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that their settled behavioral patterns should be changed, which is easiest to achieve by interacting
with those who wages power within such groups.
2. Collective’s success is ensured by its normal moral-and-psychological climate. Its
presence is testified by people’s mutual support, open discussion of contradictions, unwillingness
of being transferred to a new place. It is better
that a collective be various, consist of unalike
people, which promises greater work efficiency.
Psychologists have noticed that unity is contagious and can have a positive impact on
others, so they advice to strengthen it purposefully, including by means od formal and informal
events – from meetings and conferences to picnics and ceremonial dinners.
The science of managerial behavior attaches the utmost importance to contact
establishing, consultations, and personal ties between an executive and employees. Such
emphasis on human relations serves as an antidote against exploitative and mechanistic views on
everyday managerial activity.
A collective’s manager takes personal responsibility for other members and does it
directly and honestly. It is unlikely that any other profession in society apart from management
discloses a personality’s essence as completely. Executives who use their power to manipulate
and degrade people are soon discovered and rewarded with scorn and mistrust.
Trust is the key to
establishing a healthy and productive collective. Trust is born when people say what they think,
and in professional sphere or situations of uncertainty weaknesses are eliminated.
3. A workable collective must have the optimal size.
4. An important feature of a healthy collective is clarity of the goals. Everyone should
visualize the results to strive for, to clearly understand and share the collective’s aims. And then
people will devote themselves to the cause more willingly and will search for the optimal
compromise between personal and collective interests.
Human energy is the most important resource under control. People are capable of
devoting their energy to their needs satisfaction or to being responsible for their work. For when
a person is compelled to work against his/her will they lose the ability of expressing their hidden
energy and animosity. The task of an intuitive manager is to release the employees’ energy and
direct it on organization’s goals achievement. In the language of the science of management it
shows a manager’s care for employees’ motivation.
5. Collective goals, as a rule,
suppose achieving high results, and the latter demand
corresponding norms and standards which show what behavior is expected from the collective’s
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members. Only when these norms are observed can personality count on support and recognition
from the others, as well as corresponding stimulation of their input in the common cause.
6. A good collective is characterized by constant being in the state of search for new
knowledge, ideas, perspective methods of work. In such a collective the search becomes people’s
inner need, stimulating the development of every employee’s individual creative abilities.
Control efficiency depends on the extent to which the executive can create and maintain
constructive atmosphere in the collective.
So, the general regularities of a viable and effective collective are the following:
- the collective is a product of the development of both a group as a whole and all its
individual members in the context of common
socialyy meaningful activity;
- the condition of collective’s formation is the presence of normal interpersonal relations
and harmony between the formal and the informal relations in the group;
- the latter should be manifested in successful interaction in the process of management
by the executive and the group’s informal leader;
It is necessary to correctly use social-and-psychological methods of a collective’s control.
The methods of direct management suppose immediate contact, they are not long-term, don’t call
for special conditions. They are persuasion, compulsion,
suggestion, pointing out a behavior
example. Indirect methods don’t call for direct contact between a manager and an employee,
they are more prolonged in time, and need creation of special conditions for influence. This is
the method of orientative situation, the method of symbol regulation, the method of changing the
elements of executive role, the method of forming stimulation. Creation of a collective’s social-
and-psychological climate is the most important goal of an executive.
Psychological climate is the prevailing psychological mood,
the totality of group
members’ attitudes to the conditions and character of common activity (emotional and formal
attitude); to colleagues, group-members (horizontal: formal, and interpersonal relations, attitudes
of sympathy – antipathy, esteem – non-recognition); to the collective’s executive (vertical
relations: official and interpersonal relations that play the leading role in the extent of
employee’s satisfaction, in a person’s mental state). Conflict relations with an executive often
end up in an employee’s leaving the collective. Employees’
relations with the executive, the
collective’s psychological climate, its work results depend on the style of management realized
by the executive.
