I submit that the management being taught at American business
schools does not take into account just how bad some managements actually are.
Although I suspect that most of them are at the lower-levels of management,
bottom-feeders can achieve some height, organizationally speaking. I don’t
believe business-school faculties know just how bad “bottom-feeder” management
actually is, or at the very least such management is tolerated rather than
triggering a wholesale renovation of the managerial skills being taught. My aim
here is to spark efforts to extend managerial science to proffer tactics
oriented to correcting even the worst cases. In short, managerial science needs
to reach a certain sordid managerial mentality in order to expunge it from even
those businesses.
A telling indication of the problematic mentality is an
overstepping, such as in using words beyond their regular usages. This can
include conflating analogies with direct signification. Unfortunately, once a
management creates such an instance, it tends to spread to other managements
eager to take liberties.
One example of such a contagion is using the word guest for customer. Target was an early bird, applying the word used by
hotels, and by 2015 grocery stores and other retailers were already primped
with their very own “Guest Service” signs. What those presumptuous managements
did was to ignore the difference between a guest and a customer. For one thing,
guests don’t pay, whereas customers do. To ignore such a common-sense
difference is to presume a certain entitlement to use the language incorrectly
as if doing so were correct. Put another way, there is something phony about a
management that directs its store managers to refer to customers as guests. The
underlying mentality is similar to that of a person who bends the law because
doing so is convenient. Unfortunately, the mentality does not stop at issuing
misnomers as if they were no such thing; the entitlement is also to correct
customers who tell store managers or employees, “I’m not a guest here; I’m a
customer.” The insightful customer will recognize that she is face to face with
ignorance that can’t be wrong. Like arrogance on stilts during a flood, the
“guest” advocates should be under water apologetically rather than pronouncing
the new meaning of the word as a fait
accompli. Management science needs procedures or tactics that the offending
managements can use to clear out the practice and its underlying mentality.
Considering how fast the contagion has spread, we may conclude that
business-school faculties are coming up short.
Another example of bottom-feeder management can be observed
in dealing with customer-service departments. In this case, the pathogen
resides at low-levels of management and the subordinate non-supervisory
employees. Simply put, too many employees in call-centers are brazenly rude to
customers, or at the very least too rigid, for management science to have
reached them. The employees’ supervisors are culpable too, both in hiring such
employees and not getting rid of them. I suspect the hiring process is too
artificial in that it does not uncover the interviewee’s normal attitude,
whereas the process regarding upper- and middle-management positions is more
involved. The potential bottom-level employees are doubtless on their best
behavior during an interview, and managerial science has not been applied at
that level with techniques that can viably uncover how those employees would
actually be on the job attitudinally. To be sure, unions may protect even such
employees, but I suspect that it is more convenient for the supervisors to
retain even problematic employees than having to undergo the process to fire
them and hire replacements. Being oriented to their own comfort—following the
most convenient route, many supervisors may not typically follow up on customer
complaints, which includes listening to the relevant recorded calls.
Additionally, low-level supervisors erroneously tend to presume
that the solution to a bad attitude is more training. That training, as a
managerial technique, is presumed to be sufficient to change underlying
attitudes demonstrates that the existing managerial science itself is not up to
par. That the lapses are usually at the lowest level of management in a company
may account for the fact that the science is faulty in extending the reach of
training too far—to reach attitude rather than just conduct. Even a changed
conduct with the same attitude is not good, as customers can see through the
superficiality and fakeness.
In some cases, employees are so confident that they can get
away with treating a customer rudely that they actually refuse customer
requests to speak with the supervisor. Some such employees refuse to identify
themselves. For such presumption to exist is itself a good indication that something
basic is lacking in the application of management science to the lowest level
of management in companies. I submit that the management taught in business
schools is culpable too in that it is oriented to upper- and middle-level
management, and management down on the front lines differs in significant ways
from the management practiced at higher levels.
The management taught at business schools should give
students ways to deal with the unique or extenuating aspects of low-level
management in companies. Too often, customers and even employees must deal with
low-class management. This includes supervisors who extend the management hierarchy
too far, needlessly causing difficult power-relations by making one
non-supervisory employee the supervisor of two or three other such employees.
For example, a consulting firm sent groups of two to four
part-time employees out to register people to vote in a battle-ground state in
2016. Those employees had been hired to work with each other in small groups—none
of the employees in the groups were to supervise; the manager/supervisor
selected high-volume employees to coordinate the respective groups in terms of
keeping track of where the other employees are. Some of those coordinators took
it upon themselves supervise their peers in
the groups and the real manager/supervisor did not enforce his position that no
one in a group would supervise the others. In that atmosphere, employees designated
merely to coordinate locations developed obnoxious power-trips. Within a group
of two to four people, it goes too far to designate or allow a difference (i.e.
hierarchy) in power. This takes the boss-subordinate relation too far because
the small groups functioned better when the employees worked together.
Therefore, to apply management science oriented to upper-
and middle-levels to the lowest level, among a few employees takes the science
too far. The science should be extended alright, but only if it is tailored to
the level rather than simply being applied unchanged. Being bereft of suitable,
good management, the front-lines of companies tend to operate a world away from
the quiet halls of upper- and middle-level managers. Hence, accountability is
difficult, as many customers know. I suspect that middle-level managers assume
they would be stretched too thin were they actually charged with intervening at
the lower levels. However, the work assigned to such managers may be too
upward-oriented, so their bosses may be to blame too. It is as if there were a
dividing wall separating the bottom-level managers and employees from the
middle-level managers. Such a wall is part of the problem, and it demonstrates
that lower-level management is different and thus needs management skills that
do not yet exist because management science has been devoted to one side of the
wall.
