The Civilized Organization Norbert Elias and the future of Organization Studies
Advances in Organization Studies Advances in Organization Studies includes cutting-edge work in comparative management and intercultural comparison, studies of organizational culture, communication, and aesthetics, as well as in the area of interorganizational collaboration — strategic alliances, joint ventures, networks and collaborations of all kinds, where comparative, intercultural, and communicative issues have an especial salience. Purely theoretical as well as empirically based studies are included. General Editors Stewart Clegg School of Management University of Technology Sydney Quay Street, Haymarket P.O.Box 123 Broadway, NSW 2007 Australia
[email protected] Alfred Kieser University of Mannheim D 68 131 Mannheim Germany
[email protected] Volume 10 The Civilized Organization: Norbert Elias and the future of Organization Studies Edited by Ad van Iterson, Willem Mastenbroek, Tim Newton and Dennis Smith
The Civilized Organization Norbert Elias and the future of Organization Studies Edited by
Ad van Iterson Maastricht University
Willem Mastenbroek Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Tim Newton University of Exeter
Dennis Smith Loughborough University
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia
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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Civilized Organization : Norbert Elias and the future of Organization Studies / edited by Ad van Iterson, Willem Mastenbroek, Tim Newton and Dennis Smith. p. cm. (Advances in Organization Studies, issn 1566–1075 ; v. 10) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Organizational behavior. 2. Organizational sociology. 3. Elias, Norbert. I. Iterson, Ad van, 1952- II. Series. HD58.7 C593 2002 302.3´5--dc21 isbn 90 272 3309 8 (Eur.) / 1 58811 278 0 (US) (Pb; alk. paper) isbn 90 272 3308 X (Eur.) / 1 58811 277 2 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)
2002027971
© 2002 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Introduction: Norbert Elias and the civilized organization Tim Newton and Dennis Smith Part I Organizing Discourse 1. The development of meeting behaviour in modern organizations and the rise of an upper class of professional chairpersons Wilbert van Vree
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1 3
2. Blame and praise gossip in organizations: Established, outsiders and the civilising process Joseph Soeters and Ad van Iterson
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3. The humiliating organization: The functions and dysfunctions of degradation Dennis Smith
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Part II Negotiating Boundaries 4. About individual autonomy and the relational self: The performance of privacy in contemporary organizations Marja Gastelaars
59 61
5. Figurational sociology, monopolization and corporate governance Ruud Stokvis
85
6. Boundary behaviour and organizational dynamics Tor Hernes
99
Part III Crossing Cultures 7. From the socio-historical macro model to organizational behaviour: A comparative study of coordination in organizations in France and Germany Tatjana Globokar
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119
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8. The evolution οf management theories in China: An Eliasian analysis Stephen Chen
131
9. Cultivating Indian management: Institutions, subjectivity, and the nature of knowledge Nidhi Srinivas
151
Part IV Theorizing Practice 10. Norbert Elias as organizational sociologist Willem Mastenbroek
171 173
11. Elias, organizations and ecology Tim Newton
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12. Management and organization: Does Elias give us something to hold on to? Willem Mastenbroek
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Notes
219
References
225
Index
247
Introduction Norbert Elias and the civilized organization Tim Newton and Dennis Smith
Time for Elias Organization studies is an exciting field: multidisciplinary, receptive to new ideas, full of argument and debate. High standards of scholarship are combined with a high degree of mutual tolerance among diverse approaches. But where is the field of organization studies ‘going’? A survey of the articles in a key American journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, for the period 1998–2001 reveals certain repeated key words or concepts in their titles. Apart from the expected references to technology, strategy, bureaucracy, markets, work and gender, five clusters of ideas appear repeatedly. One cluster relates to networks and associated concepts such as strategic alliances, interlocks, exchange relations and the complementary idea of boundaries.1 Another cluster brings together dimensions of power, control and resistance including such ideas as conflict, struggle, surveillance and coercion.2 A further cluster is concerned with aspects of culture, language and knowledge and related ideas such as symbolic management, learning, social construction, fashion, ideology, cognition, rhetoric and legitimacy.3 Change and related concepts such as evolution and innovation also repeatedly appear as themes, sometimes considered in the short term, sometimes in the long term.4 Finally, there is a cluster focusing upon issues of identity, the self and emotionality, which also encompasses impression management, image and reputation.5 If we turn to a leading European journal, Organization Studies, and look at the same period, 1998–2001, a similar pattern emerges. There is, once again, a preoccupation with – – –
networks6 power, control and resistance7 culture, language and knowledge8
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– –
change9 identity, the self and emotionality10
These varying approaches may be seen in part as forms of critical reaction against the functionalist and positivist paradigms that reigned supreme in the heyday of Talcott Parsons and Paul Lazarsfeld during the 1950s. C. Wright Mills’s attack upon ‘grand theory’ and ‘abstracted empiricism’ in 1959 has been thoroughly vindicated in the development of organization studies.11 Four decades later: –
–
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–
instead of strongly-bounded Parsonian ‘systems’ (economy, family, state, etc) carrying out specific functional tasks, scholars now perceive complex, intertwining networks linking individuals, groups and organizations, often obscuring the boundaries between different functions and arenas; instead of treating power merely as a capacity that enables organizational functions to be ‘properly’ performed, the varying dynamics represented by resistance, conflict or ‘enrolment’ have been brought back in; instead of simply making quantitative measurements of ‘variables,’ researchers now look ‘inside’ social relationships so as to discover their symbolic and emotional ‘meaning’ for those involved and to investigate the way meanings are constructed and expressed; and instead of assuming that systems have a built-in tendency to maintain a preordained equilibrium, investigators treat organizational and social change as the key tendency whose direction has to be discovered by careful analysis using comparative and historical techniques.
The explosion of organization studies over the past four decades has been a kind of ‘big bang’ that has sent researchers in many directions searching for theoretical resources to fuel their empirical inquiries. Writers have seized with enthusiasm upon (for example) Actor-Network Theory, neo-Marxist approaches, and the work of writers such as Michel Foucault, Geert Hofstede and Arlie Hochschild. But how do these writers and their theoretical approaches relate to each other? Or, more generally, are there ways of making links between the thematic clusters that are, as has been seen, prominent in major journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Studies? The essays in this book provide one answer to this question. The editors and contributors share the view that the time is ripe for paying more attention within the field of organization studies to the work of a writer whose approach weaves together, within a single framework, a focus on networks (he calls them ‘figurations’), a concern with power, control and resistance, a deep interest in culture, language and knowledge, a preoccupation with processes of social change, and a strong interest in identity, the self and emotionality.
Introduction
We are referring to Norbert Elias who was, coincidentally, a near contemporary of both Talcott Parsons and Paul Lazarsfeld.12 Elias died in 1990 at the age of ninety-three but his work remains as a valuable legacy, not least to organization studies.13 Elias is important because his work brings together in one ‘take’ the nexus of power, emotion, subjectivity, conflict and control, and shows how they undergo long-term transformations. He moves quickly and skillfully between these different perspectives, giving the reader a dynamic, multi-dimensional picture. In this way, Elias explores what are conventionally seen as the political, the cultural, the economic and the psychological, and in so doing, his work mounts a continued attack on the ‘divides’ between the ‘social’ and the ‘biological’, ‘nature’ and ‘society’, ‘micro’ and ‘macro’, ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ etc. Elias’s most famous work is The Civilizing Process (Elias, 1994a) in which he makes connections between long-term tendencies in social and political macrostructures (such as the state, class relationships and the organization of the economy) and the way structures of thought and feeling develop within the population. To oversimplify, as state structures became more centralized and stable, social relations became increasingly pacified (less violent) and human beings learned to exercise higher levels of control over themselves, each other and the environment. Another key text by Elias is The Court Society (Elias, 1983) which is a powerful example of how to analyze the crystallization of a specific network (or figuration) at a specific phase in the working out of long-term social processes. Elias shows how the centralization and relative stabilization of power balances allowed the monarchy to disarm the nobility and turn unruly warriors into disciplined courtiers.14 The Court Society provides insights into the formation of status hierarchies, tensions within those hierarchies and the part played by language and etiquette in conducting and containing feuds among ‘pacified’ underlings. These insights could be usefully adapted by, for example, students of corporate takeovers, analysts of the European Union and anyone wishing to understand the workings of the WTO.15 We do not think Elias was ‘right’ on all matters. For example, his approach to capitalism paid little overt attention to the growth of large corporations during the twentieth century and appeared to be unaffected by the contributions of, for example, Schumpeter and Galbraith. However, Elias’s work has an ‘openness’ that allows other theoretical approaches to be combined with it at many points.16 This is reflected in the present volume which contains varied, and sometimes divergent, interpretations and applications of Elias. His insights are combined with concepts and interpretations drawn from a mixture of thinkers ranging from Foucault and Callon to Schumpeter and Moore. The successive chapters illustrate the potential of Eliasian analysis, either alone or in combination with other approaches. The
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argument moves between the macro and the micro level, examining the broader national and international contexts of management practice but also focusing upon the internal dynamics of organizations. Following this introductory chapter, the book is organized in four parts each containing three chapters. In the first part, entitled Organizing Discourse, William van Vree provides an Eliasian analysis of meetings within organizations. Joseph Soeters and Ad van Iterson explore the role of gossip as an aspect of organizational power struggles. Both chapters draw out different ways in which groups and individuals compete to define themselves and others in relation to the organization. These emphases are continued in Dennis Smith’s chapter. This presents an analysis of shame and humiliation processes within organizations, one which both complements and challenges Elias’s approach. The second part, Negotiating Boundaries, explores social processes and strategic issues that traverse the boundaries of organizations. Marja Gastelaars shows how the issue of privacy throws light onto ambiguities and tensions in the relationships between the state and other organizations. Ruud Stokvis explores the network of stakeholders with an interest in the performance of corporate management, paying particular attention to the power of ‘outside’ investors in relation to executives within the firm. Finally, Tod Hernes analyses the special role of ‘boundary’ workers in negotiating the limits of organizations, paying attention to the part played by etiquette. In the third part, entitled Crossing Cultures, Tatjana Globokar, Stephen Chen and Nidhi Srinivas draw upon Elias in their analyses of, respectively, work orientations, business systems and management education. The three chapters provide a comparative and historical overview of two European cases — France and Germany and two Asian cases — China and India. The fourth part, Theorizing Practice, focuses on challenges confronted by contemporary management. Firstly, William Mastenbroek concentrates on the paradox that managers are given increased freedom within organizations but impose a greater degree of control upon themselves. Following this, Tim Newton explores the contribution of an Eliasian perspective to our understanding of the greening of organisations, green technologies and issues of globalization. Finally, in a concluding chapter, Willem Mastenbroek shows how Eliasian concepts have helped with practical notions and specific interventions in the spheres of organisational design, change management and management styles. In the rest of this introductory chapter there are three tasks to be carried out. First, some key concepts and themes in Elias’s work will be set out. Secondly, we will relate these themes to debates in organization theory. Finally, the relevance of Elias to current concerns in organization analysis will be considered.
Introduction
Key Eliasian concepts and themes Figuration The concept of figuration is central to Elias’s argument. By figuration, Elias refers to the complex network of social interdependencies which surround everyday life. Such interdependencies have developed gradually across the changing social and political landscape of particular epochs (Elias, 1991a, 1994a). They reflect the ‘underlying regularities by which people in a certain society are bound over and over again to particular patterns of conduct and very specific functional chains, for example as knights and bondsmen, kings and state officials, bourgeois and nobles.’ (1994a: 489). Elias stresses that particular figurations are not fixed since power relations are rarely those of total dominance but reflect the changing balances between individuals and groups. Elias sees power as relational, as a ‘game’ of interdependencies where ‘the participants always have control over each other (Elias, 1970: 81, original emphasis). A ‘hidden order’ Elias (1991a: 13) also stresses that any apparent social order in our world is not planned or intended. This is because figurations, or interdependency networks, represent the interweaving of different groups and individuals, none of whom can second-guess the actions of others. As Elias puts it, any outcome represents the ‘interweaving of countless individual interests and intentions’ (1994a: 389, added emphasis). As a consequence, it is difficult for any one individual or group to ‘determine history’ since their intentions and actions are always likely to be moderated by others on whom they are dependent. This means that for strategists there is unlikely to be any simple relation between a particular ‘strategy’ and a particular ‘outcome’ because any particular strategy is likely to moderate, deviate or mutate as its is interwoven within the actions of a host of different players. In an organizational context, corporate strategy is unlikely to be implemented as intended since any ‘deliberate’ strategy will become interwoven with the actions of employees, suppliers, clients, competitors, state and intergovernmental agencies etc. Any order that results from such interweaving is therefore likely to be as much unintended as intended. An Eliasian perspective therefore supports Henry Mintzberg’s argument that ‘emergent strategy means, literally, unintended order’ (1990: 152, added emphasis). As Elias argues, ‘something comes into being that was planned and intended by none of these individuals, yet has emerged nevertheless from their intentions and actions’ (Elias, 1994a: 389). More generally, we are all dependent on each other, and from the early Middle Ages onwards, these interdependencies have grown in length and complexity. Any individual or group is therefore situated in a plethora of
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networks and chains and their feelings and actions cannot be understood outside of these complex interdependencies.
Homo clausus and Homines aperti Elias argues that a characteristic of modernity is that people often remain largely unaware of the complex interdependencies in which they are situated. In conventional terms, they feel divorced from ‘society’. Psychologically it is as though there is ‘an invisible barrier [that] separates their “inside” from everything “outside” — the so-called “outside world”’ (Elias, 1970: 119). In part, this feeling reflects processes of individualization in Western societies. For Elias, this ‘increasing individualization is … a process of civilization’ where ‘tensions between the social commands and prohibitions … are internalized as self control’ (Elias, 1991a: 121, added emphasis). It represents a ‘privitization’ (Elias, 1991a: 122 – a theme developed in the chapter by Marja Gastelaars). One consequence is that people increasingly experience themselves as a ‘closed box’, what Elias (1970) called ‘Homo clausus’. Elias argued that Homo clausus represents a common, yet limiting, assumption of much of the social sciences, especially psychology. Against this view, he argued for a recognition of people as Homines aperti, which represents a vision ‘of people in the plural; we obviously need to start out with the image of a multitude of people, each of them relatively open, interdependent processes’ (1970: 121) In promoting Homines aperti, Elias was concerned to show that we can only understand ourselves if we see how power relations reflect a complex interweaving of interdependencies amongst people, a ‘networked agency’. In understanding power and human agency, the focus is necessarily therefore on interdependencies and networks, rather than the decisions and actions of individual ‘sovereign’ actors. Conventionally, we fail to question this supposed sovereignty, to recognise how very personal aspects of our identity may be conditioned by lengthy historical interdependency networks (Newton, 1998a). For instance, since the history of embarrassment surrounding bodily exposure is hidden from us, it just seems part of us and our identity. In a related argument, Beck suggests that the divorce of the individual from her history has accelerated in advanced modernity so that ‘forms of perception … become ahistorical (1992: 135). Yet because we remain isolated from historical (and contemporary) networks, we fail to recognise the complexity of ‘people in the plural’ (Elias, 1970: 121), the sense of Homines aperti. Reflecting his emphasis on Homines aperti, Elias could never confine himself to looking only at the ‘inside’ of an organization. He was as wary of the idea of Organization clausus17 (or the idea of organizations as bounded and autonomous entities) as by that of Homo clausus. Elias refused to accept the reality of a sharp distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ organizations. Instead, his analyses cross
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the boundaries of organizations (whether they be families, royal courts, naval bureaucracies, duelling societies or scientific establishments), a theme which is explored in Tod Hernes’s chapter.
Interdependency, emotion and social discipline Like other twentieth century writers such as Weber, Foucault or Mannheim, Elias was concerned with how we come to learn social discipline. Following his emphasis upon figurations, he saw such discipline as a consequence of the interdependency networks in which we are situated, and the development of these networks over time. In these detailed historical studies, Elias illustrates how interdependency and subjectivity are interwoven, particular as they relate to our emotions and to what he termed self-constraint or restraint. However as van Krieken notes, the term ‘social discipline’ may be more appropriate since Elias was concerned with ‘the positive, productive aspects of the effects of social figurations on human habitus’ (van Krieken, 1998: 133). His best known example of the interrelation between figuration and discipline comes from his studies of the formation of the royal courts of Western Europe (especially France), described in The Court Society (Elias, 1983) and The Civilizing Process (Elias, 1994a). Though these analyses are clearly not concerned with present day organizations, they are worth exploring in some detail in order to illustrate the Eliasian interpretation of power and subjectivity. Through lengthy and detailed analysis, Elias reveals how the subjectivity of knights and chieftains was interwoven with ‘figurational change’, particularly the monopolisation of violence that occurred with the development of stable monarchies. Elias illustrates how, prior to this monopolisation, individuals could take open pleasure in acts of violence and were subject to rather limited emotional and behavioural restraint in comparison with that which pertains in contemporary Western society. However the monarchic monopolisation of the means of violence meant that knights and chieftains no longer warred over their individual fiefdoms, but instead became the new subjects of a centralised power. Royal courts represented new kinds of interdependency network characterised by ‘pacified social spaces’ (Elias, 1994a: 451) where courtiers begged favour to the monarch whilst others begged access to the court. As knights became courtiers they found themselves in ‘monopoly-bound competition for the opportunities the monopoly ruler has to allocate’ (Elias, 1994a: 474). This figurational change occasioned a disciplined subjectivity where ‘the coarser habits, the wilder, more uninhibited customs of medieval society with its warrior upper class, the corollaries of an uncertain, constantly threatened life, were “softened”, “polished” and “civilized”. The pressure of court life, the vying for the favour of the prince or the “great”; then, more generally, the necessity to
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distinguish oneself from others and to fight for opportunities with relatively peaceful means, through intrigue and diplomacy, enforced a constraint on the affects, a self-discipline and self-control, a peculiarly courtly rationality, (Elias, 1994a: 268, added emphasis) The power balance of the royal court was not a total asymmetry where the monarch ‘ruled supreme’. Instead monarchies always held some fragility, dependent on maintaining a coalition that could threaten to ‘gather’ and depose the monarch, and where the bestowing of honour and rank could be seen as an appeasement of knights who could still entertain violence. Monarchs did not ‘own’ some absolute power and the monopolisation of violence was never total. Yet within the ‘pacified social space’ of this coalition, the monarch held sway, and intrigue, diplomacy, and emotional restraint were more likely to prove effective than the ‘coarser … wilder … customs’ of the ‘warrior upper class’: the interdependency network of the royal court therefore encouraged a disciplined, ‘courtly’, subjectivity. The subsequent history of social discipline is not however one of a simple linear development. In particular, Elias’s work on emotion and social discipline has been developed to take account of the seeming twentieth century ‘loosening’ of emotional and behavioural restraint. Particularly in the latter half of this century, people appeared to be more ‘relaxed’ and ‘informal’ in their relations with each other. Yet for Eliasians, such processes of ‘informalisation’ represent a refinement of social and emotional discipline rather than its negation. There is a ‘controlled decontrolling of emotional controls’ (Elias and Dunning 1986: 44) within the context of ever more complex interdependencies. Though it may seem that ‘more is allowed’, such ‘relaxation’ has taken place within sharply defined boundaries. A first application of this theme to organizations was presented by Wouters (1989). His study both critiqued the work of Hochschild (1983) and explored the way in which the apparently informal codes of emotions among flight attendants represent highly internalised and refined forms of social discipline. Such Eliasian work is directly relevant to the rapidly increasing interest in emotion in organizations (Fineman, 2000). However, with the exception of the work of writers such as Kuzmics (1991), Newton (1995, 1998a, 2001) and Mastenbroek (1993, 1999, 2000a), the relevance of Eliasian argument to understanding emotion in organizations has been largely ignored. Consequently there remains considerable scope for the development of Eliasian argument within this field. Elias also presents a range of lesser-known arguments that explore the interrelation of figuration and discipline, and the ways in which growing interdependency complexity has conditioned our sense of who we are. For instance, Elias paid considerable attention to the social significance of time, and the ways in which clocks and temporal regulation provided a means of co-ordination across increasingly
Introduction
dense interdependencies (Elias, 1987a, 1991b, 1992). As Richard Kilminster (1991a) notes, Elias shows how in modern societies ‘highly self-controlled people have to adjust themselves to each other as part of an increasingly intricate mesh of contacts … which requires a socially standardized … symbol of timing’ (1991b:xvi). Railways and telegraph standardised ‘clock time’ as a social device. Without clock time, co-ordination across the temporally and spatially compressed networks of modernity would be impossible (Newton, 2002a). As Elias also notes, timing is central to the interdependency networks of organizational life: ‘the profusion of … appointments’ of the ‘official or businessman … is an expression of the multitude of interdependent actions, of the length and density of the chains composed by the individual actions, and of the intensity of struggles that keep this whole interdependent network in motion’ (1994a: 457, added emphasis). Elias is also concerned to illustrate how time and timing, like many other aspects of our subjectivity, often becomes invisible to us and taken for granted. We forget how our sense of time represents a figurational development that arose in the context of the complex interdependencies made possible by financial credit (Ingham, 1999), railways, telegraph, print etc. In contemporary organizations, we take time for granted as part of our everyday subjectivity, and often remain inattentive to the fact that the ‘working day’ and our whole sense of the measurement of time is a modern social construction that would be entirely alien to people living in pre-modern societies. As Elias argues, ‘once they have learnt it … members of … industrialized state societies … appear to forget that they have to learn time’ (1992: 139). Furthermore, ‘We have slipped into an ever-present sense of time. It has become part of our own person. As such it becomes self-evident. It seems that we cannot experience the world otherwise’ (1992: 162, added emphasis). This quotation once again illustrates the more general Eliasian argument that people tend to view themselves from the perspective of Homo clausus and forget the ways in which our subjectivity is historically conditioned, whether it is our sense of time, our emotions, or our seeming independence.
The longue durée All the above argument is tied into an emphasis on the need to see ourselves from a long-term perspective. Indeed Elias argues that much of the limitations of social science derive from a failure to see things from the standpoint of the longue durée. He presents the following story as an analogy: ‘I once read the story of a group of people who climbed higher and higher in an unknown and very high tower. The first generation got as far as the fifth storey, the second reached the seventh, the third the tenth. In the course of time their descendants attained the hundredth storey. Then the stairs gave way. The
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people established themselves on the hundredth storey. With the passage of time they forgot that their ancestors had ever lived on lower floors and how they had arrived at the hundredth floor. They saw the world and themselves from the perspective of the hundredth floor, without knowing how people had arrived there. They even regarded the ideas they formed from the perspective of their floor as universal human ideas’ (Elias, 1992: 135)
Elias’s key point in this quotation is that our contemporary ideas are not universal or timeless but represent the product of generations of interwoven interdependency networks. We therefore cannot understand ourselves without attending to such development. This argument remains significant because people still tend to think of themselves, their emotions and their subjectivity as ‘self-evident’. For example, what it means to be angry, sad or mad often seems ‘obvious’ and ‘natural’ in spite of indications that our emotions are culturally and historically conditioned (e.g., Lutz, 1988; Elias, 1994a; Morgan, 1994; Newton, 1998a). Equally we take our senses of independence, or privacy, or time for granted as though all cultures at all times shared these sensibilities and perceptions. Yet for Elias, such senses of ourselves are not a given but instead reflect the interweaving of human interdependencies across numerous generations. Over time, human groups have socially learnt privacy or time keeping, or when and where it is appropriate to be angry, sad or mad. In sum, Elias’s work stresses upon the importance of historical and developmental processes. Such an orientation is relatively lacking within organization studies. Instead, comparative, synchronic research largely remains dominant. The downside of this emphasis is that the study of organization is both historically foreshortened and insufficiently integrated with broader societal analysis (Thoenig, 1998; Newton, 1999). There are exceptions to this case as with the earlier argument of Bendix (1956), Baritz (1960) or the more recent studies of Kieser (e.g., 1989, 1998) or Jacques (1996). In general, however, the analysis of organizational phenomena as the outcome of historical processes is still largely neglected. There are some indications of change such as those reflected in the growing attention to narrative analysis and rhetoric (e.g., Zald 1993, 1996; Czarniawska, 1998; 1999), and the broader interest in the interrelation of the social sciences and the humanities. Yet though this is precisely Elias’s province, his relevance to such theoretical developments has been almost entirely ignored.
State formation, national cultures and organization regimes A large part of Elias’ main work (1994a) relates to processes of court and state formation. Elias concentrates on Western Europe, in particular the formation of what would later become the modern nation-states of France and Germany. He observed substantial differences between these countries in terms of state formation and social organization. Such national differences are now commonly
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acknowledged by organizational scholars through the influence of work attending to, say, cultural differences and differences in labour division and structure (Maurice et al. 1980). Yet the historical background and ‘sociogenesis’ of such national differences has not been subject to a similar level of theoretical or analytical scrutiny. In this context, Eliasian argument is particularly relevant since it provides a framework through which to explore the historical interweaving of societal and organizational development. The above discussion is by no means exhaustive of Elias’s concepts and argument. However it will suffice as an introduction and a means to relate Elias to current debates in organization theory and analysis.
Elias and Organization Theory It is impossible in the space available to examine all the instances where a debate between organization theory and Elias would be productive. Instead, we are going to examine some aspects of Elias’s relation to Marx, actor-network theory and Foucault. His work does however have implications for a range of other organization theories such as that of institutional theory (Iterson et al, 2001) and chaos and complexity theory (through a shared emphasis on unintended order).
Elias, Marx and Labour Process Theory While studying at Heidelberg, Elias ‘spent a great deal of time reading Marx’ (Elias, 1994b: 35), and clearly shares the Marxist emphasis upon human existence as defined by social relations rather than individual psychology. Yet Elias was critical of the predominant reliance on economic rationality within Marxist argument, and is highly resistant to its dualistic assumptions. This remains significant to the extent that labour process theorists still exhibit a dualism which reduces the subjectivity of the employee to their economic category within the labour process, particularly where this is reduced to stereotyped class identities such as ‘management’ or ‘worker’ (O’Doherty and Willmott, 1998; Newton, 1999). Elias’s strong anti-dualism made him resistant to such analysis. As Stephen Mennell notes, ‘Although [Elias] always speaks with great respect of Marx’s own pioneering contribution to understanding social development, Elias is highly critical of the one-sided causal weight which Marxists often attribute to narrowly economic forces’ (Mennell, 1989: 65) Though far from discounting the economic (e.g., Elias, 1983, 1994a), Elias seeks to analyse social relations in less dualistic and restrictive terms. This is not simply through his emphasis that the ‘monopolization of violence … plays no less a part as a source of power than the monopolization of the means of production’
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(Elias, 1987b: 230). It is also through the attempt to widen our understanding of the interweaving between consciousness and social relations through a broad analysis of our social selves within the context of shifting figurations (see above). This perspective has a tendency to challenge labour process theory, especially in its more orthodox form. For instance, though Elias portrays individualisation and collectivisation as far from a black and white issue, he nevertheless argues that the modern self has a far ‘greater chance of individualization’ (Elias, 1991a: 169). As one of us has argued elsewhere (Newton, 1999), such a position challenges labour process theorists who rely on a notion of collective subjectivity. Yet such Eliasian critique can be in danger of obscuring the similarities between the position of Marx and Elias. In particular, as Robert van Krieken notes, Elias felt that Marx’s emphasis on ‘social relations as developing over time’ had ‘been overlooked by contemporary sociologists of knowledge’ (van Krieken, 1998: 138). Elias’s emphasis on sociogenesis and the longue durée (see above) represent an attempt to underline the significance of a long term historical perspective in a manner that appears sympathetic to Marx, yet critical of Marx’s economic reductionism (Elias, 1971).
