Men Who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration

by Melville Dalton

Overview

This is a classic study of how managers interpret and engage problems as they are experienced and felt at various points and levels in factories and businesses. Melville Dalton, drawing on ethnographic data, examines both positive and negative interactions among managers, between managers and between workers, and managers and firms. He discusses the consequences for each group that result from their interactions. Where relevance and data allow, Dalton relates his findings to the surrounding community.

Dalton argues that the recurring problem areas in management grow out of six main areas: pressures for economy of operation; "cooperation" of officially powerless experts with their administrative superiors; local conflicts between union and management; uncertainty about the route to a place in middle and upper management; the task of recognizing and rewarding differential contributions; and the moral conflicts of the individual executive. Each of these six problem areas is made the subject of a chapter.

What emerges is a study of compromises among key individuals and groups in business organizations, and of the strictures on compromise. The book offers insights into how workplace rules, in practice, move from being sacred guides to flexible tools to balance company goals and personal ends. This volume includes a new introduction by David Shulman detailing the importance of this work more than forty years after its original publication. It is part of Transaction's Organization and Business series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781412852944
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	08/30/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Melville Dalton was professor of sociology and research sociologist at the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Conflicts between Staff and Line Managerial Officers.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Transaction Edition, by David Shulman Foreword, by George H. Hildebrand Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. Managers on Paper 3. Power Struggles in the Line 4. Relations between Staff and Line 5. Local Meanings of High Level Labor Agreements 6. The Managerial Career Ladder 7. The Interlocking of Official and Unofficial Reward 8. The Interconnections of Formal and Informal Action 9. The Manager between Formal and Informal 10. Conclusions 11. Appendix on Method Bibliography Name Index Subject Index

Editorial Reviews

For those interested in the rationale underlying the three major types of organization structures, line, functional and line and staff, the . . . discussion presented is one of the best to be found in the literature of management. The subsequent treatment of “Relations Between Staff and Line” is outstanding. . . . [C]lassified as a “must.”” —R. L. Froemke, Management Science “[T]he author’s point of view and efforts at constructing a researchable theory of office politics are the best and most important aspects of this book. . . . Contemporary systematic analyses of human behavior in administered organizations has become a mansion with room for students of diverse perspective, skills, and ways of working. . . . Men Who Manage is an important contribution to this. . . mansion.” —William Delany, Industrial and Labor Relations Review “[T]his research has great value for those who would understand the behavior of industrial managers. . . . We shall always have managers. Effective use of such observations as those reported by Dalton might well help us so to manipulate our social institutions that major social conflicts would be diminished and brought within a framework of orderly conflict resolution.” —Ross Stagner, The Journal of Conflict Resolution “Professor Dalton brings to fruition approximately two decades of participant-observer research in six business firms. . . . The central theme of the book is that informal human interactions lubricate and give a reality orientation to the formal expectations for working behavior in the work organization. In elaborating this theme Dalton successively considers power struggles, staff-line relations, operating interpretations of high-level policy, managerial careers, official and unofficial rewards, and some general features of the interconnections between formal and informal action.” —Robert Dubin, American Sociological Review “Men Who Manage has emerged from ten years of carefully documented in-plant experience and observation by a well-trained, perceptive sociologist. . . . [T]his book can provide perspective and many valuable insights to managers. The book is full of interesting and useful data for sociologists as well.” —Herbert A. Shepard, Administrative Science Quarterly “The significant contribution of the book in the opinion of the reviewer is that it presents a comprehensive, detailed, and intimate account of the informal or unofficial side of organization in modern business enterprise. . . . Professor Dalton’s book has set a high standard. . . . [I]t is generally good and in spots brilliant. . . . The volume retains throughout a freshness and vitality which make it interesting and readable. It represents a prodigious amount of work in a difficult field of human relations, and the author deserves high praise for the skill and ingenuity with which he has executed the project.” —Martin L. Faust, MidwestJournal of Political Science “I knew about leadership characteristics from the endless leadership literature I studied and the few studies I conducted myself. But until I read books like Dalton’s I knew nothing about the leadership situation as such. We (social psychologists) could place leaders into contexts, such as captains of teams or presidents of companies, but we didn’t know what really went on in teams or in companies. One reason for not knowing what was that we did not have a research tradition, and we did not go to such places to find out what went on there. Dalton not only infiltrated the hallowed halls of an economic enterprise, but, more important, was also able to articulate clearly and vividly the dynamics of how the managers of different department and the people at different levels of the organization could knit their effort together into organizational action. His descriptions of the collusion between the senior managers and older workers that made things happen, the complex cliques that arose to foster necessary communication and the informal deals and contracts that were made between members of the company brought to life for me the complex social drama of companies, managers, and leaders.” —Edgar H. Schein, The Academy of Management Review

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