If this is out of kick, then we go to corrective action. But the purpose of control in this instance, and the purpose of routine is to make certain that we have a very narrow degree of exception. If we can have low exception and high acceptance of our work, then we get a great deal of released time, and this permits us then, as managers, to turn our attention to the improvement or the innovative function of management.

There are a couple of things that I want to say about the process rather than this model, and the first thing that I would like to say is that it is not a discipline that is to be learned by doing. It is actually an intellectual process, and if it is an intellectual process you have to know what you are doing before you practice it. For instance, if you develop computer programmers just by letting them learn computer programing by doing it without having first been taught, the computer industry stock is going to go up in value, because ignorant people will jam up the computer so that they cannot use it. This is what we are really trying to say about the management process. What do you have to know in order to manage effectively? We can use the model, for one thing. We can say that you have to know a great deal about decision theory, and there is a great deal to be known here. You should know a great deal about planning theory, about organization theory, about control theory, and about managing by routine, by exception, and by innovation. Then, even before you can do that and learn much about it, you have to know a great deal about economics, sociology, psychology, mathematics, political science, human relations, and communication.

What we are really suggesting here is that the field of management now is beginning to be an immensely elaborate process, and the ignorant cannot work in it effectively. It is also interesting to say that it is almost the only peculiarly American discipline to have been developed. Even with all the scarcity of jobs and space in technical and scientific research, we are still importing into this country from foreign nations such as India and Germany high technical brain power. The only real discipline right now that we are exporting in great quantity is the managerial discipline. When they get ready to set up a business school in Beirut, where do you think they go? They go to the United States and get people out of Wharton, Harvard, or Ohio State. When they get ready to set up a business school at the University of Turin in Italy, where do they go to get their knowledge? To the United States. It is about the only discipline that we have developed in and of our own right. And yet it is a fascinating discipline, and it is rapidly developing into a discipline of its own. Referring now to the chart entitled "Criteria of Decision" and also back to the "Management Model," you find out, by going down the four items (a), (b), (c), and (d) under Decision Making, where the

Inductive (if, in the research sense, the criteria are met as in rationality and deduction

Deductive (if the

principle(s) is (are) sound

A Priori Analysis (Fast, consistent and qualitative if the assumptions are truly sound,
otherwise, only fast.)

Low

(Intutition is viewed as a form of induction without research, which may well result in an
unsound generalization which may serve as a decision base.

Intuition

Highly
Innovative

Types of Decisions

manager is most important and where the organization is more. important. It is startling to find that, of the four, the organization (that is to say, your colleagues and your peers) are more important in (a), (b), and (d) than is the manager. But when you get to the point of decision, it is the manager's job. It is rather interesting that in the process now the manager is important at making or choosing the decision; but in terms of getting at the decision, everybody in the organization is important. One way to say that is that, three to one, the organization is against you; and that means that you have to work pretty well with them.

But in this area of decisioning, the measures in which we have great interest are, first, speed. We want the decision made quickly. We want the decisions to be of good quality and of consistency.

As an individual consumer, how long do you want to spend buying a can of peas? When you get a can of peas, you want your decision to be made quickly, and you want a good quality decision with regard to the peas, and also consistency. This, of course, means that brands have some role, but it also means that your function of weights and measures is important, because, when that thing says 24 ounces avoirdupois, I want it to mean that, and it is your job to make certain that it does. So, as weights and measures people, you help me in my decision process; and also, of course, you let me make it with rationality, with knowledge, and with certainty.

The extreme of decisions is down at the bottom of the sheet. Most of the decisions in most any organization are going to range from the highly routine to the highly innovative. Most of us are going to make more routine decisions than innovative decisions; yet it is important to know that the innovative decisions may have more impact on the organization than any combination of routine decisions. What this scale indicates here is the direction of the curve, and that is accurate. We do not really know about the slope. There are a high number of routine decisions and a relatively low number of innovative decisions. But the generalization is that, the more we know what we are making decisions about, the more likely we are to make good ones. If the decision is a new one, a primary tool is, of course, research. This is new in terms of the societal trends or devices. It can be new to our organization, but a great deal can be known about it by other people. This moves us into the middle, and here we look at what is known about the decision and we try to translate it there.

