Financehome A large, highly diversified group was controlled from a central headquarters which contained in its staff a market research department set up to serve the constituent companies. Before this central service was established, however, a company within the group, largely concerned with exploring and satisfying consumer needs, had taken the initiative in engaging its own market research officer who, with a small staff, was slowly if somewhat painfully building up recognition among the different product managers of the value of his services. His salary and status in the operating company within the group was such that he could work on level terms and in close cooperation with those product managers. As a result he was able, over a period of years, not only to demonstrate the valuable contribution which could be made by the use of market survey techniques, but also to advise on daytoday marketing problems. Acceptance of this advice on marketing matters саше largely from the close relationship with the product managers which was carefully built up over the years. There was no possibility that a central research department at headquarters could ever achieve the same close liaison, partly because of a difference in location and partly, which is more important, because the immediate responsibility and loyalty of the central research staff was to their own top management rather than to that of the constituent company. Basically, the issue was one of confidence on the part of the product managers in the discretion of those from whom they sought advice. There are many arguments about decentralization in these days of mounting costs, and it is too big a subject to discuss in great detail. Since, however, it is the human aspect of management which permeates so much of the thinking in this book, it must be said that the problem of size, and hence the problem of responsible participation (a phrase used in an earlier chapter) by each and every worker, is a growjng one. Management cannot shirk facing it. The 'organization man', more concerned with status than achievement, is an ugly manifestation of twentiethcentury business. Much work in the U.S.A. and the U.K. is being done by great companies like Unilever, Tube Investments, General Motors, and I.C.I, to decentralize, and decentralize in such a way as to reduce the size of units to the point where employees can truly be said to be working with rather than working for management; and a good deal of new thinking, conditioned not least by high taxation, is being devoted to б4 The Business of Management 'Г the wider question as to whether size is an inevitable consequence of business development. Though working for a really large organization carries with it certain consolations, of which the sense of security is the most potent, there are many today in the lower reaches of management who feel what amounts almost to a sense of claustrophobic and crushing anonymity as they pour out of hug« factories or offices at the end of a day's work. interior Planning