Elias and Actor Network Theory There is also considerable commonality between the image of the agent in Elias’s work and that found in actor-network theory. As John Law comments, ‘the explanatory attitude of [actor-network] writers is not so different from that of Norbert Elias’ (1994: 113). Similarly, Michel Callon notes how the arguments of Elias, Granovetter, and actor-network theory share a critique of the ‘person closed in on himself — homo clausus, to use Elias’ expression’ (Callon, 1999: 185, original emphasis). Elias’s work can be seen to pre-date the stress upon networked agency in actor-network theory, and the need to attend to the plurality of interdependent agents who surround any decision — Homines aperti, in Elias’s terms, or ‘actorworlds’ in actor-network theory (Callon, 1986a, 1999). Understanding organizations therefore means understanding such networks and the tensions between them. For Elias, networks are never static figurations. They are continually in flux, never fixed or easily predictable. To this extent he also shares a similar perspective to the actor-network stress on ‘movement’ and mobility. Yet actor-network theory and Elias differ in two critical aspects. The first comes from the emphasis that Elias places on the asymmetries within interdependency networks, an emphasis that stands in some contrast to the arguments of Michel Callon and Bruno Latour. As Zygmunt Bauman notes, ‘[Elias’s] idea of “[inter]dependency networks” lifts into prominence the potential asymmetry of the location within figuration. If interdependency constrains the actors, it constrains actors in different ways’ (1989: 41, added emphasis).
Introduction
We can see Elias’s emphasis upon asymmetry in a variety of aspects of his work. For example, it is central to his analysis of courtly society, symbolised by the asymmetry between monarch and courtier and his games models which provide an explicit methodology for analysing asymmetries (Elias, 1970). Together such analytical and theoretical emphases provide a basis that draws attention to the asymmetries of organizational life, such as those of organizational structure or professional hierarchy (Law, 1994), or those that condition organizational experience (as witnessed in the interdependency asymmetries surrounding gender, ethnicity, class, age etc.). Through Elias’s theorising, one therefore has a basis for the critical analysis of organizations. Though such an orientation is not entirely lacking in actor-network theory, it often remains rather subdued. As one of us has argued elsewhere (Newton, 1999), actor-network theory tends to dull critical analysis by remaining insufficiently attentive to the significance of asymmetries. For instance, if an actor appears as a particularly passive or ‘docile’ agent, this is explained by Callon as the consequence of factors such as the ‘standardisation’ of actor-networks (1991: 151). It seems odd that Callon does not consider the possibility that actor docility may be a result of asymmetries of inequality between different actors which force passivity on to certain actors by virtue of their location within an interdependency network (Newton, 1996b, 1999). Another key difference between actor-network theory and Elias comes from their conceptualisation of agency. In particular, the former has a greater stress on the non-human actor through its desire to attain a generalised symmetry between the natural and the social (Callon, 1986b). Though this has the advantage of avoiding a privileged position with respect to the traditional divide between ‘nature’ and ‘society’, it is open to the critique that the desired circumvention is less than entirely successful. As Collins and Yearley argue, the creation of a seeming symmetry between human and non-human agents is a social process ‘very much in the hands of the analysts’ (1992: 313). Furthermore, many of the non-human entities which Michel Callon and Bruno Latour emphasise in their desire for symmetry — speed-bumps, door-openers, hotel keys and so on — are ‘stand-ins’ for humans (i.e., stand-ins for, say, ‘policemen and porters’). In consequence, they could still be read as supporting the conventional asymmetrical view which ascribes primacy to the human since such non-human objects merely reflect the human capacity for tools and technology, the development and deployment of which remain a strongly human social process. Actor-network theorists may object that actor-network theory ‘was never a theory of what the social is made of ’ and was not designed ‘to explain the behaviour of social actors’ (Latour, 1999b: 19). They sought to avoid the seeming dead ends of grand debates such as those between agency and structure, ‘Nature’
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and ‘Society’, realism and constructionism. They sought a ‘bypassing strategy’ (Latour, 1999b: 17). Yet the question arises as to how much the desire to elide the pitfalls of such debates only re-invokes rather than displaces them. For instance, in spite of Callon and Latours’ desire to maintain a ‘generalized symmetry’ between the human and the non-human, their analyses exhibit a bias toward the latter. As has been argued elsewhere (Newton, 1999), this slant is revealed through analyses which deconstruct the historical and contemporary networks which surround the ‘building’ of the non-human, but frequently ignore those associated with the human. In particular, there is little attention to the Eliasian interest in the lengthy historical interdependency networks that condition the practical and discursive consciousness of human beings — such as those relating to the socio-emotional restraint of courtly society, or those associated with the development of our consciousness of time (see above). To use the terminology of actor-network theory, human beings have a tendency to become ‘black-boxed’ within Latour and Callons’ analyses. Whereas they exhibit meticulous attention to the historical networks that surround the development of, say, the Kodak automatic camera (e.g., Latour, 1987), they do not show a similar concern with the interdependency networks that condition human action. Though they attend to how humans act in relation to technology, their analyses tend to represent people as predictable parts of the network, whose actions can be taken for granted within a particular network configuration. In actor-network terms, the significance of the social is downplayed through being ‘punctualised’ (Callon, 1991). It remains ironic that although Latour and Callon severely question the image of an independent sovereign self, or a ‘closed box’, they do not examine the networks through which that sense of independence has been achieved. In Elias’s terms, they fail to study how a human actor achieves a sense of being an independent ‘black-boxed’ Homo clausus because interdependency networks are historically obscured and in consequence seem part of our intimate subjectivity. As noted above, we tend to experience our emotions as ‘natural’, ‘inevitable’ or even purely ‘biological’ because the historical networks in which emotion codes have sociogenetically formed are concealed from us. In other words, we have a marked tendency to view our situation ‘from the hundredth floor’ (see above). From an Eliasian perspective, we need to see emotion, subjectivity and organization as developing within particular figurational contexts. In this context, it appears lopsided to attend to the development of technology without attending equally to its interweaving with the development of human sociality and subjectivity. In common with the desires of actor-network theorists, Elias seeks to avoid dualities between nature and culture, or individual and society, or the ‘social’ and the ‘technological’ (Adam, 1990). Yet for Elias, this does not represent an attempt
Introduction
to resolve such dualisms through elision and ‘bypassing strategies’ but merely by emphasising that supposed dualisms are always traversed by interdependency networks. His studies of courtly society emphasise how the emotion codes of individual courtiers were interwoven with, in conventional terms, the social ‘structures’ of royal courts, and how, in Eliasian terms, these latter ‘figurations’ are themselves interwoven with the monopolisation of violence in European states, etc. There are no ‘walls’ between ‘structures’ and the ‘self ’, ‘macro’ and ‘micro’, or the present and the past, since interdependency networks continuously traverse time and space.
Elias and Foucault It is important to firstly emphasise the strong similarities between Elias and Foucault. As one of us has noted (Smith, 1999a), both share an attack on notions of Homo clausus, use similar philosophical reference points such as Socrates and Kant, and stress the transformation of selfhood, bodily functions, human feelings etc, in the course of Western history. Yet in relation to organization theory, there are also notable contrasts between an Eliasian and Foucauldian perspective. A principal difference is that the former places the analysis of knowledge within that of the social, whereas the latter tends to treat the study of the social largely as an aspect of discourse. The latter position creates problems since it restricts the theoretical room in which to analyse how discursive practices are treated socially — i.e., how people manoeuvre in relation to discursive practices, how they play with them, resist them, circumvent them etc. (Newton, 1999, 2001). The Foucauldian concern with the ‘production of the self’ explains how images of the self are produced within discursive practices, but it doesn’t necessarily explain how the self manages such images. For instance, Nikolas Rose may have correctly identified the imperative whereby the individual is ‘to be fulfilled in work, now construed as an activity through which we produce, discover and experience our selves’ (1990: 103, original emphasis). But this, and other work does not explain why many people have not experienced such fulfilment — for instance, why they may have experienced the neo-human relations and neo-liberal messages of ‘excellence’ and culture change programmes as being closer to exploitation than empowerment, requiring them to take more responsibility, become more multiskilled, do more work etc. for similar levels of pay. Explaining such forms of resignation or resistance within the workplace remains problematic without an account of the self which explains how people agentially manoeuvre in relation to discourse (Newton, 1996b, 1998b). The problem is that explaining how the self relates to discourse requires a sensitivity to the ways in which discourse is ‘established’ within the social. As Elias put it, ‘actions and ideas cannot be explained and understood if they are considered on
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their own; they need to understood and explained within the framework of [interdependency networks]’ (1970; 96). In sum, from an Eliasian perspective what appears missing from Foucauldian analysis is a theoretical framework which is capable of analysing the way in which discursive practices are often agentially established within interdependency networks characterised by asymmetry. Without attending to the interrelation between interdependency network, agency and discursive practice, it remains impossible to consider whether differing groups of employees will be ‘constituted’ within particular discursive practices. Through his concepts of figuration, interdependency and asymmetry, Elias provides a means of moving beyond the difficulties observed with Foucauldian writers in accounting for human agency and context (Mouzelis, 1995; Reed, 1997). Whether we are concerned with ‘bourgeois and nobles’ (Elias, 1994a:489), or ‘owners and workers’, directors and shareholders, or managers and subordinates, Elias alerts us to the figurational, and often asymmetrical, context in which discursive practices are established and played out. To summarize, the work of Elias has a number of points of contact with, and divergence from, current organizational theory. His work is sympathetic to the Foucauldian interest in discourse, knowledge and subjectivity, but stresses the need to locate management practices, ‘past’ and ‘new’, within interdependency networks that are often characterised by asymmetry. Elias’s broad argument has much in common with the Marxist emphasis upon the social and the historical, yet resists its economic reductionism. As Law and Callon note, there are also notable parallels between the positions of actor-network theory and Elias, particularly through their mutual emphasis on networks and their mutual embrace of Homines aperti. In addition, Elias and actor-network theorists share an antagonism toward dualisms, particularly that relating to ‘nature’ and ‘society’ (Newton, 2002a). Yet Elias differs in his much greater emphasis upon the figurational contexts in which Homo clausus, and other aspects of human subjectivity, have historically developed. At the same time, he places a greater emphasis on the significance of asymmetries within human interdependency networks. These appear as central to his conceptualisation of power and power ‘games’. Having explored some points of convergence and divergence between Elias, labour process theory, actor-network theory and the work of Foucault, we shall now indicate some applications of Eliasian themes to current organization analysis.
Elias and Organization Analysis Comparative and historical analysis Elias’s work speaks directly to comparative and historical research on organizations.
Introduction xxiii
For example, his most influential text, The Civilizing Processes, is based on a comparison between West European states, especially Germany and France. This work illustrates the fruitfulness of situating comparative research within a historical and developmental context, a strategy adopted by our contributors Globokar, Chen and Srinivas. Elias argues that historical analysis must be approached with circumspection, particularly given the need for caution against overly continuous or linear histories. Yet equally there is a need to question the poststructural representation of history as discontinuity, disjuncture and reversal (Baert, 1998; Newton, 2000c). In this context, the advantage of current historical studies influenced by Elias lies in the way in which they reframe our understanding of organisational issues. For instance, current work underlines how the association between organization and subjectivity is not just a twentieth century phenomena (as exampled by Taylorism, human and neo-human relations, ‘OD’, ‘excellence’ etc.) but rather has characterised the earliest forms of organization (Kieser, 1998). At the same time, such studies pose the question of whether, and how, contemporary organizations and contemporary subjectivities relate to earlier historical developments, a subject addressed by Mastenbroek and Globakar in the present volume.
Globalization Though presently largely unexplored, Eliasian argument is also relevant to issues of globalization (Featherstone and Lash, 1995: 2). As Victor Roudometof and Roland Robertson note, Elias provides a means to make comparisons between different global networks. They write that ‘The novel character of [the Eliasian] approach rests on the connections established between changes in the economic network (European feudalism), political network (interstate conflict), military network (internal pacification via court societies), and changes in the cultural-ideological network (personality development and sociogenetic processes involving detachment from ‘passions’ and the promotion of interest and rationality)’ (1995: 281). Elias’s work guards against the notion that there is likely to be any linear or straightforward globalization process (although his game models do point to certain situations where planned strategies might have a greater likelihood of being effected). As Joseph Maguire notes, ‘for [Eliasians], globalization processes have a blind, unplanned dimension to them and a relative autonomy from the intentions of specific groups of people’ (1999: 40). This perspective suggests a cautious approach to visions of uniform or deterministic globalization processes and the belief that global strategies can be easily implemented, whether they reflect economic desires (e.g., Marxist, neo-liberal), religious ambitions (Barber, 1995), or ecological concerns to protect the natural environment (Yearley, 1996).
xxiv Introduction
Organizations and violence Eliasian study also draws attention to the close interrelation between organizations and violence. For instance, Wilbert van Vree (1999) re-frames our understanding of organisational processes through a unique Eliasian study of meetings. In a fashion not entirely dissimilar to Elias’s The Civilising Process, van Vree presents a detailed historical analysis of meetings and their significance for the transformation of violence. As meetings historically emerged, ‘people who previously competed freely with each other were compelled to set aside the use of force and to fight exclusively verbal battles in meetings’ (van Vree, 1999: 7). Van Vree notes how slight variation in the ‘manners’ deemed appropriate to contemporary meetings can, as with court etiquette or parliamentary manners, be of considerable relevance to power balances. Willem Mastenbroek (1993, 1999) also draws on historical analysis in his Eliasian work on negotiation and bargaining. His studies emphasise the intimate relation between negotiation processes and historically changing codes of emotion, and the need to understand negotiation in relation to conflict and violence. Together, studies such those of van Vree and Mastenbroek illustrate the relevance of an Eliasian framework to understanding violence and organization. In the present volume, Van Vree further explores the relevance of meetings in relation to violence, changing power balances and social discipline.18 Emotion in organizations Eliasian study underlines the need to see emotion within an historical (Elias, 1983, 1994a; Newton, 1998a; Kieser, 1998) and evolutionary context (Elias, 1991b, 1992). Codes of emotional engagement within organizations do not occur in some ahistorical vacuum but instead have emerged in relation to the changing figurations associated with monarchy, the Enlightenment, industrialisation and professionalisation. For instance, one of us (Newton, 1995) has drawn on Elias in order to argue that the separation of emotion codes between organizational and ‘private’ settings needs to be seen in relation to the development of merchant and industrial society since it allowed individuals to withdraw from the ‘glare of public life’ (Elias, 1983: 115). Such argument suggests that it is misleading to restrict our understanding of emotion to contemporary or twentieth century analysis. For instance, contra Hochschild (1983), emotional labour is not largely a twentieth century phenomena since the disguise and dissembling of emotion was a routine accomplishment amongst earlier groups, such as courtiers (Wouters, 1989; Newton, 1998a). More generally, an Eliasian perspective draws attention to the need to see emotional display as interwoven with changing figurational contexts. This is most graphically illustrated by Elias in relation court society but he also discusses the emotion codes
Introduction xxv
of bourgeois and industrial society (Elias, 1983), as have other writers influenced by Elias (Morgan, 1994; Newton, 1998a; Kieser, 1998). This Eliasian stress on the significance of the historical development of emotions does not imply however that contemporary analysis is irrelevant. Though emotion codes have socio-historically developed, they are nevertheless influenced by contemporary interdependencies such as those of organizations. For instance, what Hochschild (1983) calls ‘feeling rules’ can be seen as a refashioning of pre-existent emotion codes within the shifting interdependencies of accelerating commercialisation (Newton, 1998a, 2002a). As noted above, the twentieth century has also accelerated the informalisation of emotion codes, a social development whereby emotional control is sharpened, yet simultaneously appears more ‘relaxed’. In the present volume, Dennis Smith pursues these themes through questioning the Eliasian account of emotional restraint and exploring the politics of emotion, particularly in relation to humiliation. Elias’s approach to emotion also informs many of the other chapters, such as Willem Mastenbroek’s attention to interdependency and social discipline, Wilbert Van Vree’s analysis of meetings and power balances, or Joseph Soeters and Ad van Iterson’s analysis of gossip in organisations.
Knowledge and discourse Elias draws attention to the way in which discourse develops within changing figurational contexts. Firstly, as noted above, such contexts are likely to consist of asymmetrical interdependency networks as witnessed in organizations through structural and professional hierarchies. In understanding the management and deployment of new management practices, an Eliasian perspective therefore draws our attention to the way that new practices are employed within existing asymmetries, such as those surrounding employers/shareholders and employees, or producers and clients (see above). Secondly, Elias was also concerned with the broader relation between discourse and figuration, how say, Copernican or Cartesian or Freudian thought developed within particular figurational settings (Elias, 1991a). Applying this perspective to organizational analysis, we can explore the relation between figurational change and developments in management and organizational discourse. As the chapter by Willem Mastenbroek below illustrates, current management ‘fads and fashions’ need to be seen within a figurational and developmental context The above themes are by no means exhaustive of the relevance of Elias. For example, his work is also relevant to the study of strategy (Newton, 2001), the significance of the body in organizational life (Hassard et al., 2000; Newton, 2001), to industrial relations (Newton, 2001), and to organizations and the natural
xxvi Introduction
environment (Newton, 2001, 2002b). Though we explore some these themes below (see the chapter by Newton), it is impossible to illustrate thoroughly the scope of Elias in a single volume. Our aim is more modest: to ‘open up’ Eliasian argument to the study of organization.
Why so late? Why is it taking researchers in the field of organization studies so long to recognize the potential contribution of an Eliasian perspective? The Civilizing Process (Elias, 1994a) was written in the late 1930s, shortly before World War II in that refuge for the intellectual immigrant known as the British Museum. Yet international recognition of his work only occurred after Elias had officially retired (in the early 1960s). Indeed, it is only since the early 1980s that published work applying Elias has grown in strength, with a particular ‘acceleration’ since 1997 (Smith, 2001a:13). Recognition of Elias came first in mainland Europe, most notably in Germany, The Netherlands and France. In 1977, he was awarded the Theodor Adorno prize by the city of Frankfurt, and the University of Frankfurt made him an Emeritus Professor. He received frequent invitations to give guest lectures and seminars in Germany and the Netherlands, and developed a particular interest amongst staff and students at the University of Amsterdam. In 1985, he was invited by Pierre Bourdieu to give lectures at the College de France and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Shortly before his death on 1 August 1990, he received the Premio Europeo Amalfi prize for The Society of Individuals (Elias, 1991b) and the Italian Nonio Prize (van Krieken, 1998). Van Krieken notes some of the praise and recognition that Elias received from individual authors. Anthony Giddens described his work as ‘an extraordinary achievement, anticipating issues which came to be generally explored in social theory only at a much later date’ (1992: 389). Zygmunt Bauman (1979: 123) noted that Elias was ‘indeed a great sociologist’ while Lewis Coser (1980:194) stressed that he was ‘one of the most significant sociological thinkers of our day’. Yet it in spite of such growing acclaim,19 it remains true that for many years, within organization studies Reinhard Bendix’s (1956) Work and authority in industry remains one of the only texts to make a passing reference to Elias. This situation has not changed significantly over recent decades. For instance, Stewart Clegg’s Handbook of Organization Studies (Clegg et al. 1996) includes only one brief reference to Elias. How is this neglect to be explained? One reason is that The Civilizing Process was not published in English until 1978 when the first volume appeared (the second volume followed in 1982). As Robert van Krieken notes, ‘writers such as Erving Goffman and Reinhard Bendix referred to his work, but only in passing, for
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there were no English translations’ (1998: 2). There were also constraints on his accessibility in other major European languages. For example, The Civilizing Process was not published in a German paperback edition until 1976. Similarly, though Michel Foucault translated Elias’s The Loneliness of Dying into French, this translation was never published (Van Krieken, 1998). However it is not just linguistic accessibility which explains the recent resurgence of interest in Elias. It is also due to changes in the social sciences over the past three decades, not just the waning of functionalist spirit but also the slow attrition of former disciplinary divisions, such as that between the social sciences and history or biology (e.g., Benton, 1991). Elias’s argument remains relevant to such erosion because of the way in which he frequently traversed disciplinary boundaries. The new interest in Elias can be situated within the increasing interest in the relationship between power relations, social processes and subjectivity, most notably witnessed in the work of Foucault. As has been seen, Elias’s work continually addresses the interconnections between large-scale social processes and the psychological make up of individuals and collectivities, the way they think and feel. His studies inform our understanding of our emotion, our persona and our habitus whilst situating them within a societal and global context. At the same time, while Elias has certain similarities with Foucault (Smith, 1999a) his work does not raise quite the same doubts about human agency as those raised by critics of Foucault (Burkitt, 1993; Newton, 1998b). There may also be other, less obvious, explanations for Elias’s lengthy period ‘in the wilderness’. Firstly, Elias steadfastly avoided an ideological position since he equated ideology with mythology and he saw sociologists as destroyers of myths (Elias, 1970: 52; 1994b, 39–40). Secondly, though he created devotees amongst his students, he embraced none of the traditional trappings of the intellectual, as say witnessed in the iconic appeal of Einstein or the woolly bearded Marx. Instead, as one of us has observed, ‘Elias looked like a middle manager in a metal goods factory’ (Smith, 2001a: 11, a position not unlike one he once held). The contrast with his students could be rather striking. As Pieter Spierenburg observes of his time at Amsterdam in the early 1970s: ‘Occasionally, we would continue a discussion with Norbert [Elias] at some place over a beer or so. I remember us sitting outside at Hoppe’s: an old man and four or five longhaired youths. It struck me as an unusual event at the time, but to Norbert it seemed quite normal’ (1997: 4).20
The contribution of this book In what follows we do not wish to ‘pursue’ Elias in some linear and deterministic fashion. Instead, we aim to use our quite varied interpretations and applications of
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Elias in order to reveal how the neglect of his work represents a missed opportunity in organization studies. Elias offers considerable purchase on current debates through his emphasis on long-term historical perspectives, his highlighting of issues of power, emotion and subjectivity, his interweaving of analysis at the level of the state, the organization, groups, and individuals, his alternative ‘take’ on issues of agency and structure, and his relevance to a wide range of current organization theory. As we shall explore, his work is of great interest to numerous fields of organizational analysis such as the sociology of finance and markets, the comparative and cross-cultural study of organization, comparative management development, organizational meetings, organizational boundaries, gossip and privacy in organizations, emotion in organizations, and the significance of humiliation within organizations. Ironically, Elias did not make ‘organizations’ (as distinct from figurations or processes, or specific bureaucracies such as the navy) a special theme in his work, although he pursued related topics such as the sociological character of finance and money (e.g., Elias, 1994a; Newton, 2002c) and the development of bureaucracy and professionalisation (e.g., Elias, 1983). In addressing this omission, our concern is to use, re-frame and critique Elias rather than treat his oeuvre as some sacred temple. We aim to capitalise on the strength and diversity of Elias’ approach and illustrate its impact upon a wide range of management and organizational issues, from the long-term and macro-comparative to the strategic issues, emotional tensions and moral dilemmas of contemporary organizations.
Part I
Organizing Discourse
The chapters in part one are all concerned with aspects of the relationships between three things: the deployment of organizational discourse, both formal and informal, the management of emotions, and the shifting of power balances, predominantly away from formal hierarchy. Wilbert van Vree explores the importance of meetings as vehicles through which organization ‘gets done’. Meetings remains relatively neglected in organizational analysis but they are central features of modern working life. In both the public and private sectors, meetings constitute the major forum for discussion, deliberation, negotiation, and decision. Van Vree draws on manuals and instruction books to show how changes in power balance are reflected in meetings and the ‘manners’ deemed appropriate to their conduct. During the past fifty years the focus has shifted from general deliberative assemblies to more differentiated professional and business meetings; from formal rules to informal codes; and from debating to discussing. There has also been a shift from majority decisions to consensus; from the attitude of parties, administration, and opposition to the behaviour of individual meeting participants; and from a chairman’s function to the duties of ordinary meeting participants. This chapter explores the parallels between contemporary meetings and Elias’s study of court etiquette and illustrates how, in both cases, slight variation in conduct are highly significant in relation to the power balances observed. Joseph Soeters and Ad van Iterson examine another very important but strangely neglected aspect of organizational life, namely the study of gossip. Drawing on the work of Elias and John Scotson, they differentiate between ‘praise’ gossip and ‘blame’ gossip and indicate the significance of organizational culture for the forms of gossip observed. Specifically, they suggest that praise gossip, mainly directed outward, is more prevalent in homogeneous organizational cultures while blame gossip, usually directed inward at other sub-groups within the organization, is more common in segmental or differentiated cultures. The analysis of gossip — whether top to bottom, bottom to top or horizontal — is also of interest in understanding organizational micro-politics and organizational change. The chapter pays particular attention to the salience of blame gossip in relation to
2
power struggles and to strategic change. In these contexts, gossip can be very influential, acting as a kind of ‘verbal Molotov cocktail’. Finally, Dennis Smith explores how shame and humiliation take place in organizations, beginning with a critique of Elias’s approach to these aspects of social relationships in The Civilizing Process, The Established and the Outsiders and The Germans. Smith distinguishes between shame, which may have the effect of both disciplining and integrating an ‘offender’ within a group, and humiliation, which has the capacity to undermine the identity of its victims and expel them from the collectivities and social positions which they previously occupied. A typology of humiliation mechanisms is introduced and distinctions are made between types of organization according to whether or not human rights are recognized within them and whether they take the form of networks or hierarchies. The dynamics of humiliation are explored through an extended case study taken from academia. Drawing upon Elias, all three chapters explore the tensions between the integrative and divisive tendencies of discourse but emphasise different aspects of these tensions. Van Vree shows that the informalisation of manners within the context of meetings depends upon ‘a reduction in the risk of being conquered and humiliated.’ Meetings in modern organisations are, to a great extent, structured by the need to combine two things: on the one hand, increasing differentiation of interests and a less centralized power structure and, on the other hand, relatively high levels of inter-personal and inter-group trust. As Soeters and van Iterson argue, it is not easy to do this since within differentiated organizations since there is a tendency for blame gossip to be deployed for psychological and political reasons. They point out, for example, that established groups may subject those who threaten them to ‘humiliating humour and blame gossip.’ Dennis Smith moves humiliation to centre stage in his analysis, arguing that the weakening of formal hierarchies is typically associated with an increased awareness of human rights. This increased awareness of rights has the effect of making employees likely to perceive a wider range of behaviour by managers and colleagues as disrespectful and ‘humiliating.’ The resulting resentment and conflict is liable to undermine trust and focus the attention of employees upon the tasks of defending rights and demanding redress for slights and insults. Dennis Smith’s argument implies that the challenge for both the ‘meeting culture’ of modern organisations and their informal gossip culture is to move towards the ideal represented by the ‘creative network.’
Chapter 1
The development of meeting behaviour in modern organizations and the rise of an upper class of professional chairpersons* Wilbert van Vree
Meetings, manners and civilization This chapter explores the regimes of meetings through which organizations are constituted. How have these regimes developed and how have the etiquette and behaviour associated with them changed? Societal development in the last millennium is coupled with an increase in the number of meetings and levels of meeting, and with the development of an continually broader network of mutually related meetings, in which manners and habits pass continually faster from above to below and in an increasing degree from below to above. As the differences in meeting behaviour between social groups diminished, the variations and nuances in meetings increased. In Western industrial societies, especially those at the top have to live under extreme ‘meeting pressure’. The higher the individual is in society, the more the number of meetings. The everyday work of organizational leaders such as politicians, civil servants as well as company managers is dominated almost entirely by discussing, deliberating, negotiating, and deciding in groups. If they do not actually participate in meetings, they are preparing the meetings or processing the results of them. Power, status and property are largely being distributed in and through meetings to an unprecedented degree. In the last two, three centuries the ‘most powerful on earth’ have gradually altered from being courtiers and entrepreneurs to becoming professional meetingholders and chairpersons. This is pregnantly illustrated by the derivation of titles of
* This article is based on my book Meeting, Manners and Civilization. The Development of Modern Meeting Behaviour (1999). An extensive description and analysis of the different national series of meeting manuals and textbooks can be found in this book (pp. 256–311). I am grateful to Gerard Bos, Joop Goudsblom, Cas Wouters and Willem Mastenbroek for suggestions and support during my research.
