Habits and rules
In essence, economic analysis of business
management is nearly always expressed in
terms of the management of measurable
resources, technology and the production
process independently of interactions with
management structures or styles. The
implication of this is that important human dimensions are ignored which are crucial for
an understanding of organisational
competence, whether in making profits or in
delivering public services. It is thus
important to recognise the role of human
effort which contributes most, if not all, to the dynamics of organisational change.
An additional problem rests with defining organisational objectives for it is within the
context of an organisation that human
activities are determined. Whilst the
objectives of business are unequivocally
clear in neo-classical economic analysis we
do not know what are the objectives of
various institutions in the public sector that
could in any way be operationalised as a single, achievable, unarguable target. Beyond stating some grand scheme of
delivering and improving public service,
individual services in the public sector do
not have single purposes, but have to satisfy
a number of interested parties, many of
whom have conflicting objectives. For
example, in the health sector, single
objective, cost benefit analyses which
measure health outcomes in monetary terms are, in fact, very few (Backhouse et al., 1992). What are more usual are measures of health
outcome benefits of medical intervention
which are measured over a variety of natural
units such as adverse events avoided,
symptom free days, or cases detected (Briggs
and Gray, 1999). Inevitably, as objectives become closer to working practices they
become less general but more relevant. In such situations a whole range of questions
arise as to how managers introduce new
working practices and how associated
(unplanned) practices subsequently emerge,
develop and are refined in the light of experience in actual implementation.
One important research theme which is a
response to describing effective working
practices and which contributes to the debate
on the dynamics of organisational change
has been that relating to the routines, or
habits and rules, individuals adopt to
undertake their work tasks. As such, an
analysis of habits and rules offers a
perspective on why it is effective to routinize working practices and why managers should encourage such actions. As will be outlined, arules and habits approach to understanding
how individuals work offers a realistic
alternative to the presumptions of standard economic analysis in assisting managers in
designing implementable strategies for working practices. Moreover, it offers a
rebuff to the criticism that individuals in the public sector are unwilling to change since, what will be argued, the status quo is likely
to be preferred against untestable innovations.