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Title: Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation by Phillip Selznick, Philip Selznick ISBN: 0-520-04994-2 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: January, 1984 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: Basic concepts as mission and distinctive competences
Comment: I enjoyed reading Selznick's book since his perception of the organization development is precise and straightforward. His intention is to demonstrate how the mere mechanical process does not stand for the survival of the organizations and moreover that the need of values and leadership will be the basic strength in the institution's perpetuation. In this sense he rejects Simon's approach sharply, since for Selznick the realm of values is not apart, but in the core of the enterprise's success, considering the positivist scope too narrow. While describing how the sustaining principles provide a fruitful field for the development of institutions he states outstanding concepts as mission and distinctive competence. On the other hand the argument he provides is obviously the basis for strategic analysis of internal strengths and weaknesses and external limitations and opportunities.
I am impressed by the lucid comments he makes regarding the relevance of institutional leadership in achieving institutional integrity. Even though, he states he will explore the nature of large organizations I tend to think his insight is applicable to any organization, not mattering the size. This is because his analysis is somehow the extension of an individual analysis and because of the general validity of his remarks. I can even imagine a small shop in the street whose principles will drive all phases of management and therefore create a distinctive competence.
His description of leadership styles is not only deep, but also appealing. When he distinguishes between foxes and lions, quoting Pareto and Machiaveli, defining with these images the innovative and the maintainer, one may find close examples of each kind. Each type having a role in different stages of the enterprise, the foxes as the creators of the institution and the lions as the controllers of the institution. I can think at least of an immediate use of this wonderful distinction, in a classroom using the case method. For this case as a pedagogical tool it would be interesting to confront both individuals, helping them to learn from each other and making them aware of their different capacities.
Selznick starts stating his argument, which is that "the executive becomes a statesman as he makes the transition form administrative management to institutional leadership". To begin with he analyses the perspective of an organization seen as an institution. While an organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities, an institution is a responsive adaptive organism; the former is an instrument while the latter is natural product of social needs. Within the organizations there are social pressures seen through the informal structure and in rivalry among units so one of the objectives of management is to control and direct this social pressures resulting in an adaptive change. However; if the organization is to endure there should exist development of administrative ideologies or doctrine, the protection of elites to create and protect these values and the protection of identity of contending groups. These issues provide grounds for the institutionalization process, reflecting the organization's particular history in the way it has adapted to its environment. When this process occurs for the committed individual the organization changes from a tool to a source of personal satisfaction. As an organization acquires a distinctive identity, it becomes an institution. This process takes values, ways of acting and believing that are deemed important for their own sake and goes far beyond survival. Accordingly the institutional leader will be an expert in the promotion and protection of values.
On a first level organizations must run efficiently, which is a technical task, done by experts, but this is not enough for the organization to adapt to internal and external pressures and to become an institution. Beyond this routine level there is a critical experience, to define ends, to design distinctively adaptive enterprises and to see this design become reality. However, this leadership is dispensable when the range of alternatives is limited by rigid technical criteria.
From the study of character and limitations of an organization emerges its distinctive competence that is the key element in the organization's generation. It emerges in the formation of an institution upon decision of value commitments that fix the nature of the enterprise, its distinctive aims, methods and role in the community. These critical decisions are the policy in its broader sense, where leadership is the driving in choosing key values and creating the structure that embodies them. Administration is of course necessary but the areas where creative men are needed are the ones where the need is to transform a neutral body of men into a committed polity, this is the leader's role. The leaders are permanently called to perform definition of mission, institutional embodiment of porpouse, defense of institutional integrity and ordering of internal conflict. Selznik then analyzes these tasks deeper.
In this critical decision sense and organization may ask itself: What shall we do? and what shall we be? These hard to answer questions will give as an answer the mission of the institution. For its definition leaders must take in account the internal state of policy as well as the external expectations, the former is to consider how will the interest groups within influence the outcome and the latter is how the enterprise tests its environment regarded as a whole. However, in an organization where ends are given, technology will be enough for decision making, but when on the contrary ends are not given but influenced by the external and external forces the process must be controlled and perceived with awareness. On the other hand the mission cannot be adequately defined if its methods and its place among organizations is not defined, this is the organization's role. Nevertheless; these realms are impossible to bind absolutely, that is why leadership is needed to steer a course through uncharted waters.
In the process of transforming an organization into an institution the porpouse must be built into the social structure. In this sense policy is rooted in the daily experience and saved from distortion by extended lines of communication. This process of embodiment of porpouse is not separated form the mission definition, both are identification of opportunities and limitation in terms of self knowledge, determining how far leadership ca or must go in order to change the nature of organization. The problem will be to determine which limitations are unavoidable and which are to be altered to create the institutional conditions for achieving the goals assumed. The process of building a structure is devised by the setting of roles, tasks, procedures and lines of communication, must control internal interest groups, being a source of energy by being not fully controllable and it must provide social stratification accordingly. The leaders must also consider regarding the structure process the system of believes shared by participants, the particular dimension of membership, and the structural dependency. All these elements taken together will be the filter through which policy is communicated.
There are certain problems that characterize phases of organizational history. These are the selection of a social base, regarding customers as well as workers, to build the institutional core by choosing the members that will be the doers of the policy, and formalization of procedure according to policy. The sensitivity to history by the planner will make him modify the institutional structure in order to take advantage of changes in risk and opportunities. On the other hand outstanding stages in the history of institutions are personnel crisis and development stages in which different types of leader will be necessary. This is the image of the fox and the lion, mentioned before. Another outstanding stage is the issue of decentralization and social integration. In this sense the need for centralization decreases as personnel homogeneity increases. Hence, decentralization will be possible then after the centralization has provided uniformity as far s policy interpretation is concerned.
Effective policy is most important when aims are not well defined, when external direction is not easily imposed and when goals and values are easily corruptible. Then it comes the defense of the institution's social integrity, which is the persistence of the organization's distinctive values, competence and goals. For de maintenance of institutional integrity the elite group responsible of policy must be kept carefully and formed by homogeneous individuals and kept autonomous, but especially enforce their power where values are weak. This elite autonomy leads us away form rigid rules and helps us identify key elements that need to be controlled, therefore; helping us determine which guiding principles can be set forth. The defense of integrity is therefore not only a matter of organizational survival it is the mission, the policy and the special capabi
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