Production/Operations Management

Author(s): George J. Gore

Source: The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr., 1976), pp. 130-132
Published by: Academy of Management
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/257496 .
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 130
nent use for its teachable combination of the
strategy concept and case materials selected to
support it.
George Steiner was among the earliest to
write in the area of long range planning. His early
books were devoted more to description of plan-
ning systems than to the development of norma-
tive models of strategic planning. Steiner's Top
Management Planning (Macmillan, 1969) takes
a more normative view in Part II where it devel-
ops a process for corporate planning and in Part
III where it suggests tools useful for rational de-
cision-making and by implication for a rational
or normative corporate planning approach.
Ansoff, Robert Hayes and Roger Declerck,
editors of a forthcoming book of papers collect-
ed from the "first" international conference on
strategic management, illustrate their purpose in
the title: From Strategic Planning to Strategic
Management, (John Wiley, forthcoming 1976).
The important strategic management tasks of top
management are now being recognized and de-
fined. These tasks go beyond planning, as the de-
scriptive stream would agree. This new book, es-
pecially the article by the editors, helps define
those tasks more carefully.
Descriptive Models - A major book in the
descriptive stream is the collection of papers
edited by Raymond Bauer and Kenneth Gergen,
The Study of Policy Formation (The Free Press,
1968). An important message throughout the
book is the need for gaining greater understand-
ing of complex policy formation processes
through empirical research. The limitations and
uses of formal models for optimal policy forma-
tion are also developed.
Charles Lindblom, in his short monograph,
The Policy-Making Process (Prentice-Hall, 1968),
examines public policy formation and concludes
that the rational or "synoptic" approach fails to
apply. To Lindblom, a political scientist, manag-
ers must "muddle through" or practice "dis-
jointed incrementalism" because more inclusive
models are too complicated and unrealistic to be
useful to the practitioner.
Book Reviews
Joseph Bower's Managing the Resource Al-
location Process (Division of Research, Harvard,
1970), among other findings from an intensive
study of capital allocation in a single major com-
pany, suggests that normative financial and eco-
nomic models of capital allocation are not neces-
sarily used, nor would they be predictive of de-
cisions actually made. The allocation process is
far more complex and uncertain than the econo-
mist's normative models would suggest. Whether
Bower's findings would hold over a wider range
of organizations is an unanswered question;
nevertheless, his conclusions are provocative in
their implications for the normative model build-
er.
Finally, Henry Mintzberg's The Nature of
Managerial Work (Harper and Row, 1973), based
on extensive literature and field research, de-
scribes the job of the (higher level) manager in
terms of job characteristics, basic roles per-
formed and how tasks are accomplished. The
taxonomy is as interesting as the empirical de-
scription of what managers do. What they do,
according to Mintzberg, is to fill a wide range of
roles with a wide range of contingency modes of
operation, not all of which are highly "rational."
Any normative model builder who ignores
the message of real-world complexity in these
four books will overlook important insights into
gaining greater relevancy and realism. On the
other hand, the descriptive research risks the
bias that comes from subjectivity and the limited
samples that are a part of descriptive field re-
search. There is no reason to be in one stream
without understanding the contributions of the
other.
Dan Schendel
Purdue University
Production/Operations Management
While no one significant text is omnipotent
in 1976, production/operations management is
not a static field. Professors should make their
own evaluations from the inner circle of best sel-
 Academy of Management Review - April 1976
lers since it is sometimes advisable to dethrone a
long-used author in favor of a newcomer. Three
voices with different accents have been selected
for this review since a book will be effective only
to the extent that its treatment is consistent with
the needs of the user. The three have different
approaches - orthodox, quantitative and be-
havioral.
Orthodox - RichardB. Chase and Nicholas
Aquilano, in their Production and Operations
Management (Richard D. Irwin, 1973), have de-
veloped a well-balanced and comprehensive,
intermediate-level text which treats safe and fa-
miliarsubjects with a new "life cycle" twist. What
emerges is a readable smorgasbordwith mass ap-
peal.
Production and Operations Management is
divided, somewhat unevenly, into the following
seven sections with the number of related chap-
ters in parentheses: Selection of the Product (1);
Design of the System (9); Manning the System
(2); Startup of the System (1); The System in
Steady State (3); Revision of the System (1); and
Terminationof the System (1).
The unifying theme, the "life cycle" idea,
seems valid and laudable. Indeed, it comes close
to exemplifying an ideal approach. The authors
realisticallytreat the productive system as a col-
lection of dynamic rather than static entities,
providing a systematic analysis of a product in
each interrelated stage from birth to death.
Level-headed and pragmatic, this solid text
should fit into either a rock-bottom undergrad-
uate course in P/OM or, geared up, could be a
perspective-giving guide in an introductory
graduate offering. An ideal application might be
for a one-shot, potent course required of gradu-
ate students majoring in other fields of business
administration, industrial relations, or econom-
ics.
