These are what we have believed.
To become successful, a business ought to imitate the strategies and tactics of existing firms. Following an organization that is already successful ought to spare one from the pain and cost of failure. To improve processes, causes of defects ought to be identified and removed. This makes perfect sense. To achieve efficiency, old ways ought to be torn and discarded. To be competitive, one ought to focus on the single thing that one does better than others. To ensure organizational buy-in, important decisions ought to be made with the concurrence of everybody in the group. To rally employees toward a common goal, objectives ought to be defined.
Management fads are defined as “relatively transitory collective beliefs, disseminated by management fashion setters.” Fads can also be seen as “managerial interventions that appear to be innovative, rational, and functional and are aimed at encouraging better organization performance.”
Most of the time, fads are implemented on the strength of their popularity at a particular time rather than to address any real organizational need. Often, these are arbitrarily initiated by management with hardly any inputs from employees.
Adopting best practices sounds promising, but it usually doesn’t work. Successful companies are unique. It is wishful to believe that what worked for them will also work for you. One ends up copying a strategy that might not be congruent to one’s industry or company. Besides, the company that is being copied may have moved on and adopted a new and different strategy.
Awarding “karate”-inspired belts sounds novel. It encourages managers to achieve relevant skill levels to ensuring quality across the organization. But the corresponding complication of the review process, through endless meetings, defeats its primary purpose. Business process reengineering sounds revolutionary. But changing a machine while it is running is clear lunacy. In the end, it is a justification for firing employees and giving the work to consultants.
From an ethical and humanistic perspective, management by consensus is ideal. But this is true only for trivial issues. For crucial issues, members would tend not to go against the perceived sentiment of the group. As a result, a unanimous decision is reached, yet despised by all.
While identifying one’s core competence is not bad in itself, companies are often clueless about what it is. And when they do, the natural tendency is to overvalue. Focusing on one’s competence based on past performance limits one’s adaptability. In many cases, the competence is not relevant anymore.
Setting objectives is always a good start. Management by objectives is not a bad idea. By advocating goal setting at all levels of the organization, it makes performance easy to track and quantify. In practice, however, this often degenerates into paperwork nightmare. The processes of planning and evaluating work take more effort than the work itself. And besides, most objectives are only intended to look good on paper.
According to a classic Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, fads are adopted by organizations primarily as a result of “environmental pressures and forces for conformity.” In “Spotting Management Fads,” some tell-tale signs of a management fad are identified.
Fads are easy to understand and communicate. They tell managers what to do. And because the actions points are easy, they are easily misinterpreted and used in the wrong context. They are usually positioned as a panacea for management dilemmas. As a result, they “promise outcomes such as greater effectiveness, more motivated and productive workers, and deeply satisfied customers.” Fact is, they are better at raising hopes than delivering results.
Moreover, fads seldom gain credibility through empirical evidence, but by the status and prestige of their proponents or followers. These include consultants, management gurus, business schools and business mass-media publications.
For the faithful, management by God is a recent fad. The company is in the hands of God. To be successful, management ought to seek the will of God. All management decisions are to be aligned with God’s laws. Through mandatory prayer meetings and scripture reading, managers seek divine inspiration. In practice, however, the voice of God that the manager hears is his own voice serving his own interests.
Like religion, belief in management fads is a matter of faith.
Real Carpio So lectures on strategy and human resource management at the Management and Organization Department of the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business of De La Salle University. He is also an entrepreneur and a management consultant. He welcomes comments at [email protected]. Archives can be accessed at realwalksonwater.wordpress.com. The views expressed above are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of DLSU, its faculty and its administrators.