The following information has been extracted from "Unit 2: Personnel Management and Organizational Development" of the FEMA/USFA/NFA/Degrees at a Distance Program, Course Guide, Personnel Management for the Fire Service,January, 2000.

The Functions of Management and Leadership
It is important to understand the differences between management and leadership. Management skills are used to plan, build, and direct organizational systems (policies, procedures, and operational plans) to accomplish missions and goals. Leadership skills guide teams to focus on the game plan. Leaders inspire the team players to use the management tools to accomplish the mission, goals, and objectives.

Many large projects in history show the value of management and leadership in attaining goals. The building of the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian Pyramids, and the Panama Canal shows that managers and supervisors have played an essential role in getting things accomplished. As large and often complicated projects were completed, early observers attempted to understand how successful managers accomplished major tasks. Following the Industrial Revolution, most "social" and "industrial" scientists began to examine the functions of managers in large factories and on production lines.
From the late 1800s into the 20th century, several management experts presented their theories of management as ideas that could predict successful management acts. The value of sound management theory is its power to predict; thus so-called management science emerged.(1)

A concise way of viewing the tasks of management was advanced by Henri Fayol, the manager of a coal mine in France for over fifty years. He described his management theory in 1916, but his book "General and Industrial Management" was not translated into English until 1949, just after World War II.

Fayol listed five major tasks for managers: planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling. He envisioned the tasks as a closed loop, so that each fed into the next as a particular project continued. Fayol understood that, while financial and material resources are necessary, people are even more important. Much of the successful manager's time must be spent in functions that involve the workers.

In 1937, Luther Gulik(2) modified Fayol's list to identify further the steps to successful management. Gulik coined the acronym POSDCORB; still in use today, it contains the following functions of management:

Planning: Determining what needs to be done and the methods for accomplishing the goals of the organization.

• Organizing: The establishment of the formal structure of authority through which tasks are arranged, defined, and coordinated.
• Staffing: The personnel function of bringing in and training the staff and maintaining a favorable work environment.
• Directing: The continuous task of making decisions, issuing specific and general orders and instructions, and supervising the work performance.
• Coordinating: The duty of interrelating the various parts of the work and making sure that necessary resources are available.
• Reporting: Keeping both supervisors and subordinates informed about what is going on. This includes keeping adequate records.
• Budgeting: The tasks related to fiscal planning, accounting, and control.
  

It is important to realize the value and special significance of management theory and leadership ability. Applying management theory presents challenges. The biggest challenges involve the skill and ability to motivate, inspire, and create an enthusiastic team that effectively tackles the mission and goals. The essence of leadership is to inspire the team to use management tools skillfully to accomplish desired results. Great leaders can build teams that can achieve results from few resources. Unless the team is empowered by quality leadership, goal attainment can prove difficult and costly.

The importance of leadership recently has been acknowledged. We now recognize that organizational strength comes from more than properly applied management theory. Peter Drucker's principle of Management by Objectives (MBO) is effective only when flexible and adaptable leaders can carry out the enactment theory correctly in real-world circumstances.

Drucker introduced the concept of Management by Objectives in 1954. The theory was simple. After setting lofty and futuristic goals, "management" must identify the specific objectives that measurably accomplish the goals. In the earliest version of MBO the concern for leadership was less important than identifying, organizing, and measuring work output. (In 1954 this management principle worked much better than it would today!) Following the Depression and World War II, people were more willing to work without questioning authority or challenging the system to become more effective. They worked in fear of losing their jobs. Today's employees look more deeply into their work responsibilities. Better products and/or more effective services have been achieved within a more challenging and competitive work environment. A higher level of social consciousness, stressing employee rights, also has changed the work environment since 1954.

A second principle associated with MBO involved the organization of work responsibility. Again, the early adaptations of MBO involved an almost surgical process of organization and management decision making. The management concept involved dividing activities, decisions, and other work into manageable and measurable units or objectives. Once the work was organized into such units, people were selected to carry out the identified tasks.

Drucker recognized that employees had to be organized and motivated to accomplish the work units. He emphasized the need to empower the employees after the development of the plan. Again, this worked better in the '50s and '60s, when employees were eager to follow direction and respected a clearly designated chain of command. Drucker recommended incentives and rewards to motivate employees. He stressed that managers had to remind the employees constantly of their work targets, and to keep upper levels of management informed of progress. This was a powerful management tool for the day.

