> One of the ideological underpinnings of the Government's approach to
> the world in general and to voluntary organisations in particular is a
> belief in the power of the business model of managing human affairs
> that has been developed in and for the for-profit sector.  It's been
> obvious to anyone but the managerial zealots for a long time that the
> model does not translate to public services or to any form of "human
> service" organisation or to voluntary agencies. But we now have
> growing evidence that it is not particularly suitable for the
> corporations that have developed and embraced it.

> Check out some of the columns on management written by Simon Caulkin
> for the business section of the Observer. The flavour of his critique
> of the prevailing orthodoxy can be sampled by looking at some of the
> ways he ahs headlined his contributions:

> * "Command, control ... and you ultimately fail"

> * "A refreshing tip for 2008: tear up the text book" and

> * "X factor meant business schools were sure to fail".

> Caulkin's columns have generated a great deal of e-mail traffic which
> has influenced the development of his thinking about management to the
> point at which he feels that there is an "Observer's guide to
> management - a bit like the paper's style guide, a practical, joined-
> up and (I hope) radical way of thinking about the grammar and language
> of management".

> I think it is worth quoting what he goes on to say at length:

> What does The Observer's model of management look like? Well, it
> doesn't much resemble anything taught at business schools (with one or
> two honourable exceptions). As befits its origins, it begins with the
> customer, and is based on systems principles.
> In good Observer tradition, its hostility to the conventional command-
> and-control, targets-and-inspection-driven management regime that
> currently dominates both public and private sectors is based on
> optimism. Human nature is irreducibly self-interested and opportunist,
> the dominant theory runs, and requires hierarchical control to prevent
> people from subverting the organisation to their own ends.
> But myriad reader reactions confirm that humans are not the desiccated
> automatons assumed by the standard model and they despair at the arid
> bureaucratic constraints imposed in its name. On the contrary, people
> long to do a good job and be proud of their work. In turn, it is
> management's job to recognise and reinforce this positive behaviour,
> not just structure their organisations to prevent the negative.
> And, as the feedback shows, they can. First, because, as human and
> intentional rather than mechanical systems, organisations can take
> advantage of human realities ignored by conventional management such
> as self-fulfilling prophecies (trusting systems beget trusting people,
> just as the reverse is true). Second, because the opposite of top-down
> command and control is not bottom-up anarchy, as many assume: it is
> inside-out. If the organisation is built to face outwards, towards the
> customer rather than the chief executive, as at present, hierarchy
> becomes less necessary because it is the customer who exerts the
> discipline.
> This is the opposite of soft and woolly 'people management'. On the
> contrary, where customers can 'pull' what they need from the
> organisation without friction or barriers, wasted effort of all kinds
> can be rigorously stripped out and, critically, the capacity of the
> system increases. Again, readers in public and private sectors have
> shown with hard examples that by abolishing activity targets and
> improving flow through the system, results can be predictably achieved
> that make the targets look laughable.
> Ironically, for all its macho emphasis on hard-nosed 'reality', it is
> conventional management that is a failed experiment in sterile,
> numbers-driven theory.

> I read this account of his model with increasing recognition and
> excitement. Replace the references to "customers" with "users" and/or
> "needs" and it provides a vivid account of how many voluntary agencies
> were run before the introduction of the dead hand of a managerial
> approach which we can now see is not only alien to the organisation of
> voluntary action but also an unsuccessful and discredited method of
> managing in the corporate sector.