A Little Spice for Management
QUINN, T. K.
A Little Spice for Management Administrative Vitality. By Marshall E. Dimock. Harper. 298 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by T. K. Quinn Author of "Giant Business: Threat To Democracy" IT IS A...
...But he deals fairly with the fact that the group as well as the individual is needed in production and administration...
...under socialism as under capitalism...
...Reviewed by T. K. Quinn Author of "Giant Business: Threat To Democracy" IT IS A well-deserved compliment to this important book, its subject and the author that several thousand copies were ordered by business and academic institutions immediately upon its publication...
...in government departments as in family concerns...
...congenial work surroundings...
...Bureaucracy emphasizes order and system, Dimock states, "whereas enterprise relies on the individual to take the lead in new ideas...
...But the fact is that as a policy-maker, stabilizer and tone-setter for the economy, government largely creates the climate for private enterprise...
...To the extent that they prove unavoidable and socially efficient, organizations can be made dynamic by a combination of the best in bureaucracy with the best in enterprise...
...analyzes needs and finds ways to satisfy them...
...Devoted as he is to the maximum freedom and development of the individual and the human spirit, he neither emphasizes nor conceals his preference for smaller organizations...
...He believes—and he is right—that if this Marxian-rooted dogma should ever be widely accepted it would drain the vitality from administration...
...One closes this book with renewed confidence in the possibilities of our system, checked, however, by the excesses of huge organization...
...the encouragement of freedom, competition and new ideas...
...Enterprise breaks with the past when necessary...
...Marshall Dimock, who is head of the Department of Government at New York University and has had a great deal of practical administrative experience, is eminently qualified as a scholar and seasoned practitioner to illuminate this subject and provide some effective solutions...
...Enterprise is social as well as physical innovation...
...Administrators must be able to coordinate, make wise and often quick decisions, inspire employes to cooperation and develop new and better ideas instead of relying on set formulas that discourage innovation...
...Enterprise can be developed "in a monopolistic undertaking as in a competitive one...
...The author wisely denies the thesis, popular in recent years, that group activity, enterprise and innovation may be made virtually automatic, replacing individual initiative in big institutions...
...in conglomerate corporations as in the corner drugstore...
...But certain conditions are more conducive to enterprise than others: self-confident and resourceful people...
...Machine efficiency and keen human motivation are essential...
...Every effective management, he maintains, "has a little spice in it," and even the individual Russian managers who are making the best reputations are doing so by using their wits, taking chances and being insubordinate, in order to circumvent the rigid procedures they are supposed to follow...
...A measure of his approach is indicated in his statement that "if the government is enterprising and progressive the economy will have the same characteristics...
...For size aggravates bureaucratic excesses in business and government, and, in the author's words, "great bodies move slowly and progressively lose their vitality and responsiveness...
...But enterprise is impossible unless the methods are rational and systematic as well as intuitive and inventive...
...produces new goods and services and means of improving them...
...At the heart of the competition of private companies, economic systems and governments between the United States and Russia lies this question of administrative and organizational vitality...
...It grows increasingly acute and decisive as science, technology and the quest for power create bigger organizations...
...incentives to experimentation and discovery...
...But the management skills can be bottled up or smothered and people made into mere numbers in huge organizations, and this is a main concern of this book...
...There is," Dimock says, "a growing awareness that skilled management is the catalytic agent in economic development...
...Machines will not adapt, and people must...
...One gains the conviction that from the human standpoint business organizations should not be permitted to become any bigger than their mechanical requirements, which have been far exceeded in our giant corporations...
...Enterprise denies that there is a permanent one best way of doing anything, because there is always a better one if it can be found...
...Nothing more comprehensive, understanding and constructive in this critical area has appeared in print...
...In the United States we still prefer to believe that private enterprise thrives on a government that is never allowed to become too efficient...
...Natural resources lie idle until capital, management and a will to action appear...
...and extensive, thorough research facilities...
...minimal vested interests...
Vol. 43 • February 1960 • No. 5
