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Executive behavior: Classical and existential
Executive Behavior: Classical and Existential Joe Kelly
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xecutive behavior is simply what managers do. Managers get things done. Sometimes they even get great things done, and the best do them with such style and elegance that others get a kick out of working with them. The best managers not only manage efficiently ("doing things right") and effectively ("doing the right flaing"), but riley also achieve a vision for their organization, which can transform not only themselves but society as well. Like Lee Iacocca or Jack Welch, they communicate this vision by their actions and their behavior. Thus, executives never simply act or behave. Other business executives wonder what is going on around them and are puzzled by what is happening "up front." An easy way of confounding adherents of traditional management is to ask them to define the term "managing." The answers tend to be shrouded in cliches: "Managing is getting results through people." "Managing is the coordination of such functions as planning and organizing to reach a measured objective." "Managing is . . . . " What is managing? Two kinds of managers will be discussed here: the classical and the existential. The characteristics of both are outlined in F i g u r e 1.
There' a new type of CEO out there: existential, focused "on the market, and intent upon survival.
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THE CLASSICAL ANSWER
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or the traditional classical manager, managing is the art of delegation, of getting results through people. It is the formulation and execution of policy through the functional activities of Planning, Organization, Lead16
ing, and Evaluating--POLE. This leads to a definition of managing as teamwork; people really matter. At the shop floor level, as EW. Taylor would say, "managing is discovering how tasks should be performed and seeing that they are performed in that way." T h e C l a s s i c a l M a n a g e r as O r g a n i z a t i o n M a n
This view sees the manager as the person who sets objectives, plans the work, organizes people into tasks according to their age, aptitudes, and abilities, leads them in a way that turns work into fun, and evaluates performance in a way that ensures correspondence between plan and action. That is, managers do things through people: they POLE the efforts of other people. "Manage" is a verb, a doing word. But what do managers do? They talk. We know from scientific studies of executive behavior that they spend tremendously long hours working (12-14 hours a day plus "homework"), most of it at what psychologists call "interacting time." The time spent with others is made 6p of a myriad of fleeting, superficial, and often distracting contacts. A lot of these contacts are in meetings, but most are swift touching-base signals that terminate with the manager giving an "OK---Ca W on" signal. This managerial lifestyle can be disturbing to outsiders. They are likely to view managers as having sold their services to the highest bidder (usually the image of a bloated capitalist smoking a cigar is invoked) or as a kind of powerbroker who gets people together to do what the manager wants. One such outsider was W.H. Whyte, an editor of Fortune, who wrote a brilliant and widely read book called The Organization Man (1956). Managers like to think of themselves as tough individuals who go in and do it their way, win the order, get a coronary, and are fired, then make it all the way back to become chairman of Business Horizons / January-February 1993
Figure 1 Characteristics o f Classical a n d E x i s t e n t i a l E x e c u t i v e s CLASSICAL EXECUTIVE
EXISTENTIAL EXECUTIVE
Structure Hierarchical, pyramidal, multi-level; limits access
Structure Controlled anarchy and adhocracy; almost unlimited access
Style Three-piece suit
Style ShE sleeves
Process POLES (plans, organizes, leads, evaluates) Reflective, systematic planning
Process Agenda setting, networking; brief encounters, full of wit, gossip, soft in/o--all at high speed; brevity, variety, discontinuity
Information MIS complex print-outs, sales reports, etc.; Long monthly, quarterly meetings
Information High verbal, non-verbal, electronic mail, faxes; Extremely short one-on-ones and brief meeting
Vah~es "No-nonsense, let's get on with this job." "We are one big happy family." Denial of political dimension
Values "Work smarter not harder." Exploit visibility like Iacocca to sell cars
Incidentals No computer hands-on skills, apprehensive about women and minorities
Incidentals Computer skills, gets along with minorities, high-tech ambience, modern attitudes to marriage in young
Cars: Cadillacs and Lincolns
Cars: German Driving Machines
Sports: golf
Sports: tennis and skiing
Patron Saints Harold Geneen Reginald Jones
Patron Saints Jack Welch Lee Iacocca Steven Jobs
BOTH High pay, rich in stock and acquisitions Age: indeterminate Social and geographical origins anywhere Both can and do co-exist
the board. Whyte, however, painted another pic ture: a guy with a crewcut, in a buttoned-down collar, grey flannel suit, and polished leather shoes, w h o drove a Buick or an Oldsmobile (a Cadillac would be conspicuous consumption), tutored his wife on h o w to toady up to the boss, and was an all-around conformist. A Behavioral Portrait One of the first studies of American chief executives was m a d e by Whyte (1954), w h o reported a study of 52 c o m p a n y presidents, 23 vice presi- ' dents, and 53 middle managers identified as "comers." Whyte found that they w o r k e d excessive hours, included evenings in their w o r k time, Chief Executive Behavior: Classical and Existential
and spent most of their time interacting with or influencing people. The question was not h o w m u c h executives work; it was h o w they found time to work. The findings of a later study by Dale and Urwick (1960) largely confirmed Whyte's data. Dale and Urwick studied ten executives and analyzed in detail the working w e e k of a bank president. More than half of his time was taken up with outside contacts, and a lot of it was spent on public relations. The whole idea of making executive behavior studies by observation was invented by Sune Carlson, a professor of business studies in Sweden. Carlson (1979) was preoccupied with the idea that m a n a g e m e n t studies were largely theo17
logical, sterile, and based to a large extent on anecdotes. Carlson was fighting the idea--then and still widely current--that what a manager did could be summed up in the acronym POLE-plan, organize, lead, evaluate. Carlson's questions were: • How do you recognize managers when they are POLEing? • What are their behavioral characteristics? • Do they have an identifiable profile? When nobody could answer him, he set out to discover the answers for himself. Carlson collected his data under five headings: place, person, technique of communication, question handled, and action taken. What he found confirmed the clich6. He discovered that top executives worked long hours, rarely visited their factories, spent long hours travelling, were slaves to • their diaries, and had little time for leisure and contemplation. Henry Mintzberg, a professor of management at McGill University, set out in 1968 to study the work of the chief executives of five large American corporations. Using a technique called structured observation, he ob"Success is dependent served each CEO for a period of one on manipulating the vast week. Mintzberg intricacy of human showed that Amerirelationships that m a k e can chief executives were, on the surface, up the political universe very superficial of top dog executives. people who worked long hours, largely They know how to play because they were fhe game. " nodes in a complex information system• Virtually everything in the business, usually in a digested form, had to pass across their desks. What Mintzberg is telling us is that grand theories of management are irrelevant: managers don't act; they react. The stuff of managerial life seems to be made up of "brief encounters" and "brief activities" (49 percent of executives' activities in Mintzberg's study lasted less than nine minutes). To get business done, managers concentrate on issues that are current, well-defined, and non-routine; they work mainly through the spoken word. •
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Behavior
Behavioral studies of executives strongly indicate that managers feel compelled to work excessive hours at an unrelenting pace, with few opportunities for breaks or recreation. This critical executive fetish becomes more pronounced at higher 18
levels in'the hierarchy and must be regarded as a function of the kicks, rewards, and challenges senior executives get out of their jobs. The manager's life is suffused with brief contacts and fleeting interactions; it is highly fragmented with a fair level of noise. Managers appear to operate at several levels simultaneously, or at least in rapid succession. Managers apparently spend most of their time communicating. For most, writing letters is not a major activity. Managers have a preference for immediate, concrete, and specific problems, which they immediately simplify through some model• The scheduled meeting is the mainstay of their days. T h e G a m e Is t h e T h i n g
The classical imperialist drama theory of the organization views executives and their hangers-on as players in the great game of realpolitik. The great thing about the metaphor of game playing is that by reducing personal responsibility it frees individuals to make decisions. These top dog executives, whether in business, government, education, or the church, have power; they understand the drama of power, and they use it. They maneuver and manipulate to get the job done and, in many cases, to strengthen and enhance their own position. They revel in being seen as fascists, but in a humorous sort of w a y - - " H e is somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun." Success is dependent on manipulating the vast intricacy of human relationships that make up the political universe of top dog executives. They know how to play the game. ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLES
he "organization as a whole" has a logic peculiarly its own, and when working effectively it is a sight to be seen. Sustained by ideological fictions ("This place is more than brick and mortar, it has a heart"), serving both unique ("makes a big buck") and accessory ("keeps you out of the cold") functions, held together by a powerful coalition (the inner circle) that none will challenge, organizations can be understood only in their own terms. "You don't believe, but believe that everybody else believes" is what everyone believes. With this type of pluralistic ignorance, organizations are not only hard to buck, but on occasion are capable of mobilizing and directing resources in such a way that dramatic achievements become the order of the day, leaving both participants and spectators gasping in awe. Furthermore, organizations c a n g e t people to overcome their anxieties and learn to love them. Why? Because the organization has principles!
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Business Horizons/ January-February 1993
1. Organizations exist; they are bigger than people; they may be immortal. Organizations can be m a n a g e d through h u m a n resource management. 2. Organizations have "structure, process, and values." Organizations affect perceptions, emotions, and behaviors of individuals and groups. Organizations develop a culture. 3. Organizations can be designed and managed.
