Does modern management theory make sense and promote efficiency, or is it wasteful?

Question

I am coming from the view that what I see is profound waste whenever the government or a company adopts all the measures recommended to them by modern management theorists. Take the NHS for example in the UK.

Answer 1

I don't really know about the theory of management, but I will assume that the company I work for tries to make sure its managers apply these modern theories.

Let me see...

My manager does ask whether we are overloaded, asks for our opinion on matters where we are supposed to be the ones with the detailed knowledge, does say we should have lunch at some point in time, does tell us that we have to balance work and life, does ask whether we need help of any kind at work...

Now, I have 2 managers, one means these things, and the other doesn't. And it's quite clear who does and who doesn't.

I think that management has more to do with personality than with management theories. A good manager 10 years ago would still be a good manager todaybecause he/she would get people to work for him/her by personality.

Paying lip-service to what 'good managers do' is worse than just being a selfish and useless b*stard; it makes the manager add conniving to his list of adjectives. Efficiency is affected as we just do what we are required to instead of putting extra quality and we work as per rule rather than putting in the extra hours when we would have under a different manager.

To me, management theories come and go, but personality remains, and that's what makes or breaks a manager.

Answer 2

In all my past jobs management meant that guy (or girl) who did no work, didn't know the jobs of the ground staff, and didn't listen to ground staff for advice on how things could go better with some minor changes.

If that's modern management theory, then yes, its wasteful.

Answer 3

most managerial trends are toward macromanagement. the manager works with the people they manage. i think it is far superior to micromanagement where a manager is hidden in an office and does only "managerial" duties. the problem is in the work itself. work tasks have become increasingly mundane and in the age of computers you can usually do a days worth of work in a fraction of the time. the devil makes work for idle hands. i used to do all the work i was required to do in a day in about 2 hrs. i was a lot faster than average but that give me huge amounts of room to goof off -- and worse get REALLY bored with my job. this led to divine misbehavior -- i would drink beer with bike couriers for lunch -- go shopping for 3-4 hrs at a time and pray to god my boss was never looking for me. more than anything i think job tedium causes a kind of burn out that leads to extremities of ineffiency. before i left that job i was probably doing 1/2 the work i was supposed to be doing and still spending huge amounts of time out of the office. i think management has never been better -- its the jobs themselves that are the problem.

Answer 4

Well it triggers active rationals, they grasp something; and there we are, sharing the cake in our different ways.

Answer 5

Can u elaborate a little with this question? I have an answer but not sure if it would be in context or not.