test several hypotheses about problem-solving effectiveness. The subjects were managers and the independent variable was the individual manager's initial level of trust. Groups of business executives were given identical factual information about a difficult manufacturing-marketing policy problem; half the groups were briefed to expect trusting behavior, the other half to expect untrusting behavior. There were highly significant differences in effectiveness between the high-trust groups and the low-trust groups in the clarification of goals, the reality of information exchanged, the scope of search for solutions, and the commitment of managers to implement solutions. The findings indicate that shared trust or lack of trust apparently are a significant determinant of managerial problem-solving effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper throws doubt on the direct relationship between the difficulty of a decision problem and decision time. A formal theory is proposed, hypothesizing that decision makers take longer to choose from four alternatives when two of the alternatives are easily rejected than when all four alternatives are equal. The results of laboratory experiments support this hypothesis, and suggest that decision behavior is related to personality factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how the firm's risk posture can be reflected in its capital expenditure budget. It has been assumed that the firm can estimate variances-covariances of its many investment opportunities in order to determine a set of efficient budgets, an assumption made primarily for the purpose of focusing on the proper amount of the total budget. If future returns from the investment were statistically certain, the optimum budget size would be that for which the marginal rate of return from the last investment accepted is equal to the weighted cost of capital, However, since no such certainty exists, it has been demonstrated that the corporation should adopt a smaller budget, the total amount of which is determined jointly the variability of returns and the risk preferences of top management. The suggested adjustment to the budget is based on a probability definition of risk aversion. This definition permits each firm to convert random variable cash flow to a certainty equivalent, which value reflects the chance the firm is willing to accept that a specified minimum cash flow will not be realized from the investment. Such a procedure requires an explicit statement of risk aversion by corporate management, and the quantification of the announced risk attitude insures uniformity of application throughout the organization. The recommended procedures relate only to sizing the capital budget to recognize risks inherent in all investments. Their application will not, in any way, affect the actual outcome of the investment. Thus, the firm is able to estimate more realistically the minimum growth in earnings from its investments, and may benefit further from "windfall" profits if the certaintyequivalent cash flows are exceeded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Berle and Means long ago noted the increasing diffusion of ownership in large American corporations and concluded that control was shifting from the stockholders to the managers. Since then, the Berle-Means (B-M) thesis has been the subject of continuous and heated controversy both within and without the profession, and has provided a major rationale for the introduction and expansion of government regulation of security transactions. It is therefore astonishing that, almost forty years after the publication of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, the empirical evidence produced on either side of the issue has been negligible. Until recently, the B-M thesis rested entirely on faith and on data reflecting increased diffusion of share ownership, with no empirical evidence regarding the validity of the consequences alleged to follow from such diffusion. This failure to pursue more rigorous testing seems due, at least in part, to a misunderstanding of the meaning and role of private property in decision-making. The purpose of this paper is to encourage the proper evaluation of the B-M thesis. Section I contains a brief discussion of the usefulness of data describing the distribution of shares among owners. Section II presents some theoretical issues relating to the B-M thesis, Section III considers the relationship between diffusion of ownership and private property, and Section IV examines the empirical evidence relating to the behavioral implications of the B-M thesis. Section V contains a few concluding remarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response from Keith V. Smith and John C. Schreiner (S&S) to comments Randolph Westerfield directed towards their paper entitled "A Portfolio Analysis of Conglomerate Diversification," which appeared in a 1969 edition of the "Journal of Finance." Westerfield previously asserted that a measure of diversification used in S&S's paper was inappropriate, insofar as it reflected managerial forecasting ability. The authors disagree and explain why they believe an alternative measure proposed by Westerfield is inappropriate. They do, however, acknowledge that Westerfield's commentary included some interesting theoretical content.

