YOU ARE IN THE ARMY NOW! LYNDALL URWICK
AND THE USE OF MILITARY METAPHORS
Philip A. Ritson
School of History and Politics
University of Adelaide
ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA 5000
Emial:
Lee D. Parker
School of Commerce
University of South Australia
ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA 5000
Emial:
YOU ARE IN THE ARMY NOW! LYNDALL URWICK
AND THE USE OF MILITARY METAPHORS
This paper examines the employment of the military metaphor by the management thinker and writer Lyndall Urwick. Urwick developed and articulated his ideas over a 60 year period in the twentieth century, arguably the longest continuous period of any management writer of his day. The study reveals the wartime context surrounding the emergence of his ideas motivated Urwick’s faith in the military approach to management. In this case of a management idea’s failure to gain traction, the importance of the congruence between management theory and societal beliefs emerges as crucial to the likely uptake of new management thinking.
Lyndall Urwick (1891-1983) stands as one of the most prolific and enduring writers on management theory and practice in the twentieth century. He sustained a prolific output of books and articles over a 60 year period.[1] His work is particularly noted for its persistent proselytising of Taylor’s scientific management and for its employment of military metaphors to convey his management theories and prescriptions. Urwick is unique amongst the management writers of his day in his commitment to the military perspective.
This paper explores Urwick’s employment of military metaphors as a unique case of management theorising, one that failed to gain traction amongst writers and researchers of his and subsequent periods. In doing so, it offers an alternative approach to the historical study of the development of thought in management, one which focuses on the most recognisably ‘successful’ cases in the development and transmission of ideas. To this end, the paper explores not only Urwick’s articulation of the military metaphor, but also the socio-economic context that influenced his articulation of it and its reception by his audience, as well as his own rationales for his sustained advocacy of those metaphors.
In presenting this historical analysis and reflection, this study offers insights into one example of the historical genesis of longstanding concepts in management thought, such as line–staff relationships and span of control. Their original intentions and orientations can be unpacked through an analysis of their originators and their contexts. In so doing, possibilities for better understanding their degree of durability and contemporary positioning can be revealed.
This paper begins with a brief summary of Urwick’s own military and business background and his Taylorist persuasion and then provides illustrations of some of his most prominent military metaphors. The British industrial and professional environment as a conditioner of Urwick’s military focus, as well as his own diagnosis and rationale for that focus are then investigated. Historical constraints upon the perceived applicability of military metaphors to management theory and practice, and a changing set of contemporary military and business structures are finally reviewed.
Urwick’s Career: Military and Civilian
Lyndall Urwick was born the only son of a wealthy family of glove makers in WorcesterEngland in 1891.[2] He completed an undergraduate degree in history at OxfordUniversity before entering the family firm, Fownes & Co, in 1912.[3] An officer in the Territorial Army, Urwick was amongst the first to be called up in August 1914 and he fought in the British Expeditionary Force until an attack of enteritis and dysentery put him into hospitalin November 1914.[4] Urwick’s recuperation was protracted. Arrangements were made to send him to an assembly camp in Rouen where newly arrived recruits were being prepared before being dispatched to the front-lines. In May 1915, Urwick returned to front-line service on the Ypres salient and in August 1915 he became an acting Captain. Ongoing concerns about his health saw Urwick begin his progress through a succession of staff appointments. Between November 1916 and April 1917 Urwick commanded a Training Reserve Brigade in Dorset and in April 1917 he returned to France where he served as Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General.[5] At war’s end, Major Urwick was responsible for rounding-up allied prisoners of war left to fend for themselves by the retreating Germans. A final post-war promotion ensured that Urwick, who had been mentioned in dispatches on three occasions and had merited the award of the Mons Star Medal (with Bar) and the Military Cross, left the armed forces with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.[6] In 1919, Urwick was awarded an Order of the British Empire.[7]
Urwick returned to the family business of Fownes & Co where he determined to apply insights acquired serving in the armed forces.[8] Urwick had been introduced to the works of Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1915 and developed an affinity for Taylor’s approach to business organization.[9] In 1921, Urwick gave a paper at the Oxford Management Conference which so impressed the confectionary manufacturer Benjamin Seebohn Rowntree that he invited Urwick to reorganise the company’s sales and administrative offices.[10] Encouraged by Rowntree, himself the publisher of an influential study of poverty, Urwick began to publish and speak on management matters and became acquainted with leading management theorists such as Mary Parker Follett.[11] In 1928, he left Rowntree’s employ to take up the position of Director of the International Management Institute in Geneva where he lived until the Institute’s demise in 1934.[12] Returning to England, he co-founded Urwick, Orr and Partners, one of the largest and most influential management consultancies in the United Kingdom.[13] Urwick was also one of British management’s most prolific writers and public speakers, authoring at least thirty books and hundreds of articles on the subjects of management, business organisation and business administration.[14] Hannah has described Urwick as Britain’s “most consistent and coherent advocate of [industrial] rationalization” whilst others say he was the “driving force” behind the AdministrativeStaffCollege at Henley-on-Thames.[15] His career also saw him hold visiting appointments at universities in Canada, the United States, and Australia where he died in 1983.[16]