J o h n Akers a n d IBM IBM is just such an organization. But IBM is in a disaster m o d e right now. Both its stock price and its profits are falling. At one time IBM stock was the bellweather for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Now it is performing well below expectations. Nevertheless, IBM's profits are still the biggest of any c o m p a n y of the world: in 1990 it made 6 billion dollars on 69 billion dollars of revenue. In 1984, it made even more profit on 46 billion dollars worth of revenue. John Akers' answer to the charge that IBM is in crisis is simply that IBM is caught up in an industry that is moving so fast it is difficult to adjust quickly enough. IBM is fighting for its life. Moreover, the c o m p a n y has failed both in product d e v e l o p m e n t and in marketing. Akers is going to be r e m e m b e r e d as the man w h o let IBM falter. He has had a career of accomplishments, first as a navy flier, then as an outstanding IBM salesman. As a junior executive he was picked out as a star. The trouble is that w h e n Akers took over IBM from his immediate predecessors, Frank T. Cary and John R. Opel, he received a c o m p a n y that was fat and overconfident. In addition, it has 50,000 competitors---most of w h o m are niche players. IBM is often described as an asset-heavy, people-laden, bureaucracy-ridden organization. For m a n y years it has been operating as a huge citadel surrounded by a moat; n o w that moat is drying up. IBM must n o w face harsh criticism from its m a n y competitors. No longer can it d e p e n d on its history. The computer that has been giving IBM most problems is the PC, which sells in a price-driven market. Teaming up with Apple is an attempt to overcome some of the technical difficulties that IBM PCs face in the marketplace because they are not seen as being use>friendly. All this interest in PCs has come at a time w h e n IBM has retained its focus on mainframes. H o w Akers manages information flow for the c o m p a n y is of considerable interest. Around the middle of each month m a n a g e m e n t information people deliver to headquarters a quarterly fordcast based on orders received. For example, business in January and February 1991 was poor, but the February forecast s h o w e d that IBM still could Chief Executive Behavior: Classical and Existential
have a reasonable quarter bolstered by sales in March. Yet in this world of computers nothing is certain. When "white knuckles" time arri~ed--a term IBM people use to describe the waiting days of a quarter--the business wasn't there. The essence of the matter is that for IBM, marketing has always been more important than technology. For example, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. (1990) spells out h o w IBM was able to out-perform Univac, which had a better computer, simply because Watson's salespeople "John Akers" answer to had the ability to tell the c h a r g e that IBM is in the customer a story, crisis is simply that IBM is install the machine properly, and hang c a u g h t up in an industry on to the customers that is moving so fast it is once they had them. Unfortunately, John difficult to adjust quickly Akers cannot manage enough. IBM is fighting to mobilize IBM's marketing resources for its life. " effectively to get the type of performance needed to stop the stock price from plummeting. In an interview in Fortune (Loomis 1991), Akers said that the c o m p a n y was finally facing reality. According to Loomis, a major problem for IBM is h o w to reduce its e n o r m o u s staff. Having always pursued the policy of job security for its employees, the c o m p a n y has invented a whole bureaucratic language to explain h o w it overcomes problems of assured job security while retaining the right to fire employees. Examples of this "IBMSPEAK" are "MIS" (Management Initiated Separation), which is used to describe a reduction in the work force not caused by voluntary resignation or retirement (translation: "You're fired."); the verb "non-concur," meaning to withhold approval: "I non-concur with this proposal"; and "tree-hugger," referring to an e m p l o y e e w h o resists a m o v e or any other change. Technically, IBM's well-established principle of full employment is "no layoff system in place." Nevertheless, in the era of Akers the c o m p a n y has been forced into the use of MIS. John Akers has been compared unfavorably with Jack Welch of General Electric, w h o is running a revolution in his company. Akers answers, "This is simplistic. You can't compare IBM and GE." But he does admit that IBM was slow in getting into personal computers, that it missed the beat in mid-range systems, and that it was late in workstations. As Loomis notes, to counter all these criticisms, Akers is cutting IBM's expenses to the bone. He is striving for growth in software services and in what is called OEM, Original Equipment Manufacturing, meaning production of IBM hardware for resale under 19
another company's name. Akers has also declared war on the competition. "We're going to ship one spiffy product, and we're going to price it to maintain or gain market share." Lee Iacocca and His General Managers at Chrysler The existential image presented to us of Lee Iacocca on television his eyes glinting behind his aviator frames, his chin jutting forward, his finger poking the air excitedly--alerted America in the 1980s to the idea that Chrysler cars are made in America and are worth considering. Now the Chrysler Corporation is once again facing a real crisis. The trouble has come because Iacocca failed to follow his own maxims. As he pointed out in his autobiography (1984), "In the • end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits. People come first. Unless you've got a good team, you can't do much with the other two." At Chrysler, Lee Iacocca had a good team of strong-willed, dynamic executives, which included Gerald Greenwald, the accounting genius from Ford, and Harold Sperlich, an outspoken maverick and very creative executive who had helped design the Mustang at Ford. Sperlich would have been w e e d e d out of a conformist type of corporation. And Iacocca, a '!Execufive personality is very demanding boss, • , • e the organtztng cen t er is willing to fire people who don't measure up • around which people's to his standards. Never• :,motives form a unified theless, he was able to manage this unique : :.,endintegrated-system group of people he •.: a n d the strategy of the had brought together. He could command firm b e c o m e s manifest. " their loyalty and spend sufficient time to restrain their egos and reconcile competing visions. The recovery of Chrysler was spearheaded by Sperlich, who designed the K-car, the platform from which all the other early 1980 products came, including the minivan. Because of the Kcar, Chrysler's share of the N o a h American market climbed from 7.8 percent in 1980 to 10.8 percent in 1985. The enormous success turned Lee Iacocca into a celebrity and a glamorous party-goer. His autobiography, which was projected to sell a few hundred thousand copies, sold nearly 6 million copies and stayed on the best-seller list for one year. Unfortunately, Iacocca did not stick to his knitting but, as John B. Judis (1990) points out, he decided to engage in a series of acquisitions. Chrysler already owned 24 percent of Mitsubishi 20
Motors, but Iacocca's thirst for expansion had not been quenched. In 1984 he decided to buy a 3.5 percent share in Maserati to begin joint development of a luxury sports car, the TC. In 1986 he upped the share to 15.2 percent. In that same year, he bought Gulf Stream Aerospace for $637 million. In 1987, he bought American Motors for $757 million, as well as the Italian sports car manufacturer, Lamborghini. Harold Sperlich opposed the purchase of AMC because he believed the money was needed to build a new platform, similar to the K-car, if Chrysler was going to survive. But Iacocca was not willing to get involved in developing a new platform at this time. In addition, Sperlich was loudly opposed by Greenwald, and the two team members entered into a real conflict. Unfortunately, Iacocca, by now caught up in his own whirlwind of celebrity appearances and personal affairs, wasn't around to resolve the fight and focus their attention On the survival of Chrysler. In the end, Iacocca asked Sperlich to step aside so a new team could be formed. Thus, Chrysler lost a brilliant product man and marketing genius who had been behind many of Iacocca's successes. And Greenwald left Chrysler in 1990 to join United Airlines. Of the original trio w h o rebuilt the corporation--Iacocca, Sperlich, and Greenwald---only Iacocca remains, and he is retiring soon. Faced with these problems, Iacocca has been forced to sell off many of his acquisitions and invest heavily in building a new platform. These development problems at Chrysler and the personal difficulties Lee Iacocca faces seem to be a repetition of history. When Iacocca was president at Ford under Henry Ford II, a major personal conflict broke out between the two men. In the midst of one heated quarrel, Ford ended the argument simply by suggesting that Iacocca step outside the building to see whose name was actually on the wall. Cooler heads in the 1990s believe that Ford was jealous of Iacocca's accomplishments, and that the latter's self-promotion had become a threat to the company. Much the same thing has happened at Chrysler. Since losing the battle to control and retain his general managers, Iacocca has been unable to fuse together a successful new team that functions well together over an extended period of time. Instead, he has been caught up in the celebrity business, weaning himself away from daily attention to "people, product, and profits." For a firm to be successful, executives have to keep working at what they do best. For Iacocca, this was designing, manufacturing, and marketing cars. When he allowed himself to be sidelined into the celebrity track, he lost sight of what he should have been doing. Business Horizons January-February1993
MOVING BEYOND THE CLASSICAL CEO
lassical CEOs make extensive use of organizational charts, role descriptions, and rule books. They assume organizations are like orchestras, with the chief executive as the conductor who runs the whole show; only he knows the entire score. The classical CEO is still the most widely employed of all CEO types. For example, until very recently North American auto companies were organized along classical lines, with maximal task breakdown and with individual effort tied to the speed of the assembly line. On the other hand, Sweden's Volvo has come up with an existential auto assembly line where people work in teams--a system that allows job enrichment and job exchange. The first step now is to define the job in terms of duties, physical and mental requirements, and tools; this implies job analysis. The next step is to organize jobs into groups according to some principle, such as function or geographical area. The old type of organization is called bureaucracy; the new type is called adhocracy.
