to buy a house As with every other management problem there are exceptions. But these exceptions do not prove a rule. Unhappy, isolated workers so the researchers into human relations say sometimes produce the best output. This may be, but it is with normal, gregarious, social mankind that this book is chiefly concerned. And so the area beyond financial reward is approached the area in which the ordinary worker has somehow got to be made to feel responsible and involved the area in which the workers' motivation goes beyond the immediacies of incentives offered to him with almost cynical detachment. Whether workers want responsibility and involvement or not 160 The Business of Management is beside the point; managers have got to create that want in much the same way as they have to create a market. The first essential in organizing human resources so that a better job will be responsibly done is to make sure that workers are doing the jobs that they can do best in an environment which is friendly and informative. It is often said that a general sense of satisfaction among workers a liking for the company, approval of its working conditions, belief in the merchandise or services the company is producing is not enough. This is true. A worker needs more than a vague sense of contentment. He needs, let it be repeated, to feel that he is participating responsibly, whether alone or in a group, in an enterprise the overall objects of which he can understand, and the surest way to achieve that object is to see that he fits into the right place and that he is doing a job rather than performing a movement. The one exception here may be women workers who, their minds usually being full of subjects out and beyond their chore, are conceivably happier doing repetitive work : even this is, however, arguable. This puts a particular selection burden on 'middle management' (as it is often called) the foremen and supervisors who are closest to the workers and who are best situated to measure the capacities of those around them. It will make selection the more important as new machines take over more and more of the repetitive work hitherto carried out by people, thus throwing up the need, to take one example, for maintenance, repair, and control personnel who will have to exercise considerable responsibility. r A second essential raises the controversial question of standards of output. Much of presentday thinking about greater output is related to setting standards and rewarding those who exceed them the 'Stakhanovite' principle in fact. There is room for much argument here, and once again it has to be said apologetically that the subject demands a Getting the Best from People 161 book on its own. But it cannot be overlooked entirely when getting the best from people is being discussed. interior Planning