AFFECTIONATE MANAGEMENT part 4

Chapter-Two

Affectionate Management

Since the dawn of civilization, the finest achievements of the collective human mind are recognized as Philosophy, Religion, Science and Art. Religion gives extraordinary meanings to ordinary events. Science gives ordinary explanations to extraordinary events. Art makes the ordinary appear extraordinary. And Philosophy differentiates between the ordinary and the extraordinary.There is no point in getting into a futile debate over whether management is a Science or Art.

Management should not be systematized as a Religion, with a few faiths, blind beliefs and high priests of management ruling the roost. The Philosophy of management ought to have enough discretion to discern the ordinary practices giving out extraordinary outputs and extraordinary performances for the overall good of the ordinary people. The philosophy of Management always determines the practice of Management.

As there are various schools of Philosophy, there are as many management philosophies in vogue, which in turn crystallize the organizational goals, aims and objectives and streamline the processes of achieving them. The measure of achievement is normally assessed in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Efficient Management depends upon the organizational structure and systems. Effective management depends upon the individual styles of managers. Whereas, Affectionate Management by definition depends on the people; their individual and collective achievement, enlightenment and empowerment.

Efficient Management can become ruthless in its obsession for achieving the performance parameters, sometimes even crushing the human element in favour of organizational preferences. Effective management has the tendency to motivate people, convincing them, that organizational interests are more valuable than the personal interests of the people in the organization. Such management philosophies, very widespread in application at present, are making the science of management more stressful, and the art of managing too abstract to be meaningful. In organizations, where efficiency and effectiveness is a religion, performance alone is the philosophy and the science of inviolable systems control the human efforts, management becomes a mindless routine of a modern version of primitive art. In the process, the human resources of the organization get robotized and become subordinate to the interests of the non-living parts of the organization such as material, machinery and money.

Tom Peters and Rober H.Waterman Jr, in their book In Search of Excellence noted, “the excellent companies treat the rank and file as the root source of quality and productivity gain. They do not foster we / they labour attitudes or regard capital investment as the fundamental source of efficiency improvement.

Affectionate Management advocates that the living part of the organization, the people, should have a priority over everything else, because the enrichment of people and their evolution into a higher plane of empowerment makes the organization sustain itself eternally and performance becomes the art of living with joy rather than the science of stress and strain.