The extent to which personnel handles recruitment varies among companies, but in almost all large ones it will recruit all candidates for rank-and-file jobs, plant, or office, and for some of the lower and middle management jobs as well. As one goes up the line, the line managers are likely to take on more of the recruitment task.
American organizational theorist (1917-1996)
Ernest Dale (Febr. 4, 1917 - Aug. 16, 1996) was a German-born American organizational theorist, Professor in Business Administration at and the , and consultant, known for his early work on comparative management theory in the 1960s. He was board member with Olivetti, Upjohn and Renault, and consulted companies such as Du Pont, I.B.M. and Unilever.
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Every manager, up to the president of the company, must handle some phases of staffing, even though personnel may provide at least technical help in every case... Again, the personnel department seldom makes the final decision on selection, except in cases where large numbers of people must be hired at one time and the line managers would not have the time to interview them all. More commonly, even in the case of rank-and-file employees, it merely screens the applicants and picks out a few whom it considers the most promising. Then the immediate supervisors make a choice among these few.
The administrative unit that usually covers the company as a whole as well as all Its plants is broken Into smaller administrative units — often on a geographical or product basis. Each is headed by a manager who may be compared to the head of a smaller enterprise. Usually he has fairly complete control over basic line functions; if he also has staff services, such as accounting, engineering, research, and personnel. the unit may be largely self- contained.
A list of major management functions and their contents may be helpful in reorganization and in preparation of job descriptions, organization manuals, and charts. The major management functions, analyzed in this Appendix on the basis of a number of manuals, job descriptions, and interviews, are as follows:
This section will deal with the mechanics of organization—the actual processes or methods of creating and changing the company's organization structure. The problem is essentially that of best utilizing the people and resources presently on hand, as contrasted with the building up of an organization from scratch, described in Part I.
In and of itself managerial decentralization is neither desirable nor undesirable. We must apply certain criteria in order to evaluate it. One such criterion is economic efficiency: At what point in the management hierarchy and by what individual is a particular decision made most efficiently? Is a particular function exercised or a service performed more cheaply if it is "centralized" or "decentralized"? It is impossible to say in general that either centralization or decentralization is more efficient.
Organization studies usually are devoted to the study of large-scale enterprise because information about larger companies is generally more widely recorded and more readily available. Because of this, more emphasis needs to be placed on organization planning in the smaller firms. It was at the suggestion of Lt. Colonel Lyndall Urwick that AMA undertook this study of companies of different sizes, as a means of improving our knowledge of organization—a field in which he has made major contributions. Many of the larger companies face small-scale problems in their subsidiaries and small units. However, those starting work in the large firm find it difficult to visualize the evolutionary process on which their company's present operation is based. Therefore, it may be of interest even for large companies to study the various stages of growth, up to and including, of course, their own present stage of development.
The major problems of organization can perhaps best be studied in dynamic terms, i.e., as they arise and change with the evolution of the company. In this dynamic setting the causes and nature of organization problems can be recognized most easily. Each major problem can be analyzed at the stage of the company's growth when it typically arises, when there are few complications and the organizational problem is centered about just one factor or change in the company's mode of operation. Just as it is easier to study the workings of democracy as they arise in one of the small towns of New England rather than in the United States as a whole, so it appears to be desirable, in dealing with a subject of such scope as organization, to isolate and study the major problems individually.
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I find myself just a little annoyed at the tendency of all of us to adopt certain clichés about decentralization and then glibly announce that we're for it. I have been somewhat amused at some of my colleagues who are most vocal in expounding the virtues of decentralization and yet quite unconsciously are apt to be busily engaged in developing their own personal control over activities for which they are responsible.