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
Decision-
making, according to orthodox management theory is the sole function of management; why is it, then, that the primary or non-
managing worker is not a significant decision-
maker in work life, but in social life is a responsible citizen who, when he votes for who shall
7
represent him at local and national level, shares in decision-
making in a cogent manner? Why is it, too, that in work life the chief dependence is on money rewards and penalties to gain behaviour which is conformist to the economic code of laws, whereas in social life, the large majority of laws are unwritten and dependence for their operation is on free consent or morale in the part of the citizen? True, the state is limiting the field of citizen free decision-
making, citizen free choice, as centralised planning increases, but it is nevertheless true that man-
worker and man-
citizen is split schizophrenic-
wise in a manner which inevitably makes for antagonism between work life and leisure life, and degrades both. Man-
worker is work conscious (class conscious?), but as work life is the important, money-
earning aspect of living, man-
citizen occupies a secondary position and his work-
consciousness enters strongly into social life with consequent “anti-
social behaviour that seems like blackmail” but, at root, is likely to be unconscious healthy protest against the schizophrenic role in the community.
Now, there is a school of apologist thought which suggests that responsible industrial democracy is at work when opposition takes place between trade unions and employers in collective bargaining [1]. This plausible theory has, it seems, considerable support at executive level within the trade unions, but it is really a kind of verbalism; for while free opposition is a characteristic of democracy, so also is dependence on individual citizen morale and the spread of individual decision-making at the bottom as well as at the top of the social structure. A worker who is trained to sit correctly in a chair designed to promote maximum output, to move his left arm so and his right arm thus, who is clocked in and out of the works and the lavatory while engaged on continuous, repetitive production in which there is no decision-making, is certainly not playing a responsible citizen role, even though he has big brother arguing against his employer on hours of work and wages. Dependence on big brother manager and big brother trade union executive is equally neurotic in a situation in which planning is for material advantage and not also for self-respect.
However, this matter of our schizoid culture and of planning for everything but self-respect was dealt with many years past in Free Expression in Industry [2] and there is no need to labour it here.
s2
Management or Leadership in Work?
There is a quaint idea among management consultants and other experts that management incorporates leadership. Indeed, in all modern books on management this wishful notion is cultivated. Thus a recent book called
The Business of Management [3] makes the statement that management and leadership are complementary, “but they are not the same thing”. In this, as in the appropriate literature, ideas on leadership are hazy; “it is an art that is timeless … it is of the spirit … etc.”, but whatever leadership is, it is “an element in management”. Three definitions, the second and third from political science, may help to clear
8
the air:
Management: Management is a (socially necessary) activity expressed in the science and art of directing, organising and controlling material and human factors within the work institution with a view to effective and profitable results. (No-one, I think, will quarrel with this orthodox definition of management; the “art” mentioned is the art of leadership).
Leadership: Leadership is a power activity in which the leader and the led identify internally with each other (a “we” feeling) and the leader uses his power in a manner which accords with the wishes and expressions of the led [4].
Management (apart from the situation when one man is both policy-maker and manager) is an agency for its principals who are the top policy-makers who enforce economic policy and reward or penalise management in terms of results. An agent always identifies with his principal, even when the identification is only external and is expressed in formal loyalty. He acts in conformity with the purpose and policy of his principal. Make no mistake, it is not said here that all managers identify internally with their principals (a “we” feeling), although formal allegiance at least is expected. But if management identifies with its principals, as it must, where is the supposed identification between primary workers and managers? Is there really a “we” feeling between management and managed? Is it not, rather a “we-they” feeling?
Boss-ship: Boss-ship is a power activity which, though it may conform to the economic formula, is lacking in two-way identification and may not include the respect and loyalty of those who are bossed. Boss-ship may be expressed in mastership or skillship, in fixership or capacity to gain conformity by negotiation, indulgencies, rewards and penalties, and in whole or partial dictatorship, or all three [4].
By definition, management is boss-ship when management is orthodox, and the confusion about leadership and management comes from the association of leadership with skillship and fixership. It may be said that political science has nothing to do with management and, in any case, business could not be run with the defined leadership. The economy is part of the body politic even though it has its own formula, and leadership is leadership just as a rose is a rose. In fact, when I was a shop steward I had the kind of two-way identification spoken of in the leadership definition, and when I was a manager I had to identify with the policy-makers and not with the primary workers. When the trade union leader meets the managing director, or the local supervisor meets the shop or union steward, who is then the leader?
A new definition of orthodox management is in order:
Management: Management is skilled power activity expressed in the direction, organisation and control of human and material factors with a view to effective, profitable results on behalf of the principals, public or private, with whom management tends to identify when carrying out the economic aims of their principals.
Management, though it has yet to be admitted in the literature, is a
9
power activity. Power is the production of intended effects
[5]. Professor
Tawney’s definition deals with power in a human situation, for management is a kind of power relationship between human beings. Tawney says:
“Power may be defined as the capacity of an individual, or group of individuals, to modify the conduct of other individuals or groups in the manner which he (the power-holder) desires”. [6]
It is clear that management is a power activity, but what is not made clear in the literature is that the power is not given by those led as in leadership, but is granted to management by the economic formula which makes the power legal and is endowed by existing power holders within the business hierarchy. Thus management’s power at root is formal authority.
