The management and the exertion of influence through communication within the organization.

Iancu, Anica ; Popescu, Luminita ; Popescu, Virgil 等

1. INTRODUCTION

To reduce management to its procedural dimension offers, beyond doubt, the possibility to algorithm and standardize it: " Do this, this and this and will obtain this thing!" In spite of the advantages and operational easiness this standardization assure, it also brings in an obviously huge risk: it is possible only by extracting the managerial processes from the ampler, more extensive context in which they run and by willingly neglecting the implications and effects that cannot be rigorously quantifies and formulated. Such an approach encourages a narrow managerial perspective, very well centered: the management not only sees locally, it also sees only what it wants to see, meaning the things that are noticeable and measurable directly and with precision. Of course, this management myopia is not capable to administrate with efficacy the modern organizations' growing complexity and dynamism.

2. INFORMATION

An "apocryphal" definition, not really an academic one, defines it as "attaining certain objectives by the mean of other people". The definition suggests the managers determine other persons to engage in fulfilling some tasks in order to achieve specific targets. Though imperfect, the definition answers perfectly to the question "How exactly the management works?" The answer is: by directing other persons. The essence is that organization management means the management of the persons that are part of the organization: first and above all, the management of the personnel, than of the equipments, stocks, machines, finances, technologies, markets etc., which are very important for the organization's efficiency, but they are manipulated, exploited and improved by people while they fulfill their work tasks (fig. 1).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

This model allows us to clarify the nature of the managerial activity: it consists in persuading the other members of the organization to involve themselves in fulfilling some work tasks, by using certain organizational resources in order to achieve certain results. The model also shows the level and quality of the results can be influenced by modifying the quantity and the combination method of the organizational resources or by re-defining or re0organizing the work tasks. But the action upon the organization's members has the strongest impact on the results, more explicitly the action upon their motivations and preferences, their common attitudes and values and the way in which they interact. This action brings along unavoidable changes in the work tasks, the resources used and implicitly in the organization's results.

In Peter Drucker' (Drucker, 2006) definition: the management is the systematic organization of the resources in order to increase the organization's efficiency; the essential element is given by the adjective "systematic". It is very clear that the management's key feature is given by the fact it is a systematic activity and not a sporadic, discontinuous one or targeting punctual interests.

In Figure 2 it can be noticed a complex entity made of "imbricate systems"--the environment incorporates the organization, determining its structure and functions, and the organization incorporates the management, stipulating its problems and regulations. The management role must always be reported to the responsibility of assuring the organization's efficiency, respectively producing results. Therefore, the management cannot be separated from the organization it works for, from its mission and objectives. The organization is the management's field of activity and practice (Drucker, 2007). The managerial activity's contents and orientation are determined by the particular features of the organizational context in which the management works. Only from this perspective, it can be discussed about the generic function of the management, responsible for the achievement of certain specific results, in conformity with organization's mission and objectives. Fig. 2 also suggests that the "environment organization - management" relation is not one way oriented, but biunivocal: the management also influences the organization's functioning conditions, which through its behaviors and performances attended, can influence its own environment.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Regarding the contents of the managerial activity, as Henry Mintzberg has described it, the management fulfills a large variety of roles when its attributions are put in practice, organized in three important categories (Mintzberg, 2006):

* Interpersonal roles (performed by an organization or group representative, a leader or a manager of relations and contacts)

* Informational roles (performed by a person that monitors and broadcasts/spreads the information, a spokesman)

* Decisional roles (performed by an entrepreneur, a person solving the crisis and conflicts, a person that allocates the resources and a negotiator)

It can be noticed that information is crucial in performing managerial roles. In fact, all the managerial roles, not only the informational ones, are of communicational nature. Their interpretations represent, without any exceptions, communications--emitting messages that produce significations which target to influence the behaviors of the actors from within and around the organization.

Consequently three intercorelated images of the management were defined

* The management gives directions to the people first of all

* The management is a system and, at the same times a sub system of a far more complex system--the organization

* The managerial activities are in essence communications This study sustains the idea of understanding the management as the process of influencing the interactions and the interdependencies, which configures an organized context, in order to achieve predetermined objectives. The basic definition of management makes reference to the following essential notions: organized context or system, influence or modification, objective or finality. In other words, the management generates the interactions necessary to attain the desired results. This statement reveals the contents of the term influence. At the same time, this affirmation assures the connexion between the concept of system and the idea of efficiency, respectively the praxiological approach.