In this paper a normative model of social processes for decision making was presented. This model represented a slightly elaborated and refined version of a model presented in Vroom and Yetton. We share the previous authors' view that such models are far from perfect but can serve a useful function in stimulating research which, in time, will be reflected in better models. The latter half of this paper was devoted to questions related to how managers do select decision processes—to the factors which influence the degree to which they share their decision-making power with their subordinates. In pursuing these questions, we also relied heavily on the previous work of Vroom and Yetton by using a set of standardized cases selected in accordance with an experimental design. Each case depicted a leader faced with a problem to solve, and subjects were asked to assume his role and to select from a specified list of decision processes the one they would employ. The major difference from Vroom and Yetton was in the nature of the experimental design used in the construction of the "problem set." Whereas Vroom and Yetton's design utilized 30 "group problems" and five decision processes, the design used here provided for seven decision processes and 24 group and 24 individual problems. This design permitted the additional exploration of relationships between behavior on each kind of problem, and of the consistency of the behavior on the latter with the normative model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns itself with the problem of managerial implementation of scientific research. It employs a survey technique designed to test the manager's and researcher's reactions to propositions developed by Churchman and Schainblatt [5], Bennis [3], and Dyckman [8]. The sample surveyed reflects opinions derived from groups unlike those studied to date. As with previous studies, the results suggest the respondents viewed the implementation issue as a multi-dimensional problem and refused to accept a single position as being the most effective means of obtaining meaningful researcher-manager cooperation. The primary conclusion accentuates both groups' rejection of the separate functions position and advocacy of mutual understanding and provides a genera] reinforcement of prior investigations. It is suggested that managers and researchers might do well not only to understand their own self-motivation but also to understand the unique problems of implementation faced by both groups. This appreciation would no doubt assist in developing the trust and valid communication necessary for the effective transfer of theory to practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses time management among executives. Steps to develop time power; Delegation of authority; Elimination of paper works.

This article presents information related to sociology as of April 1, 1950. The Committee of the American Sociological Society on Contributed Papers for the 1950 annual meeting consists of Robert E. L. Fans, chairman; and A. B. Hollingshead and T. C. McCormick. Papers submitted for consideration should be sent not later than June 1, 1950. Recently elected officers of the Pacific Sociological Society for 1950 are: President, Leonard Bloom; Vice-president, Southern Division, Ernest Greenwood; Vice-president, Central Division, Carlo Lastrucci; Vice-president, Northern Division, Joseph Bachelder; and Members of the Advisory Council, Robert O'Brien and Paul Wallin. Gwynne Nettler continues as secretary-treasurer. The Society's annual meeting will be held in Seattle, Washington, during April 21-22, 1950. The Twenty- second annual meeting of the Japan Sociological Society was held in Tokyo, Japan, during October 15-16, 1949. The meeting was attended by more than 250 members. Fifty-two reports were given on various aspects of social theory and social research, and three public lectures on the topic, "The Population Problem in Japan."

This paper is concerned with identifying the characteristics of managers who are able to perform their tasks effectively in conditions of change. In sharp contrast to much of the work of British social scientists in industry, therefore, it is concerned with differences between individual managers rather than with the influence on performance of differences in the conditions in which men work. It emphasizes change not only because change is widespread and pervasive but because it is now generally recognized that in many of our institutions change is not taking place fast enough. After referring briefly to a series of six earlier studies of performance in conditions of change, the paper describes a study of managers concerned with the installation and servicing of computers. Particular attention is paid to differences in what their superiors and subordinates expected of these managers, and in how they rated them. It is shown that inability to cope with change is closely related to a belief that there is only 'one best way' of doing most things, and to a system of values of which this is a key feature. Finally, the implications of these findings for management training are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first three sections of the paper are background discussions of relevant types of value questions. First, we consider the historical evolution of managerial value conflict, as they are rooted in a fundamental value polarization reflected in U. S. society. Then we relate management values to environmental values, especially in the corporate context. Finally, we review contemporary analyses of the bases of general value systems, and consider their relationship to current research in management value systems. The fourth section is concerned with the other prong of our general analysis: After reviewing several examples of cybernetic system models, we consider their relevance for management systems in terms of the apparent future organizational impacts of the so-called "information technology." Section five brings us to the heart of our discussion: an estimation of the likely impacts of better understanding of organisational cybernetics upon management value systems. A paradigm of ecosystem (ecological system) influence upon organizational policy formation is presented, together with a schematic organizational ecosystem decision matrix for management. In the final section of the paper, we relate corporate values to the emerging organisational ecosphere, emphasising that cybernetic information technology creates new possibilities effectively to implement appropriate redefinitions of traditional management values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a number of functional equations which arise in the "optima) inventory" problem. This is a particular case of the general problem of ordering in the face of an uncertain future demand. Actually, an important aspect of the problem is that of determining a suitable criterion of cost, one which is both realistic and analytically malleable. In the following sections we shall consider various sets of assumptions which yield various functional equations, all belonging to a common family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that the mail balloting during December 1972 resulted in the election of Robert Lane as president of the Policy Studies Organization (PSO), Duncan MacRae as vice-president and president-elect, and Stuart Nagel as secretary-treasurer. The article also provides names of seven persons elected as at-large members of the PSO. The mail balloting also resulted in ratifying the proposed constitution. Some of the recommended constitutional changes like broadening the PSO to include the promotion of the application of social science, not just political science, to important policy problems and providing more nonacademic representation.

