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
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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
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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
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