Drucker also emphasized the need to evaluate an employee's accomplishment of work in measurable terms. He felt that the employee had to realize the importance of individual accomplishment as it related to the organization as a whole. The accomplishment of desired results in measurable terms was stressed for employees and all levels of management alike.
Lastly, Drucker realized, in small way, the importance of leadership. The following quotation is from Drucker's 1954 published management theory:

Finally, a manager develops people. Through the way he manages, he makes it easy or difficult for people to develop themselves. He directs people or misdirects them. He brings out what is in them or he stifles them. He strengthens their integrity or he corrupts them. He trains them to stand upright and strong or he deforms them.(3)

While Drucker emphasized the human resource development function of management only at the very end of his explanation, it is important to note that he presented the idea almost 40 years ago. Drucker and most other management experts now view the development of personnel to their fullest capacity as a vital organizational concern rather than as a simple management principle.

W. Edwards Deming, whose management theories are well thought of today, reveals the power and importance of leadership in the following statements, used by some Fortune 500 corporations:

• Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
• Adopt a new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
• Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
• Institute leadership. The aim of leadership should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Leadership of management is in need of overhaul, as well as leadership of production workers.
• Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
• Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team to foresee problems in production or in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
• Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force, asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity.
• Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
• Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
• Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
• Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective, management by the number.
  Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
• Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.

Deming's Total Quality Management (TQM) approach is gaining popularity in the United States. The Ford Motor Company has benefited from Deming's recommended methods of management and leadership. The "Total Quality Management" era is gaining in popularity in the public sector as well. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler summarize the benefits of TQM in the public sector in their book Reinventing Government (pages 159 and 160).(4)

"One approach used by an increasing number of governments is Total Quality Management—the management philosophy developed principally by W. Edwards Deming argues that once we learn about poor performance (or "quality," the term he uses), we do not necessarily know what is causing it. It might well be factors outside the control of the workers and the manager—like students' family backgrounds. As one Rochester teacher put it, in rejecting a contract that proposed merit pay, "I give the same effort to every class, but the results don't always match. I don't think I should be accountable alone. These kids come in here with an awful lot of baggage."

Relationship Between Personnel Management and Fire Administration
When organizations, including small cities, become large enough to separate the personnel function from the emergency services administration responsibility, new challenges develop. Emergency service leaders quickly realize the benefit of cooperative activities and positive, team-oriented relations between personnel and emergency services management. The technical personnel issues, such as recruitment, allocation, sanction, and compliance with local, state, and federal personnel regulations, overlap the more general, all-encompassing management functions. There is a need for cooperative communication, joint planning, and an "active" approach in managing personnel needs both by the personnel department and by fire management (operating as a team). A "reactive" approach to critical issues of compliance with local personnel procedures or compliance with federal personnel mandates (for example, compliance to the civil rights laws or Fair Labor Standards Act) results in potentially crossed communications and competing interests. These battling interests hinder the organization in accomplishing its mission. It is useful to establish the following structure and pattern of relations between personnel management and fire administration:

• Acknowledge formal responsibility to ensure that the necessary technical functions relating to personnel management are carried out.
• Understand and agree that human resource development (leadership) concerns and activities are the responsibility of all supervisors and managers, with a special emphasis on the value of good leadership and team ability.
• Recognize the broadest definitions of personnel management, both technical and developmental, when accomplishing administrative tasks such as planning, organizing, staffing, etc. This recognition is necessary to keep the organizational structure in "sync" with personnel needs.

To illustrate, consider the following pattern of development of a fire officer. Firefighters who aspire to officer positions must learn the job before the promotion. They should have learning experiences, such as formal introduction to the personnel management system. They should help to prepare a unit of instruction that will be presented to fellow crewmembers, to provide experience in training assignments. Future fire officers should be trained to deal with personnel issues by personnel specialists and experienced leaders. Firefighters learn best from officers who set good examples in leading daily company operations. These are examples of human resource development that are of direct benefit to the department.

Broadly based personnel management practices will enhance the effectiveness of most management functions. Using team input to develop and implement departmental goals is important for an upcoming officer. The opportunity to build a plan and then produce the desired results provides job-enriching experience. Emergency service leaders should encourage involvement of employees (especially those aspiring to be officers) in all phases of organizational planning and goal achievement. Future leaders will learn the power of team involvement in the development and implementation of a departmental plan of action (from budget development to the use of departmental resources to achieve desired results).

ENDNOTES

1. H.R. Carter and E. Rausch, Management in the Fire Service. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association, 1989, Chapters 2-4.
2. L. Gulik, "Notes on the Theory of Organization." In Luther Gulik and L. Urivick, eds., Papers on the Science of Administration. New York: Columbia University Press, 1937.
3. P. Drucker, The Practice of Management. New York: Harper & Row, 1954, p. 343.
4. D. Osborne and T. Gaebler, Reinventing Government. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Inc., April 1992, pp. 159-160.