The Staff Man Looks in the Mirror

A GREAT deal has been said and written during the past 25 years about the staff functions. In addition to the many articles and books, some 30 or 40 universities are now offering graduate level courses on such subjects as personnel administration, budgeting, management analysis, and planning. Each year, hundreds of young men and women enter careers in the staff areas in government alone, in addition to many thousands more in private business. This attention is, of course, well deserved. The more we know of large organization, the clearer it becomes that the so-called staff people have a vital part to play in the work to be done. It is inconceivable that we are going to be able to get along without them in the foreseeable future. Yet, one cannot get very deeply into organizational theory without realizing that relationships between staff and line people are still far from what they should be, and that, of all the areas of management, this is one where a great deal of friction, and sometimes outright controversy, is still likely to be found. At least a part of the reason for this unhealthy condition of affairs can be attributed to our failure to understand the real nature of the staff role. Much of what has been written about it is by way of sweeping generalization -so sweeping, in fact, that the sophisticated ways by which the staff often inserts itself into the control (or policy) processes is glossed over or else overlooked entirely. Much more of the literature is an attempt to describe the procedures or techniques which the specialist must use, or to outline, as in job description sheets, the specific functions he is asked to perform. All of this is useful but it is far from telling the whole story. Indeed, the generalization of the duties to be performed, or the > Misunderstanding, and even hostility, in staffline relations is the result when there is a general failure to understand how the role of each group is seen by the members of those groups. This article reports what staff men say are their chief satisfactions and dissatisfactions; how they feel their work is seen by others, measured, and evaluated; how they evaluate the importance of their work; and how they try to solve the problems they face.