76). As automation increasingly assumes the more mundane and routine aspects of work of all types, Drucker was visionary in his assessment of how decisions would be made in the years to come. "In the future," said Drucker, "it was possible that all employment would be managerial in nature, and we would then have progressed from a society of labor to a society of management" (Witzel, p. 76). The first tasks of the manager, then, are to coordinate an organization's resources and provide a viable framework in which they can be used to produce goods and services effectively and efficiently. The second set of tasks concern guidance and control. In Drucker's view, this role is almost entirely proactive: "Economic forces set limits to what a manager can do. They create opportunities for management's action. But they do not by themselves dictate what a business is or what it does" (Drucker, 1974, p. 88).
In a well-known statement, Drucker added that assigns to managers the primary role not only for creating the enterprise but also for creating its markets: "There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. Markets are not created by God, nature or economic forces, but by the people who manage a business. The want a business satisfies may have been felt by customers & #8230;but it remained a potential want until business people converted it into effective action. Only then are there customers and a market" (Drucker, 1974, p. 89).
Drucker established that management is legitimate field of endeavor that had not existed previously. It is neither an art nor a science, but a profession, akin to medicine or law, and one that is even more complicated. What is management? As he said again and again, it is about people: "Management's task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and weaknesses irrelevant." Management defines and communicates common goals and values, by creating the right organizational structure and providing the training and development that employees need to respond effectively to change. Unlike the doctor or lawyer, the manager functions only through others, and in fact, through many others. Management is not simply getting other people to perform, but getting many others to perform in a joint, orchestrated process. This is why it is more complicated. The only real tools the manager has are communication, organizational design, and training and development (Boudreaux, p. 19).
According to East (1997), Drucker characterized decisions as falling into "generic," "new generic,'" and "exceptional decisions" categories; East uses a comparable approach and classifies them into routine, problem-solving, and innovative categories which are described further in Table __ below as they apply to academic institutions.
Table
Topological Structure of Decisions
Type of Decision
Description
Routine Decisions
Routine, or generic, decisions are those decisions that carry the unit forward in daily operation. These decisions are characterized as high-volume, low-impact types of decisions. The dilemmas are fairly straightforward and the consequences of the action are reversible - for example, adding an additional class to the course schedule, purchasing routine supplies, and signing add cards.
Problem-solving Decisions
Problem-solving, or "new" generic, decisions involve repetitive circumstances that require unique solutions. Because problem-solving dilemmas are repetitive, operational procedures often are established within organizations to facilitate solutions to "new" generic problems. For example, the tenure/promotion of a faculty member is a repetitive event that requires a relatively unique solution. Although the procedures and criteria used to solve these dilemmas are fairly well established, the administrator must interpret these criteria and apply them to a specific faculty member.
Innovative Decisions
Innovative, or exceptional, decisions represent significant paradigm shifts within the organization. Seldom are there precedents for these decisions, and the referent information is often subject to extraneous or strategic misrepresentation. Many curricular decisions may be classified as innovative, that is, adding a new doctoral program in health sciences, terminating a major program of study, or revising the general education core curriculum. These decisions usually involve significant risks for the decision maker; however, the potential benefits of controlled change often outweigh these risks. Innovative decisions normally involve a protracted period of information gathering, and often simulate the characteristic process of consensus building.
Source: East, 1997, p. 40.
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