4
Wilbert van Vree
address given to functions fulfilled in meetings, such as president, vice-president, chairman, general secretary, presiding officer and congressman. In The Civilizing Process Elias established that, as an indicator of the civilizing process in Western Europe, the importance of eating behaviour diminished with the demise of court society and the courtiers, who were consumptive by nature in a never-to-be-equaled degree. If table manners indeed did not ‘essentially’ change after the demise of court society and the accepted standard only filtered down to broader levels of the population, then one has to consider which other behaviour (of the upper crust) could be best used to research the course of the civilizing process. Meetings are a most appropriate theme, in my opinion. Gathering together in order to talk and come to decisions about the common future has become an increasingly important means of social integration. As a means of distinction for the elite the stylization of meeting behaviour has replaced the stylization of eating and drinking. In explaining the civilizing of behaviour, Elias has pointed to the extension, the condensing and the differentiating of networks of interdependencies and the monopolizing of organized violence. If one approached the development of meetings by questioning who, and in which manner, have mutually decided about whom, one would find the same conditions, more directly however. The restraint of physical violence, at least local and temporary, was the conditio sine qua non of meetings. The long-term development of meetings coincides with the organization of violence within basic entities, ‘tribes’, villages, towns, nationstates, confederations; i.e. within the increasingly large and more stable ‘survival units’ which are in fact ‘meeting units’. The process by which ‘survival units’ grow and become more specialized can be more accurately studied by considering village councils, war councils, court councils, meetings of rank, parliaments and other central meetings, in which the actions of an increasing number of people need to be coordinated. The central meetings of ‘survival units’ may be considered as ‘frontlines of civilization’. Discussions, decisions, negotiations, deliberations in groups are barely researched as behaviours which change along with the changes in the balance of power between people. Frequently, implicitly or otherwise, people assume that present-day meeting manners were always as they are now. An image of how meeting regimes and behaviours have developed is lacking. An important source of information to fill this gap are the rather lengthy series of books about how to conduct and to hold a meeting provide. This literature particularly illustrates how, when, and which meeting manners were more widely adopted, or became obsolete when they were no longer necessary to accentuate or maintain differences in rank. Meeting manuals and textbooks reflect problems and difficulties which have occurred during the rise and expansion of “a special sort of
The development of meeting behaviour
restrained aggression, measured hostility, adaptable to changing circumstances” (Elias 1969c, p. 411). From this series of books, one can expect to gain more insight into changes in the relationship between power and behaviour.
Manuals for associations and meetings The development of a literary genre totally focused upon meeting manners occurred after the decay of court society, as the monopolies of force and taxation became more public and society became industrialized. This new genre developed, whilst ‘conversing’ and ‘speaking in company’ remained the subjects of etiquette books or general books of manners. There are many indications that with the sharper distinction between private and professional lives, etiquette books came to be written particularly by, and for, women, whereas meeting manuals were written more particularly by, and for, men. Women had been excluded from all, more or less official, meetings, probably since the beginning of the military-agrarian society. Since the emergence of the parliamentary-industrial society women are successfully conquering the right to attend political and an increasing number of other powerful meetings. However, this is a slow process. Even today, one does not often see women in political and business summit conferences and meetings. If one can speak of a leeway or organizational disadvantage for women in relation to men, it was, and still often is, in the sphere of meetings. This impressive fact deserves more attention from students of social sciences in general, and in particular from researchers in the field of linguistic differences between women and men in particular (see Deborah Tannen 1986, 1994). The monopolization of official meetings by men and the long exclusion of women from these meetings may help to explain the historical and still-existing gender gap. Interesting questions for further research arise, such as: To what extend does this historical development explain the margin between informal and formal meetings and meeting behaviour? To what extent has typically masculine (speech) behaviour developed and been preserved in meetings? To what extent is men’s language in fact just ‘meeting language’? As means of communicating the prevailing ways of conduct to lower layers of the population, the genre of meeting books is a direct progression from the court etiquette books, used by Elias to demonstrate long-term-changes in behaviour. The relationship between both genres is apparent from the many passages similar to both books, in which the readers were instructed to curb anger and aggression, to avoid threatening, giving offence, and making accusations, and to present their own opinion in a quiet, pleasant, friendly, and careful manner, so that the discussion remained free from arguments, quarrels, shouting, and other incidents; in
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short, those conflicts which tended towards bodily confrontation. The fact that writers of books on meeting manners continually refocus upon regulating this precise aspect of behaviour, is a reminder that the act of meeting is a more ‘civilized’ way of dealing with societal conflicts and tensions. Above all, the meeting rules and norms serve to regulate tensions between participants; in the sense that a flame is prevented from flaring up, but also that it is prevented from becoming so weak that it no longer gives any heat or light. In this paper, an attempt will be made to trace some main trends in the development of the genre of meeting manuals.2 In the national bibliographies of the United States of America, Great Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, Gerard Bos and the author up until 1990 noted approximately 800 titles, inclusive reprints, which qualified as meeting manuals or textbooks. Grouping these titles by their country of publication, the figures were as follows: 50% American, 10% British, 20% German, 15% Dutch and 5% French.1 The first titles appeared some hundred years ago. Given the number of translations and quotations, it is clear that the writers have influenced each other to an increasing degree. The various national series can be considered together as a single literary genre. Besides manuals and textbooks, other educational tools to communicate meeting manners and rules have emerged since the decline of court society. Such tools are regular lectures at schools and universities, audio-visual courses, and various training programmes. The books are merely a shadow of the enormous amount of activity geared to impress desirable meeting behaviour on younger generations and other groups of ‘outsiders’, in the process of establishing themselves. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that a lot of modern meeting textbooks were developed within the framework of training programmes. The fact that, in many countries, a large number of similar meeting manuals were published, is a clear indication that these countries began to differ less and less from each other in the degrees and ways of meeting during the period of industrialization. Every parliamentary, industrial society has a series of meeting manuals and textbooks, which can be considered as vehicles by which the dominant meeting manners (the meeting manners of the dominant groups) spread. In the development of the genre, two phases can be distinguished. The first phase comprised manuals which covered the etiquettes of national parliaments as models for political assemblies at lower levels, and for meetings of clubs and shareholders. The second phase comprises textbooks in which more attention is paid to those manners and customs which should be (and already are) observed in meetings and negotiations of managerial boards and companies. This divide occurred around the 1950s. From about 1960 onwards, there was a spectacular increase in the number of such textbooks.
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The outlines of the different, national, series of parliamentary manuals are convergent. The first authors were practising politicians, lawyers and administrators of societies or they came from a legal or political background. Later, authors also were teachers or journalists. Everyone of them wrote primarily for (potential) administrators, especially presidents of societies, local councils, committees, and shareholders’ meetings and, secondly, for ‘ordinary’ members. Generally, there is a legal character to the instructions and the explanations of them, although the authors usually promise to do their utmost to make ‘no profound, legal pronouncements’, but in ‘the simplest way possible’ answer the many practical questions which come up in club life — in discussing and voting, in drafting an agenda and taking minutes, and in administrative practice. On reading the instructions as to how to hold a meeting, it is apparent that these have largely been borrowed from national parliaments. Differences between the national series largely run parallel to differences in the speed and the nature of the various national processes of parliamentarisation. Notwithstanding national variants in parliamentary behaviour, the similarities are more striking. In all manuals, there are the same type of instructions with respect to the expression of moods, emotions, and affects. A central question is how to control aggressive impulses, feelings of hostility, passions, and passing impulses.
Rules of order The first author who attempted to meet the procedural needs of the United States’ growing number of voluntary societies and local councils was Luther S. Cushing, clerk to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and a noted lawyer. In 1845, he penned a small book entitled Manual of Parliamentary Practice: Rules of Proceedings and Debate in Deliberative Assemblies. Although this was the first manual for “assemblies of every description, but more especially for those which are not legislative in their character”, it has not become the standard work in this field (Robert 1981, p. xxxv-xxxvi). This honour falls to Robert’s Rules of Order, penned by Major Henry Martin Robert, an engineering officer in the U. S. army who was also very active in church and civic organisations. The first edition of 4,000 of this manual appeared in 1876, 1,000 of which Robert sent to parliamentarians, educationalists, legislators, and church leaders throughout the country, at his own expense. This edition was sold out within four months. A second edition published later in 1896 increased the size of the book by 16 pages, and changes and additions in a third edition in 1893 added 26 more pages. The first complete revision, published in 1915, was the product of three years of the original author’s full-time effort. This edition, Robert’s Rules of Order Revised, had less than one fourth of its
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content taken directly from the previous edition of 1893. The revision and expansion were largely the result of hundreds of letters from all over the country, submitting questions on parliamentary law arising in organisations. In 1970, a new revision of the book was published: Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised” by Sarah Corbin Robert. The three editions of the Pocket Manual by 1915 had totalled more than a half million copies. In 1970, a total of 2,650,000 copies had been printed. The 1981-edition listed 3,400,000 copies in print. The last major revision, the ninth, appeared in 1990. According to the present publisher, Addison-Wesley, more than 4,450,000 copies of the book had been sold by 1997. In retrospect, Cushing’s and Robert’s manuals were the beginning of a longrunning, continuous American series of manuals for parliamentary practice. Robert’s manual is the core of the American series and had great influence on the European ones. It can be used to get an idea of these series in their entirety, covering questions such as the summoning to a meeting, the opening, the quorum, the creation of an agenda, the introduction of business, the assignment of the floor, the handling and submission of motions, propositions and amendments, the formation of boards and committees, the ways of deciding and voting, and the way of taking minutes. Attention is focused upon the duties of the chair. These are to officially open the session by calling the members to order, to announce the business before the assembly in the order in which it is to be acted upon, to conduct the discussions, to make sure that the speakers do not digress onto subjects not on the agenda, to close the discussions at an appropriate time, and to state and to put the vote if one is to be held, to announce the result of the vote, and to officially close the meeting. Another main duty of the chair is the maintenance of order, “to restrain the members, when engaged in debate, within the rules of order; to enforce on all occasions the observance of order and decorum among the members, deciding all questions of order and to inform the assembly when necessary, or when referred to for the purpose, on a point of order or practice” (Robert Rules Order 1880, p. 101).
One of the most difficult (and from a ‘civilizational’ point of view, most interesting) tasks of the chair is dealing with disorder. More attention was given to this task as the genre developed. This is obvious in Robert’s Rules of Order. Compared to what is mentioned on this topic in the newly revised edition of 1970, in the 1880 edition preserving order was not an issue. It became increasingly more urgent with the parliamentary mingling of more different layers of the population as a consequence of the expansion of the franchise.
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“In dealing with any case of disorder in a meeting, the presiding officer should always maintain a calm, deliberate tone — although he may become increasingly firm if a situation demands it. Under no circumstances should the chair attempt to drown out a disorderly member — either by his own voice or the gavel — or permit himself to be drawn into a verbal duel. If unavoidable, however, proper disciplinary proceedings to cope with immediate necessity can be conducted while a disorderly member continues to speak” (Robert’s Rules of Order 1970, pp.539–540).
This quotation represents a more psychological approach of meeting problems, which has become characteristic for the whole genre in the last half of the twentieth century. Within the meeting manuals, a more differentiated approach to holding meetings became accepted. Attention was now focused on the arrangement and conduct of meetings of small groups of administrations, committees, management teams and (local) governments. This shift of attention from large, legislative and deliberative assemblies with emphasis on formal manners towards smaller meetings with emphasis on informal manners included a similar shift from the duties of the chairman towards the duties of all participants. These alterations reflect moreembracing societal changes, in which holding meetings extended enormously over practically every area of the society, and meetings and meeting behaviour became more varied, more informal, and more business-like.
Meeting textbooks as modern chronicles One of the common characteristics of the new sort of meeting manuals (usually presented as ‘textbooks’), was that they had been written from a social psychological perspective. They paid less attention to the formal manners and codes evolved in parliamentary practices than to informal manners; those which largely developed in administrative and company meetings and international conferences. This new trend started in the United States, where the publication of manuals for ‘parliamentary procedure’ and ‘public meetings’ slowly began to decline in the 1940s and 1950s in favour of manuals for holding ‘business meetings’, ‘management conferences’, ‘international conferences’, and ‘negotiations’. One of the most influential books in this genre was Successful Conference and Discussion Techniques by the American professor of speech, H. P. Zelko, which was published in 1957. This book was revised in 1969 and renamed The Business Conference: Leadership and Participation. It is the classic of this type of book, translated into many languages such as German, Japanese, and Dutch, and frequently reprinted; for example, in the Netherlands it has been reprinted thirteen times in the period from 1963 to 1993. This book will be frequently referred to in this chapter.
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In Germany, the number of manuals published for holding Versammlungen (assemblies) has sharply declined since the start of the 1960s (to none after 1983), while the number of manuals for Konferenztechnik (conference techniques), and particularly Verhandlungstaktik (negotiation tactics) increased considerably. Since 1963, in the Netherlands, no new manuals have appeared in which only official parliamentary conduct is covered. In the United States and the United Kingdom until 1990, there have been at least 150 editions (prints and updated reprints) of social psychological manuals in total. In Germany, about 120 editions have appeared, in France about fifty, and in the Netherlands about ninety.2 The arrival of social psychological, mainly company-focused, meeting manuals, and this genre’s explosive take off in the 1970s and 1980s is closely related to changes in the competitive relations between states and between societal groups within states, by which the business and professional worlds became more meetingorientated, and holding meetings rapidly became more business-like. The first newstyle meeting manuals appeared in the United States in the 1940s, when collective labour agreements were made and social security was introduced. This occurred with the enlargement in scale of companies and the growing influence of the school of Human Relations, which considered the (informal) relations between people in companies as primary. These books were translated and imitated in European countries in the 1950s and 1960s, when a rapid expansion of co-ordinating functions took place with the pacification of the relations between European countries, the increase in international (economic) transactions, and the expansion and increase in scale of organizations. As far as meetings are concerned, these developments were translated into a rapid and largely unanticipated extension of the number of meetings and meeting levels, not only within but also between states and companies. One saw the development of meeting units, like NATO and Warsaw Pact, the establishment of the United Nations and the arrival of continental scale consultation and negotiation centers for the economic regulation of developments in areas such as agriculture, trade, industry, and transport, like the European Community. Within states, the consultations rapidly multiplied between different administrative levels (local, regional and national), and the decision-making processes became less transparent and more difficult to control for the elected representatives and the central administrators. Likewise, within businesses and other work organizations, an enormous expansion took place as regards the holding of meetings. In Work and Authority in Industry (1956), Reinhardt Bendix pointed out that, since the 1930s and 1940s, a rapid and largely unforeseen increase had taken place in the number of meetings and meeting levels in American companies: “weekend meetings for middle
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management and supervisors, evening dinner meetings, regular staff meetings at all levels” (Bendix 1974, p. 321). The rapid, unplanned increase in meetings and meeting levels in work organizations of various kinds has prompted, in consideration of costs, the search for more efficient and more effective meeting manners. This search began in the United States in the 1940s. Zelko reported that, “business and industrial organizations, and government agencies, have so well recognized the uses and values of the conference method that training in conference leading has become a major training objective. Of some 150 companies and government agencies in one major survey, more than 65 per cent said that they had in operation conference training programs to equip supervisors to hold conferences. Among the many outstanding programs are those conducted by Esso Standard Oil, Johnson and Johnson, General Electric, du Pont, International Harvester, General Motors, many government agencies, and a host of others” (Zelko 1957, p.11).
During the accelerated development of meeting activities in the past fifty years, all sorts of difficulties and problems arose which psychologists began to investigate. A new scientific community was developing: that of social psychologists, and other researchers from ‘the small group’. Initially in the United States, and then in Europe, individuals emerged from the ranks of these specialists, who systematically sought for solutions to problems which went hand in hand with the increased meeting contacts between people of different societal classes and groups. The solutions they found were spread by manuals and training sessions in which people discussed and decided on how to arrange and hold meetings (i.e. meetings about meeting). The research referred to by the new meeting specialists was generally conducted “in a manner analogous to research in the physical sciences, such that certain factors are held constant whilst others are varied to observe what actually occurs in a certain discussion” (Koekebakker 1956, p. 7). Therefore, the research reports by social psychologists, and the statements and the lessons in the meeting manuals which are based upon them, can be considered as modern chronicles, as contemporary historiography (Gergen 1973). They report the manners which contemporary Western people, originating from the middle and higher classes, employ during meetings, and the solving of the problems which are encountered. However, this is not the whole story. In comparison to their juridical predecessors, who more or less only passed on what was common at higher meeting levels, there was more elbow room for social psychologists to introduce their own ‘scientific’ insight and rules. The altered power and dependency relationships can explain the fact that, as relative outsiders, they could, with approval of the management, concern themselves with meetings within companies and other work organizations and could function as go-betweens or referees by appealing to ‘psychological universals’. Writing about Socrates’ search for moral truth, Gouds-
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blom commented that whenever the distance between people, based on suspicion, enmity, and hierarchical relationships, actually becomes smaller, and individuals start to be involved in frequent contact with dissenters, “a need arises for some mutual understanding, common points of departure, and possibly for a higher truth which cancels out the original differences of opinion” (1980, p. 183). Seen from this point of view, the development and spread of the new, social psychological approach to meetings and meetings behaviour can be explained as an expression of an acceleration in social integration. In this process groups of people with different opinions and societal backgrounds have to get along with each other, and the need grows for “generally applicable principles to which all opinions could be subjected” (Ibidem).
Informalization of meeting behaviour As is evident from the meeting manual genre the manner of approaching meeting activities has been further developed in the last fifty years. Attention has shifted from general deliberative assemblies to more differentiated, professional and business meetings; from formal rules to informal codes; from debating to discussing; from majority decisions to consensus; from the attitude of parties, administration, and opposition to the behaviour of individual meeting participants; and from a chairman’s function to the duties of ordinary meeting participants. This shift reflects a more-embracing process of informalization of manners, as characterized by Cas Wouters: as the power relationships became less unequal, people began to be less threatened by those feelings and behaviours, which had been loaded with anxiety and shame in earlier stages of social and psychological development in relation to tensions between social groups, classes, and sects (Wouters 1990a). The controlled expression of feelings of anger, disappointment, and aggression were acceptable to a certain degree in meetings on the basis of an increase in the reciprocally anticipated self-control. The informalization of meeting manners can be substantiated by several quotes taken from several trend-setting, often reprinted and translated books from the United States (Zelko 1957, 1969 etc. and Dunsing 1976–77, 1978 etc.), Germany (Rüdenauer 1980, etc.) and the Netherlands (Mastenbroek 1984, 1987, 1992 etc.). Together these books give a reliable impression of the second stage of the international genre of meeting manuals. A striking example of the shift from formal to informal manners is, “Robert’s rules of order. Such rules are necessary in some kinds of large groups assembled to make decisions or recommendations. And they are required in legally constituted meetings. But in small groups, the ponderous procedures involved
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stymie human interaction and the flow of creativity. The rules stimulate a legalistic and mechanical way of thinking” (Dunsing 1978, p. 29).
The shift in accent from large to small meetings and from formal to more informal meeting codes, is to be considered as an expression of the expansion and further differentiation of meeting regimes and meeting behaviour, which requires a greater impute from one’s own thoughts and knowledge. Thus, it is no longer expected that the chairman mainly watches over and applies the procedures, but that he varies his leadership according to the type of meeting and knows how to control tensions and conflicts neutrally and smoothly, based on his own insight and feelings. “Above all, the conference leader must be resourceful, systematic yet flexible, compassionate, and ready to use his own judgment rather than relying on fixed rules, mechanics, or techniques” (Zelko 1969 (1957), p. 119).
Attention has shifted from chairman to participants. Every one is considered to be responsible for good order and fair turn-distribution. With this shift and the arrival of a less formal way of ‘controlling order’ by the chairman, the way in which a point of order is raised, has also been ‘informalized’: “You can help the chairman in the exercise of his duties. For instance, ‘I suppose to first define the subject, before beginning to discuss it’, ‘That seems to be a misunderstanding. You probably mean …’, ‘In my view the question of Mr./Mrs. B has not been answered yet’. When you dash to the help of the chairman, you do not have to ask permission to speak…” (Rüdenauer 1982 (1980), p. 27).
In comparison to their mainly juridically schooled predecessors, the writers of modern meeting manuals attach more value to holding discussions and striving towards a consensus than debating and voting. “Debate is not discussion in the true sense, for their is no attitude of inquiry and reflective thinking about what is the best solution. The debater has made up his mind in advance, and he does all he can to advance and defend his point of view with no thought to being ‘won over’ by his opposition” (Zelko 1969 (1957), pp.233–234). “Voting should be avoided in most conferences where group agreement is to be reached, unless it appears absolutely necessary. Voting tends to crystallize opinion and harden positions: it emphasizes the majority and minority rather than the whole group. (…) This tends to emphasize a spirit of advocacy and contention rather than the spirit of reflective inquiry and open-mindedness that we strive for in a discussion” (Zelko 1969 (1957), pp. 161–162).
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Debating and voting support and promote the formation of parties on the basis of belief, ideals, or philosophies of life, and increase the chance of violent, hostile, and aggressive feelings being expressed and the outbreak of arguments, which hinder an open and business-like discussion based on facts. The second generation of meeting manuals most clearly deviates from the first with the ban on debating and voting on the basis of already-made viewpoints and the advocacy to talk to each other and to decide on the common future in a ‘frank’ and ‘business-like’ manner. The instructions which appear in modern meeting manuals are largely intended to answer the question as to how the individual meeting participant and the productivity of the meeting could be increased, given the prevailing balance of power within the meeting unit. The central question is: how can someone submit one’s own opinion powerfully and purposefully without having this lead to violent conflicts and feelings of animosity? However, the modern meeting manuals advocate a less anxious attitude with regard to conflicts than the parliamentary, juridical manuals. People should allow themselves and others more opportunity to express their feelings (carefully and differentially). Expression of emotions should not be taboo. Weeping, screaming, being angry, are allowed in certain situations and on certain conditions, at least they should not give other participants a fright. “Conflicts are nothing negative. They point to problems and challenge to think of creative changes. We can consider conflicts in society as safety valves” (Rüdenauer 1982 (1980), p. 77).
In the altered attitude towards debating and voting, the expression of feelings and the starting of arguments comes down to the fact that the lessening of the power differences between the classes, sexes, and generations, made it necessary and possible for people to take into consideration more aspects of themselves and others in the discussions and decisions about the common future. The civilizing process has made people psychologically more sensitive and in some respects more vulnerable. Some authors of meeting textbooks encourage their readers to make use of this sensitivity and express certain feelings consciously and tactically in order to ‘attract attention and improve the quality of one’s meeting life’, “Be a cantankerous participant. Squeak and chirp, complain or yell ‘bull’ until you shift the tide of things or until others stop and say, ‘OK loudmouth, we’ll take the time to look at what we’re doing here’. Cry. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a man or a woman. Crying feels good when it’s genuine, and it might get you the attention you want. Fall out of the chair or fall asleep, or both” (Dunsing 1978, p.103).
As people have become more ‘civilized’ (or grown older), they may feel quickly ashamed or embarrassed when others express emotions in a way, which they had often painfully learned to control in their childhood.
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In conclusion, it can be said that the changes in the meeting manual genre from a parliamentary-juridical approach to a psycho-sociological approach indicates a growing insecurity with regard to what belongs in a meeting and what does not belong in a meeting. “The ambivalent character of the relationships between people has become clearer and become to be seen more as a psychological phenomenon, and there has been both an increase in the tension between impulses and the control of those impulses within oneself, and the attention to emotions and the regulation of those emotions” (Wouters 1990a, p. 351). This change was closely connected with the decline in the direct threat of war, and the lesser risk of poverty, sickness, and ignorance, the lessening the power differences, and the decline of societal tensions and oppositions within states. As security, prosperity, and social mobility rose, and more people were compelled to hold meetings, the party-political and socio-economic contrasts have lost their edge. The struggle towards revolutionary changes by advocates from lower classes of the population ebbed and, with it, the anxiety of the established groups has decreased about both people from these classes, and for the behaviours and feelings that were associated with these classes. People from different classes, from both sexes, and from more varied ages, began to meet each other more often and more regularly at higher levels of meeting than previously. In these meetings, they could express their feelings more freely (within the limits fixed by the balance of power). It became less dangerous for one’s position and prestige to do so, and it was reciprocally expected that the necessary self-control would be employed and there would be no misbehaviour. As the social tensions and ideological contrasts declined, the picture that meeting participants formed of each other became more ‘psychological’ and more ‘sociological’. In other words, more variegated and freer from brief emotions, and more tuned to the power and dependency relationships between people. After the establishment of the parliamentary norms and rules in the social habitus of people, and with the further reduction in the risks of being conquered and humiliated, a more differentiated regulation of behaviour and emotions became possible and necessary. In a recent meeting manual, Mastenbroek describes these changes in a sharp and short manner: “… more and more people are compelled to negotiate through the altered power and dependency relationships in the networks which they are part of. The most recent stage in this development is that we have been compelled towards a flexible and informal style of negotiating; a style which fits well into the relationship pattern of greater mutual dependency. Therefore, we were compelled into informal behaviour. Such an informal style provided advantages and quickly became prevalent over a more cautious and formal style. Differentiation and the blending of activities score over and above any awkward performances” (Mastenbroek 1992, p. 103).
