ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT STYLE
| Published date | 01 January 1971 |
| Date | 01 January 1971 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055190 |
| Pages | 12-20 |
| Author | Alan Fox |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
PERSONNEL REVIEW
ORGANISATIONAL
DESIGN AND
MANAGEMENT STYLE
Alan Fox
The Concept of Management Style
Since the notion of "management style" can be
defined in different ways, I need to make clear at the
outset how I propose to use it. It is sometimes meant to
refer to no more than the manager's personal mode of
behaviour—to the ways in which he conducts his imme-
diate social relations with colleagues and subordinates.
How does he give orders, seek advice, bestow praise or
blame? There is an abundance of literature devoted to
what might be called the tactics of face-to-face relation-
ships.
Much of it is hardly above the level of Dale
Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People,
but some provide insight that is valuable for anyone
involved in leadership and authority relations. I shall,
however, refer to it only in passing, not because I want
to disparage it, but because I want to use the notion of
management style in the much broader sense of an over-
all strategy for organisational design. Under this usage,
style refers to management in one of its most funda-
mental dimensions—namely its responsibility for the
design and mode of functioning of the organisation
through which management hopes to achieve its pur-
poses.
These are broad abstractions: let me try to be more
specific. By "design and mode of functioning" I mean
such aspects as job definition and specifications; the
nature and degree of division of labour; the distribution
of decision-making roles; the nature of authority rela-
tions;
the system of rewards and punishments; the nature
of the flow of communications; the methods of handling
whatever stresses, strains or conflicts are perceived as
existing within the organisation, and indeed the very
manner in which such conflict is defined by those in
management positions. Differences between organisa-
tions in these respects, and between different strata or
different sectors within an organisation, can be charac-
terised as embodying different styles of management.
These styles may well include the purely inter-personal
modes and manners that we noted at the outset, but in
the sense in which we are using the term here, they go
far beyond them to encompass the "structural" features
that I have enumerated. What we are recognizing, there-
fore,
is simply that a "style" is implicit not only in the
way top leadership behaves in face-to-face relations, but
in the way it designs jobs, decision-making systems,
authority relations, and all the other aspects of the
social system which "structures" the behaviour of the
members of the organisation.
Current Discussion of Styles
In order to justify giving time to this theme, it only
needs to be remembered that during the past two or
three decades a keen discussion has been developing
about styles of management in this sense;1 that we are
being urged by the predominant voices in the debate to
adopt one particular style; that some large organisations
are heeding these voices, and therefore all of us who
are interested in organisational behaviour need to take
stock, now and then, of the current state of play. I
would therefore like to recall the general nature of the
discussion; to suggest some of the forces which are
generating it; and to evaluate the particular style which
is being urged upon us.
It may help to identify this field of theorising if we
take preliminary note of some of the terms in which it
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