to buy a house How far decentralization can go towards resolving this human question is hard to say. Furthermore, the economics of running large production units must be considered particularly in process industries where the unit is indivisible and plant has cost many millions of pounds. In such instances decentralization is virtually impossible. The human problem can to some extent be solved by a system of effective communications, down and up, and sideways. This will at least assure that local managements do not feel out on a limb and that they can communicate that sense of belonging to those they are managing. Visits from directors and senior management; a constant flow of information about a company's work, aims, policies, and progress; 'house' magazines and staff newspapers; all these and other devices are essential if a highly decentralized organization is to be kept informed from manager to night watch man. A Head Office tends to be regarded as some remote, impersonal fastness peopled by soulless monsters. Many will remember the mistrustful attitude of the 'lower formation' to the 'higher formation' in the War, though this usually faded with promotion. 'Why, they're just like us !' used to be the surprised cry of the newcomer as he joined his former seniors. Management must be ready to accept this odd quirk of human nature. Strong as the temptation must often be for a harassed manager 'in the field' to inveigh against the Head Office staff, nothing can be more threatening to the achieve The Business of Management 65 ment of a harmonious unit in a larger whole than a management that is forever criticizing the central organization. The ability to communicate (and to make sure that those communicated to are conditioned to receive the communication) was discussed at the start of this book and assessed as an important management quality, but it needs to be more than a quality it must be a management aim, consciously planned and carried out. Minimum interference but maximum communication might well be said to summarize what a central management, managing its decentralized units, should work for. There is a point here for the student of human relations to ponder. It is odd that, while imaginative managements go to considerable pains to get among employees, to listen to their problems, and to discuss suggestions, it is rare for an employee to ask a manager anything about his problems. Communication is, by definition, a twoway affair, but it seldom works that way. Is it perhaps a fact that employees are plainly uninterested and, though receptive to anything management cares to produce for them in the way of literature about the Cbmpany, find it hard to make the running themselves? Experience of Joint Councils, at which management and workpeople meet together under minimum restraint, shows that the stimulus for discussion and action must more often than not come from those in authority. At any point in a management situation the need to coordinate functions is essential. to buy a house