While the text is most alert to the technical
necessities of managing a production operation,
it also treats the larger social and environmental
parameters which temper most managerialdeci-
sions today. As with other P/OM volumes, the
131
specifics provide the worth of the book more
than the abstract theorizing.
Quantitative -In the introductory chapter
to his Production and Operations Management
(McGraw-Hill, 1975), Richard P. Mayer discusses
his approach - an interrelated system with ex-
cursions involving production, marketing, fi-
nance, and personnel relations. He firmly be-
lieves that what is done in any one of these areas
will have an effect on the others just as he feels
that a P/OM text should include activities related
to the provision of both goods and services. The
author states that all operations personnel have
the basic responsibilities of producing the firm's
products or services in such a way that they ful-
fill the requirements for quantity, quality, com-
pletion and delivery deadlines, and do these
things in the most economical manner. Hence,
the topics chosen are appropriately related to
the primary responsibilities of an operations
manager, and the heart of the book is predicta-
bly limited to specific, production activities.
Areas covered include informative and un-
pretentious discussions of the performance and
limitations of production planning; production
control; quality control; methods analysis; ma-
terials handling; plant layout; inventory control;
work measurement; and wage incentives. On
the whole, Mayer has produced a reasonable
and balanced indoctrination into P/OM. This one
should probably be used in a beginning gradu-
ate level course in business.
Behavioral - Arthur C. Laufer's Operations
Management (Southwestern Publishing, 1975)
sketches a broad view of the different functions
of producing the products or services of an en-
terprise. His forte is the behavioral element in
operations management; the material is most
convincing in the areas of manpower, ergonom-
ics, work measurement, and decision making. It
may be revealing that the word "production"
does not appear in the title.
Laufer launches the work with a probing
historical overview of management and pro-
ceeds to the operations function and systems
 132
approach. He is to be praised on at least two ac-
counts. First, the section on decision making
contains the role of computers; probability as
well as economics and accounting models; and
decisions under certainty, risk, and uncertainty.
Second, the two chapters on quantitative models
also contain various methods and are fairly easy
to understand despite their brevity.
It is an easy - if not impressive - tour
through operations management. Since many
subjects are touched upon with little depth, it
may appeal most to those on the fringe of the
field. But this is a general text and cannot be
thorough. While it may have a limited audience,
it would probably be appropriate for an "ex-
posure" course at the junior or senior level. A
professor with behavioral leanings might feel it
fills a vacuum.
George J. Gore
University of Cincinnati
Organizational Communication
Three books stand out as significant and
representative contributions to the field of or-
ganizational communication.
The first is William V. Haney's Communica-
tion and Organizational Behavior: Text and
Cases, 3rd ed. (Homewood, Illinois: Richard D.
Irwin, Inc., 1973). As the title implies, it is built
on the major thesis that organizational behavior
and communication are inextricably interwoven.
In addition, a basic premise is that communica-
tion is not limited to speaking, debating, writing,
or listening. Rather, communication subsumes
all these activities and others as well. Communi-
cation, as Haney treats it, focuses on all modes of
human interchange including processes associ-
ated with "thinking" as well as processes associ-
ated with "communicating".
To this end, the author develops a three part
text. Part I establishes a linkage between the cli-
mate of the organization and the communication
that transpires within it. Part II presents the be-
havioral basis of communication, opening with
Book Reviews
the role of perception, continuing with the
unique relationship between motivation and
communication, and ending with a communica-
tion model. Part III, the longest section in the
text, may be the most original and provocative.
Here the author discusses "Patterns of Miscom-
munications". Drawing on underlying assump-
tions of General Semantics Theory, Haney cre-
ates an almost mirror-like assemblage of chap-
ters into which the student can gaze with
thoughtful introspection. What the student sees
will be at once disturbing and enlightening; dis-
turbing, because the student sees his or her own
behavior vividly portrayed with all its inconsist-
encies, frailities, and failures; and enlightening,
because the student concludes this introspec-
tion mindful of the tools with which his or her
own behavior can be modified.
The second book is Lee Thayer's Communi-
cation and Communication Systems in Organiza-
tion, Management, and Interpersonal Relations
(Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, Inc.,
1968). This book presents a most unique concept
of communication. In the first few chapters Thay-
er develops his concept and then extracts from it
a host of logical and consistent implications.
Thayer begins by disavowing the notion that
communication is something going on between
the "sender" and "receiver". Instead, he argues
that communication is best thought of as "the
organism taking something into account". This
concept puts the emphasis on the receiver rather
than the sender. It suggests that the "something"
the receiver takes into account is only partially
determined by the sender. Also at work are the
unique take-into-account-abilities of the re-
ceiver. Hence the sender must first understand
the nature of these take-into-account-abilities
before making intelligent use of the array of
communication techniques available.
If communication is "the organism taking
something into account", then organizations do
not communicate, only persons in organizations.
Similarly, it makes little sense to expect the data
system to communicate. Data systems merely