Taylor’s Disciple
Urwick retained a lifelong admiration for Taylor and his approach to management. In 1933, Urwick’s devotion to Taylor’s pursuit of a science of management was made clear:
The curious feature of the industrial situation today is this. On the mechanical side of production, on the application of the resources of nature to the production of material goods, the scientific attitude is largely supreme. But on the much more important human side of management, the task of inducing men to co-operate, the conception of scientific method is often ignored.[17]
In the 1940s, writing with his co-author Edward Brech, Urwick continued to align himself with the Scientific Management project. They said Scientific Management applied:
...science to the problems of the direction and control created by the fact that discoveries in the physical sciences had modified profoundly the whole material circumstances of industrial work.... Scientific Management ... [is] ... thinking scientifically instead of traditionally or customarily about the processes involved in the control of the social groups who co-operate in production and distribution.[18]
Like many of his early twentieth-century contemporaries, the Soviet leader Vladimir Ilich Lenin included, Urwick found in Taylorism a conception of management that promised to administer human effort in a manner that was as scientific as the technologies found in the twentieth-century factory.[19]
What makes Urwick unusual amongst his contemporaries is his continued expression of admiration for Taylor long after others were beginning to question the value of Scientific Management. The Human Relations School may have convinced others that strict adherence to Taylor’s principles imposed too high a price in absenteeism, unrest and conflict but not Urwick.[20] His faith in Scientific Management never wavered.[21] In 1969, Urwick was again praising Taylor’s “determination to break through [any] restriction of output”.[22] He continued:
The individual employed in an institution engaged in making and/or distributing goods and/or services ... is also a consumer.... To argue that ‘people’, i.e. the people employed in any economic institution, should come first and its purpose should be subordinated to their sentiments is ... ‘a moonbeam from the larger lunacy’. The business that is not organised on the principle that the consumer comes first is headed for bankruptcy.[23]
Throughout his life, Urwick retained his commitment to Taylor’s conception of a scientific approach to industrial administration because he believed such an approach would unleash the full productive potential of the technologies at industry’s disposal. Scientific Management reduced waste and inefficiency allowing the industrial worker the opportunity to share in an ever increasing quantity of goods and services being produced at progressively reduced cost. Industry should be made “as efficient as possible ... so that you are able to give to the workers an ever-rising standard of life”.[24]
The second theme that is striking about Uwrick’s writings is the extent to which he drew upon his experiences in the armed forces to illustrate the theoretical propositions he was seeking to express. Two military principles which recur in his work, and for which he became renowned, were the line-staff distinction and the span of control.
Line and Staff Relationships and the Span of Control
Urwick observed that “enormous ... modern armies” supply their commanders with “a regular staff of specially selected and trained officers” who “ensure smooth and efficient co-ordination of effort between all parts of the force”.[25] Effective coordination was achieved by staff officers who acted on the commander’s behalf. He then drew upon this practice to suggest that in large organisations:
Co-ordination ... cannot be separated from the functions and responsibilities of the leader.... It is logical to anticipate an increased specialisation of the leader’s duty of co-ordination through subordinates associated with him in a ‘staff’ relationship.[26]
His military inspired view of the role of staff managers stood in marked contrast to the commonly held view of the period. The latter defined ‘staff’ as functional specialists whose job it was to advise line managers. Urwick believed the proper role of staff managers was to assist the chief executive. Urwick wrote:
Attempts so far ... in industry have been in nature a compromise between the necessity for specialisation ... and the necessity for preserving a direct line of authority.... These compromises have been described generically in industry as ‘the staff and line’ method of organisation....
In military life ... ‘staff’ is not applied either to those exercising authority and responsibility on a unitary basis – ‘the line’ - or those exercising authority and responsibility on a functional basis - specialised troops and administrative services.... It has been recognised that if the ... [chain of command] ... is to be secured no chief can delegate any of his authority or responsibility except through that process.... There has grown up a class of officers – ‘the staff’, who ... exercise their chief’s authority in assisting him to carry out his responsibilities of command.