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An upper class of professional chairmen The upper classes of the industrial countries in Europe and North America have not become more clearly distinguished in anything than they have in their meeting behaviour. The everyday work of politicians and civil servants is dominated almost entirely by discussing, deliberating, negotiating, and deciding in groups. If they do not actually participate in meetings, they are preparing the meetings or processing the results of them. Many, especially those at the top, have to live under extreme ‘meeting pressure’. When Eisenhower was president of the United States, it was only after he had had two heart attacks that he received permission from his advisors for one meal per week free from meetings. The remainder of his extremely long working days was practically entirely full with activities concerning meetings, conferences, and other group discussions. In European countries, holding meetings has received sharp stimulation with the formation of the European Community. At the tops of the national meeting pyramids new meeting fora have been erected, from the European Council and the Council of European Unity to the European Commission and the European Parliament and all the accompanying, continuous, official discussions. Politicians, ambassadors, diplomats, civil servants, and others directly involved with the European integration process, are under extremely high pressure as far as meetings are concerned. In the Council Buildings in Brussels everyday, 3000 to 4000 officials from national capitals attend meetings (Fiona Hayes-Renshaw and Helen Wallace 1997, p. 70). And that only concerns meetings of one European entity, the Council of Ministers. In all Western industrialized countries, company managers have begun to allocate more and more time to meetings. The higher the individual is in the hierarchy, the higher the number of meetings. Research from the start of the 1960s amongst chief executives in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands indicates that members of boards, chief executives, departmental heads of huge, large, and medium-sized concerns spend 30 to 50 per cent of their time in all sorts of meetings (Luijk 1963, pp. 7, 69). Several hundred directors from primarily private Dutch companies were asked how much time they generally spent on meetings during courses into meeting practices given by the author between 1995 and 1997. According to their own estimations, those managing companies of less than ten personnel spent at least 10 per cent of their time preparing, executing, and concluding meetings, whilst those managing organizations with more than 500 personnel spent up to 75 per cent (sometimes even more) of their working time on these activities. In his survey of research into what managers actually do, as well as in his own research into the work of five chief executive officers in large organizations, Mintzberg points out that, in the United States at the start of the 1970s,
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nearly 60 per cent of a manager’s time was spent in meetings. Schwartzman quoted the researchers McCall, Morrison, and Hannan, who concluded that “meetings consume more of a manager’s time than any other activity” (1989, p. 56). Above all, as research has learned, it seems that managers consistently underestimate the time they spend in meetings, whereas they consistently overestimate the time they spend reading and writing. This may be seen as an example of Elias’s observation that people of this highly individualized society are inclined to overestimate thinking above speaking (Elias 1991a, p. 65). Group activities are usually lower valued than individual ones. Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris, who wrote a comparative study about meetings in a large Italian-British telephone company, concluded that meetings were the essence of managerial practice and the corporate communication process. They wrote “a link could be established between the consistency in underestimating time spent on meetings and the implicit and explicit expressions of skepticism or boredom vis à vis this practice registered during our company visits. This consideration may become an important one when trying to understand the role played by meetings in situations of strategic and/or cultural change, where high levels of uncertainty are counterbalanced by an increase in the number of meetings at all company levels in order to maintain a semblance of status quo” (1997, p. 30). It is possible to go a step further in one’s explanation of the reason why meetings have become a grind and are often associated with boredom and dullness. In present organizations, meetings often seem to have similar functions as etiquette had in the French court society, as described by Elias (1969c). Courtiers gathered on set places and at set times to perform specific acts according to exact rules. They bitterly complained about these useless rituals, but went through them again and again. The court etiquette endured as a ‘ghostly perpetuum mobile’ because of the current power relationships between the most important social groupings. The slightest modification of a ritual might have been interpreted by a group or faction as an attempt to upset the shaky social power balance. In the same way contemporary ‘organization men’ seem to be socially fated to meet and to meet again with the same colleagues on set places and at set times to perform similar acts every time. In our society, power, status and property are largely being distributed in and through meetings to an unprecedented degree. Whoever is not a professional sportsperson, artist, film star, pop star, or entrepreneur on a boom market and yet is willing to advance societally, has hardly any option but to climb the meeting ladder in a (large) organization. Meeting tables have become the outstanding symbols of power in our industrialized world. In 1996, the photographer Jacqueline Hassink published The Table of Power, containing pictures of the board room tables of twenty-one of the largest European industrial companies (nineteen other companies refused to admit
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photographers to their board rooms for different reasons). Among them are Akzo Nobel NV, BASF AG, Daimler Benz AG, E. N. I. S.p.A., Philips Electronics NV, Renault SA, Siemens AG, Unilever NV, Volkswagen AG. The pictures are accompanied by detailed information about size, material, designer and price of the table, the room in which it is standing, the usual table arrangement (seats of the president and the other members of the board) and some economic key figures of the company. In an epilogue, Henri Peretz points out that, indeed, “all the table-tops shine impeccably. They are made of several kinds of wood. Warm colours predominate. The size of the table-tops is proportionate to the number of participants” (p. 18). The usually oval tables are original designs, save one. “The oval shape allows for a central point upon which all eyes can converge and which may be occupied by the president.” Just like their older brothers, the dining tables, meeting tables vary greatly according to social class, nationality and generation. “The globalization of companies, the development of a complex hierarchy at the top and the ever stronger presence of financial power, entails a group of decision-makers located at the heart of a permanent structure. They are therefore invited to sit periodically at the tables of power” (p. 14). Another remarkable observation is, that the board rooms are usually situated “on the top floor of a recent building and have large bay windows, as if to show its dominance of the city or the immediate surroundings.” Older pendants of the meeting tables of big companies are the tables of (national) governments. Most of these tables are situated in richly decorated rooms in old, respectable buildings. They are at least just as much, often even more original, impressive and solemn. In sum, the tables of the current meeting classes and the above mentioned book itself once more draw attention to how closely power and behaviour are related. The social development of power and interdependency relationships between people have compelled them to increasingly develop their meeting behaviour. Gradually and in the long run, chairing and attending meetings have become the pre-eminent route to power, income, and status. Meetings lend themselves very well to exploring, describing and explaining alterations in the (power) relationships between and within social groups. It is possible to form a sharper picture of the social stratification in our society by studying who how often hold meetings with each other, in what manner and about what items they are talking and deciding, how some meetings determine the agendas of other meetings, etcetera. Boden writes: “Meetings are the proper arena of organizational activity for management, locating and legitimating both individual and institutional roles. Indeed, the world of work may appropriately be divided into those organizational members who routinely attend meetings and those lower-echelon members whose duties tie them to the clerical desk or factory floor” (Boden 1994, p. 81). However, there are many corporations in which workers at the lowest organizational levels have to attend regular meetings to talk about their daily tasks
The development of meeting behaviour
and evaluate them. Such is, for instance, the case in many Japanese companies. In France, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Scandinavian, and many other European countries, work organizations are often legally obliged to establish elected workers councils with parliamentary-like functions. The time that a person spends meeting and preparing meetings is closely connected to the number of people that he or she has under his ‘span of control’. Thus, in an inquiry conducted in a middle-sized distribution company by the author, it appeared that the amount of working time spent on meetings rose from a few percent on the shop floor to a good fifty percent at the highest management level. This trend is noticeable in all of the industrialized state societies. Thus, it appears from a series of American research that “as one moves up the organizational hierarchy, the time spent in meetings increases” (Schwartzman 1989, p. 57). With reference to this, the comment was made that “this may be punishment for advancement in the system” (Idem). However, this fact should be taken more seriously. Meetings fulfill different functions at every hierarchical level for the participants. Thus, in 1959, Melville Dalton commented in his study, Men Who Manage, that in meetings one sees the interplay of formal and informal systems in organizations. “Right down the hierarchy one finds meetings a stage for exploratory skirmishes; for making authoritative hints to those moving too fast in one direction; for studies of faces and inflections; for catching slips and checking on pre-meeting tips, etc. The formal meeting is a gallery of fronts where aimless, deviant, and central currents of action merge for a moment, perfunctorily for some, emotionally for others. All depart with new knowledge to pursue variously altered, but rare the agreed courses” (Dalton 1957, p. 227).
Conferences of various kinds have become important meeting places in (work) organizations. In large organizations, personnel are also ‘assessed’ regarding their behaviour during meetings. Due to personal capacity in meetings, someone may be seen in a favourable light, and thus has more chance for promotion and rising within the hierarchy. In consideration of this, it is somewhat surprising that professionals, in depicting organizations, for the most usually disregard meetings. To obtain a practically more adequate representation of an ‘organization’, it is insufficient to only look at the (hierarchical) relationships between individuals. These are just some examples of relevant questions that come up when one puts meetings and meeting behaviour in the center of organization studies. Organization is normally treated as something concrete, as a thing, but in fact, it is a social activity and process. Who thinks of ‘organizing’ in stead of organization soon enough comes across meetings. Thus, studying meetings and meeting behaviour is a strategic means of approaching the dynamics of organization. Studying the complicated regimes of meetings in which, and by which, an organization is
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continually shaped would be more important. How have these networks been structured, layered, and subdivided? In which direction have they developed and how did the accompanying meeting manners and the meeting behaviour change at different levels? How did meeting activities change when an organization grew or shrank; if the external market became more dynamic and more complex, or even more stable and simple? Oddly enough, so far, little use has been made of the possibility to study and shed light on organizations by answering such questions. Also noteworthy are some older studies. One of them is Work and Authority in Industry by Reinhardt Bendix, which appeared for the first time in the 1950s. Bendix commented that with the spread of meeting activities in companies, an upper layer of ‘moderate businessmen’ had emerged; “even-tempered when others rage, brave when others fear, calm when others are excited, self-controlled when others indulge” (Bendix 1974, p.332). Also, others have pointed out that the management of large industrial concerns had moved from consisting of owners-cum-capitalists, usually the founders of the concern, to consisting of a new group of managers who had gained a position in the company more due to their abilities than to their possession of stocks (Heilbroner 1977, p.140). William M. Whyte (1957) has designated these changes as the arrival of the ‘organization men’. He wrote: “For a young man on the make there is no better vehicle than the conference way. Where fifty years before he might have to labor unseen by all but his immediate superior, now via the conference he can expose himself to all sorts of superiors across the line of command. Given minimum committeemanship skills, by an adroit question here and a modest suggestion there, he can call attention to himself and still play the game” (William H. Whyte 1957, p. 152).
Around the turn of the century, the sociologist, Thorstein Veblen had already advanced the idea of ‘organization men’ in his proposal that a leisured class would form, an idle class of company owners, which would leave the practical operation of the firm to a ‘soviet of engineers’. In a study of 1941, James Burnham predicted both a managerial revolution in which company directors would take over the authoritative power concerning the means of production and the division of wealth from the owners-cum-capitalists, and that politicians would lose more and more power to official bureaus and their directors. Fifty years on, it can be stated that no ‘revolution of directors’ has taken place, but that a professional meeting regime had established itself in states and companies. As the number of meetings and meeting levels within and between states spread enormously, a new upper layer formed,
The development of meeting behaviour
consisting of managers who delegated, co-ordinated, and controlled functions by means of meetings in which they were more often primi inter pares than they were ‘commanders’ or directors. In his explanation of the changes which occurred in the attitudes, the performance, and the ideas of managers of American companies, since the 1930s, Bendix focused attention upon a notable correspondence with the process of courtisation of warriors which was outlined by Elias: “I suggest that the changeover from the idealization of the ‘strenuous life’ to the idealization of ‘human relations’ may be an adaptation of a similar kind. The manners commended by the personnel experts of modern American industry certainly facilitate the co-operation which management requires, much as the commendation of polite manners facilitated peace at the Royal Court. (…) The calm eyes which never stray from the other’s gaze, the easy control in which laughter is natural but never forced, the attentive and receptive manner, the wellrounded, good-fellowship, the ability to elicit participation and to accomplish change without upsetting relationships, may be so many devices for personal advancement when the man is on his way up” (Bendix 1974, p. 335).
The ability and the attitude, which, according to Bendix, are characteristic of ‘moderate businessmen’ or managers, developed during the mainly unplanned spreading of meeting activities and negotiations in, and between, complex company organizations, by which people from the lower levels of the population and women could take part in meetings. In a summary of a historical, psychological study entitled Anger, Peter Stearns and Carol Zisowitz-Stearns commented, “from the late 1920s into the 1950s, American corporations devoted attention and expense to retraining sessions for foremen, in order to replace bullying style, and to personality tests in order to winnow out ill-tempered candidates in the first place. (…) Secretaries, male and female, were now probed not just for honesty and reliability — the late nineteenth century clerical virtues — but also for temper control” (1993, p. 59). Such behaviour demands can be found over and over again in meeting manuals; the following examples are illustrations of this: “Your physical listening manner should be animated and expressive. Listeners as well as speakers can be animated. Animation should show in your face, in your eyes, and in your physical bearing. (…) Sloughing in a chair, leaning on elbows, supporting chin on hand, or playing with a pencil are not the habits of a good listener” (Zelko 1969 (1957), pp. 137–138). “You must know your physical state as well as possible; that you know when you are having one of your ‘good’ days or one of your ‘bad’ days. Your conference partners will be no different. When you know that they are having one of their strong or weak moments, you can adjust your conference tactics accordingly” (Rüdenauer 1982, p. 46).
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The societal significance of the forms of conduct which were developed in company meetings and other work organizations has increased even more with the extension of the international market, the growth of world trade and capital exchanges, and the expansion of companies. Nico Wilterdink has pointed out that since the 1970s “directors of large enterprises and owners or managers of large amounts of capital were more detached from their nation and, due to this, were less dependent on the employees and the government of a particular national society” (1993, p. 27). With the “strengthening of interdependencies in international relations and the weakening of national interdependencies” employees and national governments have become more dependent upon large enterprises and executives and not vice versa (Idem, p. 28). This increase in power, which was demonstrated by an enormous rise in the incomes of directors and owners of large companies, is in direct contrast to the simultaneous struggle towards less hierarchical organizations in which more and more duties are delegated to relatively small business units that work as independently as possible and which are, furthermore, simultaneous meeting units. It is to be expected that, with production processes becoming more complicated and more vulnerable in social as well as material respect, this latter trend will continue and, with progressive integration at continental and worldly levels, will be a hindrance to further increases in income differences (Idem, p. 35).
Negotiating transnational meeting regimes In the last decades, the attention paid to ‘negotiating’ had increased in the meeting manual genre. Negotiating is written about as the way in which interest groups or parties try to find solutions, which are more or less acceptable to all parties. Negotiating is a way to come to decisions in meetings where the application of the majority rule is neither possible nor desirable, for example, because there are two people or parties, or because the participants differ enormously with respect to their chances for power or their possibilities to exercise pressure over each other. Negotiating demands more from the personal ideas and knowledge of the participants than those ways of meeting where a regulation is valid, a chairman acts as ‘guardian of the social constraint to self-constraint’, and a majority can finally make the decision. Often, negotiations are seen as a form of conduct which takes a middle course between ‘fighting’ and ‘co-operating’. It is considered as a type of meeting in which the character of the reciprocal dependency between the parties participating in the conflict means that neither of them can realize their wishes or aims without the agreement or the co-operation of the other; with the impracticability of the majority rule, both parties do not exclude the application of more than verbal means of battle.
The development of meeting behaviour
The recent extension in negotiating in public and private life was able to take place under the condition of a relatively high level of violence control within and between national states and a, resulting, corresponding level of mutually expected self-control. The common regulation of societal changes has developed in the direction towards an increasingly wider continuum of variations of meetings, of which negotiating is one end. The further development of this variant seems to be dependent upon a continuing pacification in the struggle for power, prestige, and wealth and the development of meeting regimes and meeting behaviour at continental and global levels. On the political front, national meetings in which elected representatives take decisions by majority vote have lost significance with respect to more-embracing meetings such as those of the European Council of Ministers and the Security Council of the United Nations. The growing significance of continental and global, negotiation-like meetings is closely related to the strongly increased social interdependencies in military, economic, and ecological areas. The globalization of the economy and the risk of large-scale wars and ecological disasters force individual states to discuss closer co-operation and implementation of policy. The new tensions and problems which arise in this process tend to result in generally elected and more adequately functioning assemblies at the higher levels of integration. The process of economic and political integration is strongly promoted by the rise of private and public organizations. Everyday, we hear of mergers and takeovers of companies in the world of insurance and banking, car industry, press and publishing trade, accountancy and consultancy and almost any other line of business or branche of trade and services. The emergence of bigger companies requires new facilities and organization structures, involving a strong increase of conferences, conventions and congresses to talk and decide about the common future. The coming together of people from societies with various traditions has made them more conscious of their mutual identities, similarities and differences in thinking and acting. During meetings one is forced to take each other into consideration to a greater extend, to assimilate with each other and to soften and narrow (national) differences in standards of behaviour. Traditional differences and sharp contrasts are being transformed into cultural variations and local colour. Conferences, congresses and assemblies of companies and clubs pre-eminently offer opportunities for people of different countries to get to know each other. Etiquettes and manners in meetings are stricter and more compelling than those on tourist spots. Meetings require more self-discipline. Words and gestures require more precise attention, while the need rof mutual understanding and consideration is larger. That is exactly why meetings strongly promote the development of common etiquettes and languages. They are the trailblazers of contemporary, continental and global, integration processes.
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Conclusions Ability in applying company-like or business-like meeting manners has become much more significant for having a chance at societal success in terms of income, power, and prestige. Both the development of meeting regimes of work organizations, and the increased chance at societal advancement via meeting activities, are the circumstances for the continuous growth in the supply of company-directed meeting manuals and the increasing public interest in such books since the 1950s and 1960s. The development of the meeting behaviour of executives and company directors can be considered as a phase in the formation of a new upper class who were compelled to consider more aspects of more people in order to maintain their position of power. Viewed from this perspective, the second-generation meeting manuals were the vehicles which passed on the central forms of conduct and manners of the new upper class in particular. It is to be expected that, in the long run, social differentiation and integration will continue and increasingly larger groups of people will become more interdependent. However, this is not a linear process. The development of more-embracing meeting regimes and more civilized meeting behaviour is characterised by accelerations, stagnations and reversals. The degree to which these processes will be accompanied by the use of — new forms of — organized violence, is conditional upon the development of meeting behaviour. And the other way around: one of the most important conditions for a better control of organized violence and the increase in safety, welfare, and quality of life is the further civilization of men’s meeting manners; manners that make it possible to focus more adequately on increasingly more complicated and more embracing human figurations and prevent needless sorrow and suffering. Nowadays, in many meetings, great value is attached to economic regularities. There is a strong tendency to speak in metaphors borrowed from business and the economic sciences. Using economic concept in the language of meetings can be considered as attempts to make the relatively complicated chains of actions, by which people have become tied to each other over great distances, clearer and more manageable. To be able to administer and control complex societal developments, it is just as necessary to take into account more aspects of society in our meetings than only the economic aspect. More research into the way and the direction in which long-term, human processes, such as the ‘meetingization’ of societies, have occurred and still occur, can extend our understanding of the unplanned dynamics of society and contribute to a further development of meeting behaviour and language, and thus to a more civilized society.
Chapter 2
Blame and praise gossip in organizations Established, outsiders and the civilising process Joseph Soeters and Ad van Iterson
Introduction In 1965 Norbert Elias and John Scotson published The Established and the Outsiders, a monograph on power, status relations and emotional tensions in an English working-class community. Elias and Scotson analyse the mechanisms of exclusion and defence of both the incumbent group of the oldest part of the neighbourhood and the newcomers in a newer, adjacent district. The two groups illustrate the universal relation between established and outsiders — a major theme in sociology (e.g. Merton, 1964). Interestingly, one chapter of the monograph is entirely dedicated to gossiping in both groups — a little developed theme in sociology. Elias and Scotson distinguish two types of gossip discourse: praise and blame gossip. Praise gossip is positive gossip; it is intended to strengthen the internal ties within the own group. Blame gossip is negative; it is directed to other groups, i.e. groups of outsiders, or to deviant members of the own group. Through blame gossip, examples of “bad behavior” by a minority of the outsiders’ group are portrayed as typical of the whole group. Consequently, this group is considered to be inferior. Negative and positive gossip appear to be vital instruments in the struggle for survival, cohesion and status. This apparently simple scheme of positive and negative gossip may be of interest to the study of organizations. In this chapter, therefore, we aim to explore the dynamics of such praise and blame gossip in (post)modern organisations. Not only will we analyze gossip in organizations in a conceptual way, using the Elias and Scotson contribution, but also in a metaempirical fashion, on the basis of a literature scan of organizational (case-) studies in which gossip in its various forms comes to the fore. In the second part of the chapter we will try to link Elias’s work on gossip in the established-outsiders figurations with his civiling process theory.
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Gossip as a sociological phenomenon Definitions of gossip According to Webster’s New Dictionary and Thesaurus, the word gossip denotes: “one who chatters idly about others; such talk”. Cambridge International Dictionaries give the following meanings: gossip (noun): “(an) informal talk, or (a) talk about other people’s private lives which is usually unkind, disapproving or not true. A gossip is also someone who enjoys talking about other people’s private lives“. Whereas the German and Dutch synonyms for the noun gossip (“roddelen” respectively “lästern”) refer to depreciatory talk, the English word does not necessarily have this pejorative connotation, although it usually does. So, while it is difficult for a German or Dutchman to conceive of neutral gossip, in the form of small talk and idle talk, let alone of positive gossip, for an Anglo-Saxon this will be much more natural. Gossip and rumour are related but not identical. Rumour is general talk which is not based on definite knowledge; gossip is specific: aimed at a particular person or group of people, and it can be based on definite knowledge, but that is not really relevant (Fine, 1985). In a somewhat similar vein Fuchs (1995) makes a distinction between informational and moralistic gossip. Informational gossip relates to the diffusion of fast-breaking news, whereas moralistic gossip is secretive talk about absent people. Zijderveld (1979), who also distinguished a positive and negative form of gossip (the former referring to idle and small talk, the latter to speaking evil), identified five characteristics which apply both to positive and negative gossip: 1. The information gossiped is not part of the framework of formal organisation and communication. 2. The information is “off the record”: never put down in writing. 3. The source of the gossip cannot be hold accountable for the information spread. 4. The information is aimed at the person “behind” the role: the private person rather than e.g. the functionary. 5. The gossiped person cannot defend him/herself against the information spread. (S)he is absent when it happens and does not hear about it or only in a roundabout way. To Zijderveld, gossip serves as a mechanism of social control. As such it contributes to the social and cultural integration of the group to which the gossip belongs. Anthropologist Gluckman (1963) is of the same opinion as Zijderveld: gossiping can help groups to hold out. For Gluckman, gossip has three functions: (i) to create a group moral, through which group norms and values can be established and reenforced, and (ii) to exert social control over newcomers and dissidents, and (iii)
Blame and praise gossip in organizations
to regulate (threatening) conflicts with rival groups (see also: Bergmann, 1993, p. 144–146). This third function brings us to the Eliasian theme of gossip in established-outsiders relations.
Gossip in established-outsiders relations In a 1935 paper on the expulsion of the Huguenots from France, Elias (1998) first attended to the theme of established versus outsider groups. Only in the 1960s his ideas received sharper contours when he reworked John L. Scotson’s MA thesis, The Established and the Outsiders. Scotson had studied a Leicester urban settlement of some 5,000 inhabitants, comprising three discrete neighbourhoods, called Zone 1, 2 and 3. Zone 1 was typically middle-class (business men; professionals). The entire Winston Parva — as the community was referred to — considered Zone 1 to be the best area. Although both Zone 2 and 3 were working-class areas, in terms of occupational statistics, the inhabitants of both areas saw themselves as very much distinct from the other. Zone 2 was the “old village”, comprising almost all social activities and associations (e.g. churches, cinemas and a working men’s club), and the “villagers” considered their area as respectable. Zone 3, which was much less well-organised, was considered inferior by both the Zone 1 and 2 inhabitants. According to the “villagers”, the people of Zone 3 were unable to control their children, to keep their houses clean. Also they quarrelled and fought. In short, the inhabitants of “rat alley” were “rough”. Actually, this was only true of a small minority of the Zone 3 families. The people of Zone 3–largely of incomers from out of town (mainly London) — “seemed to accept, with a kind of puzzled resignation, that they belonged to a group of less virtue and respectability,” as Elias put it in his introduction to the Dutch translation of The Established and The Outsiders, (Elias and Scotson, 1994, p.8). Their reaction to the harsh attitude of the “villagers” was one of shame and resentment. Many of them considered moving out of the area. In an attempt to explain these feelings of superiority on the one hand and inferiority and humiliation on the other (cf. Smith, 2001b, and in this volume), Elias pointed at the fact that the “old village” was indeed old — at least older than the two other areas. As if they belonged to some kind of aristocratic class, a number of “villagers” took pride in being member of an “old family”. Strikingly, these “old families”, who had formed an “old families’ network”, strongly mother-centered and providing reciprocal aid, were also a minority in their own area. However, they were seen as protectors of the virtue and respectability of the entire village. The strong cohesiveness of Zone 2, gave the established “villagers” a powerful means of exclusion of the outsiders from Zone 3. To give one example: the latter
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group was barred from office, sometimes even from membership, in the local associations. Gossip played a vital role in these exclusion politics. “Gossip is highly selective and distorting,” argues Mennell (1992, p. 119). “Through it, people compete in demonstrating their fervent adherence to their own group norms by expressing their shock and horror at the behaviour of those who do not conform.” The blame gossip about Zone 3 residents corresponded to the “minority of the worst” (1965, p. 81). The “villagers” of Zone 2 tended to be equally selective in gossiping about their own area. The preferred image of their own Zone was based on “the minority of the best”. In line with Gluckman’s conclusion (see above, 1963), this idealization of the “best” appeared to be also a powerful instrument of social control. The gossip restrained possible violations of the own norms of respectability. Thus, blame gossip not only occurs when one group speaks in a pejorative way about another group — such as the inhabitants of Zone 2 about those of Zone 3–but also refers to negative talk about dissenters and drop-outs of the own group. In that respect, blame gossip is a strong instrument to correct and reintegrate these dissenters and drop-outs. Here too, power plays a vital role in the “success rate” of gossiping. Once again, in their analysis of the double function of gossip for groups, Elias and Scotson call extra attention for the role of minorities in these processes of idealization and denigration. Mennell: “A working-class minority in the middle-class zone 1 had no significance at all for the social standing of that Zone, while the middle-class minority in Zone 2 tended only to reinforce the superiority its people felt over the recent immigrants. A small minority of notorious families in Zone 3, however, tended to cast a shadow over that whole neighbourhood and to perpetuate its low standing in the eyes of the other residents of Winston Parva.” (1992, p.119)
In praise gossip — which, again, also involves the more neutral small talk — people accentuate the admirable characteristics of the own group — in this case the established. Praising one’s own group implicitly emphasizes its superiority vis-à-vis other groups. Therefore praise gossip is simultaneously an unfavourable stereotyping of the outsiders. Here we see a clear relationship with the twin phenomenon of auto-stereotyping and hetero-stereotyping (e.g. Marin and Salazar, 1985; Soeters and Van Twuyver, 1995) and with Merton’s “in-group virtues” which equal “outgroup vices” (Merton, 1964). As praise gossip is more widespread when group cohesion is strong, in return it emphasizes and strengthens the existing cohesion within the group. Strong cohesion occurs especially when group members join a long common history, have a lot of characteristics in common, have a well-developed communication pattern or are strongly organized. Not surprisingly, gossip is much more widespread
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amongst the established than amongst the outsiders. After all, Elias has remarked that gossip is not so much interest in other people than shared interest with “own” people. Blame gossip is especially used as a combat instrument when the in-group is — or feels — threatened by external groups or developments. In that case, rigid beliefs develop that comprise an unambivalent rejection of other groups. In the most extreme instance of — perceived — external threat blame gossip evolves into a doctrine that has to rescue the very group notion or the feeling that one belongs to a chosen group (Elias and Scotson, 1965; Soeters and Van Twuyver, 1995). The outsiders of Zone 3 could not retaliate because they missed the power to do so. They were excluded from key positions in the community. Also, they lacked the advantages of a network: they could not organize mutual assistance at such a level as in Zone 2 nor could they gossip as effectively as the inhabitants of Zone 2. Therefore, they couldn’t retaliate a flood of gossip coming from Zone 2. They simply lacked the institutionalized channels. Gossip travelled slowly in Zone 3. And it was also mixed with uncomfortable feelings since much of the gossip concerned the own district. Here again, one recognizes the feelings of shame and inferiority. Elias and Scotson: “…to some extent, their own conscience was on the side of the detractors. They themselves agreed with the ‘village’ people that it was bad not to be able to control one’s children or to get drunk and noisy and violent.” (1965, p.101). Even though this blaming didn’t apply to them personally, they felt ashamed because they lived in the same neighbourhood as the ones who did behave in that manner. “Affective thinking” in practice, with the result that an unfavourable collective “we-image” was incorporated into the individual self-image of Zone 3 inhabitants. Elias speaks of a “group disgrace”, which cannot be separated from the group charisma the more powerful group was able to create of itself and for itself. Mind yet again that it only takes a minority — in case the old families’ network of the old village — to impose such images on both the established and the outsiders. Elias and Scotson: “[..] the beliefs, the standards, the ranking of others current in this closely-knit elite group carried great weight with others largely because… their members held all the key positions in the community” (1965, p.41). In short: stigmatization of the outsiders is not effective without the established being capable of monopolizing at least some power resources, at least for some time. Power imbalances are a prerequisite, but at the same time it means that both groups have become more interdependent, and that the likelihood of changing power balances increases. Often this process goes in the direction of a more even power ratio — as the civilising process theory clearly elucidates.
