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doi: 10.3233/HSM-1980-1106pmid: N/A
An underlying postulate for the future is that a leader must influence an institution more than it influences him or her. Balancing artful leadership attributes with management science capabilities calls for new organizational structures, policies, processes and styles. Freer-form organizations are needed. At least ten attributes of these are outlined for study. New leadership issues are sprouting from the leading edge of scientific, technological, political, economic, social and cultural forces already at work. These issues are: intellectual operations, phenomenon of power, abstract relationships, material world and ethical-legal-religious spheres of sentient and moral powers. A third framework of the human mind is suggested with respect to the teleological-ideological, instinctive, spiritual and charismatic (TISC) attributes of a leader. This TISC framework is in addition to the logical, rational, sequential and quantitative (LRSQ) and the perceptive, intuitive, simultaneous and qualitative (PISQ) optimal working frameworks of the human mind proposed by Zeleny (10). The new breed of leaders may find this triple framework helpful in initiating and maintaining structure in expectation and interaction which is the true meaning of leading-edge-leadership.
doi: 10.3233/HSM-1980-1107pmid: N/A
This essay is a personal perspective on the emergence of a new form of communication, optimistically called the ‘eugram’. This form is based on the convergence of economical digital communications with computer aided facilities for file management, and protocols to facilitate the interconnection of users separated both in time and space. The eugram is contrasted with the telephone, with the latter's demands on instant availability and the subjugation of the user to an almost uninterruptible stream of data. The eugram is expected to increase the thoughtfulness of communication, the return of literacy in the efficient and precise use of language, and to enhance scientific discourse in many other ways.
doi: 10.3233/HSM-1980-1108pmid: N/A
Opening sections of this paper report impressions gained from an architectural study tour of cities and towns in Italy – notably Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome. All are centers of great art inherited from the past and attracting an increasing number of tourists from all over the world. Current building activities in these places are described and contrasted with what is happening in Paris and elsewhere. Architects and urban planners in every country appear frustrated and uncertain as to their future roles in community efforts to improve the built environment, esthetically as well as socially. All communities are rapidly being linked together worldwide by the still evolving networks of transportation and electronic telecommunication. Following sections of the paper therefore explore some implications of the “universal city” idea, long ignored but now receiving renewed attention as a result of the international development of motor roads. Creation of a global network of information centers for the pooling, interchange and interactive processing of knowledge about environmental conditions and potentials in every locality worldwide is seen as a basic need in establishing desirable guidelines for an integrated development of the built environment that will be beneficial to everyone living on this planet.
doi: 10.3233/HSM-1980-1109pmid: N/A
Management is a relatively modern and distinctively American concept. Developed in response to the needs created by the growth of large corporations and institutions, management processes essentially deal with concepts of a hierarchy of authority and control over broad scale activities. The process is dependent on communications and information; its development reflects both increasing sophistication in establishing lines of communications and efforts to systematize the application of management techniques. Noting that the process concept of management articulated by Henri Fayol in 1916 remains an accepted element of management theory, the author describes developments in operations research – the use of scientific method to solve management problems – as major modern efforts to understand and articulate the conceptual basis of the management process. He questions, however, how far the management sciences can go toward making a science of management. Their usefulness has been greatest at the lower tactical levels of management. The higher levels of management issues, on the other hand, deal with a dynamic and open environment, rather than the type of closed stable system that can be defined and clarified through science. When dealing with strategic issues of an organization, management is a process of searching, groping and testing rather than of problem solving; it is an intuitive art rather than a systematic technique. While management as a profession must live with the limitations of management technology, it is essential that that technology change to keep pace with changes in other technology and changing social needs. Modern information and communications technology, for example, makes widespread organizations ‘smaller’ and also makes it possible to develop more flexible, less hierarchic, management systems. This will change organizational structure. Another issue is the positioning of a management system between a totally administered system – that is, one in which decisions products and services are made from above or within – and a market system, in which decisions tend to be made in response to perceived demand. The environment within which management operates is changing. Management must develop greater understanding in order to create an environment that encourages individual initiative in the framework of ethical policy guidelines and to meet the expectations of its markets and society. The challenges to modern management are becoming more difficult and complex. A new generation of elite will be required to meet those challenges. Opportunities to move into top positions must be open to all, but equality of opportunity should not be confused with equality of reward.
doi: 10.3233/HSM-1980-1110pmid: N/A
Social sciences have so far failed to provide the busy executive, administrator or engineer with really useful models for analysing the day to day human problems arising in bureaucracies. An alternative system of concepts based almost exclusively on Systems and Cybernetics is suggested. This already provides fresh insights into old pathologies.
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