The article discusses a 1972 study which measured the magnitude and direction of the alteration of the personal value systems of decision makers and managers in the U.S. A Personal Value Questionnaire was used in both studies to record decision maker responses. The dimensions of values were based on aesthetics, ethics, organizational perspective, and level of importance to the individual. Respondents were selected from the 1971 Edition of Standard and Poor's Directory of Corporations, Executives and Directors. The author concludes that personal value systems of American managers seem to be relatively stable.

The article presents the author's comments on the report "The Relationship Between Managers' Budget-oriented Behavior and Selected Attitude, Position, Size, and Performance Measures," by Robert J. Swieringa and Robert H. Moncur, the authors' study concerning the interaction between the budget process and employee performance and attitudes. The author discusses the study's weaknesses such as not accurately defining the methodologies used, but complements the way the Swieringa and Moncur discussed policies on budgets and budgeting to create a study helpful in observing managerial accounting and behavior.

In this article the author wants to analyze what has happened in recent years to some of the traditional personnel functions as government intervention in personnel administration has steadily increased. Personnel management in the United States cannot today be carried out according to the sole discretion of top management or even in a very flexible way consistent with applying insights of behavioral sciences. Instead, key aspects of personnel management must be molded to fit the legal, control and reporting requirements of governments. The personnel manager is clearly faced with the serious prospect of becoming a corporate lone ranger who is entangled in the red tape of bureaucratic rationality and pomposity. Warnings have been implicit and explicit in the literature for years that unless he became more effective that governmental regulation and public policy would not only supervene but also intervene in the greatest depth. The last area discussed in the paper is in many ways the newest, although governmental intervention into personnel work through the creation of the workmen's compensation concept and start-up of the industrial safety movement can be traced back to the early days of the 20th century.

Here is first aid for that paramount problem of the average executive, how to manage time so that he is no longer clobbered by too-imminent deadlines, senseless interruptions, and homework. It presents a way to analyze job activities, delegate secondary tasks, and get first things done first so that there can actually be time left over in which to think and plan. Included also are hints on how to lock the door against the biggest business time thieves of all, an overactive telephone and that unscheduled caller who drops in just to "renew contacts." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a special class of behaviour in organizations, namely, social relations between managers of functionally interdependent departments. It is organized around three topics: (1) A discussion of the problem of interdepartmental relations. (2) An overview of theoretical and applied findings on this problem. (3) Some views on the form of future research on this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper has been to present and exemplify a new and alternate method of return assessment. The method does have computational and mathematical advantage. It is also believed to have analytic advantage in that it is less susceptible to manipulation by base selection and more closely associated with performance measures which are relatively well defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the paper "The Impact on Managers of Frequency of Feedback," by Doris M. Cook. The article is believed to be an example of over reliance on the obvious and a failure to control or test for relevant variables. For a long time, management theorists have argued that frequent feedback has a positive impact on the communication process and the effectiveness of an organization. Cook's findings may be significant because they correlate with several external variable. However, correlation only implies a relationship and not causality.

The personal value systems of 1072 American managers are studied for their contribution to the understanding of managers and their behavior. A theoretical model for analyzing the impact of values on behavior is presented and utilized. Major results are explored with respect to the impact of personal values systems on the behavior of managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on mortgage bank operations in the post-World War II period mortgage market. Two sources account for most of this study's data: mortgage banks' annual financial statements from 1945 to 1955 filed and transcribed by the U.S. Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and a questionnaire of the quarterly financial structure and mortgage operations of selected banks from 1953 to 1955. Mortgage bank executives and other professionals were interviewed in order to gain a better understanding of the developing history and structure of mortgage banking, as well as the characteristics of operations in 1957.