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Gossip in organizations What is valid for general sociological textbooks, is even more true for organizational textbooks: the notion of gossip is far from familiar. This should not come as a surprise since in organization theory the study of gossip and other “non-rational”, or “non-functional” phenomena is highly neglected. But there is at least some research undertaken to illustrate the relevance of this social activity. We will refer to these studies while discussing gossip in different organizational relations. Below we will argue that one can observe praise gossip, as analyzed by Elias and Scotson, above all in organizations with a pluralistic culture. Praise gossip can be found among employees of the same department, the same age group, the same gender and the same ethnical background. This type of talk, first of all, serves to strengthen the relations within the own group. Praise gossip may be mildly negative against others and is closely connected to so-called ‘joking relations’ This is a phenomenon known from the anthropological study of customs related to dealing with families-in-law (Radcliff-Brown, 1952). This joking is always somewhat ambiguous: it implies affection intermingled with mild criticism towards people whom one simply cannot avoid. Praise gossip has a similar hybrid or ambiguous character. It occurs in a open, friendly atmosphere to improve mutual relations, but at the same time this type of gossip may imply criticizing others, hence developing into a mild kind of blame gossip. If, however, the organizational culture is segmented and tolerant of mutual hostilities, blame gossip can become predominant. As Wittek and Wielers (1998) have found out in an empirical study, gossip flourishes in socially segmented environments. Campaigns of blame gossip evolve in times of strategic change, succession of leadership and in general during struggles of power in the organization (see: Zald and Berger, 1978). Blame gossip can be seen as an “indirect attack” (Herskovits, 1937), but it is meant to avoid an open conflict. Blame gossip as a manifestation of micro-politics between groups can go in all directions: horizontally between members of competing departments, but also in a vertical direction: from the bottom to the top, and from management to the bottom. Finally, the gossip can “stay” within departments: to control possible deviant employees. We believe that when one applies the notion of organizations as consisting of groups or parties-in-a-system (e.g. Mastenbroek, 1991a), the study of gossip as an instrument in established-outsiders relations is particularly fruitful. Organizations have outside and inside boundaries. Outside boundaries define who is and is not a member of the organization (see Hernes, this volume). Inside boundaries define the demarcation lines within the organization. They differentiate between various groups and parties. These inside boundaries can be formal, such as between different units and different hierarchical levels, but also informal — e.g.
Blame and praise gossip in organizations
between groups based on equivalence in sex, age, ethnicity and company tenure (e.g. Pfeffer, 1985). Both formal and informal boundaries can contribute to group formation and thus subcultures in organizations (Sackmann, 1992). When such inside boundaries are absent as an outcome of a strong homogeneous corporate culture, gossip will be exclusively aimed at the outside world, in the form of a doctrine. This will predominantly occur in times of crisis, when all members of the organization face a common enemy, such as a (foreign) competitor or the government. In such circumstances, a certain collective ‘fever’ affects everyone in the organization, a process which is similar to the way social movements come about (Soeters, 1986). As known, in social movements people seem to talk about one thing only: the hostile outside world. When on the contrary inside boundaries are rigid and the communication between various internal groups and parties is hostile or non-existent, there will be a lot of aggressively formulated blame gossip about the other groups within the organization in order to gain power within the organizational arena. If there exists a differentiated company culture with a “normal” communication pattern between the various groups and parties, blame gossip will be much more mild, whereas praise gossip about the own group will be more predominant than in the two extremes of total homogeneity and segmentation (see Table 1). Table 1.Gossip and company culture Company culture Direction of gossip Praise/blame gossip
Homogeneous Outward Blame
Differentiated Inward Blame and praise
Segmented Inward Blame
In the remainder of this chapter we will focus on internally oriented gossip. Subsequently we will discuss gossip as a binding factor in favour of the own group and gossip as a combat instrument to gain power in the organizational arena. Although we intentionally distinguish both sides of organizational gossip, we do not want to reify these types. We are fully aware that in reality gossip is much more hybrid than theoretical distinctions can account for. In addition we realize that realities are fluid, implying that gossip can easily transform from one type into another.
Gossip as binding factor Internal praise gossip along formal organizational lines has, as far as we know, not been researched significantly. Unquestionably, unit-bound or function-bound
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praise gossip does exists and undoubtedly it has major consequences for the development of well-being among personnel within organizational units (e.g., Hofstede, 1994a). But this type of gossiping has been much less researched than gossip as related to demographic characteristics. The emphasis on demographic differences rather than on structural-organizational ones is understandable, as Pfeffer has noticed: “demographic features such as age, race and sex both help to determine similarity and also signal that those who share these features are more likely to be similar. People who share experiences and attitudes are more likely to like each other because they will understand each other better, and because liking someone who is similar is selfreinforcing as it ratifies one’s own qualities” (1985, p.69). It is above all among peers and sexes that “binding” work floor gossip abounds.
Gossip among peers In the 1950s, the British sociologist Tom Burns (1955) stumbled upon age bound, small subcultural groups while doing in-company research. Burns distinguished two types of groups. Both groups involved management level “cliques”. One group consisted of older managers who had reached the ceiling of their careers, and hadn’t succeeded in reaching the “absolute top”. Gossip was a defence mechanism for those who realized that they had not fully achieved in their work what they had thought to achieve. That disillusionment was, next to their age, their common experience. These managers — who worked in different departments — regularly met to “console” each other, as it were, to give each other the feeling that they had not failed. One of the mechanisms was to relativize their professional role and career in general as less important. In an atmosphere of intimacy, they ironically and sarcastically ran down their organisation and especially those organizational members who had made it, or still had the ambition to make it. Such ironical critique is a sophisticated mode of gossiping, “which is passing judgements — disapproving, depreciating, or condemning — on the behaviour of others. It is an indispensable instrument for fixing one’s own occupational prestige, or finding an acceptable style. […] In cliques, gossip criticism is normally couched in ironic terms, so that a joke is shared among the clique members at the expense of the outsider’ (Burns, 1955, p. 477; see also Burns 1953). In this description one easily recognizes the hybrid character of binding praise gossip and the mild mode of blame gossip. Next to cliques of consolation seeking older managers, Burns also discovered cliques of younger managers who were absolutely convinced that they would succeed in the organization. Their gossip was aimed at success stories of the organization’s top management, at the operative norms of success and at the achievements of the clique members. In doing so, the ambitions and superiority of the own group were emphasized and the position of the various group members in
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the status hierarchy determined. In this example the binding praise gossip can be recognized in a pure form.
Gossip amongst women Meyer Spacks (1983) and Tannen (1990) have called attention for the binding impact of small talk gossip and praise gossip for women. According to Meyer Spacks, “Gossip is healing talk” (1983, p. 164), “Gossip learns women to understand their own lives more fully” (1983, p. 161), “It involves the information of alliance; it marks and encourages friendship, comradeship and connection” (1983, p. 163) and “Gossip gives pleasure, it is sheer fun” (1983, p. 164). Tannen arrives at similar conclusions about the role of gossiping for particularly women. According to her, gossip creates shared values in female subcultures. “It serves a big purpose” (1990, p. 102) since social-emotionally gossip supports those who are deprived of power and status — and in organisations, too, the deprived are often women. Despite these jubilant phrases, Meyer Sparks also shows to be sensitive to feelings of shame and guilt which can take hold of those who gossip. Moss Kanter’s classical study “Men and women of the corporation” (1977) also exposes the informal character of (female) gossiping. Cross-functional and crossdepartmental gossiping occurs in this study mainly through an informal network of (female) secretaries, who communicated in this way to support each other in coping with common experiences. This network was so strong that the management frequently used it to get things done. Otherwise closed channels could be opened with the help of the secretaries’ informal communication patterns. Such spontaneous processes can be influenced by management. In many organizations it is common practice to organize ‘social events’ in a variety of forms. Those events aim at creating an atmosphere in which experiences and opinions can be exchanged; sometimes these gatherings are indicated as ‘reconnecting meetings’ or even ‘gossip sessions’. In these sessions “the tactics of collective organization decrease self-regarding actions on part of teammates, since the interest of each become linked to those of others” (Van Maanen and Kunda, 1989, p.87; See also March and Sevon, 1988). A similar approach of ‘group formation’ is advocated by Helgesen (1990) as being a specific feature of female leadership. She claims that chatting, small talk and internal social networking (and taking time for these humble purposes) really contribute to the development of well-being among the employees, and — even more than that — to the performance of the organization in general. This plea for praise gossip as an instrument of female managers surely underlines the importance particularly women attach to this type of informal organizing.
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Gossip as a power instrument In Eliasian thinking discourse is always closely related to power. Evidently, work floor gossip is often used as an instrument to gain power in the organizational arena. Although work floor gossiping is most frequently conceived as an act of spontaneous, intuitive behavior, in many cases it is a deliberate tactic used by groups to achieve specific goals, and it includes tactics from management to the bottom, from the bottom to the top, or tactics in a horizontal direction, between members of competing departments (Lammers, 1993). Gossip as a power instrument is probably even more important than praise gossip, since its impact may be devastating to the organization or its individual members. Like in everyday life, destroying social relations is easier than (re-)building them (Burt and Knez, 1996).
Gossiping from the top to the bottom One of first authors in organization studies to explore organizational gossip has been Henry Mintzberg (1989). He focused on gossip in its informational form (cf. Fuchs, 1995). In his analysis of the day-to-day work of managers, which is marked by a — at that time perhaps unanticipated — prevalence of intuitive decisions on the basis of “soft” information, informational gossip plays a vital role. After all, gossip — information about others within and outside the organisation — is soft information. Since the formal information systems in bureaucratic organizations usually operate too slow, managers rely on informal networks of informants. These informants provide primarily “neutral bits of news”, such as that one has seen a competitor’s manager at a reception talking to etc. However, these informants can also supply negative news about the functioning of others — information that the manager can use and manipulate (cf. Davis 1973). In the extreme case of eliciting gossip, one could speak of “management by gossip”. Blame gossip by managers themselves aimed at their employees increases in times of organisational conflict. In that instance, managers develop a “front mentality” in which the employees are considered as the enemy. Sometimes this gossip is an expression of a kind of “downward jealousy” (de Swaan, 1989; Bergmann, 1993, p. 145). This type of blame gossip is specifically directed towards people who are suddenly rising in power due to outstanding performance or for political reasons (connected with, for instance, problematic labour relations or “positive action” in favour of minority groups). Typically, this gossiping originates from the perceived “misbehavior” of a minority of people within the organization only, much in the same way as Elias and Scotson described the blame gossip patterns occurring at the community level. This type of downward blame gossiping stays “in the family”, obviously.
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Gossiping from the bottom to the top In Domination and the arts of resistance, the anthropologist Scott (1990) describes the tactics that subordinated and poor people in both the West and in developing countries utilize to survive. Although Scott does not directly address organizational issues, his findings seem to be relevant to this domain as well. For those who stay at the bottom of the social ladder, Scott claims, gossip is the tactic to damage the reputation of superiors — clearly, a form of violent blame gossip. Gossip is an obvious instrument since the possibility to gossip is much more democratically distributed than power, income, property or the freedom of public speech. Gossip is the more attractive because the dispatcher can stay anonymous. It is a “verbal Molotow cocktail”, so to speak. Although gossip is an easy accessible means and an anonymous one to boot, it is not without danger. Gossipers always run the risk of being traced, with more severe consequences for those at the bottom than those at the top. Interestingly, when the blame gossip is directed at those who are only one step higher at the hierarchical ladder, the gossiper runs a higher risk of being detected than we (s)he gossips about the top management. Employees who come together and giggle and laugh about the lowest managerial functionary in charge are much more visible. At the same time, openly gossiping grants the gossipers more prestige. This ‘reward’ can be taken advantage of when the risks of gossiping are low (see also Collinson, 1988; Noon and Delbridge 1993). Horizontal gossip Especially in professional organizations, such as law and accounting firms, peers are highly important in protecting common interests against individual ‘problem makers’ (Lazega, 2000). When individuals infract everyday working life (as a result of alcoholism, private problems, free loading), usually a process starts in which the members of the group want to control the ‘deviant’ behavior. However, they want to do so without getting into open face-to-face conflicts and without the use of overt, direct and coercive excercise of power. Therefore, graduated sanctions start with unobtrusive and unsolicited advise and the spread of gossip. Usually, the spread of gossip is the start of the control process (Lazega, 2000, p. 194). By means of gossip, peers in post-bureacratic organizations strive for ‘mutual adjustment’, and in many cases this simple, elementary form of social control will suffice to solve the “problem” (cf. Wittek, 1999). In many organisations, micro-politics of groups (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999) flourish along interdepartmental lines. Such interdepartemental frictions are often coped with through blame gossiping. These frictions may relate to rivaling about scarce resources such as budgets and people, or they may be related to discussions about production norms, performance evaluations or the general
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strategy of the organization. When a company introduces a tough competitive culture, horizontal blame gossip will increase dramatically, as Metze (1991) has shown in his study on the Dutch electronics company Philips. The same may apply to horizontal tensions along racial, gender and other demographic lines within organisations. Especially the established ‘white males’ may react on non-male and non-white newcomers in the organization by means of humiliating humor and blame gossip (e.g., Burma, 1945; Soeters, 1993).
Organisational gossip and the civilising process theory Various figurations of established and outsiders in organisations — horizontally and vertically — entice various types of blame and praise gossip. The easy access and the anonymous character of gossiping is crucial in understanding the attractiveness of this social activity. However, under-emphasised, so far, are the social codes which constitute the incidence and character of gossiping. To summarize it in a simple what-where-when-question: When and where can I say what and in which manner to whom about who? Elias’s civilising process theory (Elias, 1994a) — central to this volume — can be helpful in describing and analysing shifting patterns of social codes regarding gossip behaviour in organizations. This section, therefore, will address the possible relevance of this theory to understanding gossip in organizations. Elias’s civilising process theory implies that the self-constraint, essential in ‘peaceful’ social interaction at the (late medieval, French) courts, was central to the development of emotional control, conscience formation and personality structure of modern Western humans. This increasing self-constraint is the one overarching trend in the civilising process in Western societies, according to Elias. In the 1970s, a second trend gained increasing attention in Eliasian thinking: informalisation. Some consider this trend to be inconsistent with increasing self-constraint; others — above all Cas Wouters — see it as a further refinement. We will discuss both trends subsequently.
Increasing self-constraint Elias observed an increasing control and curbing of emotions in Western Europe which was closely linked to the trend of centralisation of authority, through court and state formation. Despite sizeable geographical differences and countermovements (decivilising processes), the overall trend has been towards more restraint. Elias: ‘Forced to live together in a new way, people become more sensitive to what inspires others. Although not in leaps, the behavioural code gradually becomes more strict, the mutual urge of people to take each other into account grows.
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In comparison with the preceding stage a more differentiated sense of what one should do or avoid so as not to hurt or irritate others develops, and, linked with the new balance of power, the nature of the social commandment not to give offence becomes more stringent.’ (1994a, p. 114). Whereas behavioural and emotional restraints initially arose from marked power imbalances (i.e. in relation to the power of an absolute monarch), later on restraints were compelled by the more impersonal, less visible compulsions of a closer social interdependence. As a result, ‘correct’ behaviour is increasingly produced by the individual person, on his or her own accord. Elias labels this shift as: from Fremdzwänge (external constraints) to Selbstzwänge (self-restraints). The increasing constraints have brought about fundamental changes in the psychological constitution of people. Where external constraints were still dominant, one could witness an advance of the threshold of shame and repugnance, as Elias calls it. When the self-control became more prominent, feelings of shame gave way to a more advanced and internalised stage of self-consciousness: a quasi-automatic selfrestraint, regardless of whether one was observed or not. From the eightteenth-century British factory system onwards, productive organisations also are characterised by monopolisation of authority and increasing interdependencies. In factories and offices, too, people have to live together in peace, order and mutual support (Kieser, 1998; Newton, 2000). Inspired by Elias’ perspective, one could study organisations as a nexus of civilising processes (rather than restricting analysis to only institutional, cultural and economic perspectives), which include both changing standards of work behaviour and moulding individual participants towards greater self-constraint. In the early decades of industrialisation, the problems of increasing interdependencies were mainly solved by coercing the workers in line through rules and sanctions and occasionally by efforts to raise their self-control and motivation — a pattern that mirrors the Eliasian mix of external constraints and self-restraints. In the twentieth century, managers have changed their control strategies by employing sophisticated organizational development techniques. Here, one recognises again the mix of external constraints (e.g. Business Process Re-engineering) and self-restraints (e.g. empowerment), but the balance shifts towards self-restraint. Along with diminishing power inequalities, overt display of authority gives way to a more negotiated order implying a greater role for give-and-take in a ‘civilised’ way. This calls for increasing self-restraint from both supervisors and subordinates. Note — as we saw earlier — that partners in law and accounting firms try to ‘correct’ perceived misbehavior of colleagues, not through the use of overt and direct power, but by means of subtle, informal tactics in which gossip plays an important role (Lazega, 2000). Next to decentralisation of organisational power, the growing work complexity as well as the dissipating organisational boundaries also necessitate more self-restraint.
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Both trends imply more team work and more intra- and interorganisational linkages. So, organizations represent ever more complex webs of interdependency, which entails that people have to take each other more into consideration. Following Elias, such complex and lengthy interdependency chains are likely to imply increasing shifts toward self-restraint.
Informalisation Along the above line of reasoning, Elias and others have developed the argument that self-restraint has become both more subtle and more skilled. This refinement implies less rigidity, more pleasing expression of communication, in sum, more relaxed or “natural” behaviour. Cas Wouters (1977, 1986, 1990b) contends that informalisation — as he has dubbed the trend — is a recent development in the civilising process, that started at the end of the nineteenth century, but particularly gained momentum in the 1960s and 1970s. In organisations, informalisation may be gathered from such trends as lowered acceptance of power and status differences, abating ceremony in meetings and addressing, increasingly relaxed interaction between superiors and subordinates, male and female employees, older and younger employees et cetera. Other evidence of the informalisation trend on the work floor may be the growing tolerance for informal clothing, the use of first names and colloquial speech, “deviant” behaviour (such as that of organizational “skunks”), confessing private feelings and expressing emotions, engaging in intimate relations on the work floor, and in general the blurring of the boundaries between “work life” and “private life”. It needs to be stressed that informalisation does not represent permissiveness or a simple loosening of (work) ethics. Informalisation and self-constraint should not be regarded as competing trends. In fact, informalisation has not been accompanied by a lapse in discipline as to industriousness, relations between the sexes, age groups et cetera. Informalisation rather implies refinement through more polished and seemingly “relaxed” performances. It means more variation and differentiation in manners expressing control and distinction. Following Elias and Dunning (1986, p.44), Wouters uses the notion of “controlled decontrolling of emotional controls” (for a critical discussion of Wouters’ contribution, see Newton, 1997). Clearly, this is related to gossiping as well: when and where can one say what to whom about who. Informalisation means that one knows when one can make an — acceptable — joke and when one has to work hard. Against Wouters, Van Iterson et al. (2001) suggest that informalisation developed well before the 20th century: in the Italian city-states of the early sixteenth century. They argue that Elias has overemphasized increasing self-restraint of the suppressive kind since he overlooked the simultaneous development of formalisation and informalisation. The notion of a balance between formality and informality may
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better explain changing patterns of emotion management. This balance requires a delicate touch. To many, it is a tension balance. More discipline inflames the desire to “letting go”. On the other hand, “free and easy conduct” presupposes and cultivates adherence to the rules of law or the discipline of mutual consent. Research on the civilising processes of increasing discipline and informalisation and their effect on social personality can contribute to a better understanding of behaviour and emotion in current organisations. Iterson et al. believe that the potential contribution is particularly promising in relation to organisational restructurings which enable the loosening of vertical chains of authority and the blurring of boundaries in and between organisations, possibly within the context of flatter structures. Members of decentralised units and teams — especially those who fulfil linking and boundary-spanning roles — may win more freedom of movement vis-à-vis management, but also become more horizontally interconnected in many respects. Decentralisation and burgeoning links to the external environment imply a need for greater integration and co-ordination. Unit members and boundary spanners have to become more and more active networkplayers who have to combine discipline and informalisation. They have to show private initiative and activate horizontal relations which require integrative abilities. They are expected to “show results” yet co-operate smoothly (Mastenbroek, 1992). Members of such “unlocking” organisations find themselves in settings comparable to royal courts (cf. Kuzmics, 1991) since they have to combine firmness with friendliness, “enthusiasm” with “grace” (Newton, 1996a). Obviously, this double pressure has a strong effect on the style and content of gossiping. We believe that the study of the civilising processes of increasing discipline and informalisation are particularly relevant to the practice of gossiping (i) between departments with shifting responsibilities and discretion; (ii) between informal groups (which become more in front once formal intra-organizational boundaries are dissipating), and (iii) from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top as a result of decreasing power inequalities, which affect gossip in both directions: gaining power can indicate that one needs less gossip in order to attain your goals, but gaining power can also mean that blame power becomes more effective. It seems that the tense balance between constraints and informalizing in relation to gossiping is particularly relevant in differentiated organizational cultures (see Figure 1). When indeed organizational units win more freedom of movement, homogenous company cultures will become obsolete. Appreciating that a segmented company culture is a temporary organizational dysfunctioning, the “normal” situation, then, will be differentiation with the associated mix of praise and blame gossip. This mix has an interesting relationship with the equally dual phenomenon of the above-analyzed tense balance between constraints and informalizing. Both praising the own group and blaming the others demands a delicate balancing
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between withholding to gossip and letting go when deemed appropriate. Above all, it requires knowledge — call it “intuition” — of when to stop.
Increasing self-constraint, informalisation and gossip: Some further questions According to Mennell (1992, p.119ff), the allusions made in The established and the Outsiders to the arguments developed in The Civilizing Process are “sketched in only very lightly” (see also Krieken, 1998, Chapter 5). The possession of more selfrestraint from the part of the “villagers” became a key element of their self-image and of how they differed from the outsiders from Zone 3 who seemed to menace their traditions and community identity. The newcomers, on the contrary, possessed little self-restraint, in the eyes of the villagers. They were “rough”, “dirty”, “delinquent” and “barbaric”. Within the triangle established-outsiders dynamics, long-term civilising processes and gossiping, some more — normative — questions can be formulated for further research. Does increasing self-constraint imply that organizational members should withhold from gossiping as much as possible? Not necessarily. In figurations where the external constraints on self-constraint are extreme, such as at the French absolutist court, praise and above all blame gossiping flourishes unparalleled (Elias, 1983). Therefore, it can be assumed that blame gossiping, though considered as “uncivilised”, is an outlet — to cope with very demanding constraints. Informalisation would demand a delicate expression of news and opinions about others. Relevant questions would be: how can organizational members by gossiping in the “right” way help to give the impression that they know how to play the informalized game? How do people on the work floor “know” when they can and cannot gossip about X or Y? Can we distinguish between civilised and uncivilised gossip? Is blame gossip more civilised than direct confrontation — be it verbally or physically? Or is it just the other way around? When commencing to study gossip in organisation applying Elias’ civilising theory perspective, one should always bear in mind that of paramount significance in his approach are the explicit long-term study of social processes stretching into the pre-industrial era and the persisting attempt to show the intricate connection between macro-societal developments and behaviour changes at the micro-level. These two methodological ambitions may inspire organisational analysis per se, which usually does not transcend the industrial era when trying to capture the sociogenesis of organisations and their specific features (e.g. Kieser, 1994; Zald, 1996) and is still not very proficient in tearing down the wall between the reified concepts of “organisation” and “individual”. When indeed organizations are studied as a “nexus of civilising processes”, it is pivotal to understand that gossiping plays a vital role in organisational processes of civilising and decivilising, inclusion and exclusion, particularly in figurations of established and outsiders.
Chapter 3
The humiliating organisation The functions and dysfunctions of degradation* Dennis Smith
Introduction Humiliation and shame are two of the best-kept secrets in modern societies and modern organisations. These secrets are widely shared but we are all reluctant to admit that they concern us directly. We are ashamed of being ashamed and do not want to experience the humiliation of admitting our humiliation. Elias was sensitive to these social and psychological dynamics and emphasised their contribution to the formation of disciplined selves and relatively pacified and integrated societies. However, these dynamics also contribute to the formation of ashamed and humiliated selves and the undermining of peaceful social integration. That is especially the case with respect to humiliation, which is the main focus here. In this paper an approach to humiliation will be presented which overlaps with, but is distinct from, Elias’s own analysis as developed in The Civilizing Process (Elias 1994a), The Established and the Outsiders (Elias and Scotson 1965) and The Germans (Elias 1996). Following a brief discussion of three texts by Elias, humiliation is distinguished from shame and a typology of forms of humiliation presented.1 This is followed by a typology of organisations. Finally, there is a brief case study of an academic organisation that illustrates many of the points made. It will hopefully be evident that the definitions, examples and typologies presented in this paper are merely the beginnings of a search for understanding on the writer’s part and all need further theoretical refinement and empirical fleshing out.
* This paper develops themes initially explored in Smith 2000 and Smith 2001. Arguments introduced there are reworked and extended in this present chapter.
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Three texts In The Civilizing Process, Norbert Elias argues that we are intensely sensitive to the fact that our bodies are liable to erupt in an uncontrolled and unpredictable way. The unruliness of the body is disturbing if we are trying to exercise the maximum amount of control possible over our behaviour. The biological and emotional mechanisms that operate within our bodies resist our attempts to predict or regulate them. As our level of awareness grows, so does our sense of vulnerability to embarrassment. According to Elias, we are fundamentally ashamed of our bodies. Shame makes us keep our emotional responses under lock and key. It causes repression and inhibition. Repressed and inhibited people are unable to see as clearly or think as rationally as they could. They are liable to be fooled by myths and phantoms and be ready prey for politicians and others who tell them lies and fairy stories. Elias’s conclusion is that there is too much shame in the ‘civilized’ world. It is an inconvenient source of ‘noise’ that interferes with rationality. Elias develops his argument further in The Established and the Outsiders (Elias and Scotson 1965). In this work, the authors look at an urban settlement (‘Winston Parva’) in which a long-established group of working-class ‘villagers’ were able to impose a sense of inferiority upon another group of working-class people who were newcomers to the area. Whenever there was ‘bad behaviour’ by a minority of the incomers this was portrayed as typical of the whole group. The message that all the incomers were bad and inferior was broadcast through ‘blame gossip.’ The working-class incomers were more socially fragmented and much less well-organised than the villagers. As a result, they could not resist or effectively contradict the definitions of themselves that the latter disseminated. The victims of the blame gossip resented it. Many of them considered moving out of the area. Nevertheless, as Elias put it in his introduction to the Dutch translation of The Established and The Outsiders, they ‘seemed to accept, with a kind of puzzled resignation, that they belonged to a group of less virtue and respectability’ (Elias 1976, 8; quoted in Mennell 1989, 117). In other words, although Elias does not make this point explicitly, the working-class incomers were demoted or relegated, forced to accept that they belonged to a ‘lower’ category than the one they could normally expect to belong to. In this respect they were humiliated, and they coped with it by ‘buying into’ the values that condemned them. Elias returns to similar themes in The Germans (Elias 1996). Here he argues that the German people was deeply influenced by their ingrained feeling that Germany had suffered a long-term decline in its fortunes. This collective awareness of a decline from former greatness was expressed in a national habitus (or psychic make-up) that was a mixture of sorrow and resentment. Both these attitudes were intensified
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by the utter defeat of Germany in 1918. This defeat stimulated an intense desire for revenge. At first this desire was mainly felt by the officer class with its strong aristocratic links. However, Hitler persuaded the German people as a whole to share in these feelings. He directed the intense passions he aroused against the Jews. In all three of the examples just mentioned — the analysis of body-related embarrassment in The Civilizing Process, the discussion of blame gossip in The Established and The Outsiders and the treatment of revengeful sorrow in The Germans — Elias’s argument moves seamlessly between shame and humiliation, tending to elide the two. For example, in The Civilizing Process, Elias argues that the courtly etiquette developed partly as a way of managing shame feelings related to the body was also used to humiliate inferiors who did not know their place. Again, in Winston Parva, some of the so-called ‘rough’ inhabitants of this settlement expressed a degree of shame that they did not meet certain standards laid down by the local establishment. However, their occasional expressions of selfcriticism were interwoven with resentment and a frequently-voiced desire to leave the area (which implies a resistance to being humiliated). Finally, in the case of inter-war Germany, the sorrow expressed in national sentiment reflected both a great awareness of the wide gap between German ideals and German performance (a source of shame) and deep anger at the way Germany was ground into the dust (humiliated) by the victorious allies in 1918. There is no doubt that Elias was aware of the complex subtleties surrounding shame and humiliation. However, he did not devote much space to exploring the differences between them. In the next section, an attempt is made to do so. It is certainly not being assumed that Elias would have subscribed to the argument presented. However, the analysis shares with Elias an interest in the way human emotionality is closely related to specific characteristics of the complex tissue of social bonds in which men and women are embedded, the interpersonal and psychic mechanisms that operate within these networks, and the long-term social processes that transform them.
