DRUCKER, PETER: EMPLOYING THE WHOLE MAN (A SUMMARY)

"Employing the whole man", The Practice of Management. by Peter Drucker
Harper & Row (1982). New York (pp. 262-272)

Peter Drucker makes the case that a company cannot just hire "a hand"; an entire human being always comes with that hand. This means that the firm also hires the values, attitudes, and other personal attributes the worker brings to the workplace. According to Drucker:

The human resource... is, of all resources... the most productive, the most versatile, the most resourceful.
...one cannot "hire a hand"; its owner always comes with it.

In exploring the complexity of the management process, Drucker makes some significant comments about workers as humans, as opposed to inert resources.

...we are dealing with the worker as a human resource
[how we view the properties of this resource depends on]... whether we put the stress on the word "resource" or on the word "human"

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The management process requires that a number of questions be asked about the relationship between worker and enterprise.

Q1: what demands does the enterprise (as the organ of society for getting work done) make on the worker?

Q2: what demands does the worker (as a human, an individual, and as a citizen) make on the enterprise? 

There is, of course, also an economic dimension to management - the dichotomy between the firm's need for profits and the workers' needs for wages:

a) the enterprise is the wealth-producing organ of society
b) the enterprise is the source of the worker's livelihood

...we must reconcile... [the] conflict between wage as cost and wage as income... and... the problem of the worker's relation to the enterprise's fundamental requirement of profitability

 WORKERS AS RESOURCES

First, Drucker deals with the issue of workers as resources. He indicates that an engineering approach...

...looks at the worker as a resource, comparable to all other resources... to utilize him in the same way in which we utilize copper or... water power

Conversely, a human approach to the human resource issue would take a different and, according to Drucker, more appropriate perspective.

...the human being has one set of qualities possessed by no other resource: it has the ability to co-ordinate, to integrate, to judge, and to imagine....

 [we must focus]... on man as a moral and a social creature...

As a resource, man can be "utilized". A person, however, can only utilize himself. This is the great and ultimate distinction.

...it is workers' motivation that controls workers' output.

The human being also has control over how well he works... in all work of a clerical, skilled, technical, professional or managerial nature, this control is practically absolute ....

THE DEMANDS OF THE ENTERPRISE ON THE WORKER 

Since it has hired the worker, the enterprise makes some demands of that worker. It has been assumed that an enterprise has the right to expect "a fair day's labor for a fair day's pay". However, Drucker questions whether one can actually determine what is "fair". Furthermore, he feels that an enterprise ought to expect more from its workers.

The enterprise... must demand something much bigger than a fair day's labor. It must demand over and above fairness, willing dedication... It must aim at building aggressive esprit de corps.

The enterprise must expect of the worker not the passive acceptance of a physical chore, but the active assumption of responsibility for the enterprise's results. 

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Beyond the demand that the worker "buy into" the mission of the organization, Drucker maintains that the enterprise has the right to expect the worker to accept change. Change is not only an intellectual process but a psychological one... there are conditions for man's readiness to change.

1. The change must appear rational
2. [The change]... must appear an improvement
3. [The change]... must not be so rapid or so great as to obliterate the psychological landmarks which make a man feel at home regarding:

• his understanding of his work
• his relations to fellow workers
• his concepts of skill, prestige, and social standing

 Change will meet with resistance unless it clearly and visibly strengthens man's psychological security.

THE DEMANDS OF THE WORKER ON THE ENTERPRISE

Just as the enterprise makes demands of the worker, so too does the worker make demands of the enterprise. In making these demands, the worker acts as more than just an economic being. 

The worker in making his demands on the enterprise is a whole man not an economic subsection thereof. 

He demands, over and above economic returns, returns as an individual, a person, a citizen. He demands the fulfillment of status and function... that his work be meaningful and that it be serious.

THE ECONOMIC DIMENSION

...there is a big group of [management] problems that have their origin in the economic sphere.

 The enterprise lives in two economic systems, an external and an internal one. The total amount available for the internal economy (...above all for wages to the employee) is determined by what the enterprise receives for its product in the external economy. Internally... the enterprise is not a market economy. It is a "redistributive" one... [in which wages are distributed] according to a predetermined formula.

While the effort of management must be directed toward receiving more... the attention of the worker... is directed toward receiving a larger share....

Outside the enterprise the considerations are economic. Inside the enterprise they (considerations) are based on power balance and power relationships.

In the economic dimension, the is a basic divergence.

The enterprise needs flexibility of the wage burden. The individual values, above all, a steady, stable and predictable income... 

The result of this divergence tends to be a twofold meaning of profit:

• To the enterprise profit is a necessity of survival.
• To the worker profit is somebody else's income.

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