Financehome The kind of joint consultation through Works or Staff Committees or Councils, discussed earlier in this chapter, are management's attempts, usually sincere, to humanize industrial relations in a local way; the personnel function has become an important managerial activity and is a specialist operation in many businesses. For all the obvious reservations and criticisms it attracts to itself, personnel management (there are 4,000 members today of the Institute of Personnel Management) will grow as business complexity grows. It could be argued that, at this point in a discussion about trade unions, the question of irresponsible behaviour by labour and its representatives should be tackled. Unofficial strikes disgrace the industrial scene and make nonsense of the laboriously built, alltoofragile, fabric of labour rela Getting the Best from People 169 tions. Business cannot divorce itself from such happenings, which present a large problem in the field of personnel management. The subject is too complex and farranging to be discussed here. Sufficient to say that the unions as much as management need to do a good deal of urgent thinking on the subject. The point that is germane to the whole thesis of this chapter and its postscript that to get the best from people, management's skill, patience, and wisdom need to concentrate on creating a sense of responsible participation the Unions may have helped this along more than they presently realize. By taking the wagesbargaining aspect out and above local management and on to an industrywide basis, individual firms have been left to concern themselves with those aspects of industrial relations which may be indeed are surely becoming of equally high importance to workers: the character of the job itself and the responsibility attached thereto; the provision of recreational and social facilities; the development of other welfare schemes; the tasks of meritrating and promotion assessment; the creation by properly organized and enthusiastically run Works and Staff committees of a spirit of sharing. This has become what a recent book from the University of Liverpool's Department of Social Science calls 'constitutional paternalism' an excellent name for that new brand of management which stems from the new controllers of businesses, the managers themselves. The Training of Managers 'You can't train managers! They're born, not made.' Twenty years ago, this remark was sure to have been made at some stage of any discussion about the possibility of management training. It did indeed represent the general view held in business. The provision of the men who were eventually to take over responsibility for the management of an enterprise was regarded as a matter of making sure that enough young men entered business at the foot of the ladder. When the need arose, those who became managers were the people who had best survived the struggle up the rungs to the top. Financehome