Shame and humiliation The emotion of shame is inseparable from the mechanism of shaming, in other words, the process whereby a person or group is made to feel ashamed. The key actors in shaming may all be ‘within’ the shamed person: the ‘you’ that commits the offence may be confronted by the ‘you’ that believes in the values against which the offence is committed. Shame/shaming involves the creation of an uncomfortable sense of culpable unfitness in a person or group due to their failure to adhere
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to norms that prevail in the wider collectivity to which they feel they belong. Shame is felt because one’s inadequacy or unfitness has been demonstrated. One has fallen below the mark. Humiliation is also both an emotion and a social mechanism. Like shame, humiliation gives its victims a sense of having become ‘lower’ than before. However, while shame produces a feeling that one’s efforts have been inadequate (and one should ‘try harder’), humiliation instills the perception that one has been violently pushed down or kicked out. Humiliation involves a forced deprivation of benefits (such as respect) to which its victims feel they have a legitimate claim. This produces feelings of violation, bereavement, anger and outrage. By contrast, shame implies that one has voluntarily strayed from a path to which one ‘should’ have adhered. In the case of shame, the force dictating one’s uncomfortable condition is the constraining power of norms in which one believes. It is quite possible to feel shame without also experiencing humiliation. A little light shaming may be a very effective way of fine-tuning the behaviour of children — or motorists (as flashing signs that broadcast the presence of a speeding vehicle often demonstrate). Employed in this way, shaming can be part of a non-humiliating strategy of drawing the offender back into the ‘law-abiding’ community. It is also possible to be humiliated without feeling shame. If an invading army makes an example of a village which has harboured resistance fighters by hanging its leading citizens in the main square, raping its women and using its church or mosque as a urinal, it is not to be expected that the surviving inhabitants will feel shamed before their aggressors. Anger and hatred are much more likely. If the inhabitants do feel shame, it is likely to be produced not by the process of humiliation but by the fact that they have failed to prevent this process from occurring — which is quite a different thing. An important case of overlap between shame and humiliation occurs in cases where the offender accepts and believes that her offence is so serious that it makes her unfit to remain a member of the group to which she belongs and whose norms she has infringed. Such a situation may produce a division within the offender’s psyche between the person who adheres strongly to the group and resists being cast out and degraded, and the person who adheres to the group’s values and insists upon the humiliating punishment being carried out. A different kind of overlap between shaming and humiliation occurs when shaming is overdone in specific cases. The strategy of drawing attention to the offender and her offence may, if taken too far, have destructive rather than positive results. If you leave someone in the oven-like atmosphere of the ‘shaming machine’ for too long they may burn to a crisp; they end up not shamed but humiliated. The ticking-off turns into a show trial. For example, in modern organisations specific norms such as the ‘need’ to meet specific output targets — as opposed to general
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norms such as truth-telling and promise-keeping — only elicit a calculated and pragmatic compliance among employees. In such cases, the depth of shame employees feel at breaking those norms is not great. In those circumstances, applying the strategy of shame-making — trapping offenders in a beam of publicity — may not stir feelings of shame within the ‘offender.’ Instead, it may generate anger and resentment. The heat in the shaming machine does not have to be turned up very far before it becomes a humiliating machine — and while shaming may be accepted as painful but legitimate in certain circumstances, humiliation has become a modern anathema, at its worst a serious offence against human rights. Humiliation is one possible outcome of the increasing use of techniques such as the publication of ‘league tables’ based upon performance indicators of various kinds. Performance indicators are increasingly becoming available. As computerization develops, it becomes easier to manipulate large sets of numerical data. At the same time, taxpayers are less willing to provide additional revenue for public services in spite of the increasing demand they make upon them. As a result, managers in the public sector increase productivity by raising both the average and overall output of their subordinates. They want more work from fewer people. A further trend is increased competition within all organizational sectors, public and private. This gives an additional incentive for managers to look for productivity gains. Once measuring instruments are in place they can be maintained relatively efficiently. After all, every employee and organization has an incentive to provide and check (or manipulate) the data against which they will be judged. On the basis of such data, comparisons can be made between institutions, between departments or units within institutions, and between individuals. Furthermore, the prestige of statistics with their air of objectivity can be harnessed on behalf of bureaucratic authority. Once a table has been drawn up, it is possible to work out an ‘average’ score and a ‘best’ score. Armed with this data, messages can be sent to institutions, departments, units or individuals in the bottom half of the table, especially those in the bottom quarter, asking them to explain their shameful ‘under-performance’ and ‘put it right.’ The disadvantage of merely rewarding the few at the top, perhaps the top five per cent, is that many of those denied rewards — especially the large majority who did not even come near to being rewarded — are likely to be left feeling either indifferent or hostile. The effects on the output of the many may be negligible, even negative. By contrast, making a bad example of the ‘bottom’ five per cent is likely to stimulate increased effort from all employees, especially the other forty-five percent or so whose performance is presented as being below the average. This extra effort is caused not by the pursuit of extra rewards, nor even necessarily by a feeling of shame, but rather by the desire to avoid humiliation.
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Varieties of humiliation Humiliation is an act of destruction. Humiliation may be enacted deliberately or may, in some circumstances, occur unintentionally. Its effects may be achieved through either deliberate action or by deliberately refraining from action. However, in all cases it entails the forced ejection and/or exclusion of individuals or groups from social roles and/or social categories with which they subjectively identify. This occurs in a way that conveys the message that they are fundamentally inadequate to fill those roles or belong to those categories. Humiliation involves being violently pushed down and/or forcibly kept below the boundary line that separates the worthy from the unworthy. Humiliation always carries the message that the victim is on a lower plane than the perpetrator, that there is an unbridgeable gulf between them. As already implied, this message is especially hurtful and outrageous when it occurs within a society that supposedly upholds the idea of universal human rights. This is because those rights are based upon the principle of mutual respect among individuals who are held to be of equal worth. Humiliation has a very long history that stretches back several centuries before human rights were widely accepted. One effect of this history has been to shape behaviour and assumptions at a very deep level. The ‘grammar’ of behaviour embodied in our habitus still has a long way to go before it catches up with the new demands imposed by human rights. This is one possible explanation of the frequent clashes that occur between forms of rhetoric that emphasise justice and equality and practices that are often sexist and paternalist. This helps to explain why workforces who have been told they are being ‘empowered’ and women who have been told they are ‘liberated’ sometimes respond with cynicism. It is possible to distinguish between four kinds of humiliation mechanism. These are conquest-humiliation, relegation-humiliation, expulsion-humiliation and reinforcement-humiliation.2 Conquest-humiliation occurs when hierarchy is introduced where previously there was equality. It happens when a strong power reduces the degree of relative autonomy enjoyed by its rivals. The conquering force deprives those rivals of their freedom, makes itself top dog and forces old enemies into long-term subordination. Those who used to stand proud are forced to bend the knee. This is what happened when Henry IV emerged victorious at the end of the French Religious Wars of the sixteenth century. He and his successors made the fractious nobility toe the line at the royal court instead of fomenting rebellion in the provinces.3 A more recent equivalent is the conquest of Japan by the Americans in 1945, an event that cost the Emperor his divinity. Conquest humiliation also occurred when industrial managers succeeded in imposing a Fordist regime of assembly-line production upon labouring communities.
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In this case the losers were the skilled craftworkers who had been able to control the pace and order in which they carried out their functions. Their independence was reduced. The conquered workforce was tied to the moving belt and forced into routines dictated by the time-and-motion expert. As has been argued, conquest-humiliation brings a hierarchy into being (or adds an additional layer to a pre-existing hierarchy). However, once hierarchy has been established, other forms of humiliation flourish within it. A new field of competition comes into being. Rivals try to move up the greasy pole and to kick down their opponents. Attacking your opponents can take many forms but the ultimate object in all cases is to destroy or, at least, fundamentally undermine them. For example, rivals may be subjected to relegation-humiliation. This involves demotion to an inferior status group, with a consequent loss of honour. Examples of relegation-humiliation include the breaking of a military officer, when he is reduced to the ranks, or taking property and dignities away from an aristocrat who has offended the monarch in some way. Demotions also occur in modern organisations although, significantly, they are often disguised to minimise either the pain felt by the victim or the extent to which those who are responsible feel blame. In cases of incompetence, fraud or political defeat within an organisation, the person involved may be forced to resign or may be sacked. This is an example of expulsion-humiliation. This involves being completely cast out from the group to which one previously belonged. Expulsion-humiliation was the fate of many dissident or revisionist intellectuals in Eastern Europe during the Cold War; one example is Zygmunt Bauman, forced to leave Poland in 1968 during an anti-Jewish campaign.4 Expulsion-humiliation may, in extreme cases, include expulsion from life itself through extermination. Conquest-, relegation- and expulsion-humiliation are extreme measures. They have radical and painful results. They lead, respectively, to the creation of hierarchy where none existed before, the reordering of hierarchy through the demotion or groups and individuals, and the forcible ejection and/or elimination of unwanted people. By contrast, the fourth form, reinforcement-humiliation, is part of the everyday psycho-dynamics of established social, political or organisational hierarchies. It has a more conservative effect. Reinforcement-humiliation occurs because at every level within hierarchies, many of those who perceive themselves as underdogs dislike their lowly status.5 They growl, squeal and complain, usually covertly and behind closed doors. If it gets out of hand, this chronic subterranean resentment may threaten the stability of the hierarchy. Because of this, expressions of resentment must be kept in check. One way to do this is through the habitual use of verbal and physical aggression against underlings. This reinforcement-humiliation directed by those ‘above’ against those ‘below’ has the object of keeping the latter ‘in their place’. It is another form of ‘pushing down.’
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The scale and severity of reinforcement-humiliation has to be judged quite carefully. If it is done too heavily, it may stimulate those very resentments it is trying to keeping in check. Too much contempt-ridden abuse will bring about rebellion whether in the form of industrial strikes, peasant revolts or Frondes. Nevertheless, throughout history, monarchs have executed aristocrats ‘pour encourager les autres.’ Meanwhile, lords have repressed peasants, masters have beaten servants, and men have abused their wives. This controlled aggression, directed downwards, has occurred at every level and in every hierarchical social bond. It has been met with hidden anger. The onset of human-rights regimes has made reinforcement-humiliation much less acceptable. This is because it contradicts the fundamental principle of human rights that every individual has an inner core of dignity that must be respected by everybody else. Reinforcement-humiliation has ceased to be seen as routine and ‘normal’ and the anger is no longer hidden.
Varieties of organisation Buried within the argument made so far is another set of assumptions that relate not to the nature of humiliation but to the nature of organisations. It will be helpful to make them more explicit.6 In this section of the paper four organisational types will be identified: absolutist hierarchy, emancipated hierarchy, emancipated network and creative network. As in the case of the different types of humiliation mentioned, these organisational types rarely exist in ‘pure’ form. Nor do they appear in any determinate historical sequence. They represent possibilities that may be actualised to a greater or lesser degree in many different circumstances. The first type of organisation to be considered is the absolutist hierarchy. Such an organisational type is, in principle, quite incompatible with a human-rights regime although, in practice, some elements of absolutist hierarchy may be found in a number of modern organisations, including military ones. The principle upon which a full-blown absolute hierarchy is based is that absolute differences and unbridgeable gaps exist between higher and lower beings. Archetypal examples include the relationship between monarch and subject eighteenth-century Europe, between master and slave in the American South before the Civil War, and between husband and wife in patriarchal family regimes. In many cases, absolutist hierarchies have their origin in processes of conquest humiliation. The second organisational type is the emancipated hierarchy. Historically, this frequently develops, directly or indirectly, from the absolutist form. Emancipated hierarchies come into existence when absolutist assumptions cease to be taken seriously. One reason why those assumptions are undermined is that marketrelated and bureaucratic procedures erode the idea that there are absolute differences
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and unbridgeable gaps between different social groups. For the sake of competitive efficiency, it becomes convenient to allow people with black skins to do what were previously ‘whites-only’ jobs, to appoint females to ‘men-only’ positions, and so on. In other words, talent, competence and technical qualifications become the relevant criteria and it becomes accepted that it is both useful and necessary to trawl the whole population for those resources. These practices provide a basis upon which a human-rights regime may eventually be erected. Where this occurs, the organisation is still divided into those who command and those who obey. However, hierarchy acquires a new justification. Its rationale is no longer the need to maintain a given absolute status order. Instead, organisational hierarchy is legitimised with reference to the organisation’s need to perform certain functions in an effective way. The supposed beneficiaries are not the people at the top of the hierarchy but the collectivity as a whole. This may mean either members of the organisation itself, as in the case of, say, a company in which practically all employees are shareholders, or members of the wider society who may look to the organisation for defence, law and order, the production of goods and services, and so on. The people ‘at the top’ of an emancipated hierarchy find it a more difficult to exercise power in an arbitrary way. This is because they experience pressure from ‘below’ to demonstrate clearly the rationality of their actions in terms of the interests of the whole organisation or collectivity. They are, to a great extent, expected to show that their authority is legible and rational.7 One effect of human rights and the emancipation it brings to underlings is that reinforcement-humiliation is a much more dangerous business for those who practice it. It very easily becomes translated into, for example, accusations of sexual harassment or unfair discrimination. Incidental insults and casual over-familiarity which, under a previous regime, were everyday expressions of the master’s superiority now become seen as unacceptable attacks upon fundamental human rights. Movement between organisational levels becomes more likely in emancipated hierarchies as the constant trawl for talent sucks promising men and women, whatever their origins, into jobs that match their abilities. In fact, the rhetoric of opportunity and personal development in modern emancipated hierarchies becomes so dominant that people whose salaries cease to rise or who do not see a steady, if gradual, advance in their organisational position feel they are ‘stuck’ or being ‘held back.’ This means that in such organisations relegation-humiliation acquires a new dimension: failure to move upwards. The erosion of the old impermeable barriers between ranks means that reference groups are extended upwards in emancipated hierarchies. In these circumstances, the sense of relative deprivation increases. If people are not moving upwards, they feel held down by an invisible barrier, a sort of ‘glass ceiling’.
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Emancipated hierarchies are, currently, the most common form in the West. One of the disadvantages for chief executives is that the tasks and responsibilities associated with their positions have greatly increased. This is not only because the urban-industrial order has become more complex but also because they have to take account of the sensitivities of all employees to a much greater extent than before. At the same time, the pleasures of lording it over one’s underlings are gone. It would, therefore, not be surprising if some chief executives had a desire, secret or overt, to return to a condition of absolutist hierarchy when ‘everyone knew their place.’ A subterranean tidal pull back towards absolutism may be felt in many emancipated hierarchies. Arguments over the status and power of trade unions are one indication of this. At the same time, the increasing urban-industrial complexity is mirrored in the internal dynamics of organisations with an effect that works in another direction. As the tasks confronting organisational hierarchies become increasingly complex, a wider range of skills and resources develops. This means that the centre’s power advantage is diminished. Some of the ground it won during by the Taylorite/Fordist phase of conquest-humiliation is lost. It becomes more difficult for the centre to monopolise control over all the knowledge needed to run the organisation. Where the tendency just described is powerful it undermines hierarchy and moves organisations in the direction of a network of interdependent individuals and groups performing complementary functions, i.e. an emancipated network. This is the third form of organisation to be described. Such an organisation is rarely trouble-free. An emancipated network is liable to inherit at least two ‘generations’ of resentments. First, there are the wounds that were inflicted during the daily round of reinforcement-humiliation in the days when absolutist hierarchies were the dominant form. The feelings engendered were normally contained, kept to whispering behind the hand. However, during a second phase, that of emancipated hierarchy, all forms of humiliation are seen to offend against the principles of human rights. As the framework changes, people voice their protests more openly. Emanicipated hierarchies are liable to have complaining cultures and may become riddled with ‘procedures’ for dealing with ‘grievances.’ However, the power advantage held by the top dogs in the boardroom usually means that the bosses win out. Parts of the organisation may be given the task of ‘dealing’ with grievances and conflicts while making sure that the power structure and distribution of resources remains fundamentally unaltered. The complaining culture often becomes a culture of cynicism and apathy. Such is the troubled inheritance bestowed upon many emancipated networks. Where the old hierarchy has fragmented or disappeared, it is possible to express
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grievances more openly and fight with a chance of securing real advantages. In these circumstances, considerable effort may be spent working through cycles of score-settling. Old humiliations are brought to light and long-accumulated resentments expressed. New slights are perceived, whether or not they were intended. Furthermore, the stakes are raised as people see there is mileage in claiming rights for themselves that they never before regarded as practical propositions, capable of being realised. This competitive assertion of rights is understandable: it is no longer the special responsibility of a hierarchical elite to look after everybody’s interests; everyone has to look out for themself. An emancipated network very easily becomes a battlefield. Since the organisational structure is flexible, it is always possible to shift it slightly to one’s own benefit. No battle has to be regarded as decisive. To state the obvious, the resulting atmosphere is likely to interfere with effective performance of the organisational functions for which the network is responsible. Emancipated networks create considerable frustration for those who work within them. One response may be to move towards absolutist hierarchy. This may seem an attractive option if a particular individual or group is able to persuade the others that it will be efficiently serve the interests of the whole group. This scenario has echoes of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, or perhaps of Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s. Another response is to move towards a creative network, which is the fourth type of organisation to be discussed. This is as much an ideal to which some organisations adhere as an empirical reality realised in practice. It has some resemblance to the flexible networks of small companies in Emilia-Romagna discussed by Michael Piore and Charles Sabel.8 A creative network requires the existence of trust and commitment among participants in the network. This provides a basis for open dialogue. Forging such a basis for trust means confronting the consequences of past humiliations and the damage associated with them.9 An organisation (or society) may be labelled a creative network insofar as trust, co-operation and mutual concern provide the framework for all or most of its relationships and activities. It may seem rather utopian to imagine that major organisations could be run on the principle that everyone concerned takes part in framing a set of meaningful objectives that all parties feel serve their interests. However, the techniques for building creative networks are well known in most societies. Creative networks exist in niches within most instances of absolutist hierarchy, emancipated hierarchy and emancipated network. They may be found, for example, in the ‘think tanks’ that advise bosses and rulers of all kinds, among warrior groups planning military campaigns, within professional and managerial teams formulating and carrying out business plans. They may also be found in the councils of strike leaders working out effective ways
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of frustrating unwelcome managerial initiatives, and in the ranks of conspiratorial groups of all kinds. Wherever power and survival are at stake and effective solutions cannot simply be imposed by fiat, then creative networks spring into existence. To coin a phrase, we already ‘have the technology.’
A brief case study from academia In this final section, the heuristic tool developed in the preceding two sections is used in the analysis of a particular case. The following brief case study is based on evidence from a male academic known to the author who joined a university somewhere in the Western world during the early 1980s and spent approximately two decades as its employee. He has now left the institution, which may be called Uptown University, and works elsewhere. The following account records his perceptions of Uptown University as an institution. Anonymity is maintained as much as possible in the following account in order to facilitate freedom of expression. The account does not claim to be either unbiased or complete. It is deliberately left in the subjective register and no attempts have been made to test the statements made against written records. This is because the main point is to gain access to the informant’s recollections and intuitions about the feelings that were mobilised within himself and his colleagues at Uptown University during this period. The informant is familiar with the heuristic tool developed in the last two parts of this paper. “The question is whether the idea of humiliation is useful for understanding what happened at Uptown University? Well, actually I do find it quite helpful. I went there for a bit of promotion and didn’t expect to be there for long — how wrong can you be. I was a bit worried when I first arrived because there was a kind of happy acceptance at Uptown that the place was somewhere near the bottom of the pile within the university sector but that this was ok because working conditions were reasonable and everyone was making a living. “However, not long after I got there two things happened in what now seems like quick succession although memory probably telescopes them a bit. First, a new top man arrived to run Uptown. One of the first things he did was to get everyone to produce a cv to be sent to his office. That upset the union. In fact, relations with the union were never good, as far as I can tell. Then — and this was the second thing — there were some big cuts in funding for the universities and Uptown was hit particularly badly, to the extent of 30 to 40 percent of its income. That could have been truly humiliating: to be picked out for especially ‘bad’ treatment as a university. We were one of the worst hit in the country. We felt we were being picked on unfairly and treated according to a standard that was not being applied to others.
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“In the event, the initial response was not a sense of humiliation. There was at least verbal solidarity from people in other universities. The blow was so severe that it effaced any feelings that it was a fair judgement. My colleagues felt we could not possibly be that bad. No, the humiliation came from the way the new situation was exploited by the principal within Uptown. Everybody in the institution was thoroughly shaken up and shocked by the cuts. “This situation gave the principal an opportunity to engage in something that resembled conquest-humiliation. In other words, he squeezed a lot of the independent-mindedness that existed at lower levels in the hierarchy out of the system. Many of the old ‘big guns’ (powerful heads of department) on the campus were given big payoffs. Also, letters went out to all staff. Some people got a letter saying, more or less, that if they decided to leave the university that was fine, it would be welcomed. Other people got a letter saying that they would not be allowed to go. I got one of the first kind and it was a bad moment. “More or less at the same time, the organisational structure was torn apart and put together again the way the principal wanted it. The man who was acting head of our group (the sociologists) protested in a faculty meeting against the speed it was happening and the lack of consultation. The principal just took him apart in front of the whole meeting, asking why he had not been working hard to help save the university over the summer. It was a brutal piece of reinforcement-humiliation and it left the man speechless. “The Business Studies Department (BSD) took a lot of people in from the wreckage of the faculty which I belonged to. The BSD was subdivided into groups and the new people were put into specially created new groups within the department. It got to be such a big department that it was difficult to see much beyond its boundaries once you got in there. So from now on I’m mainly talking about the BSD. “Initially, there was a lot of hostility from within BSD to taking the sociologists in but we thought it was the safest place to be. We were a fairly small department (although we lost departmental status by going into the BSD) and some key members had strong ties to business studies. However, the way sociology got on within BSD is mixed up with another story about the relation between the BSD and the principal. Here I’m guessing a bit but I’ll tell you what I think happened. “At some point, I can’t remember exactly when, the job of head of the Business Studies Department fell vacant. The principal did not fill it. It stayed vacant for years. That was a real insult to BSD although I never heard a really strong protest made. The department was run by a series of senior staff chairing an executive committee of group leaders and function coordinators within BSD. Actually, the social atmosphere was very good in those years. Everyone disliked the principal intensely and that provided a sort of negative solidarity. Things were managed on the basis of a kind of weak consensus between senior staff. However, BSD had little success in getting its way on anything against the principal and he seemed to be
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holding us in cold storage. Promotions were rare. There was a lot of anger and frustration underneath. We were being sat on. “Sociology was gradually asset-stripped. Our professor left and the post was not refilled. Other posts were siphoned off in various ways. We lost our main degree and the word ‘sociology’ disappeared off our teaching programmes for many years. In terms of the typology this would count as relegation-humiliation. There was almost nothing that could be done to prevent this. The predominant feeling was always one of being ‘acted upon’ or ‘acted against.’ There was never a willingness to enter into meaningful engagement with sociologists on the basis that they were worthwhile practitioners with something important to say. This was, indeed, humiliating. “At one point, when patterns of student demand shifted in our favour, we managed to re-establish a sociology programme — only to find the title changed to ‘social studies’ at the last minute in one of the university’s higher councils. Again, this was a refusal to accord proper dignity to the subject and people involved; a not-very-subtle bit of reinforcement-humiliation. “Alongside this story of the relationship between sociology and Uptown University there is another one, just as fascinating, about the relationship between the Business Studies Department and the university principal. Although I can only see it now, in retrospect, there was a fundamental struggle going on for about a decade between two tendencies: towards turning Uptwown University into an absolutist hierarchy under the control of the principal’s office; and towards the development of a creative network within BDS. “In the early 1980s, before the principal arrived and before the cuts, Uptown University was an emancipated hierarchy. In fact, a number of the old-stagers I first met when I went there were very proud of the strong job rights that were, in their view, built into the university’s constitution. However, the absolutist tendencies of the principal were clear from the very beginning. Attempts were made, unsuccessfully, by the central administration to weaken the institution of tenure within the university and later, successfully, to abolish elected faculty deans. “In sharp contrast, during much of the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, the largest department in the university (the BSD with staff into three figures) ran itself as a multi-disciplinary collectivity managed by a relatively ‘democratic’ consortium of senior academics. This is not so say that the BSD was a democracy; far from it. But information was disseminated with reasonable ease between different groups and functions since they all had a talking head at the table where strategy was discussed and local bargains made. “The ideology which justified this arrangement claimed that a complex and flexible structure allowed BSD to respond quickly and effectively to changing opportunities in a changing environment. The BSD had the formal structure of a creative network even though much of its creativity was soaked up in trying to defend its situation against the principal.