Authority does not depend only on the economic formula which gives it legal sanction; it depends on allegiance or formal loyalty from those over whom authority is wielded. The authority, as I have said, is legal, and to have legality is to win allegiance (but not identification) in the minds of the majority of people, given other things are equal.
Authority has small real power, but the prestige of the person holding authority is an important factor. “Even a nod from a person who is esteemed”, said Plutarch, “is of more force than a thousand arguments”. Wealth, status and technical skills are attributes which tend to increase the weight of authority, and it is on these that orthodox management must on the whole depend, if outright coercion is not to be the rule. But, to repeat, the gaining of formal allegiance through external identification with authority itself, or with this or that attribute of the person holding authority, is not leadership.
The experts, economic and psychological, who have had this point of view on leadership in work put to them have, without exception, hotly rejected it. This rejection is understandable in view of the hundreds of books and the many educational courses on management which have promoted, and still promote, the idea that orthodox management and leadership of human beings are in some mystical manner twin functions. But in our analysis of human leadership there is no rejection of management and the necessity for management; rather, there is advanced the idea that the management structure be designed to integrate the human leadership function with technological and commercial functions in a manner later to be described.
s3
Management’s Work Doctrine
Management doctrine, as with other political and economic doctrines, serves to justify the holders of power and those of the group or class with which the power-holders identify [4].
Some of the doctrinal assumptions are:
1. That leadership is a component of orthodox management activity. (This we have examined.)
2. That management is or can be a professional body with an ethical code independent of the code of the policy-
making group which employs
10
management as agent and with which management necessarily identifies. The latter part of the foregoing sentence contains the answer to the first part.
3. That the orthodox management process and structure is the best possible and there is no reasonable alternative.
4. That the decision-making process is by right and, in terms of business efficiency, the sole prerogative of management, (i.e. the managers-must-manage philosophy of the Harvard Business School, the methods of which are being humbly copied in British business schools.)
The matter of whether there is a reasonable alternative to orthodox management process and structure remains to be examined, but that decision-making is the sole prerogative of management is questionable.
It has been shown that management is a skilled power activity. Power is decision-making or participation in the making of decisions. A has power over B with respect to value C, when A participates in decision-making affecting the C policy of B [4]. In other words, the manager has power over a non-managing worker (or a subordinate manager) in respect of money when the manager decides that the bonus reward for a certain job, which the managed-one does to earn money, is so much money. Likewise, a manager exhibits power when he decides to move Bill from the job Bill likes to another job which Bill doesn’t like. This is power with respect to a man’s desires and feelings.
In his book Decision-making and Productivity, Professor Melman, as will later be shown, indicates factually how foolish is the management doctrine that the managers must manage, [7], as does Professor Likert in his New Patterns of Management [8]. But the change from centralised decision-making to shared decision-making is not easy. For the holders of power, if they are not enlightened by mature insight, tend to hold on to their power. As Lord Acton said, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
I like the philosopher Roger Bacon on the effect of power on man, (I will misquote slightly): “Man doeth like the ape, the higher he goeth the more he showeth his ass”. Power is of an encroaching nature, or, as the political scientist Michels put it:
“Every human power seeks to enlarge its prerogatives. He who has acquired power will almost always endeavour to consolidate and to extend it, to multiply the ramparts which defend his position, and to withdraw himself from the control of the masses”. [9]
Part of the management doctrine has to do with work, but, it should be said, the idea of work held by management is that held by the majority of people:
1. Work is effort applied for the material values which income from work will buy. (Economic theory.)
There is a corollary to this definition of work and this comprehends the notion of economic man:
1a. A whole man can wholly be bought for money and money incentives.
Many managers will rightly reject the corollary out of hand, but on the whole, judging in terms of economic techniques, the corollary
11
expresses economic doctrine. It is true that some men will sacrifice money for status, but not willingly in the following case of the loyal forty-
years service clerk who went to the boss in a
woollen mill for a rise from £1 a week. In those days the top men in the woollen trade wore
top hats, and the boss replied, “Ah wain’t gie thee a rise Nathan, but that has been a guid and faithful servant so on Monday tha can come ti wark in a top ’at.”
If we compare other definitions of work with that given above we will find ourselves leaving the concealing smoke of economic work, and breathing a sweeter air:
2. Work is prayer; prayer is work. (St. Benedict).
3. I pray with the floor and the bench. (Hasidic Judaism).
4. Labour is the great reality of human life. In labour there is a truth of redemption and a truth of the constructive power of man. (Berdyaev).
