Page 224 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Understanding the ‘human’ dimension of change
of managerial assumptions about employees and the implications of them for
management and job design strategies. These assumptions and the implications
are set out as follows.

‘Rational–economic man’
The rational–economic model is clearly associated with the principles of ‘scien-
tific management’ and, historically, its approach is founded in the early decades
of the twentieth century. The model assumes that people evaluate the outcomes
of different courses of action and select the one which maximizes the benefit
they receive, i.e. they exercise rational judgement based on economic criteria.
This general assumption can be broken down into the following eight specific
assumptions about employees:

1 Employees are primarily motivated by economic incentives and will pursue
those activities which result in the greatest economic benefit.
2 Employees are passive and can be manipulated, motivated and controlled by
management, since management control economic incentives.
3 Feelings are essentially irrational and must be prevented from interfering with
the rational calculation of self-interest.
4 Organizations should be designed so that people’s feelings, and hence their
unpredictability, are controlled and neutralized.
5 People are inherently lazy and must be motivated by external incentives.
6 People’s own goals run counter to those of the organization and external forces
are needed to channel efforts towards organizational goals.
7 People are incapable of self-control and self-discipline because of irrational
feelings.
8 People can be divided into two groups: those who fit these assumptions,
and those who are self-motivated, self-controlled and less dominated by
their feelings. This second group must assume responsibility for managing
the others.

The main thrust of these assumptions is that emotions have no place in man-
agement–employee relationships and must be prevented from interfering in the
work situation. This implies a management strategy of financial and economic
rewards for the employee’s contribution and a system of authority, controls and
punishment to protect the organization and the employee from irrational feel-
ings (the ‘control’ model described earlier).
In the field of work design the main emphasis is on efficient task performance,
since this leads to the greatest economic benefit. Rules and procedures must be
established, and methods of improvement sought, so as to achieve maximum
efficiency and it must be possible to identify shortcomings so that incentives or
punishments can be used to correct the situation. Provided that the method of
working is specified, and employees conform to it, adequate motivation and out-
put will be ensured by manipulating rewards and punishments, and using ade-
quate supervision.

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