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The Existential Chief Executive
Realizing the limitations of the classical approach, chief executives have switched their efforts to redefining the CEO's style. The advantage of the existential approach is that it does not reject the organization model built on the accounting and industrial engineering analogy; it goes beyond the analogy to give pride of place to the transformational style. Why don't they concentrate their efforts on production? When we ask such questions regarding executive behavior, we are trying to explore questions of motivation. Motivation is concerned with the study of the direction and persistence of action. Executive personality is the organizing center around which people's motives form a unified and integrated system and the strategy of the firm becomes manifest. The aim here is to present an organized review of some of the outstanding contemporary chief executives that are interesting and relevant for the study of executive behavior and personality. Allport (1937), having examined many different definitions of "personality," offers the cleanest, most penetrating, and most frequently cited definition: "Personality is the dynamic organization within an individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment." For Allport, personality is dynamic and descriptive of something that is always in the process of becoming. H e ' sees executive personality as an expanding system seeking new and better levels of order and transaction. Thus his definition emphasizes the Chief ExecutiveBehavior: Classical and Existential
ideal of organization and of how people perceive themselves and the world. For a firm to function properly, subordinate managers must have insight into h o w the CEO's personality works if they are to mobilize their energies and resources around it to focus them in a productive way. The Existential Answer
The ancients compared the plot of a drama to, tying and untying a knot. Corporate life has become a knot, and existentialism offers a way of untying that knot. The new entrepreneurial society has revealed a new type of existential executive--a "The old type of young upwardly mobile organization is called manager, or " y u m m y " - who sees the organizabureaucracy; the tional sea as boiling hot n e w type is called with opportunity. This adhocracy. " "Pepsi Generation" of executives is young in years, seasoned in experience, and knowledgeable about conflict. A recent B u s i ness W e e k article (Carey and Smith 1989) describes these yummies: They were raised on Rice Krispies and "Father Knows Best" in the homogeneous streets of suburban America, only to come of age during the turbulent 1960s. They danced to the Beatles, protested the Vietnam War and the Establishment, and experimented with drugs and new lifestyles. In the 1970s and 1980s they witnessed the sobering decline of smokestack America and the rapid growth of the national debt. Soon, they will take over the leadership of Corporate America. The typical CEO of America's largest companies takes power at the age of 51. That means that by the year 2000, CEOs of even the biggest, most conservative companies will be drawn from the ranks of the postwar baby boom. These new corporate chieftains are likely to be strikingly different from their predecessors. Current chief executives, who average 56 years old, were born during the low-fertility years of the 1930s and came of age during the post-World War II economic boom. "They were the beneficiaries of a highly favorable combination of high demand for labor and labor-supply shortages. It was a generation that reached the top fairly easily," says University of Southern California Professor Richard Esterlin. 21
Managers Are Samurai Ballet Dancers New types of managers have a different optic and a distinct perspective. Existentialism, as an executive style and a manner of thinking, is of great interest to these entrepreneurial managers because so much of contemporary consumer choice is mandated by the new existential ways and lifestyles that "creative people" have consciously and unconsciously built into advertisements, both electronic and print. The yun~rnies' cognitive style emphasizes lateral thinking and the search for an alternative. Existentialists want to stand outside the self to "existere"---or to move beyond self-actualization. This implies a new value system and new attitudes. New managers have a different attitude to'ward authority, computers, women, minorities. They do not function in a crisply defined black-andwhite geometric "The yummies" cognitive environment. In the style emphasizes lateral world of organizational "Mice," they hinking a n d the search for use intuition and an alternative. Existentialists the right hemiwant to stand outside the sphere of the brain. Because organizaself to 'existere ' or to tions and markets m o v e b e y o n d self-actualbehave counterintuitively, it is ization. " useful to glance at the executive as a samurai ballet dancer, to w h o m existentialism, entrepreneurship, intuition, and disciplined analysis are all vital. John Sculley exemplifies this managerial type. He excels in the art of corporate self-actualization. The following describes John Sculley's mission at Apple (Rose 1989): Reinventing the corporation: that's what John Sculley had been doing these past few months. It was three years since he'd first flirted with the idea of coming to Apple Computer, and now, with the man who'd lured him there expelled from the company, the time had come to talk about his own plans, his own blueprints, his own vision. It was January 1986. Apple was on the rebound after the most disastrous year in its history, and Sculley's job was to get that across while simultaneously promoting the idea that the company's vision--its most important product, in a w a y - - h a d not merely survived the messy and unpleasant departure of Steven Jobs, its founder and 22
chairman, but had in fact been transmuted into this new and improved vision that he, John Sculley, would not articulate. As a package-goods guy, as the marketing man behind the "Pepsi Generation," he knew about communicating intangibles. What he had to do now was make the leap from intangible benefit to intangible product. He had to talk about the Apple Vision. The New Manager's Patron Saint: Jack Welch John S. Welch, Jr., chairman of General Electric Company, also exemplifies the new manager. He has been dismantling the organizational structures built by his predecessor, Reginald Jones. Jones had built up GE in the 1960s and 1970s by using classical organizational structures and formal strategic planning. For example, he tried to reduce the number of levels in the organization to only six or seven. He also introduced the idea of strategic business units (SBUs), which were developed solely for the purpose of strategic planning. Each SBU had to have a unique business mission with a clearly identified set of competitors, and the ability to accomplish strategic planning and implementation independent of the other SBUs. The strategic manager in charge of a particular SBU had to make crucial decisions to ensure its success. This strategic planning at General Electric represented a formalized process for establishing corporate goals, and it turned out to be extremely successful. It is widely accepted that Jones' formal, almost bureaucratic, strategy in his approach to the organization was appropriate for the 1960s and 1970s. Jack Welch, in a series of dramatic moves in the 1980s, has instigated a major effort to modernize the company by shutting d o w n unproductive plants, which he describes as marginal. Welch believes that if a plant is marginal, it must either be fixed or sold. The financial evidence shows quite clearly that GE is moving ahead quite briskly. The new entrepreneurial and dramatic style of Jack Welch is a strong contradistinction from the bureaucratic style of Reginald Jones. General Electric has an outstanding reputation for using modern management techniques, including value analysis, strategic planning, and new decentralized organizational structures. Welch is currently redesigning the company using a personal dramatic style that is very informal but rigorous and appropriate for the highly competitive environment of the 1990s. He is trying to transform GE into a high-flying entrepreneurial organization, which he feels must grow to succeed. His tough, hard-nosed style has earned him the reputation Business Horizons/ January-February1993
of being one of the hardest charging managers in the United States. Whereas Reginald Jones was perceived as a polished, disciplined, and rather formal man w h o rose through GE from its accounting and finance departments, Jack Welch is much more of a "shirt-sleeves" manager. According to Thomas J. Lueck (1985). Welch confidently asserts that the company will reign supreme in foreign markets. "We have the smarts and the money," he says. "We ought to be able to win."
Translating Top Management Policy into Shop Floor Practice Jack Welch is trying to run his company as if it were a small business. Welch's view is, "You've got to take out the boss element." In his mind, managers must set aside POLEing and take on responsibility as coaches and team leaders. As Welch points out, "We're going to win on our ideas---not by whips and chains." For Welch it is a question of speed, simplicity, and self-confidence. As Stewart (1991) points out, Welch has no intention of sacrificing profit for newa'nanagement ideas. He believes that a hard-nosed reputation for superior performance can coexist with such "soft" concepts as employee involvement. The idea is that power in the executive system has to be dismantled and allocated to "processmapping" people, who could be in any level in the organization; these are the people responsible for pushing the product out the door. General Electric uses three techniques: workout, best-practices, and process-mapping. "Workout" is used to get employees more involved in the decision making process; best-practices are used to get General Electric looking elsewhere for good ideas; and "process-mapping" is a technique for specifying the actual procedures used to produce or manufacture a particular product. This latter technique is used to identify where the actual bottlenecks exist. Welch is challenging his employees to develop new ideas by taMng the boss element out of management. Yet Welch himself represents the quintessential boss, and is often described as capo di tutti capi ("chief of all chiefs"). Welch believes the future in management lies in the ability to mobilize employees' good ideas. General Electric focuses on these ideas to get things done. This represents a radical departure for GE. The company has introduced such concepts as strategic planning, decentralization, and market research. In many respects it was widely believed that GE invented a whole spectrum of manage-' ment techniques. When Welch took over in 1981, the company had 350 different product lines; Welch has squeezed them into 13 big businesses. Chief ExecutiveBehavior: Classical and Existential
He was so effective in reorganizing General Electric that he received "Welch believes the the title "Neutron Jack." Welch is trying to f u t u r e in m a n a g e m e n t change GE's culture.. lies in the ability to. The objective is to get mobilize employees" the company hierarchy to wither away and then g o o d ideas. General replace it with a horiElectric fobuses on zontal structure, but with accountability built these ideas to get in. In this system, as things done. " Welch points out, a manager's functions "are comfortable facilitating, greasing, finding ways to make it all seamless, not controllers and directors. Work-out is the fundamental underpinning of training the next generation of managers."
THE NEW MANAGERIAL STYLE he turmoil in the offices of CEOs is forcing senior executives to undertake a radical reassessment of their understanding of management concepts. The complexity of events and the complicity of players has made change and crisis the two constants in corporate life. CEOs are marching to a new drumbeat of rapid technological change and global competition. Three things matter most to the CEO: market leadership, high profits, and a standout stock price. What is missing from this list is loyalty. In discussing the new managers, Carey and Smith (1989) ask and answer the question, "What influence will their past have on their executive style?"