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“There was an extraordinary balancing act going on between absolutist hierarchy (ie Uptown University as a whole) and emancipated network (ie BDS) during those years. It was made possible, ironically enough, by the fact that for the better part of a decade the position of departmental head within the business school was left unfilled. The irony lies in the fact that although one effect of leaving the position of departmental head unfilled was to weaken the influence of the business school within the university, the other effect was to perpetuate conditions within the business school that made an emancipated network almost inevitable and the dream of a ‘creative network’ a plausible ambition. The bickering that supposedly goes with emancipated networks was limited by a shared culture of resentment against ‘head office.’ “After some years, the principal decided to fill the post of head of BSD. The first occupant was temporary and his academic background was outside business studies. The second head was appointed on a more permanent basis. He had a lot of business experience but his academic background was not so well developed. His period of office was a sort of replay of the early years of the principal but this time within the confines of BSD. In other words, he set out to centralise the organisation and used the tactic of reining in the freedom of the group heads within the BSD. Conquest-humiliation was on the agenda once more. “Some individuals were removed from their group headships, especially those who displayed any independence. More generally, the senior staff who had managed the BSD were ‘put in their place.’ The approach was not direct. It was manipulative and opportunistic — not in itself a fault but there was no intelligible rationale apart from a power grab by the centre. “When that man moved on, another head of department was appointed, this time a ‘proper’ business academic. However, even more significant was the fact that the group in which most of the sociology team were located was now headed by a person who was prepared to take a very active approach to restructuring people’s duties, including the duties of the sociologists. “In fact, looking back now I can see a pattern. From the sociologists’ point of view, the strategic level at which the key organisational ‘hatchet man’ (or ‘radical innovator’) was located gradually moved ‘down the system.’ First, he was located at university level and we found our hiding place in the BSD. Then he was located at the level of the BSD and we found some room for manoeuvre within our particular group within BSD, which was a ‘mixed bag’ containing academics from three or four disciplines. Finally, however, the ‘hatchet man’ arrived at our front door: he was the head of our group and we could not avoid him. “The group head did not try to represent the interests of the group members within BSD. The rhetoric of rights was almost completely absent from his discourse. Instead, the logic he deployed was a mixture of market-oriented reasoning (‘the books have to be balanced’), Darwinian philosophy (‘if you want to survive, adapt’) and Benthamite choices (‘if you don’t like it, get out’). The words I’ve just
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put in inverted commas are not direct quotes but they convey the essence of the discourse. The drift was markedly away from emancipation and towards absolutism. I should add that other groups within BSD had other experiences and there is no reason to claim that what happened to us was typical of the whole department. “The group head’s remit (I am guessing), and his inclination, was to impose discipline upon us in terms of a BSD strategy which we, his colleagues, had practically no part in shaping. His approach was very direct. He claimed that he had to use the teaching capacity within the group to ‘earn’ enough income to pay the group’s salaries. BSD’s senior management had agreed a pricing structure which enabled each group head to tot up the amount of income being earned from teaching within the group. “The group head called a meeting at which he presented data on three things: the amount of income the group ‘needed’ to earn to cover its salaries; the amount of teaching in different areas he said the group was committed to providing; and the amount of ‘income’ that was being ‘earned’ by each member of the group through his or her teaching. “It was at this point that the failure to establish a mature dialogue between the sociologists and other parts of BSD became evident. Levels of trust were very low all round. At the climax of the meeting, the group head’s ‘revealed’ that the figures he had got implied that the sociologists in the group were the lowest ‘earners.’ He therefore proposed that they should teach in new areas that would earn additional income for the group. This would have involved a major shift of direction and identity for at least some of the sociologists. As it was, they were made to appear inadequate and ‘not pulling their weight.’ “Whatever the intention, the effect was deeply humiliating. The challenge of conquest-humiliation had now moved from university level, via department level, to group level and was threatening the day-to-day freedom of certain academics to carry on their discipline. Within about a year two of the sociologists left the university, including myself. “On reflction, and turning away from the particular troubles of sociology, I now think that the effect of repeated humiliations over the years was to undermine the self-confidence of staff, in BSD at least. I mean it undermined their confidence in their ability to make a creative contribution to shaping the organisation. There was creativity around — but the organisation wasn’t getting the benefit of it. There was a kind of institutionalised but unofficial withholding of enthusiasm that shaded over into outright cynicism. People knew they were not stupid but the organisation made them look and feel stupid as long as they took its opinions seriously. “From the beginning of the period I’ve been talking about, Uptown University had a poor opinion of itself. It was not difficult to create the impression within the institution that a high proportion of its staff was ‘failing’ in the eyes of the principal. New people that came in, especially at senior level, responded by treating existing staff with mild contempt in many cases. This was duly returned.
The humiliating organisation
“The main compensation was that if you retreated into your study it was possible to do some good work as long as you had the inner drive needed. By and large, if you did not make too much trouble, they left you alone. (You see how easily I fall into the ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality). It was when ‘they’ started to threaten that autonomy — the space for ‘real’ work — that I decided to get out.”
This case study describes a series of conquest-, relegation- and reinforcementhumiliations within Uptown University. These include the assertion of the principal’s mastery at the expense of departmental heads, the assertion of the BSD head’s power at the expense of group heads, the assertion of the group head’s power at the expense of other group members and the degradation and marginalisation of sociology within BSD. The cumulative message was: ‘go away’, in other words expulsion-humiliation. Finally, as the story shows, the hint was taken. The informant gives some insights into the way a humiliated habitus may develop within an organisation, generating a complex mixture of fear, resentment and aggression. It is certainly possible that he is tending to over-generalise from the experience of a particular group within Uptown. However, it is also possible that the dynamics he identifies may apply to a wide range of organisations. It would be wrong to interpret all, or even most examples of humiliation as expressions of some ‘master plan’ designed to enforce a particular power structure. The evidence presented here suggests a more subtle message. This is that once the humiliated habitus becomes widespread within an organisation, this very fact shapes the range of managerial tactics that are likely to be effective, in the short term at least. It is much easier to achieve minor victories within the organisation by playing on existing fears than by creating the conditions for a genuine dialogue based upon mutual respect. However, playing the humiliation game carries a heavy cost. It creates barriers to the release of imaginative insights and constructive efforts by all participants for the benefit of the collectivity. This is unfortunate since organisations of all kinds need resources of this kind if they are to compete and co-operate effectively. This conclusion applies much more widely than Uptown University.
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Part II
Negotiating Boundaries
Very often social processes traverse the boundaries of organizations. This can create ambiguities and tensions in the relationships between different organizations and between organizations on the one hand, and stakeholding parties and institutions, on the other hand. Ambiguities and tensions also affect individuals agents, especially the so-called ‘boundary’ workers who constantly negotiate the limits of organizations. In this section, Marja Gastelaars examines a very Eliasian theme, namely that of privacy. She considers varying conceptualisations of privacy and explores the shifting boundaries between the zone of privacy and the claims of organizations and the state. The chapter draws on a range of argument including that of Elias, Goffman, Gergen, Barrington Moore, Westin and Douglas. It argues that privacy formerly enshrined certain ambiguities and tensions in relation to sociality since it allowed individuals to withdraw from social involvement without infringing their right to socially belong. Increasingly however, the desire for privacy has become intertwined with the need for anonymity in the face of the encroachments of panoptic surveillance and computerised audit systems. Organizational practices play a significant role in this process through their ambiguous stance in relation to individual autonomy and empowerment. In consequence, attention to privacy highlights those aspects of organizational life where individual autonomy is under duress. In his chapter, Ruud Stokvis brings together insights from economics and sociology in order to explore the behaviour of investors, financial experts and top managers of corporations. He draws upon the approach taken by Joseph A. Schumpeter whose vision of capitalism as an evolutionary process is based on a sociological perspective of the competitive struggles between entrepreneurs. Stokvis combines Schumpeter’s theory about the competition between firms with some elements of an Eliasian perspective in order to obtain a sociological understanding of the increasing power of investors in relation to the managers of firms. The chapter traces a reversal of the trend that since Burnham, and Berle and Means, has been labelled the “managerial revolution”. For an explanation of this reversal, Stokvis refers to the interaction of three trends: (1) the enlargement of markets through technical innovation and a free trade policy; (2) the availability of increasing
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amounts of money that needs to be invested profitably and; (3) the role of high stock value as a weapon to defend a firm against hostile take-over attempts and to attack other firms with lower stock value. Tor Hernes focuses upon the boundaries that exist in and around organizations. He firstly notes that attention to boundaries has been neglected in organization studies because it appears to support a reified perspective rather than one that acknowledges the permeability of organizations. Challenging this view, Hernes outlines a different conception of boundaries and organizational change influenced by the work of Elias. This is illustrated through consideration of the significance of etiquette in relation to boundaries and their trangression, the significance of boundaries as ‘borderlands’ between interdependency networks, and the relation between boundary negotiation and changing power balances. Hernes shows how individuals can find themselves in boundary zones where they negotiate a balance between external affiliations and internal loyalties. The chapter suggests that individuals in boundary zones negotiate the limits of their organizations and in doing so they influence decisions in the organization. The point is made with the help of empirical illustrations from interviews held with persons from four different organizations. Through these analyses, Hernes reveals the significance of boundaries in relation to organizational reproduction and transformation.
Chapter 4
About individual autonomy and the relational self The performance of privacy in contemporary organizations Marja Gastelaars
Introduction What do organizations have to do with privacy? In my opinion a lot, although this may not always be taken for granted. Privacy is produced at the interface of institutional surroundings and individual lives and only relates to everyday occurrences as far as it renders visible the ‘critical edge’ of contemporary individualisation. In fact the concept of privacy particularly highlights those aspects of organisational life where individual autonomy and integrity are under duress. So, where many contemporary organisations claim to encourage entrepreneurial attitudes on the work floor, the concept of privacy may become particularly relevant, when the same organisations also require a ‘total’ commitment of the individual to their corporate regime. And, while flexible contracts and working hours may certainly be intended to improve the ‘fit’ between organisational requirements and individual priorities, they may become problematic from a privacy point of view inasmuch as they blur the distinction between ‘organisational participation’ and ‘private life’. Thus it may be particularly useful to consider under the aspect of privacy, some unintended consequences to individual integrity and autonomy that organisations may produce. It is particularly worthwhile to treat this subject in a volume dedicated to the contribution to organisation theory that may be derived from Norbert Elias’ works. The subject of privacy provides us with an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the potential usefulness of one of Elias’ major sociological pre-occupations. In his critique of the homo clausus perspective, in which contemporary individuality appears to be framed as ‘an individual acting on her own’, Elias has tirelessly pointed out that individuality as such — and this version of individuality in
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particular — must be historically framed, as the outcome of the interdependencies specific for its contemporary social context. The relevance of the subject of privacy in and around organisations is related to some of the unintended consequences of those interdependencies, and particularly points at those outcomes that even could be considered undesirable, both from a societal and an individual point of view. In this contribution I shall particularly make use of Elias’ volume Die Gesellschaft der Individuen, published as late as 1987, but some of it written well before World War II (Elias, 1987c; cf. Smith, 2001a). It contains some astute reflections upon the apparent unzeitgemässe survival of ‘we-feelings’ associated with family, ethnicity and the national state — and, for my purposes, with the organisation — in a historical context in which both the autonomy and the voluntary (inter-) relatedness of individuals appear to be taken for granted. The simple questions I shall take as a starting point for my analysis are: Assuming that contemporary individuals can’t avoid being incorporated into, and maybe even to want to ‘belong’ to such omnipresent entities as ‘organisations’, what can be the disadvantages of such an incorporation from the perspective of their individual autonomy and integrity? What can, in short, be the ‘individual uses’ of a concept such as privacy in the organisational realm? In order to provide us with some possible answers I shall above all try and reframe the concept of privacy in an organisational context, and, taking Westin’s classic conceptualisation of privacy as a starting point, but also making use of Barrington Moore’s comments on the historical nature of the subject, delineate seven ‘states of privacy’ that can be considered relevant at this point in time. I particularly intend to do this in order to elucidate my general thesis that the privacy debate — and particularly the privacy debate in and around organisations — does render visible the ‘critical edges’ of contemporary individualisation. The contributions of Norbert Elias will be made use of, as one of the very powerful commentaries on the ‘social’ nature of contemporary individuality but I shall make use of other commentaries as well. I shall particularly try and confront Elias’ work with the more recent attempt at a conceptualisation of contemporary individuality provided by Kenneth Gergen. (Gergen, 1991) What does an author like Gergen add to Elias’ theory of the contemporary social habitus?
Seven states of privacy (instead of four) In the contemporary Western world privacy is formally acknowledged as a human right. However, and maybe even because of this, a concept like privacy may take on a number of different meanings. In this analysis I propose to organisationally contextualise some of the states of privacy many people appear to consider
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relevant, at least in most Western cultures. I shall start from a well known conceptualisation of privacy by one of the Grand Old Men of the so-called privacy-debate of the 1960s. Alan F. Westin was commissioned by the Bar of the City of New York to investigate the privacy effects of the, then new, electronic forms of public surveillance. He availed himself not only of the insights offered by the disciplines of law, ethics and the information sciences. But he also tried to broaden his conceptualisation of privacy, making use of the contributions of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and ethologists of his day — among them famous names like Edward Hall and Erving Goffman. He differentiated four ’states of privacy’ — anonymity, solitude, reserve and intimacy (Westin, 1970, p. 31) — which, to begin with, I shall develop into seven. The first state of privacy Westin developed is the state of anonymity. This state of privacy is very important to contemporary life, as it is related to the effects upon individual lives of computerised data-systems and of other forms of electronic surveillance. Anonymity is effectuated ‘when an individual is in public places or performing public acts but still seeks, and finds, freedom from identification and surveillance.’ (Westin, 1970, p. 31) It’s nature is in fact quite paradoxical, as, on the one hand, it presupposes total exposure, a maximum of individual visibility in which everyone is allowed to know all there is to know, whereas, on the other hand, this information should entail no consequences for the individual. So it is not this public visiblility itself that needs to be avoided, but the possible consequences that an individual may incur. Anonymity appears to be there in order to protect the aspect of individuality I propose to call the expression of individuality. Historically, this expression of individuality associates with the individual’s entitlement to an uninhibited free choice and it is currently associated with consumer behaviour. And, as we shall see in the next section, theoretically this type of individuality is particularly celebrated in Gergen’s conceptualisation of post-modern individuality: the notion of a relational self. But organisational selection processes and also organisations’ inclinations to classify individuals into categories of their own, may be based upon such electronic surveillance and upon the data-bases back stage, yet it may not only destroy anonymity but produce discriminatory effects as well. The latter affect another state of privacy I would propose to label the individual’s right of self-identification as opposed to one’s identification by others. This second state of privacy that I would like to add to Westin’s list, can be associated, not only with the individual’s need to freely express herself but also with her need to identify or even to belong to a specific set of categories, out of her own volition and independent of categorisations made by anyone else. These two rather ‘intangible’ aspects of individuality are particularly associated with the impact of contemporary mass media and of IT
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and appear to transcend Elias’ theorising on individuality. As Tim Newton also indicates in a recent contribution on the relevance to organisation theory of Elias’ work, such ‘distant’ and even ‘virtual’ disciplining is well beyond his scope (Newton, 2001, p. 489). Much more tangible — even physical — are the second and third state of privacy Westin discussed, which will be the third and fourth on my list. Westin called his second state of privacy the state of solitude and this state of privacy may also be associated with the individual’s need to belong, but now seen from quite a different, often quite biologically inspired angle. All people need — at least so Westin argues, and also Barrington Moore — their moments to be on their own and avoid participation, while amongst others. ‘Viewed in terms of the relation of the individual to social participation, privacy is the voluntary and temporary withdrawal of a person from the general society through physical or psychological means.’ (Westin, 1967, p. 7) This state of privacy is interesting from an organisational point of view inasmuch as organisations tend to incorporate individual bodies and lives, once people are admitted to their ranks. Of course, as we shall see in my third section, most individuals may not even object to, may even like to be included in a family, a group, a nation and, last but not least, an organisation. But even then, they also like to be rescued from the more or less oppressive elements this inclusion inevitably produces. If not, in spite of the individual’s voluntary participation, the individual’s integrity may be at stake. Westin also recognises a third state of privacy, reserve, that also relates to the more or less oppressive effects of the unavoidable presence of (many) others. It has to do with the right to create a psychological barrier against unwanted intrusion by others present. In fact, it qualifies the interactions between individuals in a specific setting or situation. According to Westin this state of privacy is realised when ‘the individual’s need to limit communication about himself is protected by the willing discretion of those surrounding him.’ (Westin, 1970, p. 32) Westin even considers the mutual production of this state of privacy as essential for the ‘securing of meaningful privacy in the crowded, organisation-dominated settings of modern industrial society and urban life’ (Westin, 1970, p. 32). Its infringements are often called harassment. It is the fourth state of privacy on my list and it appears to associate most of all states of privacy with Elias’ argument concerning the ‘thresholds of embarrassment’ associated with contemporary individualisation. (Cf. Newton, 2001) It may even be argued that the effective performance of solitude eventually depends on the effective performance of reserve. Within organisations, these two states of privacy are particularly related to the question, how the integrity of the individual is dealt with in the ‘face to face’ and ‘hands on’ negotiations that often
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constitute at least a part of many actual organisational processes, in which a large degree of power-dependency is involved. Striking examples are provided by medical treatments, police interventions, and the regimes of closed wards, but can also be found among the many ‘hands on’ versions of management. Westin also uses the same notion of solitude (and, for my part, could have used the notion of reserve) for a state of privacy that in his view particularly affects our ‘desire to avoid being manipulated or dominated wholly by others.’ (Westin, 1970, p. 33) It relates to our need for personal autonomy in a moral and even a juridical sense of the word, often associated with the individual right of self-determination, although Westin does not introduce this term. Yet it has become quite a powerful notion in the privacy debate ever since. (Cf. Koers, 1995) Westin relates this principle of solitude to the individual need to withdraw for the purpose of her ‘dialogue with the mind or conscience’ (Westin, 1970, p. 31) as a part of the act of taking a well-considered decision. He also relates it to the principle of individual empowerment or participation in the sense of one’s entitlement to influence the course of events within the organisation (or any other formal arrangement) in which one takes part. In organisational life this latter concept may particularly be politically defined, as the individual’s and groups’ right to participate in those decision-making processes that concern the organisation as a whole. As such it is related to Hirschman’s well-known concept of voice (Hirschman, 1970) i.e. the right to voice opinions that may be inconvenient to those in charge. But of course it also denotes the active responsibility an individual may wish to assume in all those ‘lesser’ decision-making processes that are directly interwoven with for instance the primary processes of service delivery, like being selected as a client or being classified as a ‘case’. And again, these formal concepts of self-determination appear to be beyond Elias’ scope, although his theory provides some arguments as to the individual empowerment they appear to presuppose. Finally, I should add one more state of privacy to my list in the face of some recent developments in contemporary organisations. As I argued in the introduction of this contribution, contemporary organisations tend to blur the boundaries between the individual’s private negotiations and her ‘public’ and/or ‘working life’. Here the original realm of privacy, the private sphere is at stake, i.e. the ‘sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest’ (Mill, 1975, p. 17). Of course, in Mill’s original conceptualisation this private sphere is associated with the individual’s entitlement to hold ‘private opinions’ of her own. In this context, however, Westin also associates this — his fourth, my seventh — state of privacy with the performance of intimacy or, to use a term that also has some direct organisational relevance, of reciprocal trust. According to Westin intimacy creates opportunities to be ‘yourself ’ and serves the
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Diagram 1.States of privacy, organisational processes, individual needs States of privacy
Organisational processes
Individual needs
1. Anonymity
Curiosity and identification
Expression of individuality
2. Self-identification
Selection and classification
The need to identify and to belong
3. Solitude and 4. Reserve
Incorporation
(Physical) integrity of the individual in relation to the need to belong
5. Self-determination and 6. Participation
Decision-making processes
Individual conscience and voice in relation to the power structure
7. Intimacy
All-encompassing relationships
Unquestioning acceptance by all others present
need of emotional release. (Westin, 1970, p. 32) But according to me it involves the unquestioning acceptance of an individual’s doings by all other parties present, and vice versa. Here Westin appears to touch upon the ‘democracy of emotions’ (Giddens, 1999, p. 63) that, according to Giddens, is essential for the essentially self-chosen private or personal relationships that currently appear to replace the traditional family. The question is: are there specific personal relationships of this kind that may be produced within organisations, or do such aspirations still belong to an exclusive private ‘sphere’? The various states of privacy — and the organisational processes they relate to — are summarised in Diagram 1 above. The general questions I shall address here are: How do organisations relate to these various states of privacy? What do these states of privacy tell us about contemporary individuality and particularly: What do they tell us about contemporary individuality in relation to contemporary organisational life?
Organizational curiosity and the state of anonymity Anonymity is effectuated ‘when an individual is in public places or performing public acts but still seeks, and finds, freedom from identification and surveillance.’ (Westin, 1970, p. 31) Somehow, this state of privacy fits in very well with the conceptualisation of contemporary individuality — in Elias’ terms: the social habitus — proposed, not by Elias but by Kenneth J. Gergen in his Saturated Self. (Gergen, 1991) According to Gergen the technological achievements of the past
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century have produced a radical shift in our exposure to each other, apparently destroying all kinds of privacy but at the same time leaving ample room for the expression of the ‘self ’. Individuals are undergoing ‘an enormous barrage of social stimulation’ as they are ‘thrust into an ever widening array of relationships’. (Gergen, 1991, p.XI) These relationships are not face to face, but indirect and, when confronted with them, individuals may initially picture themselves as ‘strategic manipulators’ but soon, ‘caught in often contradictory or incoherent activities, (they may) grow anguished over the violation of their sense of identity.’ But then, according to Gergen, ‘this initial stage is superseded by one in which one senses the raptures of multiplicitous being.’ (Gergen, 1991, 17) One cannot only choose with whom or what to associate. On the contrary, ‘in casting the “true” and “identifiable” to the wind, one opens an enormous world of potential.’ Gergen suggests that ‘the final stage in this transition — in his view a transition to the post-modern — is reached when the self vanishes fully into a stage of relatedness. One ceases to believe in a self independent of the relations in which he or she is imbedded.’ (Gergen, 1991, 17) Apparently he is sacrificing any concept of individual autonomy or even individuality to this conceptualisation of an essentially public or rather, relational self. An interesting aspect of Gergen’s assumptions is that in fact he appears to radicalise an aspiration frequently uttered by Norbert Elias, that not only social scientists but ordinary people as well should acknowledge the essentially social origins of their experience of individuality, as the social habitus of their time. (Elias, (1939) 1989) Moreover, Elias would particularly be interested in the dialectics between the performance of this new, post-modern self and the societal environments by which it is produced. In this respect Gergen particularly points at the effects upon both interpersonal relationships and individuality, of IT — although he apparently does not discuss the less attractive effects of electronic surveillance. Gergen’s conceptualisation of the relational self does fit in very well with what we know about those organisational negotiations in which the current uses of datasystems are reproduced. The current organisational starting points, then, are the complaints of contemporary organisations that they have lost track of their potential clients. Not because these clients have become physically untraceable but because of the untraceable nature of their individual desires and orientations. (Gabriel and Lang, 1995) Particularly organisations involved with mass service delivery or with the mass production of consumer goods, discover sooner or later that it is not objective data like age distribution and socio-economic differences they have to monitor, but an immeasurable variety of possible aspirations, that are quite variable over time. As culture critic Dick Hebdige has it: ‘we live in a world and in bodies which are deeply scored by the power relations of race and class, sexuality
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and gender but we also live — whether or not we know it consciously — in a world of style-setters, innovators, sloanes, preppies, empty nesters (working couples with grown up families), dinkies (dual-income-no-kids), casuals, sensibles, the constrained majority, and today’s prime targets, the pre-teens and woofies (well-off-older-folks).’ (Hebdige in Mercer, 1992, p. 173) Traditional classifications have been overtaken by new ones, that are intangible and consequently very flexible, too. Moreover, such classifications have turned into a matter of individual, unlimited free choice. Although one could suggest that these marketing segments are produced by the marketers themselves, it is safer to assume that these categories are also negotiated in everyday life. Whether they like it or not, deliverers of goods and services are expected to anticipate or at least to follow them as well as they can. This process has been labelled the culturing of production (Du Gay, 1997, pp. 236 ff.) inasmuch as it implies that, apart from their exchange value and user value, the symbolic value of the products and services that are marketed, will be of relevance to the consumers. (Nixon, 1997, p. 185) As a consequence, commercial mass service deliverers such as supermarket chains or telecom companies have become quite insatiable in their attempts to gain an overview of current lifestyles and consumer choices, developing elaborate databases on the way. (Mante-Meijer, 1998) Many of these organisations even tend to hold on to all the information they ever collect. The combined effect is a nearly insatiable ‘organisational curiosity’. This may infringe upon the state of privacy called anonymity and thus provide individuals with a deeply felt need to escape. However, they often don’t. As Bauman argues, ‘the storage of massive quantities of data, amplified with every use of a credit card and virtually each act of purchase, results (…) in a “superpanopticon” but a Panopticon with a difference: the surveilled, supplying the data for storage, are prime and willing factors in the surveillance.’ (Bauman, 1998, p. 50) As it turns out, anonymity still appears to be associated with a desire to remain anonymous but at the same time with a desire to be seen without suffering any adverse consequences. In tune with the so-called ‘stranger-effect’, once perceived by Georg Simmel as one of the advantages of modern city life, people not only ‘demonstrate’ their consumer behaviour but also use E-mail and chatbox to ‘confess’ or, rather, make up identities at will, without running the risk of actually being identified as a responsible person. In a similar manner youth cultures appear to actively seek out the media to publicise their acts of defiance. In the words of Dick Hebdige in his Hiding in the Light: ‘subculture forms up in the space between surveillance and the evasion of surveillance, it translates the fact of being under scrutiny into the pleasure of being watched.’ (Hebdige, 1988, p. 35) They now also use the Internet for such purposes. Yet, as a real person, they prefer to remain out of sight.
About individual autonomy and the relational self
In the end, however, the institutional curiosity this behaviour provokes produces a paradoxical effect. On the one hand commercial producers and mass service deliverers thrive upon the performances of the contemporary relational self. Individuals are expected to pick their uniquely individual courses of life from the myriad of cultural offerings. On the other hand these same institutions tend to destroy the very anonymity that provides a basic requirement of this ‘independent free choice’. Even Gergen’s apparently carefree relational self — voluntarily moving from situation to situation and choosing identities at will — is leaving innumerable electronic traces behind on her daily rounds (Ruijter, 1998) and may be confronted with some unforeseen consequences at some point in her lifetime. The risks involved with identification may even progressively diminish her possibilities to present herself to an unprejudiced audience. No wonder that people are — both by law and by public opinion — encouraged to become more streetwise as to the dangers associated with this kind of data-collection. (Boomen, 1995) Anonymity is not what it used to be!
Inclusion and exclusion and the need to belong At first sight such institutional curiosity may not have too many disagreeable effects, apart from the destruction of anonymity. Yet, when the same data-bases are introduced in selection processes that are intended to produce a clear-cut ‘yes’ of ‘no’ at the organisation’s door, they may produce very real discriminatory effects, in spite of the fact that they appear to be dealing with completely ‘virtual’ personalities. Those selection processes are designed to establish whether the organisation has something to offer or not (and vice versa). In practice, however, the question usually turns out to be: What people should be barred from this organisation and who should be let in? This so-called risk selection of potential customers is there to ‘confirm their reliability as clients and choosers,’ and to sift out ‘those incapable of choice (…) before damage is done or resources wasted.’ (Bauman, 1998, p. 51) These acts may affect real people, in the end. No wonder, that many of us have become quite sensitive to this type of discrimination. Particularly in relation to these institutional selection processes, the criticism of the use of data-systems has become quite widespread. Thus Ericson and Haggerty demonstrate in their Canadian research that as a consequence of this negative curiosity, for instance the notion of police surveillance — which used to denote a rather physical activity, with watchful people moving about — has taken on a quite different meaning. It has turned into ‘risk knowledge production’ i.e. the collection of feed for the data-machines. (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997) Particularly the binary logic of data-systems is criticised, identifying ‘bad cases’
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with a limited set of criteria (and consequently labelling everyone else as ‘good’). To some these binary sets of criteria are simply testifying to a one-sided preoccupation with deviant behaviour (Rule, 1974; cf. Kuitenbrouwer, 1991) and certainly one could argue that ‘inclusion and exclusion do not necessarily entail prejudice (negative preconceptions) or discrimination (unjust decisions)’, but that one should also realise that ‘prejudice and discrimination are often built into the (..) schemes of differentiation and thereby become institutionalised.’ (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997, p. 257) Moreover, the more individuals set value on their privacy, and the more they are consequently inclined to be very selective in the disclosure of information, the more organisations in their turn are inclined to take measures to recover what is kept from them. (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997, p. 117) In the end this virtual exclusion may also reinforce the exclusion of such ‘real’ people as belong to the ‘wrong’ sex, race, family group or socio-economic class — to mention some of the traditional classifications whose use is still quite widespread (Cf Gastelaars, in press). And maybe this is precisely the reason why the ‘good ones’, i.e. the ones accredited by the data-systems, seem to positively evaluate its effects (Kuitenbrouwer, 1991; Rule, 1974). As it turns out, most of us somehow seem to wish to ‘belong’ to an exclusive ‘we’, as opposed to ‘them’.
