Gonjitti Blog
Published on

[Management Behavior] Best Book for Life. Chapter 1: Anatomy of the tissue


Roughly speaking

  1. I got an anatomy of the organization during the New Year holidays. A book that looks like a human body model for a doctor.
  2. Each chapter is heavy, so we will explain it on our blog.
  3. Chapter 1. An overall view of the organization. Five impacts and three decisions within the organization that work for the organization.


Organizational Anatomy


Articles for all chapters are here.


During the New Year holidays, I was working on my first homemade Windows PC, building a development environment, and also fighting against Simon's Management behavior.


This is a book that Simon has continued to update for its entire life, and this time I will introduce the final version of the fourth edition (1997). The basic content remains the same since the first edition (1945), and it has continued to reign as the basis for management organization theory. This book quickly passed away from "PRINCIPLES: Principles of Life and Work (Ray Dario)", which was my best book of life.


Just as human relationships are the main cause of job turnover in companies, the organization's worries never end. In particular, best practices have been found for relationships between superiors and subordinates, and experiential knowledge is sporadic.


Management behavior provides a consistent model for sporadic organizational theory. And I'm amazed at Simon's insight, as the model survived almost unchanged until at least 1997.


After reading management behavior, I felt like I had an anatomy of the organization. Doctors would not be able to work without human body models, but for a doctor, it is nothing but funny to them that they act as businessmen without having an anatomy of an organization.




Each chapter is heavy. Simon, the genius of reasoning


Reading Simon's books is tough. Simon's books are unique in writing, and always tests your logical thinking and reading skills. Simon's book has an unusual style of writing among the writings of many business scholars, and is intended to quell the exactness of concepts and logic. Therefore, the main relation of each sentence is extremely distant, and the content that should originally be illustrated is written in one sentence in a simple sentence. Since I'm going to do this, I'll introduce some text about "determining the value that should be implemented as defined within the organization."


Bentham defined "happiness" in psychological terms, and stated that the word "good" was synonymous with "happiness benefits."

<br/>
<br/>

<Omitted>

<br/>
<br/>

That is, it is the function of expressing that one alternative is morally preferred over the other. While it may be possible to draw the conclusion that people are happier than people in another environment, this does not prove that people should be happier. Aristotle - what is good for humans is to conform humans closer to their true nature as rational animals - suffers from similar limitations.

I think the English sentences are probably similar to those. I think it's amazing to see people who translated Japanese into Japanese. To be honest, I was exhausted just reading a passage, and it made me cry because I continued to go through 550 pages (although it probably won't hurt at all for those who are used to reading it). In this blog, I would like to try to extract the essence and make it relatively easy to read. On the other hand, if you use it as an essence, what Simon wants to convey is omitted. It's worth taking the time to read the finest text, so if you're interested in being there, I would definitely recommend you read it.


We'll start with the next section and begin with the explanation of Chapter 1, but I'd like to briefly review the contents of this book.


Management behavior is intended to provide a complete set of tools for components and concepts in an organization. This book consists of 11 chapters, each chapter covers the following: (By the way, I also have the third edition (1976), but I will introduce the fourth edition this time. The structure and case studies are slightly different, but I would like to introduce them if I have the opportunity.)

  1. Demonstrate the organization's structure and function (relationships between entrepreneurs, employees, advisors, and customers). This is the premise for the following chapters.
  2. Point out problems with general management theory and propose a new definition of management, "improving efficiency," focusing on human limitations.
  3. Introducing the two concepts of judgment given to various subjects, which are used as the basis for decision-making in management, "the factual judgment" and "should" (value judgment), and state that there is one optimal solution to factual judgment, and that there is a need to be handled as subjective opinions are mixed in value judgment, and then point out the risk of expert advice being inherent in expert advice (maybe it?)
  4. Consider the limitations of rationality in management behavior from structural organizational issues.
  5. Consider the limitations of rationality in management behavior from a psychological perspective.
  6. Introducing the tensions that work between an organization and individual, such as how to coordinate the organization's goals with the individual's goals and how to provide the organization with the individual's efforts.
  7. Introducing the concept of authority used by a superior to his subordinate to act as intended, and discusses the issues of authority conflict, such as acceptance of authority by subordinates and conflict between departments.
  8. Discuss communication within the organization. Describes the changes in formal/unofficial communication and information processing brought about by computers (well, this book was written in 1997, so it's half speculated).
  9. Regarding management's goal of efficiency, we will explain the common values ​​that should be pursued, such as time and money, as well as how to handle various values ​​such as welfare and purpose in life. We will introduce the differences in the way efficiency is thought of between for-profit and non-profit organizations, as well as the four stages of conversion of factors when considering efficiency.
  10. Describe the key elements that individuals follow an organization: loyalty and organizational integration.
  11. In the final chapter, we organize the discussions so far and introduce the various theories. We will introduce how to synthesize decisions, how to give subordinates discretion, the significance of reviewing their subordinates' status, and centralizing and decentralizing organizations (they are good at growing startups).


