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The explanation and conception of operational processes within a successful industrial firm is the core element of general, international business economics from a viewpoint of decentralized actions of a company and of several decision makers.
Personnel management and organizational theories offer a good starting point to describe, understand, explain and conceive a business.1 Until now, industrial research does not offer a fully perfected, empirically proved and well formulated managerial theory, consisting of a system of falsifiable hypotheses. Therefore, the basic schools of thought related to personnel management and business organization will be presented. The methodological background of business economics is coined by the fact that most business management related problems are poorly structured and complex. For that reason they can only be addressed as multi-complex problems, e.g. from a personnel-management related and organizational viewpoint.
Complex problems in connection with business economics can only be described and partially solved with the help of different definitions of part-problems from a personnel management and organizational perspective, but it is not possible to summarize them in comprehensive, univariate definition and solution.
We present the basics of four schools of thought regarding a personnel management-related standpoint with their axioms, assumptions and logic. Closest to the practical, normative business management comes the finance-oriented personnel management – one only needs to think of remuneration management, personnel controlling, the Berlin Human Capital Assessment or occupational pension schemes. Therefore, we take the example of the annual financial statement of an international enterprise and deduct and calculate the Berlin Balanced Scorecard Approach from it.
The counterpart of each personnel management related theory is the corresponding organizational theory. Therefore, the four basic schools of thought with regard to organization are presented. In this context, the structural approach is essential and the other organizational theories repeatedly refer to it.
The political and legal organizational approach with its paradigm from the Corporate Governance Approach2 is certainly worth mentioning in an international company with its conflict-filled problems. For example the practical application of the financial controlling of strategic management or of the company supervision due to different compliance standards requested by the state or the capital market and in Germany, e.g. by the employee participation, confront the company management with huge challenges.
Berlin and Nuremberg
Rebecca Popp and Wilhelm Schmeisser
1 Cf. the following German literature with regard to that topic: Schmeisser, W. / Andresen, M./ Kaiser, S. (2012) Personalmanagement, UTB basics, Munich, chapter 1 and chapter 3.1 and Schmeisser, W. /Reiss, M. /Rolf, A. / Popp, R. (2014): Organisation, UTB basics, Munich, chapter 2
Primärer Gegenstand und Objekt der allgemeinen, internationalen Betriebswirtschaftslehre ist die Erklärung und Gestaltung des betrieblichen Prozesses im Erfolgsmodell Industriebetrieb aus der Sicht des dezentralen Handelns eines Unternehmers oder mehrerer Entscheidungsträger.
Personal- und Organisationstheorien bilden hier gute Ansatzpunkte einen Betrieb zu beschreiben, zu verstehen, zu erklären und zu gestalten3. Da es eine voll ausgereifte, empirisch abgesicherte und wohl-formulierte betriebswirtschaftliche Theorie, bestehend aus einem System von falsifizierbaren Hypothesen noch nicht in der betriebswirtschaftlichen Forschung gibt, werden hier die grundlegenden Denkschulen aus personalwirtschaftlicher und organisatorischer Sicht vorgestellt. Methodologischer, betriebswirtschaftlicher Hintergrund ist, dass die meisten betriebswirtschaft-lichen Probleme schlecht-strukturiert und komplex sind, und man sie nur als Multi-Komplex-Probleme, z.B. aus verschiedener personalwirtschaftlicher und organisatorischer Sicht, lösen helfen kann. Komplexe, betriebswirtschaftliche Probleme kann man deshalb nur durch verschiedene Teil-Problem-Definitionen unterschiedlicher personalwirtschaftlicher und organisatorischer Sicht beschreiben und teilweise lösen, ohne sie zu einer umfassenden, univarianten Problem-Definition und Lösung zusammenfassen zu können.
Hier werden vier Denkschulen aus personalwirtschaftlicher Sicht grundsätzlich vorgestellt, mit ihren Axiomen, Prämissen und ihrer Denklogik. Der praktischen, normativen Betriebswirtschaft liegt natürlich die finanzwirtschaftlich orientierte Personalwirtschaft am nächsten, denkt man nur an das Entgeltmanagement, das Personalcontrolling, an die Berliner Humankapitalbewertung oder die betriebliche Altersversorgung. Deshalb wird hier exemplarisch der Berliner Balanced Scorecard Ansatz aus dem Jahresabschluss eines internationalen Unternehmens abgeleitet und berechnet.
Das Pendant jeder personalwirtschaftlichen Theorie bildet die entsprechende Organisationstheorie. Es werden deshalb die vier grundsätzlichen Denkschulen zur Organisation vorgestellt, wobei der strukturelle Ansatz unumgänglich ist, und auf den die anderen Organisationstheorien sich immer wieder beziehen. Zu erwähnen ist sicherlich der politisch-rechtliche Organisationsansatz mit seinem Paradigma des Corporate Governance-Ansatzes4 in einem internationalen Unternehmen mit seinen konfliktreichen Problemen. So erweisen sich die praktischen Umsetzungen des Controllings des Strategischen Managements, der Unternehmensüberwachung wegen unterschiedlicher Compliance-Anforderungen durch den Staat oder den Kapitalmarkt und in Deutschland z.B. durch die Mitbestimmung als ausgesprochene Herausforderungen an die Unternehmensführung.