By graduations of authority and subdivision of work within the ‘staff’ there is built up a structure by which the chief can assure himself that all detailed consequences of any decision have been worked out, are understood, and are being carried out in correlation by everyone under his command, both specialists of all kinds and troops in the line. The authority of his line commanders is not interfered with ... [because] ... orders issued by the ‘staff’ are the chief’s orders....[27]
Staff managers should not exercise authority in their own right; but rather, act on the chief executive’s behalf. Urwick explained the distinction as follows:
During 1917-1918 I had the opportunity to observe firsthand the organization of a British infantry division.... The Commander had ... only six immediate subordinates who usually approached him directly – the three Brigadiers General in charge of infantry brigades, the Brigadier General of Artillery and his two principle general staff officers. The latter were able to relieve the Commander of all the routine work of coordinating line and specialist activities. They did virtually all the paper work, drafting operational and routine orders, conducting correspondence, etc. However, the responsibility for every word they wrote was the Commanders; they had no personal authority.[28]
Urwick focussed on the military’s line-staff distinction because he believed conventional definitions encouraged the exercise of personal authority within a functionally defined area of expertise by staff managers. His First World War experience in the line and as a staff officer had taught him to distrust any source of authority located outside the chain of command; the reporting relationships that linked the commander to his subordinates in the line. The maintenance of this chain of command was vital if an organization was to maintain the unity of command and direction needed to coordinate action in the pursuit of goals. Thus, for example, Urwick suggested a personnel manager should be:
Responsible directly either to the administrative authority (the board) or the chief executive officer ... [and] ... in direct (‘line’) control of all units in the organization specialising in various aspects of personnel work – employment, medical, welfare.... There are however three aspects of personnel work – general relations between the undertaking and its employees, trade union negotiation and [the] development and promotion of higher executives – which are of such character that they can only be handled effectively ... by the chief executive officer. Where a personnel manager assists a chief executive in the preliminary stages of such matters he should act in a ‘staff’ capacity.[29]
In addition to the line-staff distinction, Urwick was also known for the ‘span of control’,a phrase he coined in 1933, whilst he assisted on the translation of a paper for the Bulletin of the International Management Institute.[30] Urwick explained:
As far as I know, the first person to direct public attention to the principle of span of control was a soldier – the late General Sir Ian Hamilton. His statements ... [are] ... the basis for subsequent interpretations of the concept orientated to business.[31]
Urwick then went on to quote General Sir Ian Hamilton directly, “the average human brain finds its effective scope in handling three to six other brains”.[32] Urwick often drew on military experience to assert that span of control was restricted to a small number of subordinates. For example:
Obviously, the number of any individuals in any organization with whom a leader can have this direct official relationship is, save in the cases of the smallest businesses, an infinitesimal fraction of the whole.... It is important because of the importance of example. A chief of staff of the United States Army wrote a good many years ago – ‘The leader must be everything that he desires his subordinates to become. Men think as their leaders think, and men know unerringly how their leaders think’.[33]
In the latter half of his career, Urwick defended his preference for narrow spans of control against Herbert Simon’s contention that “Administrative efficiency is enhanced by keeping at a minimum the number of organizational levels” and that “the results to which this principle leads are in direct contradiction to the requirements of ... span of control”.[34] In Urwick’s mind, Simon’s claim that the limits imposed by the span of control could be violated was mistaken. Alluding once more to the British Army he explained:
There were 18 persons directly responsible to our Divisional Commander - a dozen more than we have said the ordinary business executive can effectively handle.... How had this apparently successful neglect of the principle of span of control been made to work?
First of all, a clear distinction was drawn between the nominal right of direct access to the Commander and the frequent use of that right. Normally, heads of specialized branches, and indeed all subordinates, were expected to take up all routine business through the appropriate general staff officer in the first instance. Only if they regarded the matter as one of outstanding importance which justified them in approaching the Commander - and only after they had failed to secure a satisfactory settlement with one of his general staff officers - would the Commander accept a direct discussion.... The Commander had thus only six immediate subordinates who usually approached him directly.[35]
Simon had failed to appreciate that staff managers mediated the relationship between an executive and their subordinates. Sometimes an organization might use staff to give the appearance of a broad span of control; but, the limits imposed by the span of control were absolute. For any given number of subordinates; the number of managers, either line or staff, needed to supervise them adequately was always fixed. As late as 1974, Urwick continued to deny Simon’s claim that more than six subordinates could operate under a manager’s supervision.
For some years I had been asserting that there was a strict limit to the number of direct subordinates an executive (any executive) should have. This opinion was based on 3 factors: