Roy Lilley (NHSManagers.net) sums up the cognitive dissonance behind the NHS' problems:
If the NHS top management 'believes that hospitals are run by plans and structures, it will keep producing them.
If it understood that hospitals run through empathy, tender moments, joy, sorrow, effort, judgement, relationships, innovation, determination, inventiveness & skill...
... it might behave differently'!
The problem (as so often is management by spreadsheet).
The NHS might be an exceptional example, but the modern business approach to Taylor-style productivity improvement seems to involve as much, if not more resource being directed at the collection and measurement of productivity data as the resource dedicated to productive work.
indeed; the person with the clipboard needs to be paid
Hyper-accountancy is a diagnostic feature of a profit-led, over-financialised economy?
I like the term 'hyper-accountancy' - not come across it before but it encapsulates so much I complain about
Not sure it's a proper term really, but I've been repeatedly struck by the excessive amounts of micro-accounting and reporting activity that goes on inside most organisations in the name of improvement and efficiency.
Its a proper term now..... you've coined it! 😀
Are you having you accounts done in the Matrix?
Haha!
No, but it occurred to me that hyper-accountancy sounds way cooler than it actually is.....
Agreed, and "The correct reporting can become more important than the correct performance" is a perfect way of summing this up.
@ChrisMayLA6 without disrespecting your career... there's a huge problem with mba's and the like, across all of management everywhere across the board.
They all seem to come out of university with an attitude of 'it' can only be done the way they were 'taught'.
We know best because we have mba's.
Doesn't matter what patients (or customers) want. The mba has spoken and that's that.
It's only getting worse too. There's no joy or love in anything anymore, just mba's and profit.
Couldn't agree more; the MBA (and its model of data-driven generalised management) is a major problem - I taught economics in a depart of politics (then latterly Politics Philosophy & Religion), while the economists (who hated my course & banned their students from taking it) sat in the management school feeding into the MBA programme.... so yes, I agree (despite my university career) that MBA course & those who hold MBAs are a key problem for the UK economy
@ChrisMayLA6 but how to turn it round. My understanding has always been that the relationship between bosses and workers #should be symbiotic. It's been a parasitic relationship for 30 odd years now. Hardly anyone remembers that it wasn't like this in the past.
Am I remembering wrong? I sometimes think, "am I making that up?"
Its more that the parasitic relationship has re-grown.... there was always some areas of business like that; in the C19th lots were (but even then some holding out for a form of symbiosis); in the last three decades the parasitic has spread, but its not total - look at the cooperatives , the B-Corps, the 'good' employers - the parasitism is a managerial choice & that's what makes it even more depressing
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Reg
David John Crook
Dar