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Some argue that these business leaders will be less loyal to companies and more appreciative of leisure and family. Their views on environmental issues will differ from those of earlier generations. And others note that this group of executives will be the first to feel comfortable dealing with computers and the other trappings of the Information Age. Also, predicts Drexel University sociologist Arthur B. Shostak: "They will be more self-confident, more thick-skinned, and more outspoken than previous executives." Those leadership qualities may prove to be the most valuable assets of the baby b o o m e r CEO. Columbia University business school Professor Donald C. Hambrick asked today's CEOs what qualities their successors ought to have. His findings? "One of the biggest was greater emphasis on the need for CEOs to be the energy 23
- force for the company," says Hambrick. With companies getting m o r e complex, diverse, and geographically spread out, he explains, only a more charismatic leader can hold the whole enterprise together. These CEOs are learning to c o p e with uncertainty and paradox by focusing on the nitty-gritty details of business with short time horizons. They are acting differently and refusing the straitjacket of corporate hierarchy. A n e w interpersonal climate is emerging in which the emphasis is on "we" rather than "I." Yet something else is happening. It is b e c o m i n g increasingly obvious to top managers that a n e w style of m a n a g e m e n t is required if business is to succeed in the 1990s. Companies once again are realizing that w h e n something is accomplished it is, as Peter Drucker (1984) put it, by a m o n o m a n i a c with a mission. Contrary to conventional wisdom, business decision making is not entirely rational; a great deal depends on intuition, hunch, and experience. If CEOs are to be successful, they must b e c o m e visionary monomaniacs w h o can drive their companies forward. CEOs must be able to infuse their values into the system. The n e w manager: 1. uses a transformational style of leadership; 2. cuts an existential figure; 3. is a charismatic visionary; 4. is an actor w h o can handle conflict; 5. has a different value system.
Corporate M y t h o l o g y a n d the C h i e f E x e c u t i v e Unfortunately, m a n y CEOs are blinded b y grandiose sell-images, and are unable to m a k e rational choices relating to the economic realities that face their companies. Abraham Zaleznik (1990), a Harvard Business School professor w h o applied psychoanalytic techniques to corporations, has argued that a major reason w h y General Motors lost its market share was "the internalization of ideals, values and corporate structures and practices that can be traced back to the c o m p a n y ' s legendary chairman, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr." In other words, GM's chief executives have b e e n so overa w e d by Sloan's performance and the radical w a y in which he redesigned the corporation that they have b e e n unable to adjust these legendary transformations to meet the present-day realities. Because these CEOs are well established in the p o w e r structure and enjoy a protected position, they develop certain narcissistic gains from belonging to the organization; they b e c o m e very difficult to influence. Middle managers and workers are excluded from the mythological structures that provide these narcissistic gains to chief executives, so it is often difficult for the executives to persuade subordinates to put their plans into action or accept criticism. For example, because the General Motors chairman has his eyes fixed o n an o u t m o d e d structure that is no longer appropriate, he finds it difficult to c o m p e t e with J a p a n e s e and G e r m a n car manufacturers.
Figure 2 C h i e f E x e c u t i v e s : D i f f e r i n g Pictures
24
Observational Studies
Media Reports
1. Unstructured: fragmented, ad hoc, brief, unplanned
1. Structured: full of "white knuckle" time awaiting data for quarterly report
2. Devoid of emotion
2. Emotionally charged: executives weeping at having to fire their boss (like Steve Jobs at Apple)
3. Absence of drama
3. Charged with drama: flamboyant moments in board meetings when the chairman declares "VICTORY"
4. Superiors are courtly and accept "noise" and criticism from subordinates
4. Subordinates don't speak back; in many cases they don't speak at all
5. Nothing is said about telephone calls at home
5. Much of the vital business is done by telephone after or out of hours
6. Executives live in an "expletive deleted" environment---a "gee whiz, oh!" environment
6. The language of the executive suite sounds like a bunch of marines waiting to go into battle
7. An abstemious atmosphere; no sign of the liquor cabinet.
7. As our famous chairman used to ask, "Where's the booze?"
Business Horizons /January-February 1993
Consultants are often brought in to an organization to help identify its culture and get behind the myths that are keeping it from adapting to meet the reality of situations. As Zaleznik argues, it is important for chief executives to remain objective and have the capacity to look at the world as it is. Roger Smith a n d General Motors Roger B. Smith, former chief executive officer of General Motors, restructured the corporation in January 1984. Great hopes were expressed that the company was going to achieve a turnaround. Smith envisioned two supergroups (big and small cars) that would allow a more effective method for designing, engineering, and manufacturing cars. Unfortunately, General Motors is n o w going through a very difficult passage: its market share has dwindled considerably, profits are down, and Ford and Chrysler have moved more effectively into the market. Roger Smith argues that GM lost market share because the company had to switch from manufacturing large rear-wheel-drive cars to mid-sized front-wheel-drive models. His critics argue that the problems are much more serious and relate to material labor and overhead costs in automobile production. Unfortunately, Smith would not adjust to the idea that General Motors had been losing market share. He began to shift General Motors away from automobile manufacturing to other areas. General Motors subsequently acquired Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Aircraft in an effort to diversify. here is a new breed of CEOs out there w h o are no longer preoccupied with a favorable trade balance or even manufacturing in America, but with ensuring the survival of their organizations. These new executives scorn loyalty in favor of market leadership, profits, and a high stock price. Their view is that change is the only constant in society, which casts them as global explorers in search of joint ventures with other companies. They are no longer involved in social concerns outside their areas of business but are up to their eyeballs in the nitty-gritty of the business.They are learning to deal with paradox and uncertainty and are focusing on back-to-the-basics. They are vitally preoccupied with the market. To put this new style of CEO in context, it is necessary to reflect on the fact that American chief executives had it easy in the 30 years following World War II. German and Japanese in- ! dustries, destroyed by the Allies, could not compete effectively with the United States. In such circumstances, marketing didn't matter so much,
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Chief ExecutiveBehavior:Classical and Existential
and Henry Ford's philosophy, "Give them any color they want as long as it's black," applied in many cases. With the b o o m markets of the 1960s gone, however, chief executives have to focus more on what customers are 'demanding. Beginning in the late 1970s after the U.S. dollar began its swings, the oil market caused inflation and interest rates to soar. As a result, businesses became a lot more difficult to manage than before. With the invasion of foreign goods, market share has taken precedence over all other considerations because maintaining market share becomes synonymous with survival. Unfortunately, most studies of chief execufives have little to say about the context in which managers actually operate (see F i g u r e 2). They focus instead on the idea of the managerial job being ad hoc, fragmented, and of brief duration. Most chief executives today, by contrast, would argue that they have an obsession, an existential preoccupation with market leadership, profits, and that high stock price. CI References Gordon W. Allport, Personali(y: A Psychological Interpretation (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1937). John Carey and Emily T. Smith, "The Pepsi Generation Heads for the Comer Office," Business Week, September 25, 1989, p. 170. Sune Carlson, Executive Bebaviour (New York: Arno Press, 1979). Teresa Carson and John A. Byme, "Fast Track Kids," Business Week, November 10, 1986, pp. 90-92. Ernest Dale and Lyndall E Urwick, Staff in Organization (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960). Peter Drucker, "Our Entrepreneurial Economy," HarvardBusiness Retn'ew,January-February 1984, pp. 5964. Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1984).
A.B. Ibrahim and Joe Kelly, "Leadership Style at the Policy Level," Journal of General Management, 11, 3 (1986): 37-46. John B. Judis, "The Guru Who Forgot What He Said," London Sunday Times Business World, 1990. Joe Kelly, How Managers Manage (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1980). Joe Kelly, Is ScientificManagement Possible? (London: Faber & Faber, Ltd., 1968).
25
Joe Kelly, Organizational Behavior: Its Data, First Principles, and Applications (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1980).
Henry Mintzberg, "Planning On The Left Side and Managing on The Right," Harvard Business Review, July-August 1976, pp. 49-58.
Joe Kelly and A.Bakr Ibrahim, "Executive Behavior: Its Facts, Fictions, and Paradigms," Business Horizons, March-April 1991, pp. 27-36.
Frank Rose, West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer (New York: Viking, 1989).
Joe Kelly and A.B. Ibrahim, "Making Participation Productive," in David I. Cleland, ed., Matrix Management Systems Handbook (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1984), pp. 692-713.
A.P. Sloan, My Years With General Motors (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1964). Thomas A. Stewart, "GE Keeps Those Ideas Coming," Fortune, August 12, 1991, p. 40.
John P. Kotter, The General Managers (New York: The Free Press, 1982).
Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Norton, 1947).
John E Kotter, "What Effective General Managers Really Do," Harvard Business Review, November-December 1982, pp. 156-167.
Thomas J. Watson, Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond (New York: Bantam Books, 1990).
Carol J. Loomis, "Can John Akers Save IBM?" Fortune, July 15, 1991, pp. 40-56. Thomas J. Lueck, "Why Jack Welch Is Changing GE," New York Times, Business Section, May 5, 1985, p. 1. Fred Luthans, "Successful Versus Effective Real Managers," Academy of Management Executive, 2, 2 (1988): 127-132.
William H. Whyte, Jr., "How Hard Do Executives Work?" Fortune, January 1954, pp. 108-111. William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956). Abraham Zaleznik, "The Leadership Gap," Academy of Management Executive, February 1990, pp. 7-22.
Michael Maccoby, The Gamesmen: The New Corporate Leaders (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1976). Henry Mintzberg, "The Manager At Work: Determining His Activities, Roles and Programs by Structured Observation," Ph.D. dissertation, Sloan School of Management, Massachusettes Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., 1968. Henry Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work (New York: Harper and Row, 1973).
26
Joe Kelly isa professor of m a n a g e m e n t at Concordla University, Montreal. This article isfrom his forthcoming book, Fact Against Fiction of Executive Behavior: A
Critical Analysis of What Managers Do, to be published by Quorum In 1993.