The "systemism--praxiology--prospective" triad has also the role to point out the characteristics of a high quality management. The transition to managerial systems with this type of characteristics implies, first of all, the next reconversions in matter of managerial thinking:

* The re-orientation from fragmentation, differentiation and isolation toward searching the interdependencies, connexions and interfaces. This transformation expresses the necessity of imposing the systemic thinking in the management in order to identify and capitalize on the generative effects of interaction, communication and cooperation.

* To give up the narrow, restrictive, strictly economic perspective on efficiency in favor of a richer and more nuanced vision.

* Learning from the future instead of depending on the past and present.

We must add to all the ideas above the fact that numerous human dynamics and interactions lay at the base of the economic systems, as social systems. In Mielu Zlate's opinion (Zlate, 2008), these interactions determine the manifestation of some inter subjective relations (of communication, knowledge, socio-affective connections, dependency etc.), group phenomena (cooperation, competition, conflicts, members' solidarity, their sub grouping, the group members' consensus and cohesion) and collective mental structures (attitudes, opinions, beliefs, mentalities, preconceptions).

The new paradigms of management need a profound harmonization and a fine, organic integration of these elements in a unitary and coherent knowledge system and not in a mechanical aggregation of a lot of theories and models structured on some very different hypotheses and variables.

The management must create constantly new contexts and situations to facilitate the exploiting of system's competences, potentials and resources in order to assure the system's long term efficient evolution. So, to influence does not mean only to constraint, persuade or manipulate, though, these represent, in certain situations, essential elements of the managerial influencing process. The adaptation of the constructive or productive contexts is made depending on the degree and type of complexity characterizing the system in various periods of its existence. It results that understanding the nature of the system's complexity is an essential condition for the management's efficiency.

An organization's behavior can be influenced only within the delimitations of its perceptions. Perception represents the instrument for observing, learning, gaining experience, changing. The consequence is that managerial mechanisms fulfill an essential function, since they make possible the transformation of its members' perceptions upon the reality of the organization. A management system is more efficient when the messages it creates and emits are more coherent. It is vital for the organization's well functioning to make the managerial instruments compatible (organizational structure, control and gestation systems, ransoms/sanctions' structure, the channels for decision taking, strategy).

3. CONCLUSION

Therefore, the target of the managerial influence exertion is represented by the organization's employees and certain major actors or different segments of the public from outside the organization. The management influences people in order to attain certain results. The organizations are, as Chester Barnard (Barnard, 2003) so well put it, "cooperating human systems". People are "the material" the organizations are made of and represent essentially forms of social life.

The management has succeeded in finding efficient gestion solutions for the technical subsystem, the organization's physical structure, in almost a century of existence as science.

If the organization represents a communication system, any major restructuration can't be conceived without a fundamental revision of the organization's communication pattern. Nothing will be truly changed without modifying the communication, if the communication is indeed everything in an organization. All the more so as the symbols--significations, images, impressions, perceptions, emotions, representations, beliefs, etc.--can be created and put in circulation only through communication. The acute priority of the organization's management is to move away from the culture of technical and economic efficiency and to develop a culture of the efficient communication.

4. REFERENCES

Barnard C. (2003). Functiile executivului (The Executive Management Functions), Editura Cartier, ISBN 9975-79194-8, Bucuresti

Drucker P. (2006). Despre profesia de manager (About the Profession of Manager), Editura Meteor Press, ISBN 973 728-058-X, Bucuresti

Drucker P. (2007). Despre decizie si eficacitate (About Decision and Efficacy) Editura Meteor Press, ISBN 973728-203-3, Bucuresti

Mintzburg H. (2006). Manager, nu MBA (Manager, not MBA), Editura Meteor Press, ISBN 978-973-728-105-0, Bucuresti

Zlate M. (2008). Leadership si management (Leadership and Management), Editura Polirom, ISBN 973-681-616-8, Bucuresti