A cursory glance at the business section of a newspaper, or at the recent speeches of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would give the impression that expectations of future demand are a crucial factor influencing the investment decisions of businessmen. The purpose of this paper is to give some theoretical justification to the above contention, and to study with some precision the role of expectations in determining the optimal investment program of a firm. As Arrow has made clear, the traditional neoclassical investment rule, where a perfectly competitive firm accumulates or decumulates capital to the point where its marginal product is equal to the real rate of interest, leaves no role for expectations and is essentially myopic. An important aspect of the world that is ignored in the formulation of the myopic rule is the fact that, once a firm has acquired capital stock and "bolted down the machinery", possibilities of subsequent decumulation are severely limited. One way of capturing this aspect in a model is to make investment an irreversible process and this was the approach that Arrow used in [1] in the context of a perfectly competitive firm. Once this assumption is made, then it is clear that the investment rule is no longer myopic and expectations matter. In this paper, the irreversibility assumption is used in the context of a firm which is not perfectly competitive, but instead faces a known downward sloping demand curve for its product. This demand curve is expected to vary over time, but the firm's expectations are held with certainty. The way in which the firm behaves over time is then as follows. At the present moment the firm formulates a production and investment plan based on its expectations, it follows this plan until such time as its expectations prove incorrect. It then reformulates its expectations, computes a new plan and proceeds as before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two main definitions of democracy have been used in the analysis of union politics; either as leadership responsiveness to membership opinion, or as the institutionalization of opposition. This paper rejects both definitions, instead defining democracy as the survival of faction. The survival of faction is explained by the pressures which prevent union Executives from destroying it. These pressures fall into twelve categories: political culture; government attitudes and behaviour; membership distribution; industrial setting; economic environment; technology; source of union bargaining power; membership characteristics; membership beliefs; opposition expertise and resources; leadership beliefs; and union structure. The contrasting political histories of the A.E.U. and the N.U.R. are explained by contrasting patterns of constraints. The paper concludes with a formal statement of the characteristics associated with union democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How important is the economic role of business executives in determining their degree of involvement in local community affairs? Studies of social class and social participation, of community decision-making processes, and more general analyses of the economic institution in modem society all have suggested that as one ascends the corporate pyramid he becomes more involved in the organizational life of the local community. Explanations for this association between economic position and community involvement have been of two general kinds. The first emphasizes the structural position of local economic dominants in community affairs and the second focuses upon the concept of "corporate social responsibility" and the attendant role conceptions of business executives. While there are many claims as to the primacy of the economic role in community involvement of executives, there have been few empirical attempts to ascertain the degree of local involvement actually explained by the economic role. Certainly businessmen are active in the local community. But how important is their economic role as compared to their other sociodemographic characteristics in accounting for variations in their activity? It is the purpose of this paper to discover the degree of local community participation explained by both the structural dimensions of the economic role and the executive-community role conception based on a national sample of business executives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to a comment by Professor Simon on the original article "Some Limits of Rational Man Organizational Theory," by Chris Argyris. The author asserts that he was not confused between the influence of the internal organizational environment and the influence of the manager upon the individual. The point being made was that the manager is the agent of the organization and has much to say about creating its internal environment. Given the rational-man theory of administration, one can travel from the internal organizational environment to the manager to the people in power to managerial control, etc., and still find that all these factors usually have, from the subordinate's viewpoint, a similar psychological impact upon him or her. Professor Simon continues, as his title states, to make rationality and self-actualization mutually exclusive. Although more research is needed to explore each view, my position is that we need much more research that seeks to integrate the two views.

This paper has been written as a comment on the article, "Some Limits of Rational Man Organizational Theory," by Chris Argyris, which appeared in the May/June 1973 issue of "Public Administration Review." There is no need to pick fault with details of Argyris' characterization of the theories of Allison, Cyert, March, Steinbruner. First, Argyris' critique contains a serious confusion between the influence of the organizational environment upon the individual, and the influence of the manager upon the individual. Managers, of course, swim about in the organizational environment, are influenced by it, just as are other employees. A major theme of Argyris' critique is that exaggerated emphasis has been given to the rational component of human behavior at the expense of the emotional and motivational. This allegation is not borne out by examination of the literature itself. Finally, Argyris' essay exhibits a curious ambivalence toward the idea of bounded rationality, and the related concept of statisficing.