Chapter 1: "Decision-making and Management Organization"



The organization shall have the following structure: Entrepreneurs, advisors, bosses, subordinates, and customers are each made up of the following: Of these, customers and advisors are not included in the organization.



An organization is considered a collection of decision-making and actions. Organizational members act as if they were individuals, continuing to make decisions and act to generate profits. This concept is easy to understand because in Japan, organizations are described as corporations and "people."


Entrepreneurs grant wages and authority to bosses in each department (boss 1, boss 2). The boss gives orders to his subordinates, and the subordinates provide results. Each boss and subordinate provide time and effort to the entrepreneur.


On the other hand, as an entrepreneur, as a company, has relationships with customers. Provide goods and services to customers and receive payment in return.


Entrepreneurs sometimes have advisors and other services. Advisors are provided with capital such as wages or equity, and provide advice and information in return.



Impact of working in an organization


The following explains the impact of working in an organization. List five.


authority



Authorization is the action of directing from an entrepreneur to a superior, a superior to a subordinate, and refers to using another person in his place of self. The authority also includes the power to make a final decision when the debate is turbulent.


Loyalty



Loyalty is a necessary component to continue to achieve an organization's goals. This involves continuing to put effort into the organization as an individual before it is a member of the organization or making decisions. Loyalty can sometimes go towards the entire organization, but sometimes it can turn into factions towards the department. A state in which loyalty is directed towards a department will lead to department conflicts and should be avoided.


Efficiency


Efficiency is the management goal. Management is a series of decision-making and action on which options to take, but efficiency is used to determine options when making decisions. That is, the question is, which one can obtain the largest output with less input. When conducting an act, there is a question of efficiency: how efficiently each member can carry out the performance.


Advice and Information



Advice and information refer to communication that is not normally based on the official routes of an organizational chart. Advice can be obtained through the recruitment of experts such as advisors, or can be obtained from informal group of employees through informal communication (internal recreational activities and drinking parties). Advice and information are often useful for business activities as they are less likely to be biased than regular results reports.


Training


Training is a prerequisite for the efficiency of each member. It is related to human resource decision-making. HR decisions can be made either by hiring trained personnel or by educating unskilled personnel. When training is conducted, success or failure depends on whether the subject is obedient or not. If you are unskilled, if you have a long history or retrain your boss, you may be able to hurt their pride and not be able to achieve the desired effect, so prior care is required.



Three factors of organizational decision making


Decisions are not always made top-down, but are sometimes made by each member. There are three decisions made by an organization:


Adjustment


Coordination is carried out between organizational departments. The bosses of each department delegate and combine decisions by saying, "This decision is asked by the Legal Department and that decision is asked by the sales department."


Your boss takes responsibility


The boss is given a certain amount of discretion and takes responsibility and executes decisions on behalf of the entrepreneur.


Judge based on professional ability


If a member has the specialist skills of that member alone, decision-making may be transferred to the target member. Legal and technical aspects are possible.


In the second chapter, we list and refute the errors in typical management efficiency proposals. It will be serialized irregularly, so please look forward to it.


Aside (Gonjicchi memo)


This time, I write notes for each chapter using iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. This time it's not an e-book, but it has around 550 pages, making it inconvenient to carry around. If you make a note of it on your tablet, it's recommended as it can be done on your smartphone when you review it later.