Business Horizons / January-February 1993
~
xecutive behavior is simply what managers do. Managers get things done. Sometimes they even get great things done, and the best do them with such style and elegance that others get a kick out of working with them. The best managers not only manage efficiently ("doing things right") and effectively ("doing the right flaing"), but riley also achieve a vision for their organization, which can transform not only themselves but society as well. Like Lee Iacocca or Jack Welch, they communicate this vision by their actions and their behavior. Thus, executives never simply act or behave. Other business executives wonder what is going on around them and are puzzled by what is happening "up front." An easy way of confounding adherents of traditional management is to ask them to define the term "managing." The answers tend to be shrouded in cliches: "Managing is getting results through people." "Managing is the coordination of such functions as planning and organizing to reach a measured objective." "Managing is . . . . " What is managing? Two kinds of managers will be discussed here: the classical and the existential. The characteristics of both are outlined in F i g u r e 1.
There' a new type of CEO out there: existential, focused "on the market, and intent upon survival.
.L
THE CLASSICAL ANSWER
F
or the traditional classical manager, managing is the art of delegation, of getting results through people. It is the formulation and execution of policy through the functional activities of Planning, Organization, Lead16
ing, and Evaluating--POLE. This leads to a definition of managing as teamwork; people really matter. At the shop floor level, as EW. Taylor would say, "managing is discovering how tasks should be performed and seeing that they are performed in that way." T h e C l a s s i c a l M a n a g e r as O r g a n i z a t i o n M a n
This view sees the manager as the person who sets objectives, plans the work, organizes people into tasks according to their age, aptitudes, and abilities, leads them in a way that turns work into fun, and evaluates performance in a way that ensures correspondence between plan and action. That is, managers do things through people: they POLE the efforts of other people. "Manage" is a verb, a doing word. But what do managers do? They talk. We know from scientific studies of executive behavior that they spend tremendously long hours working (12-14 hours a day plus "homework"), most of it at what psychologists call "interacting time." The time spent with others is made 6p of a myriad of fleeting, superficial, and often distracting contacts. A lot of these contacts are in meetings, but most are swift touching-base signals that terminate with the manager giving an "OK---Ca W on" signal. This managerial lifestyle can be disturbing to outsiders. They are likely to view managers as having sold their services to the highest bidder (usually the image of a bloated capitalist smoking a cigar is invoked) or as a kind of powerbroker who gets people together to do what the manager wants. One such outsider was W.H. Whyte, an editor of Fortune, who wrote a brilliant and widely read book called The Organization Man (1956). Managers like to think of themselves as tough individuals who go in and do it their way, win the order, get a coronary, and are fired, then make it all the way back to become chairman of Business Horizons / January-February 1993
Figure 1 Characteristics o f Classical a n d E x i s t e n t i a l E x e c u t i v e s CLASSICAL EXECUTIVE
EXISTENTIAL EXECUTIVE
Structure Hierarchical, pyramidal, multi-level; limits access
Structure Controlled anarchy and adhocracy; almost unlimited access
Style Three-piece suit
Style ShE sleeves
Process POLES (plans, organizes, leads, evaluates) Reflective, systematic planning
Process Agenda setting, networking; brief encounters, full of wit, gossip, soft in/o--all at high speed; brevity, variety, discontinuity
Information MIS complex print-outs, sales reports, etc.; Long monthly, quarterly meetings
Information High verbal, non-verbal, electronic mail, faxes; Extremely short one-on-ones and brief meeting
Vah~es "No-nonsense, let's get on with this job." "We are one big happy family." Denial of political dimension
Values "Work smarter not harder." Exploit visibility like Iacocca to sell cars
Incidentals No computer hands-on skills, apprehensive about women and minorities
Incidentals Computer skills, gets along with minorities, high-tech ambience, modern attitudes to marriage in young
Cars: Cadillacs and Lincolns
Cars: German Driving Machines
Sports: golf
Sports: tennis and skiing
Patron Saints Harold Geneen Reginald Jones
Patron Saints Jack Welch Lee Iacocca Steven Jobs
BOTH High pay, rich in stock and acquisitions Age: indeterminate Social and geographical origins anywhere Both can and do co-exist
the board. Whyte, however, painted another pic ture: a guy with a crewcut, in a buttoned-down collar, grey flannel suit, and polished leather shoes, w h o drove a Buick or an Oldsmobile (a Cadillac would be conspicuous consumption), tutored his wife on h o w to toady up to the boss, and was an all-around conformist. A Behavioral Portrait One of the first studies of American chief executives was m a d e by Whyte (1954), w h o reported a study of 52 c o m p a n y presidents, 23 vice presi- ' dents, and 53 middle managers identified as "comers." Whyte found that they w o r k e d excessive hours, included evenings in their w o r k time, Chief Executive Behavior: Classical and Existential
and spent most of their time interacting with or influencing people. The question was not h o w m u c h executives work; it was h o w they found time to work. The findings of a later study by Dale and Urwick (1960) largely confirmed Whyte's data. Dale and Urwick studied ten executives and analyzed in detail the working w e e k of a bank president. More than half of his time was taken up with outside contacts, and a lot of it was spent on public relations. The whole idea of making executive behavior studies by observation was invented by Sune Carlson, a professor of business studies in Sweden. Carlson (1979) was preoccupied with the idea that m a n a g e m e n t studies were largely theo17
logical, sterile, and based to a large extent on anecdotes. Carlson was fighting the idea--then and still widely current--that what a manager did could be summed up in the acronym POLE-plan, organize, lead, evaluate. Carlson's questions were: • How do you recognize managers when they are POLEing? • What are their behavioral characteristics? • Do they have an identifiable profile? When nobody could answer him, he set out to discover the answers for himself. Carlson collected his data under five headings: place, person, technique of communication, question handled, and action taken. What he found confirmed the clich6. He discovered that top executives worked long hours, rarely visited their factories, spent long hours travelling, were slaves to • their diaries, and had little time for leisure and contemplation. Henry Mintzberg, a professor of management at McGill University, set out in 1968 to study the work of the chief executives of five large American corporations. Using a technique called structured observation, he ob"Success is dependent served each CEO for a period of one on manipulating the vast week. Mintzberg intricacy of human showed that Amerirelationships that m a k e can chief executives were, on the surface, up the political universe very superficial of top dog executives. people who worked long hours, largely They know how to play because they were fhe game. " nodes in a complex information system• Virtually everything in the business, usually in a digested form, had to pass across their desks. What Mintzberg is telling us is that grand theories of management are irrelevant: managers don't act; they react. The stuff of managerial life seems to be made up of "brief encounters" and "brief activities" (49 percent of executives' activities in Mintzberg's study lasted less than nine minutes). To get business done, managers concentrate on issues that are current, well-defined, and non-routine; they work mainly through the spoken word. •
..
:
.
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Behavior
Behavioral studies of executives strongly indicate that managers feel compelled to work excessive hours at an unrelenting pace, with few opportunities for breaks or recreation. This critical executive fetish becomes more pronounced at higher 18
levels in'the hierarchy and must be regarded as a function of the kicks, rewards, and challenges senior executives get out of their jobs. The manager's life is suffused with brief contacts and fleeting interactions; it is highly fragmented with a fair level of noise. Managers appear to operate at several levels simultaneously, or at least in rapid succession. Managers apparently spend most of their time communicating. For most, writing letters is not a major activity. Managers have a preference for immediate, concrete, and specific problems, which they immediately simplify through some model• The scheduled meeting is the mainstay of their days. T h e G a m e Is t h e T h i n g
The classical imperialist drama theory of the organization views executives and their hangers-on as players in the great game of realpolitik. The great thing about the metaphor of game playing is that by reducing personal responsibility it frees individuals to make decisions. These top dog executives, whether in business, government, education, or the church, have power; they understand the drama of power, and they use it. They maneuver and manipulate to get the job done and, in many cases, to strengthen and enhance their own position. They revel in being seen as fascists, but in a humorous sort of w a y - - " H e is somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun." Success is dependent on manipulating the vast intricacy of human relationships that make up the political universe of top dog executives. They know how to play the game. ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLES
he "organization as a whole" has a logic peculiarly its own, and when working effectively it is a sight to be seen. Sustained by ideological fictions ("This place is more than brick and mortar, it has a heart"), serving both unique ("makes a big buck") and accessory ("keeps you out of the cold") functions, held together by a powerful coalition (the inner circle) that none will challenge, organizations can be understood only in their own terms. "You don't believe, but believe that everybody else believes" is what everyone believes. With this type of pluralistic ignorance, organizations are not only hard to buck, but on occasion are capable of mobilizing and directing resources in such a way that dramatic achievements become the order of the day, leaving both participants and spectators gasping in awe. Furthermore, organizations c a n g e t people to overcome their anxieties and learn to love them. Why? Because the organization has principles!
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Business Horizons/ January-February 1993
1. Organizations exist; they are bigger than people; they may be immortal. Organizations can be m a n a g e d through h u m a n resource management. 2. Organizations have "structure, process, and values." Organizations affect perceptions, emotions, and behaviors of individuals and groups. Organizations develop a culture. 3. Organizations can be designed and managed.
