Anarchy 47/Towards freedom in work

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Towards
freedom
in work

JAMES GILLESPIE

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.

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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 . 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 and there is no need to labour it here.

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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 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

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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 .

  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 .

  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

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power activ­ity. Power is the pro­duc­tion of in­tended ef­fects . 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” .

  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.

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Man­age­ment’s Work Doc­trine

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Auto­mated Work

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Work in Fel­low­ship

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Work­shop Floor Groups

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Free Group The­ory

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Free Group Struc­ture and Method

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Fifteen Years of Group Dis­cus­sion

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The Free Group Con­tract Sys­tem

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The Stand­ard Motor Gang Sys­tem

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The Dur­ham Min­ers’ Free Group Pro­ject

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The Wider Issues

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Re­com­mended Basic Read­ing

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Book Re­fer­ences