5. Laying stress on the importance of work has a greater effect than any other technique of reality living. (Freud).
6. Work and love are the two chief components in the growth of mature personality in community. (Erich Fromm).
Although our stress is on the psychological value of work, as in Freud, Fromm and others, it would be pleasing if we had more room to develop a work philosophy and to quote the poets’ work visions, the fine work philosophy in the Hindu Bhagavat Gita (Gandhi’s Karma Yoga), Zen Buddhism, which somewhat parallels Benedictine work practice, Chinese <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: neo-Confucianism">neo-Confucianism which affirms the ‘Tao or Way’ as that of drawing water and gathering wood, and as the marriage of the sublime and the commonplace, and the respect for the common task in Isaiah, Deuteronomy and Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour”.
But there is small joy in work within the work institution, for work is an enforced means to earning money; and how can the soul enjoy good in its labour when there is no soul in the places where labour is organised? But these are big, if somewhat odd thoughts, which have as yet no echo in the work institution, for to equate work with fellowship, with love, with the liberated vitality of the artist of which Morris, Ruskin, Kropotkin and others speak, is to be met with the hidden smile behind the polite hand, or with a psychiatric diagnosis. Once I attacked what is now called “work study” in one of my books [10] and quoted Plato. “What”, a reviewer of the American edition asked, “has Plato to do with work?” What indeed?
Yet there is joy in work when the task is a man’s own; when he is not ant-heaped in a monstrous tall flat which shrinks him to less than man-size, but has a garden in which there is the poetry of fulfillment, “The Apple tree, the Singing, and the Gold.”
Or he makes a table, or she bakes a good cake, or sews a dress, or together they raise a family—
why is there fulfillment only in this work and not in the other? I have been told, “But that’s different; we
12
couldn’t organise production that way”. Why is it different, and who is this “we”?
What function, if any, has work in the well-being of the personality or, on the other hand, what relationship has work to life as a whole? Why is it, for example, that the capacity regularly to work is a dominant factor in individual normality from the psychiatric and the depth psychological points of view? Why too is work-therapy an essential treatment in neurotic and psychotic illnesses where there is a withdrawal from reality? It is because in free, meaningful work which calls for skill and decision-making there is at once a focussing of consciousness on the world of reality and a protection against the backward group of unconscious fantasy and infantilism.
Work in which there is free expression of the whole man is an ego-building and sustaining function of the self. The age of primitive innocence, of the participation mystique when men were yet in the mindless state of oneness with nature, was the Golden Age spoken of in the great religious traditions. In the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata, there is a Krita or Golden Age: “In that age no buying or selling went on, no efforts were made by man; the fruits of the earth were obtained by their mere wish; righteousness and abandonment of the world prevailed”. The _Greece Greek peasant poet Hesiod bemoans the passing of the Golden Age in which men cared nothing for toil and lived like gods and had no sorrow of heart. But of his own, the Iron Age, Hesiod cries: “Dark is their plight. Toil and sorrow by day are theirs and by night the anguish of death”.
Writing over 2,000 years past, the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu describes the Golden Age of Chaos, of placid tranquility in which no work was done and there was no need for knowledge. In Genesis, man lived in a paradisal Golden Age until with the expression of self-consciousness, of knowledge of good and evil, the curse of work was placed upon humanity.
Always, in the great traditions, the pain of work and the rise of self-conscious individuality are twinned, and in other language the story is repeated by modern anthropologists who have studied primitive societies and tell of their loathing of work. Primitive man obeyed the call of the ancient blood which would charm us away from the sore round of duties and obligations to a state of primitive indolence in which personality disintegrates and, as in the primitive, the wish substitutes for the act, and fantasy substitutes for directed thought. It is against this regression, so well-known to psychotherapists, that Freud and Jung warn us:
“Laying stress upon the importance of work has a greater effect than any other technique of reality living in the direction of binding the individual to reality. The daily work of earning a livelihood affords particular satisfaction when it has been selected by free choice; i.e. when through sublimation it enables use to be made of existing inclinations, of instinctual impulses that have retained their strength, or are more intense than usual for constitutional reasons.” (Freud, [11]).
13
Freud also stresses the psychological value of work in community. Jung has this to say: “The best liberation (from the grip of primitive and infantile fantasy) is through regular work. Work, however, is salvation only when it is a free act and has nothing in it of infantile compulsion.”
[12]
Work which is creative and thought-provoking is a blessing and a boon to growing personality, but work in which there is no thought and no decision-making breeds infantilism and is once accursed for those who, like repetitive psychopaths, are forced to do it, but manifold for those who enforce it and would reduce another person to the level of instinctive beast or cataleptic stone. Men do not so much dislike work as they dislike their management-dependent status. They do not dislike work as such, but mainly that work which calls for small skill and for repetitive movement, the effect of which, the American sociologists Walker and Guest show, is to reduce interest in social affairs, in sport, in religion, and in out-of-work activities generally. [13] The important aspect of this is that if a man’s occupation is thoughtless and skill-less, or if he has no occupation, he will introvert and so retreat from the call of social, family and economic duties.
This is the unspoken fear of the many writers on the problem of leisure: that man, drugged by comfort and distracted by mass amusements, will regress to a state of neurotic dependence on the state, the managers, the amusement caterers, and the computerisers:—
- Here where brave lions roamed, the fatted sheep,
- and poppies bloom where once the golden wheat.
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
Recommended Basic Reading
s15
Book References