J o h n Akers a n d IBM IBM is just such an organization. But IBM is in a disaster m o d e right now. Both its stock price and its profits are falling. At one time IBM stock was the bellweather for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Now it is performing well below expectations. Nevertheless, IBM's profits are still the biggest of any c o m p a n y of the world: in 1990 it made 6 billion dollars on 69 billion dollars of revenue. In 1984, it made even more profit on 46 billion dollars worth of revenue. John Akers' answer to the charge that IBM is in crisis is simply that IBM is caught up in an industry that is moving so fast it is difficult to adjust quickly enough. IBM is fighting for its life. Moreover, the c o m p a n y has failed both in product d e v e l o p m e n t and in marketing. Akers is going to be r e m e m b e r e d as the man w h o let IBM falter. He has had a career of accomplishments, first as a navy flier, then as an outstanding IBM salesman. As a junior executive he was picked out as a star. The trouble is that w h e n Akers took over IBM from his immediate predecessors, Frank T. Cary and John R. Opel, he received a c o m p a n y that was fat and overconfident. In addition, it has 50,000 competitors---most of w h o m are niche players. IBM is often described as an asset-heavy, people-laden, bureaucracy-ridden organization. For m a n y years it has been operating as a huge citadel surrounded by a moat; n o w that moat is drying up. IBM must n o w face harsh criticism from its m a n y competitors. No longer can it d e p e n d on its history. The computer that has been giving IBM most problems is the PC, which sells in a price-driven market. Teaming up with Apple is an attempt to overcome some of the technical difficulties that IBM PCs face in the marketplace because they are not seen as being use>friendly. All this interest in PCs has come at a time w h e n IBM has retained its focus on mainframes. H o w Akers manages information flow for the c o m p a n y is of considerable interest. Around the middle of each month m a n a g e m e n t information people deliver to headquarters a quarterly fordcast based on orders received. For example, business in January and February 1991 was poor, but the February forecast s h o w e d that IBM still could Chief Executive Behavior: Classical and Existential
have a reasonable quarter bolstered by sales in March. Yet in this world of computers nothing is certain. When "white knuckles" time arri~ed--a term IBM people use to describe the waiting days of a quarter--the business wasn't there. The essence of the matter is that for IBM, marketing has always been more important than technology. For example, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. (1990) spells out h o w IBM was able to out-perform Univac, which had a better computer, simply because Watson's salespeople "John Akers" answer to had the ability to tell the c h a r g e that IBM is in the customer a story, crisis is simply that IBM is install the machine properly, and hang c a u g h t up in an industry on to the customers that is moving so fast it is once they had them. Unfortunately, John difficult to adjust quickly Akers cannot manage enough. IBM is fighting to mobilize IBM's marketing resources for its life. " effectively to get the type of performance needed to stop the stock price from plummeting. In an interview in Fortune (Loomis 1991), Akers said that the c o m p a n y was finally facing reality. According to Loomis, a major problem for IBM is h o w to reduce its e n o r m o u s staff. Having always pursued the policy of job security for its employees, the c o m p a n y has invented a whole bureaucratic language to explain h o w it overcomes problems of assured job security while retaining the right to fire employees. Examples of this "IBMSPEAK" are "MIS" (Management Initiated Separation), which is used to describe a reduction in the work force not caused by voluntary resignation or retirement (translation: "You're fired."); the verb "non-concur," meaning to withhold approval: "I non-concur with this proposal"; and "tree-hugger," referring to an e m p l o y e e w h o resists a m o v e or any other change. Technically, IBM's well-established principle of full employment is "no layoff system in place." Nevertheless, in the era of Akers the c o m p a n y has been forced into the use of MIS. John Akers has been compared unfavorably with Jack Welch of General Electric, w h o is running a revolution in his company. Akers answers, "This is simplistic. You can't compare IBM and GE." But he does admit that IBM was slow in getting into personal computers, that it missed the beat in mid-range systems, and that it was late in workstations. As Loomis notes, to counter all these criticisms, Akers is cutting IBM's expenses to the bone. He is striving for growth in software services and in what is called OEM, Original Equipment Manufacturing, meaning production of IBM hardware for resale under 19
another company's name. Akers has also declared war on the competition. "We're going to ship one spiffy product, and we're going to price it to maintain or gain market share." Lee Iacocca and His General Managers at Chrysler The existential image presented to us of Lee Iacocca on television his eyes glinting behind his aviator frames, his chin jutting forward, his finger poking the air excitedly--alerted America in the 1980s to the idea that Chrysler cars are made in America and are worth considering. Now the Chrysler Corporation is once again facing a real crisis. The trouble has come because Iacocca failed to follow his own maxims. As he pointed out in his autobiography (1984), "In the • end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits. People come first. Unless you've got a good team, you can't do much with the other two." At Chrysler, Lee Iacocca had a good team of strong-willed, dynamic executives, which included Gerald Greenwald, the accounting genius from Ford, and Harold Sperlich, an outspoken maverick and very creative executive who had helped design the Mustang at Ford. Sperlich would have been w e e d e d out of a conformist type of corporation. And Iacocca, a '!Execufive personality is very demanding boss, • , • e the organtztng cen t er is willing to fire people who don't measure up • around which people's to his standards. Never• :,motives form a unified theless, he was able to manage this unique : :.,endintegrated-system group of people he •.: a n d the strategy of the had brought together. He could command firm b e c o m e s manifest. " their loyalty and spend sufficient time to restrain their egos and reconcile competing visions. The recovery of Chrysler was spearheaded by Sperlich, who designed the K-car, the platform from which all the other early 1980 products came, including the minivan. Because of the Kcar, Chrysler's share of the N o a h American market climbed from 7.8 percent in 1980 to 10.8 percent in 1985. The enormous success turned Lee Iacocca into a celebrity and a glamorous party-goer. His autobiography, which was projected to sell a few hundred thousand copies, sold nearly 6 million copies and stayed on the best-seller list for one year. Unfortunately, Iacocca did not stick to his knitting but, as John B. Judis (1990) points out, he decided to engage in a series of acquisitions. Chrysler already owned 24 percent of Mitsubishi 20
Motors, but Iacocca's thirst for expansion had not been quenched. In 1984 he decided to buy a 3.5 percent share in Maserati to begin joint development of a luxury sports car, the TC. In 1986 he upped the share to 15.2 percent. In that same year, he bought Gulf Stream Aerospace for $637 million. In 1987, he bought American Motors for $757 million, as well as the Italian sports car manufacturer, Lamborghini. Harold Sperlich opposed the purchase of AMC because he believed the money was needed to build a new platform, similar to the K-car, if Chrysler was going to survive. But Iacocca was not willing to get involved in developing a new platform at this time. In addition, Sperlich was loudly opposed by Greenwald, and the two team members entered into a real conflict. Unfortunately, Iacocca, by now caught up in his own whirlwind of celebrity appearances and personal affairs, wasn't around to resolve the fight and focus their attention On the survival of Chrysler. In the end, Iacocca asked Sperlich to step aside so a new team could be formed. Thus, Chrysler lost a brilliant product man and marketing genius who had been behind many of Iacocca's successes. And Greenwald left Chrysler in 1990 to join United Airlines. Of the original trio w h o rebuilt the corporation--Iacocca, Sperlich, and Greenwald---only Iacocca remains, and he is retiring soon. Faced with these problems, Iacocca has been forced to sell off many of his acquisitions and invest heavily in building a new platform. These development problems at Chrysler and the personal difficulties Lee Iacocca faces seem to be a repetition of history. When Iacocca was president at Ford under Henry Ford II, a major personal conflict broke out between the two men. In the midst of one heated quarrel, Ford ended the argument simply by suggesting that Iacocca step outside the building to see whose name was actually on the wall. Cooler heads in the 1990s believe that Ford was jealous of Iacocca's accomplishments, and that the latter's self-promotion had become a threat to the company. Much the same thing has happened at Chrysler. Since losing the battle to control and retain his general managers, Iacocca has been unable to fuse together a successful new team that functions well together over an extended period of time. Instead, he has been caught up in the celebrity business, weaning himself away from daily attention to "people, product, and profits." For a firm to be successful, executives have to keep working at what they do best. For Iacocca, this was designing, manufacturing, and marketing cars. When he allowed himself to be sidelined into the celebrity track, he lost sight of what he should have been doing. Business Horizons January-February1993
MOVING BEYOND THE CLASSICAL CEO
lassical CEOs make extensive use of organizational charts, role descriptions, and rule books. They assume organizations are like orchestras, with the chief executive as the conductor who runs the whole show; only he knows the entire score. The classical CEO is still the most widely employed of all CEO types. For example, until very recently North American auto companies were organized along classical lines, with maximal task breakdown and with individual effort tied to the speed of the assembly line. On the other hand, Sweden's Volvo has come up with an existential auto assembly line where people work in teams--a system that allows job enrichment and job exchange. The first step now is to define the job in terms of duties, physical and mental requirements, and tools; this implies job analysis. The next step is to organize jobs into groups according to some principle, such as function or geographical area. The old type of organization is called bureaucracy; the new type is called adhocracy.
