Assign Duties: G1

Will the Work be Done?

The previous perspective of structuring an organization was useful. But now the perspective changes to organising the management of all work-to-be-done within an organization, however structured.

Reminder: Effective performance in large organizations absolutely demands recognition of different levels of responsibility for work. Formulation of these management levels was oriented to include responsibility for actual performance of lower levels as well: hence the focus on line-management .

Ensuring that work will be done requires:

distinguishing duties in term of their scope and significance (as well as kind)
allocation of duties to employed individuals

who are judged to have
the personal capability to carry the responsibility for their discharge.

With this focus, the 7 levels of management generate 7 Monads and 7 levels of responsibility, each with specific duties.

These duties provide confidence that all necessary tasks will be performed (at least in principle), and the system is referred to as «management control».

A duty may not seem controlling from the outside, because control is exerted from within by the sense of responsibility and contractual obligation. While assigning tasks or issuing instructions, by contrast, looks highly «controlling» in the informal sense of the term, such behaviour does not provide a manager with control. No single task can deal with both standard and unusual situations, where the staff member is on their own and must use discretion first to determine what exactly ought to be done and then to do it.

Duties-G1 are best viewed using the values to outputs perspective, as shown in the example below

Example

Consider «maintain nursing standards» as an example of the work-to-be-done. This means answering questions like "what are all the duties required to maintain nursing standards?" &/or "who is responsible for nursing standards?" Relevant duties are then to be found in all 7 Monads. Control can only be said to be in place if all these duties are allocated and performed.

G1	Name	Nature	Standards Example
G1⁷	Identity control	Defining basic parameters	Choosing which standards are to be taken as given by all operational entities.
G1⁶	Policy control	Framing operational fields	Ensuring given standards and adaptations are implemented in a consistent, coordinated way.
G1⁵	Strategy control	Shaping overall operations	Taking account of standards in shaping and structuring nursing and all associated services and facilities.
G1⁴	Management control	Developing multiple services	Taking account of standards in developing a range of nursing services.
G1³	Operations control	Handling concrete systems	Building appropriate standards into actual nursing care systems.
G1²	Situational control	Assessing concrete needs	Applying given standards appropriately to meet the needs of any particular patient at a particular time.
G1¹	Output control	Responding to concrete demands	Following given nursing procedures meticulously in actual situations.

Features

Function: The Monads precisely and completely differentiate any kind of work into distinctive duties for which responsibility for effective performance can be assigned.

Quality: These duties are prescriptive in the sense that an individual assigned the duties must perform them as part of their employment contract.

Integration within each Group: Not applicable because a Monad is just one Level.

Integration across all Groups: Provided by all the higher Groupings (G2-G7).

Psychological Correlate: Because the duties correspond to levels of responsibility, the primary correlate is personal work capability i.e. carrying the weight of responsibility.

Personal Tension: The desire to concentrate on role-based duties can conflict with your desire to affect choices at higher Levels: especially if you have the capability to work there, now or later in your career.

Social Correlate: Personal duties exist in social life, and such duties are simultaneously a right (i.e. you cannot have an obligation to do something and not be entitled to do it). Ethical obligations, rights and rules apply in organizations as a microcosm of society.

Organisational Tension: The separate pursuit of work by individuals using their own judgement can conflict with the organization's need for an integrated output. It is easy for optimum performance at one Level to throw the system out of kilter.

Practical Implications: These Monads are the basis for the requisite structuring of an organization in terms of responsibilities (as in the earlier section).

Start the Integration

Simply prescribing duties is not enough. The tensions make that clear.

Because goals are about outputs and outcomes, there is an immediate pressure to ensure that duties are leading to choices that deliver desired results.

As part of this, there is a need to adjust specifications and allocations of duties over time. This calls for continuous authoritative oversight between adjacent Levels, which depends on communication and cooperation.

Next step:

Oversight is provided by combining Levels in pairs (i.e. Dyads-G2).

Originally posted: 19-Mar-2014