Over on the left we are talking about the routine process, and here we are going to base our decisions on knowledge, and so the generalization is this. The nearer we are to pure rationality, the more likely our decisions are to be right. The further we get from rationality (that is, toward emotion and intuition), the less likely our decisions are to be right, although it is possible to get a great decision under conditions of emotion and sometimes under conditions of intuition. When you talk with people who are not well trained or well educated in the field of management and the field of decision making, you find the good decision maker being described as highly intuitive. I take personally great disagreement with this premise. I think you will find that most everyone with whom you are familiar who is a great decision maker is not intuitive. He is extremely knowledgeable, and he operates at the analogous level, like the computer. He sees certain symbols and certain symptoms, and he begins spinning his tape-his knowledge, if you will. He sifts, he sorts, and he plants it, until he identifies the problem for what it is out of his knowledge framework; and he does this all so rapidly that we figure he cannot think that quickly and we ascribe to him great intuition. But intui

tion is not much more than hunch. So if you have to rely on hunch, the chances are pretty poor that you can make decisions of quality speedily and with consistency. There is a possibility that you might make a great decision somewhere along the line, but for us to rely on you to make consistently good decisions is probably not going to work.

The same can be said, of course, with respect to emotion, and we know why you do not make good decisions there.

So let me suggest to you that we have these six great trends— government policy, education, enterprise, technology, urbanization, secularization. All of them are working if you will make individuals more and more free. Conversely, as the personal freedom line goes up, the institutional freedom line comes down. Yet we are under severe pressure to perform better and better and better, institutionally and professionally, and we are dealing with people, though, that do not have to take our guff.

This means then, in turn, that we have to know a great deal more about the management process in its general term. I have found in my own years of teaching and of studying that, when I ask someone to define management, he does as the American Management Association does-which says getting things done through others. And that is a sentence one sentence to describe, if you will, 70,000 pages of discipline. It does not make any sense.

You cannot describe management with a sentence, just as you cannot describe it adequately and fully with a model. It is an immensely complex thing about which we have to know a great deal. But yet, you as the manager are responsible for the effective and efficient performance of your institution—the effective and efficient performance of the individuals who work with you. So we suggest that the management approach is a new approach-not in the sense of the last ten years, but certainly in the sense of the last half century. The first business school in this country was not founded until right after World War I. The first Ph. D. in the area was not given until 1930. So we are talking about a relatively new discipline, a very rapidly developing one, and you have to know a great deal.

FORUM ON MANAGEMENT

T. M. STABLER, Office of Weights and Measures, Moderator

It is my pleasure to be a participant on the panel of the Forum on Management and also to moderate the discussion which will follow. First, I would like to introduce the other participants on the panel.

Mr. George Mattimoe is Deputy Director of the Division of Weights and Measures, Hawaii Department of Agriculture. He has spent four years with the Department and is responsible for the immediate success that it is experiencing. Prior to that, Mr. Mattimoe served 17

years with the Mantes Scale Company.

Mr. David Edgerly is a fellow worker in the Office of Weights and Measures. He came to the National Bureau of Standards in 1967 with major responsibilities in the area of fair packaging and labeling. For the past year he has been project leader for the OWM Management Information and Assistance Project.

Mr. Robert Williams is Director of the Consumer Protection and Service Division in the Texas Department of Agriculture. He has been with the Texas agency for 18 years and is currently President of the Southern Weights and Measures Association. Prior to state service, he was a staff writer for the San Angelo Standard Times and the Amarillo Globe News, and later served as state editor of the San Antonio Express and Evening News.

MANAGEMENT OF A WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
PROGRAM

by T. M. STABLER, Chief, Office of Weights and Measures, National Bureau of Standards

As managers of weights and measures programs, there are four questions that concern you most.

1. What is the mission of my department?

2. What is my job?

3. How do I obtain resources?

4. How do I allocate resources?

Let us look at these separately.