The management of a medium-sized NHS Trust hospital,
in order to improve the service offered to the patients and reduce the
absenteeism among the ancillary staff, tried to implement some changes directed
in particular to the porters, domestic and catering staff. A pilot scheme was
introduced to create a new category of multi-skilled workers which combined the
duties of the above mentioned staff with the aim of increasing flexibility and
reduce waiting times through the hospital. It failed to be accepted by the
workers and the trade unions representing them.
The Trust’s managers believed that, not only the
changes would have improved the service’s quality, but the workers involved
would have been advantaged in terms of job enrichment. Therefore, the non-acceptance
was attributed to two main factors: the alleged subconscious resistance to
changes (“…so if they vote no is because we changed hours and changed rotas”),
and the implicit union’s imposition to favour its resolutions (“in a way they
were asked – do you support your union?- management one side, union the other”).
The aim of this essay is to demonstrate that several
factors determined the failure of the scheme by analysing under different
perspectives issues about management style, motivation, groups and teamwork,
structural changes and organisational structure.
Before the changes took place, porters and domestic
staff were required to perform specific tasks according to their job
description. It is indisputable how this recalls the classical school of though. According to Taylor’s scientific management, “managers are
expected to plan, organise and supervise and workers are expected to perform
the specific operative tasks” (McKenna, 2006:6). It is also believed that money
is the sole motivating factors. Ford
applies Taylor’s principles of specialisation of the tasks to the mass-scale
industry obtaining, as noted by Huczynsky and Buchanan (2001:429), a uniform
and interchangeable workforce, implying that an individual was .....