C
The Existential Chief Executive
Realizing the limitations of the classical approach, chief executives have switched their efforts to redefining the CEO's style. The advantage of the existential approach is that it does not reject the organization model built on the accounting and industrial engineering analogy; it goes beyond the analogy to give pride of place to the transformational style. Why don't they concentrate their efforts on production? When we ask such questions regarding executive behavior, we are trying to explore questions of motivation. Motivation is concerned with the study of the direction and persistence of action. Executive personality is the organizing center around which people's motives form a unified and integrated system and the strategy of the firm becomes manifest. The aim here is to present an organized review of some of the outstanding contemporary chief executives that are interesting and relevant for the study of executive behavior and personality. Allport (1937), having examined many different definitions of "personality," offers the cleanest, most penetrating, and most frequently cited definition: "Personality is the dynamic organization within an individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment." For Allport, personality is dynamic and descriptive of something that is always in the process of becoming. H e ' sees executive personality as an expanding system seeking new and better levels of order and transaction. Thus his definition emphasizes the Chief ExecutiveBehavior: Classical and Existential
ideal of organization and of how people perceive themselves and the world. For a firm to function properly, subordinate managers must have insight into h o w the CEO's personality works if they are to mobilize their energies and resources around it to focus them in a productive way. The Existential Answer
The ancients compared the plot of a drama to, tying and untying a knot. Corporate life has become a knot, and existentialism offers a way of untying that knot. The new entrepreneurial society has revealed a new type of existential executive--a "The old type of young upwardly mobile organization is called manager, or " y u m m y " - who sees the organizabureaucracy; the tional sea as boiling hot n e w type is called with opportunity. This adhocracy. " "Pepsi Generation" of executives is young in years, seasoned in experience, and knowledgeable about conflict. A recent B u s i ness W e e k article (Carey and Smith 1989) describes these yummies: They were raised on Rice Krispies and "Father Knows Best" in the homogeneous streets of suburban America, only to come of age during the turbulent 1960s. They danced to the Beatles, protested the Vietnam War and the Establishment, and experimented with drugs and new lifestyles. In the 1970s and 1980s they witnessed the sobering decline of smokestack America and the rapid growth of the national debt. Soon, they will take over the leadership of Corporate America. The typical CEO of America's largest companies takes power at the age of 51. That means that by the year 2000, CEOs of even the biggest, most conservative companies will be drawn from the ranks of the postwar baby boom. These new corporate chieftains are likely to be strikingly different from their predecessors. Current chief executives, who average 56 years old, were born during the low-fertility years of the 1930s and came of age during the post-World War II economic boom. "They were the beneficiaries of a highly favorable combination of high demand for labor and labor-supply shortages. It was a generation that reached the top fairly easily," says University of Southern California Professor Richard Esterlin. 21
Managers Are Samurai Ballet Dancers New types of managers have a different optic and a distinct perspective. Existentialism, as an executive style and a manner of thinking, is of great interest to these entrepreneurial managers because so much of contemporary consumer choice is mandated by the new existential ways and lifestyles that "creative people" have consciously and unconsciously built into advertisements, both electronic and print. The yun~rnies' cognitive style emphasizes lateral thinking and the search for an alternative. Existentialists want to stand outside the self to "existere"---or to move beyond self-actualization. This implies a new value system and new attitudes. New managers have a different attitude to'ward authority, computers, women, minorities. They do not function in a crisply defined black-andwhite geometric "The yummies" cognitive environment. In the style emphasizes lateral world of organizational "Mice," they hinking a n d the search for use intuition and an alternative. Existentialists the right hemiwant to stand outside the sphere of the brain. Because organizaself to 'existere ' or to tions and markets m o v e b e y o n d self-actualbehave counterintuitively, it is ization. " useful to glance at the executive as a samurai ballet dancer, to w h o m existentialism, entrepreneurship, intuition, and disciplined analysis are all vital. John Sculley exemplifies this managerial type. He excels in the art of corporate self-actualization. The following describes John Sculley's mission at Apple (Rose 1989): Reinventing the corporation: that's what John Sculley had been doing these past few months. It was three years since he'd first flirted with the idea of coming to Apple Computer, and now, with the man who'd lured him there expelled from the company, the time had come to talk about his own plans, his own blueprints, his own vision. It was January 1986. Apple was on the rebound after the most disastrous year in its history, and Sculley's job was to get that across while simultaneously promoting the idea that the company's vision--its most important product, in a w a y - - h a d not merely survived the messy and unpleasant departure of Steven Jobs, its founder and 22
chairman, but had in fact been transmuted into this new and improved vision that he, John Sculley, would not articulate. As a package-goods guy, as the marketing man behind the "Pepsi Generation," he knew about communicating intangibles. What he had to do now was make the leap from intangible benefit to intangible product. He had to talk about the Apple Vision. The New Manager's Patron Saint: Jack Welch John S. Welch, Jr., chairman of General Electric Company, also exemplifies the new manager. He has been dismantling the organizational structures built by his predecessor, Reginald Jones. Jones had built up GE in the 1960s and 1970s by using classical organizational structures and formal strategic planning. For example, he tried to reduce the number of levels in the organization to only six or seven. He also introduced the idea of strategic business units (SBUs), which were developed solely for the purpose of strategic planning. Each SBU had to have a unique business mission with a clearly identified set of competitors, and the ability to accomplish strategic planning and implementation independent of the other SBUs. The strategic manager in charge of a particular SBU had to make crucial decisions to ensure its success. This strategic planning at General Electric represented a formalized process for establishing corporate goals, and it turned out to be extremely successful. It is widely accepted that Jones' formal, almost bureaucratic, strategy in his approach to the organization was appropriate for the 1960s and 1970s. Jack Welch, in a series of dramatic moves in the 1980s, has instigated a major effort to modernize the company by shutting d o w n unproductive plants, which he describes as marginal. Welch believes that if a plant is marginal, it must either be fixed or sold. The financial evidence shows quite clearly that GE is moving ahead quite briskly. The new entrepreneurial and dramatic style of Jack Welch is a strong contradistinction from the bureaucratic style of Reginald Jones. General Electric has an outstanding reputation for using modern management techniques, including value analysis, strategic planning, and new decentralized organizational structures. Welch is currently redesigning the company using a personal dramatic style that is very informal but rigorous and appropriate for the highly competitive environment of the 1990s. He is trying to transform GE into a high-flying entrepreneurial organization, which he feels must grow to succeed. His tough, hard-nosed style has earned him the reputation Business Horizons/ January-February1993
of being one of the hardest charging managers in the United States. Whereas Reginald Jones was perceived as a polished, disciplined, and rather formal man w h o rose through GE from its accounting and finance departments, Jack Welch is much more of a "shirt-sleeves" manager. According to Thomas J. Lueck (1985). Welch confidently asserts that the company will reign supreme in foreign markets. "We have the smarts and the money," he says. "We ought to be able to win."
Translating Top Management Policy into Shop Floor Practice Jack Welch is trying to run his company as if it were a small business. Welch's view is, "You've got to take out the boss element." In his mind, managers must set aside POLEing and take on responsibility as coaches and team leaders. As Welch points out, "We're going to win on our ideas---not by whips and chains." For Welch it is a question of speed, simplicity, and self-confidence. As Stewart (1991) points out, Welch has no intention of sacrificing profit for newa'nanagement ideas. He believes that a hard-nosed reputation for superior performance can coexist with such "soft" concepts as employee involvement. The idea is that power in the executive system has to be dismantled and allocated to "processmapping" people, who could be in any level in the organization; these are the people responsible for pushing the product out the door. General Electric uses three techniques: workout, best-practices, and process-mapping. "Workout" is used to get employees more involved in the decision making process; best-practices are used to get General Electric looking elsewhere for good ideas; and "process-mapping" is a technique for specifying the actual procedures used to produce or manufacture a particular product. This latter technique is used to identify where the actual bottlenecks exist. Welch is challenging his employees to develop new ideas by taMng the boss element out of management. Yet Welch himself represents the quintessential boss, and is often described as capo di tutti capi ("chief of all chiefs"). Welch believes the future in management lies in the ability to mobilize employees' good ideas. General Electric focuses on these ideas to get things done. This represents a radical departure for GE. The company has introduced such concepts as strategic planning, decentralization, and market research. In many respects it was widely believed that GE invented a whole spectrum of manage-' ment techniques. When Welch took over in 1981, the company had 350 different product lines; Welch has squeezed them into 13 big businesses. Chief ExecutiveBehavior: Classical and Existential
He was so effective in reorganizing General Electric that he received "Welch believes the the title "Neutron Jack." Welch is trying to f u t u r e in m a n a g e m e n t change GE's culture.. lies in the ability to. The objective is to get mobilize employees" the company hierarchy to wither away and then g o o d ideas. General replace it with a horiElectric fobuses on zontal structure, but with accountability built these ideas to get in. In this system, as things done. " Welch points out, a manager's functions "are comfortable facilitating, greasing, finding ways to make it all seamless, not controllers and directors. Work-out is the fundamental underpinning of training the next generation of managers."
THE NEW MANAGERIAL STYLE he turmoil in the offices of CEOs is forcing senior executives to undertake a radical reassessment of their understanding of management concepts. The complexity of events and the complicity of players has made change and crisis the two constants in corporate life. CEOs are marching to a new drumbeat of rapid technological change and global competition. Three things matter most to the CEO: market leadership, high profits, and a standout stock price. What is missing from this list is loyalty. In discussing the new managers, Carey and Smith (1989) ask and answer the question, "What influence will their past have on their executive style?"