The article presents a study on the ownership and compensation as incentives to corporation executives. The present study therefore confines itself to the first two financial incentives mentioned: the gains from ownership and salary and bonus. The financial incentives available to this top stratum of corporate management are of three types: salary and bonus, capital increment and dividends from stock held and gains of position. The paper accordingly aims to evaluate, for a selected list of large corporations, the relative importance of ownership gains and executive compensation as financial incentives to corporate business leadership. The companies chosen for the study are the same as those used in an earlier article, those of the 200 largest non-financial firms for which the pertinent data are available.

The thesis of this paper discusses sociologist Edwin H. Sutherland research on white-collar offences. The author states that one of the tightest definitions that Sutherland gave to white-collar crime was that it applied to criminal acts of corporations and individuals acting in their corporate capacity precise. Faced with range of definitions and granting the desirability of making a choice, it would appear most promising to concentrate on corporation crimes that Sutherland discusses in "White Collar Crime," his major work in this area. This book, which elaborates the thesis Sutherland first outlined ten years earlier in his presidential address to the American Sociological Society, is largely a recital of decisions rendered against the leading corporations in the United States for restraint of trade, infringement of patents, misrepresentation in advertising, unfair labor practices and similar acts. According to the author, the major difficulty in the book "White Collar Crime" as criminological research lies in Sutherland's striking inability to differentiate between corporations themselves and their executive and management personnel.

This paper is concerned with some of the general issues of the relationship between comparative research and the case study and where one can complement the other, showing specifically bow this applies to recent research dealing with the expert qualifications of operating personnel, the ratio of managers to operating personnel, and the flow of hierarchical communications in formal organizations. inferences about the flow of communications within organizations in which superiors have narrow spans of control and supervise subordinates who are highly qualified are drawn from comparative research on the formal structures of organizations and tested with observational data from case studies on the interaction of superiors and subordinates. The findings from two of these case studies are generally consistent with the argument that narrow spans of control serve to facilitate upward communication where experts are employed as subordinates. However, the analysis of a third deviant case suggests that the degree and type of differentiation of hierarchical work roles importantly affect both the needs and opportunities for communication and through them the relationship between hierarchy and expertness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with a neglected problem in the social stratification of occupations. Most research in this area has been concerned with prestige differences among occupations and begs the question of intra-occupational variability. It is suggested that there may be as much or more variability in prestige within many occupational categories as among them. The central concern of this inquiry is with the differential prestige associated with specific positions of school superintendent, an occupation having characteristics of both professional and executive positions. Another unique aspect of this inquiry deserves emphasis. Whereas most studies of occupational stratification have been concerned with prestige evaluations by the general public or by students. A working hypothesis that intra-occupational prestige differentials among school superintendence's are a function of the relative opportunity to contribute to the function of the occupation proved to be less adequate than reliance on the single factor salary, which did not fit neatly into the initial formulation. It was found that salary was an important determinant of prestige not only in conjunction with the other variables but also independently of them. It was suggested that the independent contribution of this variable stemmed largely from its superior visibility.

This paper focuses on managerial leisure in Great Britain and the U.S. It states there are three aspects to managerial leisure: the amount of leisure taken by managers, the content of their leisure activities and how closely these relate to their work interests, and the subjective meaning of leisure activities to managers. It mentions that the comparative study of management in different countries has attracted increased interest. It comments that American executives tend to enjoy their jobs and experience feelings of creativity at work, while others claim they enjoy business entertaining activities. It mentions that managers in Great Britain tend to spend more time devoted to family and home and use leisure to escape from work.

