The other day I read another book written by Nobuo Takahashi, Professor of the University of Tokyo, whom I picked up in this web site because his book Fallacy of Performance-Based System was so impressive. Actually the book entitled 'Capable Employees Intentionally Overlook Orders of Boss' was written before 'Fallacy of Performance-Based System' was written. In addition, his basic ideas of management are already described in an easier style in this book. Those who already read one of these books don't have to read the other. (Anyway only Japanese people can be moved by his strong argument against the 'management as a profession' theory because no English translation is available for both.)

I could find some impressive parts in this book 'Capable Employees Intentionally Overlook Orders of Boss'. I would like to quote them by translating them into English. I'm very sorry that his excellent books are not available in English. If English-speaking management experts can read Prof Takahashi's books, I'm sure that the boom of Japanese management just like in 80's will come again.

"The word 'professional' in the phrase 'professional management' seems to mean that everybody who mastered a collection of any management methods can manage anything. But if this is true, only if an engineer masters how to design, or only if anybody has a CAD computer on the desk, everything can be designed from a bridge to an atomic reactor. Can there be such a silly story? What on earth is the 'professional management' that can exist even with no relation to a specific context in which it is applied or with no relation to the initiative of people?" (p.186 - 187)

This phrase is quoted from a paragraph entitled Illusion of Professional Management. Prof Takahashi criticizes the concept of 'professional management' itself by emphasizing that any management activity cannot be free from a specific context of those who manage and those who are managed. As long as we ignore the context in which we conduct management activities, we will never be able to manage appropriately. The word 'context' includes both the context of national culture (e.g. Japanese context and American context) and the context of a specific organization (e.g. Toyota context and Sony context). This is the argument of Prof Takahashi. Prof Takahashi reached this conclusion by conducting researches with interviews and questionnaires in various Japanese companies of various industries. Only when we have more information of Japanese companies than Prof Takahashi, we can claim that we have as good an opinion as Prof Takahashi.

"The concept of 'managing an organization' assumes that the targeted organization is established and exists. But to establish and maintain an organization just as Barnard says is actually a very difficult thing. Barnard says that to manage is not to control a group of people but to establish and maintain an organization. I think that it is in his words that the concept of 'management' is living." (p.191)

Chester Barnard was a former top management of AT&T and also a famous management theorist in the United States. Prof Takahashi's argument here is based mainly on Barnard's book 'The Functions of the Executive' published in 1938. Prof Takahashi says that before arguing how to manage an organization, we have to argue how to establish and maintain an organization. In order to establish and maintain an organization, the first thing we should do is to keep the members within the organization. If we have no members, we have no organization. If we have no organization, it is nonsense to discuss how to manage an organization. According to Prof Takahashi, it is the minimum requisites for the managers to be able to keep the number of necessary members of the organization. After we reach the point that we don't lose a member of the organization, we can finally start thinking about how to manage the organization. The most important point of Barnard theory is that it is really difficult to maintain an organization, i.e., as the first step, not to lose a member.

These two parts are the most impressive for me. Prof Takahashi criticizes indirectly the 'management as a profession' concept of Malik as well as me. Malik seems to forget that the most important point of Chester Barnard and implicitly assumes an organization that can be maintained without big efforts. Naturally focusing on the performance or results of the organization assumes the stable existence of an organization. But why can we assume so easily the stable existence of an organization? The most difficult thing when we face a group of people is not to lose a member. If we can't even keep the members of an organization, we should seriously ask ourselves whether we are appropriate to manage an organization in the specific national or company context we are put in.