The heart of this essay is the idea of free work in fellowship, and it can be illustrated simply from the practice:
In an electrical components factory we had trouble planning for smooth flow of components and balancing of operations. Output varied considerably from one operator to another. Monday’s output was some 25% lower than output on Thursday which was the closing day of the bonus week, and work discipline was only fair. After some study a group bonus system was designed and the outline, meaning and purpose of this was put to the group which was then left to discuss it among its members, (free group discussion). The girls agreed to have a trial and they were then invited to check the base times set per operation, (group participation in method). The system was introduced with the quick result that the group members so organised themselves that the flow of work was greatly improved, discipline improved as a result of internal group controls, and output increased by about 12% over that previously attained under the individual piecework system. (Here the group took over the local management function of internal work progressing and, more important, that of local man-management).
But interesting though the figures given are, the heart of the matter for me was in the group’s attitude to a girl called Mary, whose output, I pointed out, was some 16% lower than the group average. I was met with the antagonistic group rejoinder that Mary was a nice girl. This profoundly true evaluation by the group of the worth of qualities like kindness and goodness cuts across the motivational fabric of our modern culture, and it is a statement of values I have found in nearly all small groups who work closely together. I knew that Mary was unwittingly the “group psychiatrist”, but were I a poet it would take an epic pen to tell that here was a guiding candlelight in the dark wasteland of our
6
materialist culture. In terms of production efficiency, individual cost, and export-
import balance, Mary is a
dead loss whose virtues are not entered in the commercial statistician’s reports; but the Mary’s are the symbols of the riches of small community living in which goodness and kindness are highly rewarded, whereas our economic culture highly rewards individualist acquisitiveness and egocentric power and status seeking. In terms of individualistic costing, based on individualist incentive schemes, the Mary’s are a costly burden, but in terms of overall group efficiency, Mary was a lubricant factor without which the group could not, would not, have reached and maintained its state of high productive effectiveness. This effectiveness was a result of a situation in which the group shared work and the reward of work with encouragement of co-
operation and mutual aid, and with group acclaim of individual material and spiritual contributions.
We use the social-psychological term “group”, but our little group was more than an economic group dominated by economic self-interest. Because the group members consciously recognised the whole worth of each person in the group, there was a fellowship (communis), or, it may be said, a fellowship group. Later it will be shown that free work and fellowship are the twin components of individual growth towards personal maturity.
Tens of thousands of kind-hearted Mary’s are victims of our materialist culture which offers high rewards for some of the basest human characteristics and penalises some of the best through the stupefied attachment of both managers and managed to individualistic ratings and rewards:
- Sweet Mary your production’s poor,
- Just dry your tears and go,
- For speed and greed are rated high,
- But love-for-others, no.
- Christ! Where’s the electrician?
- Our lamps are burning low!
The illustration given describes in simple form the group contract system in which the group shares work and the rewards of work, and has a share in decision-making within the local work environment, a function which hitherto was in the sole field of management. The illustration also touches on the free or informal group discussion system which has been in use during the past fifteen years in a number of companies, and in which decision-making is shared on a wider level than in the group contract system.
s1
Man Citizen and Man Worker
s2
Management or Leadership in Work?
s3
Management’s Work Doctrine
s4
Automated Work
s5
Work in Fellowship
s6
Workshop Floor Groups
s7
Free Group Theory
s8
Free Group Structure and Method
s9
Fifteen Years of Group Discussion
s10
The Free Group Contract System
s11
The Standard Motor Gang System
s12
The Durham Miners’ Free Group Project
s13
The Wider Issues
s14
Book References
s15
Recommended Basic Reading