This paper has examined the relationship between management or career development and transfer aspects of these programs. Data were presented indicating the causes of transfers, variances in its use, and costs and benefits to industry and its executives. It is hoped that more attention will be paid in the future to this facet of management development, with a view to effectively integrating it into career development of executives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of a number of studies which were carried out by members of the Churchill College Management Course as part of their 'field work' between formal sessions of the course. In many cases, those who did them found difficulty in using the method — as the more academic users have done — but they also found it useful in providing insights and an approach to systematic observation which they did not previously possess. (We have also found that the employment of this method with post-graduate Diploma students engaged on project work in industry provides them with a great deal of 'practical insight'). But can the results also be used to advance our general understanding of the management process ? I think they can: the findings offer broad support for many of the propositions which have been advanced, for example by Dubin, but they also provide additional hypotheses of a more detailed kind. The quality of these findings does not seem to differ markedly from that of investigations already published. They may therefore be advanced in a tentative fashion to provide further illumination of what is after all an extremely complex piece of social reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the experiments that I have made with different types of diaries and summarizes my conclusions from these experiments about diaries as a means of studying managers' jobs. My aim was to study some of the similarities in, and differences between, managers' jobs. In order to do this a method had to be devised that would fulfil the five conditions that: 1. it could be used to study at least a hundred managers. This seemed a minimum number for the study of differences between different types of managers' jobs; 2. it would be applicable to managers in different kinds of jobs; 3. it would cover a sufficient period of time to show up variations in the job. Unless this was done one would not know whether the period studied was representative, nor could one detect one of the possible differences between jobs, that of the amount of variation in the job; 4. it would produce comparable results; 5. it would be sufficiently simple for the managers to be willing to keep it for the required time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reprint of the paper "Analisis fundamentales sobre la decision directiva." In this paper, the author discusses the fundamentals of the managerial decision-making process. Many management theories are based on an impossible pretense, namely, that the act of decision must be free of all subjective assessments and limited to an objective and impersonal attitude. This pretense confuses two acts that intervene in managerial actions, each one with its own nature and particular laws: knowing and deciding. A manager must have a different attitude when facing each one of these acts. The act of knowing must be basically regulated by fidelity to what is real, while deciding must be concerned with fidelity to the personal self of he who decides. This is, precisely, one of the more radical difficulties inherent in managerial action: One must be objective while appraising reality, but one cannot be objective when deciding to change it. The election of an alternative for action springs from the knowledge one has about a reality that must be acted upon, but it also derives from a self that pursues a goal in that reality. In the decision referring to the goal to be attained, the subjectivity of whoever decides must necessarily intervene, and the decision process involves both personal values and expectations.

Motivating employees to work for the goals of the firm has long been one of management's most important and vexing problems. The search for methods that motivate effectively, that induce the employee to work harder for the firm's goals, led to experimentation with a wide diversity of devices. In recent years, several writers emphasized that the firm's accounting system has a direct influence on the motivation of managers. This paper (a) surveys the available findings of research done in the behavioral sciences and organization theory as they bear on motivation and (b) critically examines the accounting system and reports in the light of such findings. Decentralization contributes to effective motivation. The firm's accounting system facilitates decentralization and hence has an indirect but important impact on motivation. The direct use of accounting reports, such as budgets, for motivation can result in reduced performance, if the budget is imposed on the department manager. The accounting system facilitates decentralization, which is conducive to effective motivation. Furthermore, the careful use of accounting reports can directly contribute toward effective motivation by expressing goals and by supplying knowledge of performance.

The personal qualities of a manager are widely considered the most important element both in his attitudes and in his performance. Technical competence is taken for granted as a requirement in specific jobs, but for top management it is often rated less important than organizational gifts, vision and a strong personality in general. For the rest, the personal qualities required in managers are frequently summarized as character, meaning as a rule the ability to get on with people, to participate in teamwork, and to supply leadership without authoritarian traits. Especially labor representatives in Sweden and Germany stressed the significance of personality variations in managers. Persons with the managerial qualities mentioned are widely judged as capable of performing well in any ownership form of comparable enterprises-private, public, or co-operative. Private management, not unexpectedly, are generally characterized by a desire to keep intervention down-a desire which is often shared by managers of co-operative enterprises and sometimes by officers of labor unions, too, even where their influence upon the government is strong. The functional differences involved were stressed frequently by spokesmen for the Swedish co-operatives, labor, and government, which all favor the same ideological creed.

The article presents a study which examines the possibilities of forecasting the success of young executives. The study uses pencil-and-paper test scores and personal data as prediction index correlated with a rating criterion of on-the-job success and conducted under the auspices of Edward N. Hay & Associates management consultants. The study reveals that education is the variable which correlated most significantly with executive success as measured through the on-the- job ratings while other significant correlations contributed by other variables were too low to possess more predictive value.