homemoney to purchasehow The school of thought that presses for more and more technical knowhow in management sees and often with reason considerable dangers to progress in the emergence of a purely management 'cadre'. They suspect the man or woman whose sole expertise is 'management' and who might obstruct a vital technical development because of an obsessive concern with, say, an organizational chart. There is also a school which says and often with equal reason that the very fact of the possession of technical knowledge in a high degree often eclipses imaginative thought and the 'human touch'. This school argues, often convincingly, that in a technological age the technocrat (that most unattractive of words) should not be taken out of the technical sphere, otherwise he will cause antagonisms and resentments. The very fact, it is argued, of considerable technical ability presupposes a mind closed to wider issues. The clinching argument produced by the first school the 'management for management's sake' school runs something like this : it says and a mounting bibliography on management subjects would confirm this that, in modern conditions, management needs its trained interpreters. How true is the last argument? There is no question that management principles are beginning to emerge, and that the hitormiss methods of the old days will no longer do. The manager who says 'I don't know how I do it, but I do, and it seems to work successfully' has an aura of fustian about him. He may be right; it may well be that he has an instinctive feel for management and that he is unconcerned both with management techniques and technical knowhow. He is, however, an exception from whom it would be wrong to try and prove a rule. The danger would appear to lie more in the degree to which management itself becomes cocooned in its own technical knowhow. The excessive selfconsciousness about management which is a strong characteristic in industry and commerce today is surely an excellent thing, but it needs to be constantly reassessed; if the technicians in an industrial or commercial organization are to respect the work of trained management and accept that there is a place for it that, in fact, its existence is a guarantee of the recognition and progress of technological development then it is essential that management should not be imprisoned in its own technology. It needs to beware of that singlemindedness which is, very often, the greatest strength of the technician. In modern industrial conditions this is becoming a large problem. Top management needs a strong constitution to scale the heady slopes of technical development. Every day more and more questing scientists are being turned out who are dedicated to the improvement of a product or service. personal finance