Berlin und Nürnberg
Rebecca Popp und Wilhelm Schmeisser
2 Schmeisser, W. and Popp, R. (2016): Corporate Governance, UVK-Verlag, Munich (to be released)
3 Vgl. hierzu die deutsche Literatur: Schmeisser, W. / Andresen, M./ Kaiser, S. (2012) Personalmanagement, UTB basics, München, Kapitel 1 und Kapitel 3.1 und Schmeisser, W. /Reiss, M. /Rolf, A. / Popp, R.(2014): Organisation, UTB basics, München, Kapitel 2
4 Schmeisser, W. und Popp, R. (2016): Corporate Governance, UVK-Verlag, München (erscheint noch)
Academics oriented towards national economics, in this case national labour economists, often evade problems of “general management” and therefore also of some functions of human resources, especially of personnel management and organization. They project the economic assumptions of a perfect market model onto a kind of labour market within a company and take over all assumptions of an atomic market model. They consider business studies as field of microeconomics and national labour economics. Therefore, business studies should resort to the way of thinking, to the methods and patterns of argumentation of national economics.
With his book “Production” (1951) Gutenberg made a cut between national economics and business studies with the production functions A and B. He makes clear that the production function A of national economics is not suitable for business studies, as it is neither practically nor theoretically comprehensible and that company management, including personnel management, cannot be defined away with the help of “market models”.
Besides, models of national economics have been questioned for more than 200 years on a theoretical, legal-normative and empirical basis. This criticism is due to the development of industrial enterprises and especially to the phenomenon of “management” which questions the separation of ownership and leadership of microeconomic models and the dispositive production factor management, which coins Gutenberg’s production function. In a model it is thinkable that one person owns and leads the company and works for the company and controls it and is led by the market at the same time, however, this reduces personnel management in an industrial company to absurdity. Additionally, personnel management works in accordance with formal conduct guidelines dictated by the company goals of productivity, cost effectiveness and profitability and does not intend to solve the allocation problem on the national labour market. In this case the national labour economics as alleged business management function lacks credibility.
The performance measurement as predecessor of human capital assessment in the company is always achieved with a combination of technical, social and economic processes as well as an organizational approach concerning the process-oriented organization.
The first ideas on (industrial) business management refer in a narrower sense to questions on labour organization and to the explanation as to why in industrial businesses high productivity figures can be achieved and why enormous efficiency problems can be solved.
Pre-classical thinkers like Adam Smith explain high productivity rates in industrial businesses with the help of the example of pin production. High division of labour in industrial businesses as well as the invention of machines are analytically deduced as explanation for the enormous growth of productivity rates achieved by employees.
Around 80 years later Babbage perceived that with high and increased productivity rates staff costs can be reduced and high efficiency rates can be achieved. In addition to that, due to the freedom of trade in the free market economy in England, and due to the mass production in miscellaneous industrial companies, unskilled, low-salary day labourers or also children and women could be employed for a pittance. Today, this phenomenon of remuneration can be found between industrial countries and developing countries in transnational and multinational businesses, as those companies purposefully choose production in developing countries due to low staff costs.
The most sustainable and for more than 100 years most famous, global, industrial model of business management and staff management was practically, theoretically and empirically developed and put into practice by Frederick W. Taylor and Henry Ford I.
Example: The Ford Motor Company produced the car model T as first car in mass production for the anonymous mass on the assembly line. 16 million cars of model T were offered for a price of 800 USD. At that time the “normal price” of a handcrafted car was 5000 USD. Everybody could obtain an “individual” car, as long as the car could be black and the model T. There was no other mass car than the Ford Model-T. This mass production in the mass market “automobile sector” was and is up to now only possible due to the management theory of “scientific management” developed by Taylor (also called Taylorism or Fordism).
To explain to some extent with today’s concepts of strategic management this prime example of a success story in the automobile sector, one needs to attempt a consistent, up-to-date interpretation with Porters strategic concept of cost leadership. Taylor was certainly familiar with every classical thinker of natural science like Newton, as well as national economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo, as well as Darwin’s theories of behavioural science and evolution. He was convinced that the methodological knowledge from natural science and mechanics would also offer an instrumental, organizational and personnel management basis for business management. He propagated a radical division of labour with almost zero qualification of the employees, i.e. in today’s argumentation almost zero human capital, in order to achieve the highest productivity on the assembly line with the help of extreme labour division and for being able to discharge unnecessary employees in order to reduce staff costs. The remaining employees were offered a performance-oriented remuneration (piece work system), in order to motivate the employees in the sense of the picture of mankind as “homo oeconomicus”. This way an increase of productivity by 300% to 400% was achieved.
Taylor’s concept of staff management is put into practice with the help of a consequent staff selection, work places designed in accordance with scientific conclusions with breaks and recovery phases, training phases, a consequent process-oriented design of logistics in accordance with the organizational principle of continuity, as well as the entire production management, especially the strict separation of management functions from performing activities under functional management (the later matrix organization). Through analytical time and motion studies in the system of scientific business management staff costs and productivity were easier to calculate.
With the help of the attribution of contributions to individual employees or to at least larger groups of employees concerning the production process of one or several products, as conceived in today’s human capital assessment, cost accounting and bid proposal calculation for potential customers were made possible. Taylor and Ford enforced those “inhuman” production conditions by doubling the wages. Only this way the employees were prepared to tolerate the “inhuman” conditions at the assembly line. However, in his memoirs Ford prided himself as social entrepreneur for doubling the wages per day, allegedly on a voluntary basis.
Example