Committees

Whether referred to as a committee, board, commission, task group, or team, its essential nature is the same, for the committee is a group of persons to whom, as a group, some matter is committed. It is this characteristic of group action that sets the committee apart from other organization devices.

Some committees undertake managerial functions, and others not. Some make decisions, and others merely deliberate on problems without authority to decide. Some have authority to make recommendations to a manager, who may or may not accept them, while others are formed purely to receive information, without making recommendations or decisions.

A committee may be either line or staff, depending upon its authority. If its authority involves decision making effecting subordinates responsible to it, it is a plural executive (коллегиальный орган верховной исполнительной власти) and a line committee; if its authority relationship to a superior is advisory, then it is a staff committee (комитет персонала).

Committees may also be formal or informal. If established as part of organization structure, with specifically delegated duties and authority, they are formal. Or may be informal, that is, organized without specific delegation of authority and usually by some person desiring group thinking or group decision on a particular problem. Thus, a manager may have a problem on which he needs advice from other managers or specialists outside his department and call a special meeting for the purpose. Indeed, this kind of motivation, plus the occasional need for gathering together in one room all the authority available to deal with an unusual problem, gives rise to many of the numerous conferences in organizational life.

Moreover, committees may be relatively permanent, or they may be temporary. One would expect the formal committee to be more permanent than the informal, although this is not necessarily so.

However, the executive who calls his assistants into his office or confers with his department heads is not creating a committee. Although it may sometimes be difficult to draw a sharp distinction between committees and other group meetings, the essential characteristic of a committee is group action in dealing with a specific problem. The committee is in wide use in all types of organization.

The board of directors is a committee, as are its various constituent groups such as the executive committee, the finance committee, the audit committee, and the bonus committee. Occasionally, one finds a business managed by a management committee instead of a president. Moreover, at each level of the organization structure, one or more committees are likely to be found.

A group of people can bring to bear on a problem a wider range of experience than can a single person, a greater variety of opinion, a more thorough probing of the facts, and a more diverse training in specialized aspects. Most problems require more knowledge, experience, and judgment than any individual possesses.

One of the advantages of group deliberation and judgment, not to be obtained without an actual meeting, is the stimulation resulting from oral interchange of ideas and the cross-examination techniques of the committee meeting. This interchange has been found to be especially enlightening in policy matters. The results obtained by group judgment are superior to those obtained by individual judgment.

Topic#4

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 756