In adopting the staff conference in administrative matters, there is danger that composite opinion may be uncertain and decisions flabby. In such a case the attempt to retain the advantage of personal direction by issuing the staff orders in the name of the general manager usually fails. The manager loses enthusi asm when he thus fathers orders which are not his own. Employes are quick to note any lack of interest on the part of the manager and to reflect the same spirit in their work.
8. Pressure of general economic problems.—There is a vital weakness in the administrative organization of our business concerns. Efforts to' develop har monious cooperation between the men who plan and command, and the men who take orders and operate the business machinery, are often unsuccessful. Even a leader of the highest rank finds it difficult to sustain year in and year out the high ideals of duty, loyalty and sacrifice necessary to the most efficient operation of a modern business organization. Nor can staff or ganization, or functional management as it is called when the same principles are applied to factory and office operation, accomplish these results among a great body of workmen, when their energies are ex hausted by monotonous work, and their loyalty is weakened by appeals of trade-unions whose aims are not in harmony with company policies.
Perhaps the greatest problems of business adminis tration are not those of internal organization, but those which spring from general economic and social conditions. While these problems remain unsolved,
an element of mere expediency exists in all efforts to secure cooperation within the organization. Bonus systems, profit-sharing schemes and copartnership plans are some of the evidences of the external pressure. Too often they are adopted without proper consideration of their relation to the general economic problems. A manager may find his organization working inefficiently, and to meet his own pressing internal needs may adopt some such scheme in an imperfected state, often taking it bodily from some other concern, which has taken it up with as slight de liberation as himself. From such action we get piece rate wage systems which are ineffective, welfare pro grams which degenerate into fox-trot parties, and pension systems which put a premium on senility, simply because there has been no adequate planning and no proper adjustment of the means adopted to the end proposed.
The problems of administrative planning are of three general classes. One chiefly concerns the em ployer and executive ; a second embraces production and distribution—problems of machinery and men; while the third involves the relation of business organ ization to the vvhole political and industrial system.