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Some argue that these business leaders will be less loyal to companies and more appreciative of leisure and family. Their views on environmental issues will differ from those of earlier generations. And others note that this group of executives will be the first to feel comfortable dealing with computers and the other trappings of the Information Age. Also, predicts Drexel University sociologist Arthur B. Shostak: "They will be more self-confident, more thick-skinned, and more outspoken than previous executives." Those leadership qualities may prove to be the most valuable assets of the baby b o o m e r CEO. Columbia University business school Professor Donald C. Hambrick asked today's CEOs what qualities their successors ought to have. His findings? "One of the biggest was greater emphasis on the need for CEOs to be the energy 23
- force for the company," says Hambrick. With companies getting m o r e complex, diverse, and geographically spread out, he explains, only a more charismatic leader can hold the whole enterprise together. These CEOs are learning to c o p e with uncertainty and paradox by focusing on the nitty-gritty details of business with short time horizons. They are acting differently and refusing the straitjacket of corporate hierarchy. A n e w interpersonal climate is emerging in which the emphasis is on "we" rather than "I." Yet something else is happening. It is b e c o m i n g increasingly obvious to top managers that a n e w style of m a n a g e m e n t is required if business is to succeed in the 1990s. Companies once again are realizing that w h e n something is accomplished it is, as Peter Drucker (1984) put it, by a m o n o m a n i a c with a mission. Contrary to conventional wisdom, business decision making is not entirely rational; a great deal depends on intuition, hunch, and experience. If CEOs are to be successful, they must b e c o m e visionary monomaniacs w h o can drive their companies forward. CEOs must be able to infuse their values into the system. The n e w manager: 1. uses a transformational style of leadership; 2. cuts an existential figure; 3. is a charismatic visionary; 4. is an actor w h o can handle conflict; 5. has a different value system.
Corporate M y t h o l o g y a n d the C h i e f E x e c u t i v e Unfortunately, m a n y CEOs are blinded b y grandiose sell-images, and are unable to m a k e rational choices relating to the economic realities that face their companies. Abraham Zaleznik (1990), a Harvard Business School professor w h o applied psychoanalytic techniques to corporations, has argued that a major reason w h y General Motors lost its market share was "the internalization of ideals, values and corporate structures and practices that can be traced back to the c o m p a n y ' s legendary chairman, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr." In other words, GM's chief executives have b e e n so overa w e d by Sloan's performance and the radical w a y in which he redesigned the corporation that they have b e e n unable to adjust these legendary transformations to meet the present-day realities. Because these CEOs are well established in the p o w e r structure and enjoy a protected position, they develop certain narcissistic gains from belonging to the organization; they b e c o m e very difficult to influence. Middle managers and workers are excluded from the mythological structures that provide these narcissistic gains to chief executives, so it is often difficult for the executives to persuade subordinates to put their plans into action or accept criticism. For example, because the General Motors chairman has his eyes fixed o n an o u t m o d e d structure that is no longer appropriate, he finds it difficult to c o m p e t e with J a p a n e s e and G e r m a n car manufacturers.
Figure 2 C h i e f E x e c u t i v e s : D i f f e r i n g Pictures
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Observational Studies
Media Reports
1. Unstructured: fragmented, ad hoc, brief, unplanned
1. Structured: full of "white knuckle" time awaiting data for quarterly report
2. Devoid of emotion
2. Emotionally charged: executives weeping at having to fire their boss (like Steve Jobs at Apple)
3. Absence of drama
3. Charged with drama: flamboyant moments in board meetings when the chairman declares "VICTORY"
4. Superiors are courtly and accept "noise" and criticism from subordinates
4. Subordinates don't speak back; in many cases they don't speak at all
5. Nothing is said about telephone calls at home
5. Much of the vital business is done by telephone after or out of hours
6. Executives live in an "expletive deleted" environment---a "gee whiz, oh!" environment
6. The language of the executive suite sounds like a bunch of marines waiting to go into battle
7. An abstemious atmosphere; no sign of the liquor cabinet.
7. As our famous chairman used to ask, "Where's the booze?"
Business Horizons /January-February 1993
Consultants are often brought in to an organization to help identify its culture and get behind the myths that are keeping it from adapting to meet the reality of situations. As Zaleznik argues, it is important for chief executives to remain objective and have the capacity to look at the world as it is. Roger Smith a n d General Motors Roger B. Smith, former chief executive officer of General Motors, restructured the corporation in January 1984. Great hopes were expressed that the company was going to achieve a turnaround. Smith envisioned two supergroups (big and small cars) that would allow a more effective method for designing, engineering, and manufacturing cars. Unfortunately, General Motors is n o w going through a very difficult passage: its market share has dwindled considerably, profits are down, and Ford and Chrysler have moved more effectively into the market. Roger Smith argues that GM lost market share because the company had to switch from manufacturing large rear-wheel-drive cars to mid-sized front-wheel-drive models. His critics argue that the problems are much more serious and relate to material labor and overhead costs in automobile production. Unfortunately, Smith would not adjust to the idea that General Motors had been losing market share. He began to shift General Motors away from automobile manufacturing to other areas. General Motors subsequently acquired Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Aircraft in an effort to diversify. here is a new breed of CEOs out there w h o are no longer preoccupied with a favorable trade balance or even manufacturing in America, but with ensuring the survival of their organizations. These new executives scorn loyalty in favor of market leadership, profits, and a high stock price. Their view is that change is the only constant in society, which casts them as global explorers in search of joint ventures with other companies. They are no longer involved in social concerns outside their areas of business but are up to their eyeballs in the nitty-gritty of the business.They are learning to deal with paradox and uncertainty and are focusing on back-to-the-basics. They are vitally preoccupied with the market. To put this new style of CEO in context, it is necessary to reflect on the fact that American chief executives had it easy in the 30 years following World War II. German and Japanese in- ! dustries, destroyed by the Allies, could not compete effectively with the United States. In such circumstances, marketing didn't matter so much,
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Chief ExecutiveBehavior:Classical and Existential
and Henry Ford's philosophy, "Give them any color they want as long as it's black," applied in many cases. With the b o o m markets of the 1960s gone, however, chief executives have to focus more on what customers are 'demanding. Beginning in the late 1970s after the U.S. dollar began its swings, the oil market caused inflation and interest rates to soar. As a result, businesses became a lot more difficult to manage than before. With the invasion of foreign goods, market share has taken precedence over all other considerations because maintaining market share becomes synonymous with survival. Unfortunately, most studies of chief execufives have little to say about the context in which managers actually operate (see F i g u r e 2). They focus instead on the idea of the managerial job being ad hoc, fragmented, and of brief duration. Most chief executives today, by contrast, would argue that they have an obsession, an existential preoccupation with market leadership, profits, and that high stock price. CI References Gordon W. Allport, Personali(y: A Psychological Interpretation (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1937). John Carey and Emily T. Smith, "The Pepsi Generation Heads for the Comer Office," Business Week, September 25, 1989, p. 170. Sune Carlson, Executive Bebaviour (New York: Arno Press, 1979). Teresa Carson and John A. Byme, "Fast Track Kids," Business Week, November 10, 1986, pp. 90-92. Ernest Dale and Lyndall E Urwick, Staff in Organization (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960). Peter Drucker, "Our Entrepreneurial Economy," HarvardBusiness Retn'ew,January-February 1984, pp. 5964. Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1984).
A.B. Ibrahim and Joe Kelly, "Leadership Style at the Policy Level," Journal of General Management, 11, 3 (1986): 37-46. John B. Judis, "The Guru Who Forgot What He Said," London Sunday Times Business World, 1990. Joe Kelly, How Managers Manage (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1980). Joe Kelly, Is ScientificManagement Possible? (London: Faber & Faber, Ltd., 1968).
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Joe Kelly, Organizational Behavior: Its Data, First Principles, and Applications (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1980).
Henry Mintzberg, "Planning On The Left Side and Managing on The Right," Harvard Business Review, July-August 1976, pp. 49-58.
Joe Kelly and A.Bakr Ibrahim, "Executive Behavior: Its Facts, Fictions, and Paradigms," Business Horizons, March-April 1991, pp. 27-36.
Frank Rose, West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer (New York: Viking, 1989).
Joe Kelly and A.B. Ibrahim, "Making Participation Productive," in David I. Cleland, ed., Matrix Management Systems Handbook (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1984), pp. 692-713.
A.P. Sloan, My Years With General Motors (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1964). Thomas A. Stewart, "GE Keeps Those Ideas Coming," Fortune, August 12, 1991, p. 40.
John P. Kotter, The General Managers (New York: The Free Press, 1982).
Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Norton, 1947).
John E Kotter, "What Effective General Managers Really Do," Harvard Business Review, November-December 1982, pp. 156-167.
Thomas J. Watson, Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond (New York: Bantam Books, 1990).
Carol J. Loomis, "Can John Akers Save IBM?" Fortune, July 15, 1991, pp. 40-56. Thomas J. Lueck, "Why Jack Welch Is Changing GE," New York Times, Business Section, May 5, 1985, p. 1. Fred Luthans, "Successful Versus Effective Real Managers," Academy of Management Executive, 2, 2 (1988): 127-132.
William H. Whyte, Jr., "How Hard Do Executives Work?" Fortune, January 1954, pp. 108-111. William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956). Abraham Zaleznik, "The Leadership Gap," Academy of Management Executive, February 1990, pp. 7-22.
Michael Maccoby, The Gamesmen: The New Corporate Leaders (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1976). Henry Mintzberg, "The Manager At Work: Determining His Activities, Roles and Programs by Structured Observation," Ph.D. dissertation, Sloan School of Management, Massachusettes Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., 1968. Henry Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work (New York: Harper and Row, 1973).
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Joe Kelly isa professor of m a n a g e m e n t at Concordla University, Montreal. This article isfrom his forthcoming book, Fact Against Fiction of Executive Behavior: A
Critical Analysis of What Managers Do, to be published by Quorum In 1993.
Business Horizons / January-February 1993