In Brief
Likert’s contribution may be summarized as:
-Rensis Likert (1903-1981), an American organizational psychologist, educator and management theorist is known for his studies on organization and management styles.
-Making detailed study of supervisory styles, Likert classified supervisors into two categories viz., job- entered and employee-centered. The job-centered supervisor’s focus is to ensure the performance of assigned tasks and maintenance of prescribed standards and employee-centered supervisor is more concerned with human aspects of their subordinates and effective team building for high task performance. He recognizes that the effective supervision is an adaptive and a relative process.
-Likert postulates supportive relationships as a contributing factor of high performance of management. He conceives of an interaction-influence system to maximize skills, resources and motivation of individuals at different levels of organization and elaborates the characteristics of the system.
-To overcome the difficulties of traditional system and to facilitate the growth interaction-influence system, Likert suggested Linking Pin Model. In this model each individual in the organization has twin roles in two overlapping groups.
-The most important contribution of Likert is the conceptualization of different systems of management along a continuum as “Management Systems 1-4”. He labels them an exploitative-authoritative, benevolent-authoritative, consultative and participative. These systems are arranged along the type of authority and operating characteristics.
-Likert considers system 4 as an ideal model of management and suggests applications for transfer of systems from System 1 to System 4. He proposes improvement cycle with elaborate guidelines for the application of organizational improvement. Likert suggested internal management and monitoring systems base on causal, intervening and end result variables.
-In his search to evolve new patterns of management based on cooperative and supportive relationships, Likert focused attention on new ways of managing conflict.
-Management systems model of Likert is criticized for lack of contextual sensitivity. His linking pin model is often accused of doing nothing more than drawing tringles around the traditional hierarchical structures and slowing down the process.
-Likert’s most important contribution to management thought and practice is his systematic analysis of good management and extending their frontiers of knowledge and application.