Top Down: Why Hierarchies are Here to Stay and How
In spite of all the talk about flatter, looser organisations, top down hierarchies are - and always will be inevitable in the business world. But there are ways to make the hierarchical structure more humane for the people who work in them. This book shows how It argues that every organization today even those that "disguise" themselves as open or flat structures are still hierarchies. Rather than resisting this reality, this is book offers managers realistic ways to "tame" hierarchies to make them more humane, egalitarian places to work. "Top Down" is particularly vacuous commentary on authoritarian hierarchies, as exhibited by corporate America. First, the author wants to make the overwhelmingly obvious point that American corporations are undemocratic hierarchies and that no outbreak of democracy is going to occur anytime soon. Apparently, those comments are meant for idealistic academics, because working people are well aware of the continuing master/slave nature of corporations. Secondly, the author continually flip-flops between discussing hierarchies as authoritarian control structures and as a means of organizing tasks; those are two distinct subjects. Democratic governance does not preclude hierarchies or other organizational forms. Speaking of corporations primarily as hierarchies and not as bastions of authoritarianism verges on dishonesty. Curiously, the author readily admits that authoritarian hierarchies are un-American in their disenfranchisement of people and in subjecting them to a control regime little better than a ruthlessly run feudal estate. Corporate America infantilizes employees, creating fear, dependency, and conformity. The much heralded claim of efficiency is gained at a high cost: the reduction of intelligent beings to timid, tunnel-vision followers. It can hardly be ignored that corporations are constantly going off track, making bad decisions, if not engaging in criminal activities. Perhaps thinking, empowered employees could head off such disasters, even if less "efficient."
Management, unlike other subjects such as economics, philosophy, political science is of a recent origin and hence, a relatively new subject. Being an evolving concept (George 1972), it is still in its developing stage. So far as the meaning of management is concerned, like other socio-economic terms, it has also been defined differently by different authorities. As a result, there is no single definition on the term but many. We do not have unified views on what management is precisely. The following are a few of the important definitions of the term ‘management’. Mary Parker Follett views, “Management is the art of getting things done through people (Follett 1941).” According to Henri Fayol (1949) who is considered the father of principles of administrative management, “To manage is to forecast, to plan, to organize, to command, to co-ordinate, and to control.” In the opinion of Fredrick Winslow Taylor (1947), “Management is knowing exactly what you want men to do and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way.” According to George R. Terry (1953), “Management is a distinct process consisting of planning, organizing, actuating, and controlling performance to determine and accomplish the objectives by the use of people and resources.” Peter F. Drucker opines, “Management is a multi-purpose organ that manages business, manages manager and manages workers and work (Drucker 1970).”