ABSTRACT
The members of the Board of management, who had by now taken over the complete running of the textile mills, were convinced both of the logic of their earlier arguments about management structure and of their feelings about what they wanted to command themselves. In effect, the basic model they now operated was the same as that first introduced six years before, but it had both grown and been modified. In practice, the functions within it had been differentiated in terms of the capacities and preferences of members of the Board. As a result of growth, and of learning about each other, they had been able to accept a collective, in place of individual, responsibility for different parts and for the whole of textile operations. The members of the Board wanted to continue in office, but could not see their way to the next stage. If they continued to expand and to accept their own and each others’ personal command preferences, they could visualize having up to sixteen divisional managers, even if the chairman did not add any more establishments. They could not see any reason why the chairman should be so constrained and they also had a shrewd suspicion that as the new chemical plant in Bombay got more and more into its stride they would be expected to provide still more young managers for that. They had already lost their chief engineer, who was the general manager designate for the Bombay plant, as well as other engineers and accountants. But their immediate preoccupation was with themselves as a Board of management.