Institutional ambiguities and the need to belong But do such contemporary relational individuals still wish to belong? It is at this point that Norbert Elias provides us with insights that may be of some use. In a late essay about the changes in the so-called ‘we — I — balance’ (Elias, 1987c) Norbert Elias convincingly argues, not unlike Gergen, that in utterly complex societies like ours the social habitus characterising the required behaviour of individuals presents itself as a multi-layered concept (cf. also Fletcher, 1997). According to Elias this has become inevitable by the sheer number of interrelated contexts affecting a particular person. (Elias, 1987c, p. 245) He also argues, however, and quite a few contemporary ethnographers will confirm this, that in many of these contexts the balance between ‘I’ and ‘we’ still can be expected to shift toward the ‘we’. In spite of contemporary ‘relationalism’, the ‘we’-identities produced by such entities like family, friends, village, town, neighbourhood and — I may add here — the organisations many of us are associated with, still may provide individuals with a sense of belonging. (Elias, 1987c, p. 270) Although many of these units are ‘artificially constructed’, some of the we-identities they produce can be paramount to someone’s survival or, to be more precise, to the social production of a sense of self. According to Elias, the national state still figures for many of its citizens as a
About individual autonomy and the relational self
haven of security. To this I may add that some organisations, in particular those with a ‘strong’ corporate culture, at least pretend to do the same. This point is confirmed by the American anthropologist Herzfeld, where he argues that abstract institutions like the state are often reinforced by tacitly extending them with a traditional familial logic, turning them into simulacra of familiar social relations. (Herzfeld, 1997, p. 7) According to him contemporary ‘individualised’ human beings still seem to be in need of those, for instance because they are in need of a logic that ‘helps them to convert their own deaths into a shared immortality.’ (Herzfeld, 1997, p. 6) Even ‘relational’ individuals are saddled with a physical body and, to an extent, an irreversible course of life, and have to put up with the consequences, somehow. Herzfeld also suggests, however, that this ‘familiar logic’ provides them with ‘culturally persuasive explanations of apparent deviations from the public interest.’ (Herzfeld, 1997, p. 9) The assumption is that it proves convenient to frame a superior’s bad behaviour within the range of the mixed feelings that inevitably are part and parcel of the ‘cultural intimacy’ that comes with belonging: ‘Of course he is a liar and a cheat, but he is our President, you know!’ This same ‘cultural intimacy’ may even induce individuals to put up with the fact that such larger social units may turn out to be quite ‘overwhelming’. The most extreme examples in this respect are obviously provided by the so-called total institutions (Goffman, 1961) but the physical superiority, the all-encompassing relationships and the tendency to maintain one-sided communication patterns that are specifically attributed to them, are surprisingly often mimicked by other organisations, as well. Moreover, Elias argues, that these quasi familial ‘we’s’ tend to reproduce (Elias, 1987c, p. 277) the logic of the established and the outsiders over and over again: the conceptualisation of a ‘we’ routinely opposed to an equally homogeneous conceptualisation of a ‘them’. The potential consequences are quite obvious. Even if we follow Gergen and assume a self voluntarily choosing the associations she desires, even this ‘self ’ may be expected to present a convincing picture of ‘belonging’ on the penalty of being excluded. This may provide us with yet another reason why in contemporary society we seem to be so particularly vulnerable to those institutional negotiations that could be framed as discrimination. They interfere with our need to belong.
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Organizational classifications and the individual’s entitlement to self-identification Organisations always classify. To some cultural theorists, the structuralists in particular, the production of binary logic of a ‘we’ and a ‘them’ is a universal human trait but equally universal is — to them, but also to contemporary cognitive scientists — the tendency to classify, by which not only a difference is established between a ‘we’ and a ‘them’ but also ‘different’ categories within a given social order. Cognitive scientists Lakoff and Johnson, for instance, put it quite straightforward: ‘Every living being categorises (…) Animals categorise food, predators, possible mates, members of their own species, and so on.’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 17) They even argue that categorisation is part of our bodily experience. It should not come as a surprise, then, that for instance one of the ‘universal’ cosmologies Mary Douglas proposed along her dimensions of grid and group, is created by the effects of formal classifications of social roles. (Douglas, 1978, p. 8) And again, this classification issue — or the issue of the management of diversity — appears to be beyond Elias’ scope. Interesting from an organisational point of view is the fact that such categorisations do not necessarily involve the production of a homogeneous ‘we’. On the contrary, these processes appear to define the range of accepted diversity within an institution. Within organisations we are very familiar, of course, with the division of labour and with the many informal classifications that are used when selecting personnel and when judging their actual behaviour. As far as organisation-client relations are concerned, this inclination to classify has been extensively reinforced, both by the rise of modern professions and by the development of the modern social state. The medical professions have become quite exemplary, not only in terms of their mutual classification efforts producing a medical hierarchy, but also in terms of their abilities to classify as a part of their diagnostic competencies, sometimes providing the ‘objects’ involved with a generally recognised ‘personal achievement’ — ‘ she is a surgeon’ — and sometimes with a lifelong stigma — ‘she is a suitable case for treatment’. However, it also should be noted that categorisations like these also invite individuals to ‘make a difference’ without being excluded from the range. For instance, as Herzfeld (1992) argued in an earlier text on the workings of bureaucracy, such a mechanical management of difference may create its own sense of belonging, if only to a generally recognised category. More recently, however, he assumed that even such apparently static categorisations — like any other cultural trait — are subject to permanent processes of (re)negotiation. In his more recent work Herzfeld even suggests that it may be worth our while to pay some more attention to this creativity on a local level he terms ‘social poetics’ (Herzfeld, 1997).
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Referring to the linguistic turn in cultural analysis he coins this activity ‘semiotic bricolage’. (Herzfeld, 1997, p. 20) Even binary cultural stereotypes like ‘male’ and ‘female’ tend to be appropriated in an immense variety of meanings. (Herzfeld, 1997, p. 165) This semiotic bricolage reinforces the aptitude of individuals to ‘identify’ and ‘make a difference’ in relation to each other or to an organisation, and yet to ‘experience’, ‘express’, or ‘perform’ their unique individuality (cf. Widdicombe, 1998, p. 59 ff). At the same time, however, it serves the purpose of guaranteeing the survival of institutions in the face of a massive differentiation of their constituencies. Elias misses out on these individualising effects of ‘institutionalised diversity’, as a generalising theory of our contemporary ‘habitus’ appears to be the aim of his quest. Yet, he might not have been adverse to an analysis of this dialectic, of the ‘identification by others’ as opposed to the ‘self-identification’ many contemporary individuals are allowed to claim.
Organisational regimes and the states of solitude and reserve In the 1980s, Barrington Moore undertook an impressive comparative study of practices referring to the concept of privacy in cultures as widely divergent as an Eskimo community of the Utku, ancient China, the ancient Hebrews and Athens’ city state (Moore, 1984). He essentially conceptualised privacy as ‘a desire for socially approved protection against painful social obligations’ (Moore, 1984, p. 6). He focused on the potentially detrimental effects of the need to be socially involved and even suggested — without any reference to Elias, by the way — that ‘the great civilising achievement in the concept of privacy has been its questioning of social concerns.’ (Moore, 1984, p. 275) And, to demonstrate that such practices are not exclusively reserved to modern societies, he quotes the case of the Utku Eskimos: their mutual dependencies, due to the dangerous circumstances of their hunting, produce an elaborate habitus of ‘external friendliness’ that is put into perspective, however, by a rather vicious gossip back stage. The state of privacy that obviously applies here is the state of privacy Westin called the state of solitude, i.e. ‘the voluntary and temporary withdrawal of a person from the general society through physical or psychological means’ (Westin, 1967, p.7). This conceptualisation of privacy could be associated with the concept of ‘autonomy’ Mary Douglas developed as a variety of her famous group-grid cosmology, referring to the way of life of the hermit ‘in which an individual withdraws from coercive or manipulative social involvement altogether’ (cf. Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990, p. 7) but actually it applies to a much wider range of social situations. As I argued in my introduction, this state of solitude should be associated with Westin’s state of reserve: the ‘willing discretion of others’ protecting ‘the
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individual’s need to limit communication about himself ’ (Westin, 1970, p. 32) as the effective performance of solitude may even depend on it. These states of privacy explicitly focus on the possible consequences of the individual’s being subject to an organisational regime. Many organisational processes are literally done by human hand or produced in face to face interactions between for instance managers and the work floor, or between representatives of the organisation and their (prospective) clients, and may in fact offer ample opportunity to touch, to inspect, to question in intimate detail, or even to produce a functionally inspired, artificial kind of confidentiality in which things are said and done that we usually associate with private life. It may not be accidental, then, that many professional ethical codes somehow reflect the possible invasions of individual integrity that may ensue from the performance, however legitimate, of their professional repertoires. For the police its association with the monopoly of violence implies a strict monitoring of its use of force; the association of the state with justice and equity should preclude any ‘favouritism’ in the negotiations of street level bureaucrats with their clientele; the everyday routines of the medical regime always involve the risk of transgressing the delicate boundaries of the integrity of the body. As a consequence, the complexities of such institutional negotiations still may leave plenty of room for the creative realisation of individual options, but they also create ample opportunity for massive infringements upon the integrity of the individual, particularly where power-dependency relations are involved. It is in a context like this that Richard Sennett, referring to Norbert Elias’ court society, speaks of the ‘virtues of a certain kind of disguise’ and ‘the ability to reach indirection’, particularly when negotiating with an individual who is perceived as ‘different from us’ (Sennett, 1991, pp. 79–80). Negotiations like these may become very complicated indeed because of a profound divergence of interests and expectations, that could be interpreted as the effect ‘cultural differences’ but might be related to a power differences as well. Jeffrey Minson argues that in cases like these the good manners proposed by Sennett — and, for that matter: Westin’s concept of reserve — do not suffice. He offers an Elias interpretation of his own, transforming Elias’ conceptualisation of social distance into a practical ‘ethical competence’ providing sufficient physical room — or time and space — to enable people to settle their differences, and yet avoid the danger of one of the contending parties — presumably the one with the least power — being hurt. How can sufficient time and space be provided to induce two parties in a conflict — about sexual harassment, for instance — to speak with each other on a fairly equal basis, and avoid the intimidating effects of hierarchical relations? And how can be avoided that the alleged victim may take the alleged offender to court? It appears that both the concepts — solitude and reserve — do require some institutional, but
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most of all some physical reinforcement, precisely because in our contemporary egalitarian culture, we are not prepared to accept power-dependency relationships as a ‘given’ any more.
Organisational decision-making processes vis à vis individual self-determination We should realise, however, that in our juridical-oriented society, privacy laws are usually motivated by the desire to formally or juridically empower the individual in situations like the above. We tend to put our hopes on the law, in order to empower individuals to negotiate the undesirable privacy-effects of organisational interventions. Under the present laws individuals are for instance entitled to inspect their own files and to retrieve the information collected about them. (Cf. Koers, 1995) People also have acquired the right to refuse disclosure of ‘personal information’, pertaining to ‘those facts, communications, or opinions which relate to the individual and which would be reasonable to expect him to regard as intimate or sensitive and therefore to want to withhold or at least to restrict their collection, use or circulation.’ (Wacks, (1989) 1993, p. 26) But, beyond this, individuals are also entitled to re-negotiate selection and classification processes they deem hurtful, by means of formalised ‘informed consent’, ‘second opinions’ and ‘complaints’. Currently, this type of juridification of everyday negotiations appears to be considered essential to organisational life. But even this juridification process should, or so I assume, be regarded as a consequence itself, of a much more fundamental change in the social habitus of individuals. Here Elias’ work comes in again. As he has pointed out, it is precisely the circumstance that many of our relationships appear to be of a voluntary nature, that forces individuals to make up their minds over and over again, testing their relationships and consequently also testing themselves and the validity — or persuasiveness — of their considerations (Elias, 1987c, p. 272). One has to at least convincingly perform the moral competence to take decisions or to enter into a relationship with ‘individual’ intentions and aspirations, continue it and, when need be, terminate it at a self-chosen moment. According to Elias considers this social habitus is specific to contemporary society, (Elias, 1987c, p. 273) a point of view that appears to be confirmed by Giddens, who adds that, since most of us now have a life expectation that is quite long, one has to continuously try and negotiate a convincing ‘course of life’ as well. (Cf. also Giddens, 1991, p. 80) Seen this way, such individual self-determination appears to be a ‘self-evident’ part of our contemporary habitus. Juridification of social relationships in fact presumes a subject that can effectively act on its own.
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This reasoning relates to Westin’s second version of the state of solitude. Here he expressly refers to ‘the desire to avoid being manipulated or dominated wholly by others’ (Westin, 1970, p. 33) as it is related to the express need to come to terms with life. This interpretation of the notion of solitude directly confirms the individual’s right to self-determination, i.e. the entitlement of the individual to negotiate her own terms, her own preferences and considerations, in the face of everyday decisions that may or may not have far-reaching consequences on her life. (cf. March, 1994, p. 7 ff.) In fact, this right to self-determination may transcend the conceptualisation of the relational self as proposed by Gergen. Here the implicit ‘agency’ Gergen assumes is transformed into an active agent both performing decisions and accounting for them; his relationally produced ‘I’ is transformed into a ‘reflexive agency’ endowed with a capacity to transcend a given situation. However, to Gergen this version of individual autonomy may appear to belong to the habitus of a recent but already obsolete past. Yet, according to Barrington Moore this performance of individual selfdetermination is closely associated with the development of a dialectics of what should be considered ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ in a formal sense of the word. (cf. also Giddens, 1991, p. 149 ff.) To him this dialectic of individual empowerment and formal authority even becomes explicit with some very early varieties of public authority. In his reasoning — and in partial agreement with Elias, although not openly referring to his work — this public authority stems among other things from the acknowledgement of a need for an independent authority, superior to the bloodshed associated with the ‘informal’ practices of feuds and blood revenge. Elias — and in his turn he could have related to Moore — probably would agree that a monopoly of violence is essential to this sort of autonomy. According to Barrington Moore, such public authority could be performed by religious authorities, with the ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament providing an early case in point, but as a rule such a centralised authority is produced by the authority of a ruler or a state (or both). But to individual ‘subjects’ or ‘citizens’ such legitimate and formalised authority produces a critical edge of its own. Put in general terms, the need for the kind of individual autonomy we are discussing here essentially stems from the need to protect individuals against the ‘arbitrary abuse of authority’ (Moore, 1984, p. 271). One way of safeguarding the individual may be produced by the mutual obligations between ruler and ruled, as was the custom in Ancient China (Moore, 1984, p. 273) but in more contemporary versions it usually is produced by means of the formal but also the practical acknowledgement of an individual ‘right of remonstrance’ or ‘voice’ — in those early days particularly granted to philosophers or prophets, or similar exceptional individuals, as an early precursor of contemporary civil rights. Privacy in this
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context could be associated with the right to heed ‘private opinions’, i.e. opinions that do not agree with the hegemonic point of view. In organisational contexts, this concept of privacy may particularly relate to the individual empowerment in the sense of the individual’s right to participate in the decision-making processes that may affect the course of life of the organisation as a whole. Yet, in practice it usually is associated with the individual participation in the decision making processes that specifically affect a person’s own situation. But even this has to be regarded as a profound change in the general constitution of organisations, as until not too long ago, and particularly where its clients’ rights are concerned, the organisation’s ‘private jurisdiction’ has been considered paramount to any individual considerations. For instance, until very recently the active participation of clients, even in the everyday decision-making processes concerning their own cases, was hardly ever taken for granted by organisations. But still: even the formal acknowledgement of procedures concerning customer complaints, second opinions, informed consent may not provide sufficient room for individuals, to really take their own decisions, or to effectively change the course of events.
Organisational relationships: Intimacy and trust To quite a few authors, trust is becoming an important issue, when discussing organisational life. According to Gutek, for instance, who is writing about contemporary changes in the processes of service delivery, the performance of trust is an absolute prerequisite to long-term contractual relationships between organisations and their clients. Although the parties involved may or may not be expected to be of a more or less equal standing, both are expected to invest sufficiently in the relationship, producing for instance a shared need for a continuous, immediate and mutual exchange of information. And as a consequence, both partners are expected to produce a profound interest in ‘bonds of attachment and trust.’ (Gutek, 1995, p.17) Obviously, in most organisational negotiations I have been discussing here those prerequisites — both equal standing and mutual confidentiality — may or may not be fulfilled, but that is not the point I wish to make. The intriguing part of Gutek’s argument is, I think, that Gutek produces an idealised professionalcustomer relationship, here, that can be characterised by a specific mix of public and private arrangements that may be considered typical of contemporary organisational life. On the one hand this relationship can be conceived as purely contractual. On the other hand, however, the ever present potential of diverging interests between the various parties involved is somehow smoothed over, if not by a version of reserve, then by a quite extraordinary appeal to the individual need to belong, or at least to entertain personal relationships. Gutek thus produces an organisational version of the state of intimacy, usually labelled as ‘ reciprocal trust’.
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Which brings us to the question: does the ‘private sphere’ as we still know it in our culture, have any organisational relevance at all? To be sure, this ‘sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest’ (Mill, (1859) 1975, p. 17) is originally conceptualised as a ‘sphere’ outside the organisation, by definition. But now that the phenomenon of trust is ever so often invoked as an essential characteristic of organisational relationships, we may have to change our considerations. What does it mean, in an organisational context, that one can speak ‘off the record’ in the expectation that the information will not go any further? And what does a concept like organisational ‘loyalty’ actually mean? The state of privacy that applies here is the state that Westin called the state of ‘intimacy’ or ‘trust’. According to Westin this state of privacy creates opportunities to be ‘yourself ’, an expectation that only can be fulfilled on the basis of a mutual unquestioning acceptance. As Giddens informs us, this concept of intimacy, just like that of the ‘purely’ democratic relationship — between partners, parents and children, and between friends — is of a relatively recent origin. To him, in this sort of relationship ‘disclosure is the basic condition of intimacy’ (Giddens, 1999, p. 61) as it deals with things that only intimi are allowed to know and are to keep to themselves. Performing trust or intimacy requires that one ‘shares’ specific matters with a small number of people of one’s own preference, excluding all others. Obviously, this relational quality still does apply to the traditional private sphere, but in organisational settings, it also appears to have a relevance of its own. If we are to believe the recent contributions by Fineman and Albrow, contemporary organisations tend to become more openly ‘emotional’ (Fineman, 1993; Albrow, 1997) and so one’s entitlement to ‘emotional release’ may have to be respected as well. To Elias, the production of this state of privacy is an inevitable by-product of the social habitus associated with contemporary individuality. As he argues, the production of contemporary individuality also involves the ‘privatisation’, or isolation of certain spheres of life from the general intercourse of people. (Elias, 1987c, p. 49) To him, individualisation processes have been produced over a long period of time, in and and through the interdependencies of the surrounding society. Eventually they have produced a habitus by means of which individuals are expected to restrain themselves, and to regulate the expression of their feelings and their natural instincts, (Elias, 1987c, p. 49) and to remove the ‘unrestricted versions’ to a separate sphere. Moore suggests, however, that even some universal physical needs are involved, particularly the need not to be disturbed while performing certain acts — the nearly universal examples according to Moore being sexual intercourse and defecation. (Moore, 1984, p. 276) It even may be considered an infringement of one’s privacy, if one is involuntarily forced to witness these acts.
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Westin particularly stresses the consideration, that the state of intimacy — relating to a private sphere, even within an organisation — serves a need of emotional release. (Westin, 1970, p. 32) This does not entail, of course, that one is allowed to vent one’s animosity or violence more openly in these ‘private’ situations although this may have been the case in the past. On the contrary, the contemporary ‘democratisation’ of personal relationships requires, that acts of violence but also the suspicion of sexual harassment, diminish one’s entitlement to this state of privacy. Similar things are happening to organisational relationships. The concept of the integrity of the body has become a quite familiar theme in relation to medical treatments; and, due to a perceived increase in client violence, some Social Security agencies have intentionally tampered with the soundproof (and consequently ‘private’) quality of their consultation rooms, in order that ‘dangerous clients’ can be dealt with immediately in case of a physical attack. (Zuurmond, 1994, p. 195) Organisational relationships may still mimick familiar relationships, but refrain from the traditional patriarchal family tenets I discussed in the context of ‘our need to belong’. At least ideologically, they may rather focus on the contemporary democratic relationships in which the vulnerabilities of all those present are mutually respected. The tenets of patriarchal authority are replaced by ‘democratic’ concepts like partnership and reciprocal trust. Interestingly, this preoccupation with personal relationships is even reproduced — although in a rather odd manner — in the short term and superficial organisational transactions Gutek calls encounters. (Gutek, 1995, p. 18) Here the mutual expectations of both parties involved are much more limited. So one would not expect the client’s trust to move beyond a general confidence that the organisation will somehow deliver. But in fact even these transactions turn out to be ‘emotionally loaded’ as a consequence of the organisation’s machinations back stage. An example: ‘Some phone-order companies give the entire responsibility for an order to a single agent, the person who answers the telephone. With the help of the computer, this person knows about inventory, is knowledgeable about the product, and interacts with the customer from beginning to end. If there is a problem the single agent can resolve it. (…) As a customer (…) you are awed and delighted when told that although the store is out of your size sweater in blue you can have one in green or another style, delivered Tuesday, and, by the way, that the correction you requested for the returned sushi calendar has been made, and thank you, Mr. Landauer — pronounced correctly.’ (Landauer, 1995, pp. 156–7) A formalised organisational relationship is artificially mimicking an informal encounter between people who know each other well. This transaction may appear both friendly and very accurate, but a client sensitive to his or her individual integrity may think: ‘What else do they know!?’ In
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transactions like these, again, masses of data may be collected and stored back stage; they even may be voluntarily supplied by the clients themselves, during many of these frequent but rather unimpressive encounters. However, it is not only anonymity that is endangered, here: the organisational intimacy and trust that are suggested by this ‘personalisation’ of institutional relationships may very well produce a sense of organisational abuse.
Concluding: The pluriformity of privacy in contemporary organisations Let me state one thing clearly: it is obvious that organisations can’t avoid the selection of clients and personnel and thus the production of ‘inclusion and exclusion’ processes; not can they avoid the production of institutional classifications; and equally indispensable to their functioning are their institutional regimes, including the performance of ‘trust’. These terms even may be considered synonymous with ‘organising’ and ‘organisations’! As it turns out, however, these organisational initiatives may or may not leave any room for individual needs and aspirations and consequently may endanger the various states of privacy I have developed. We should particularly realise that the ‘private jurisdiction’ of organisations still often is considered paramount to any individual’s entitlements and/or interpretations, so even ‘organised individualisation’ may produce some ambiguous effects. From an organisational point of view, then, my original diagram can be reversed, taking the various organisational activities as a starting point, and associating them with the appropriate individual needs and states of privacy and, last but not least, labelling the possible organisational intrusions. To say the least, in its everyday usage the concept of privacy is multi-layered. And, as is generally the case with conceptualisations like these, this multi-layered-ness enhances its relevance in everyday life, as many people, in many possible situations, may be able to associate effectively with at least one of its possible meanings. And thus Diagram 2 also testifies to some of the more problematic consequences of the sheer variety of organisational relationships — and encounters — contemporary individuals are confronted with in the course of their everyday lives. The concept of privacy sensitizes, but cannot explain the various effects of organisational interventions upon individual lives.
And how about Gergen? This brings us to the discussion of the actual reach of Gergen’s conceptualisation of the relational self as the ultimate picture of contemporary individualisation,
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Diagram 2.Organizational activities, individual needs and states of privacy, organisational instructions Organizational activities
Individual needs states of privacy
Organizational intrusions
Performing curiosity/ the organisation’s right to know
Unrestrained expression of one’s individuality/ anonymity
Involuntary identification and accountability
Performing selection
The need to belong/ self-identification
Discrimination
Classification efforts
The need to identify §self-identification
Stigmatisation
Decision-making processes
Empowerment/ selfdetermination and voice
Suppression of individual participation
Performing a regime/ incorporating the individual
Integrity of the individual/ solitude and reserve
Harassment
Performing all-encompassing relationships
Unquestioned acceptance/ intimacy and trust
Betrayal and abuse
processed by the almost all-encompassing ‘virtualisation’ of individual relationships produced by contemporary IT. Does it or does it not render obsolete the more traditional treatments of individuality, based on concepts of individual integrity and/or autonomy and, consequently, on the need for individual privacy, as can be related to Elias, but also to sociologists like Giddens and Barrington Moore? First of all, and unlike Elias, Gergen appears to miss out on all attempts to somehow frame the individual’s ‘physical embodied-ness’ and the individual’s attempts at framing an ‘individual course of life’. In Gergen’s conceptualisation there appears to be no room for the processes of Selbstregulierung Elias associated precisely with the multiple dependencies of modern individuality. Nor does he seem to ‘see’ the concomitant social production of a specific private sphere to save the individual from institutional pressures. Of course, there is no reason to assume that these aspects of privacy cannot be relationally produced as well; one could even argue that the relational self he discusses can only function on the presumption of an individual that is competent to negotiate the differences between her ‘public’ and ‘private’ associations. But for some reason there is no mention, for instance of a need to be intimate with self-chosen others, nor of the ‘inner monitoring’ that is
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usually associated with the performance of an intentional self. Nor of the regulatory effects of being among others that may be sufficiently powerful to profoundly affect one’s ‘strictly individual’ or ‘personal’ intentions. Gergen also tends to ignore that the negotiation processes he discusses typically involve more than one perception of the situation at the same time. Nor does he pay attention to the institutional context in and through which the various concepts of individual autonomy — and of privacy — may be acknowledged and/ or reproduced as a part of often a quite assymetrical — or hierarchical — set of relations. What if an individual fails to impress, or fails to perform the required ‘in-group’ qualifications and consequently suffers exclusion? And how does an individual cope with the dialectics between ‘institutional’ requirements, or with the consequences of power differences and differences in expectations she may be confronted with in the course of her transactions? Here Gergen even misses out on the semiotic bricolage I discussed earlier, that on the one hand reinforces the aptitude of individuals to ‘identify’ and ‘make a difference’ in relation to each other or to an organisation, and yet to ‘experience’, ‘express’, or ‘perform’ their unique individuality in a mutually performed negotiation process. (Cf. Widdicombe, 1998, p. 59 ff.) In Gergen’s conceptualisation, the notion of agency seems to be reduced to the individual’s unquestioned capacity to ‘choose’ and to ‘perform’ countless possible associations, apparently without much room for an individual capacity to transcend the given possibilities or to produce effects of its own. This implies, first, that Gergen’s relationalism even may be suspected of an inherently conservative strain: he implicitly assumes that most options open to the relational individual should be considered as ‘given’ and/or ‘institutionally produced’. More interesting, however, is the question how the individual is capacitated to perform her ‘presentation of self ’ in the face of the often very powerful expectations stemming from other parties in the negotiations and from the organisational environment. For instance, the right to self-determination I have presented in this contribution, may in fact transcend the conceptualisation of a relational self as proposed by Gergen, and transform his implicit ‘agency’ into an active agent performing decisions, and also transform his relationally produced ‘I’ into a ‘reflexive agency’ endowed with a capacity to transcend a given situation and to perform the ‘evaluation’ of its possible consequences for the individual and for society at large. Of course one may very well follow the philosophical gist of Gergen’s argument that ‘it is not individual “I”s that create relationships, but relationships that create the sense of “I”’ (Gergen, 1991, p. 157), and accept the intended criticism of an essentialist ‘individuality’, but even then I am still very interested in its contextualisation. I am still interested in the questions raised by Elias and other sociologists, of how this individuality and its ‘relationships’, including their ambiguities,
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can be put into an evaluative, even a historical perspective.(Cf. Rose, 1991, p.162 ff.) And although I also agree that we have to assume, with Gergen, that most social relations will permanently remain ‘in flux’, yet I still like to relate to the permanent dialectics of individual actions and the enabling and constraining effects of often quite solid-looking institutional arrangements. I think that the gist of my argument is that, in spite of the apparently all-pervasive ‘virtualisation’ of many aspects of contemporary life, I still assume that both the individuals and their institutional surroundings should be considered to be physically, mentally and emotionally ‘there’, continuously negotiating this virtualisation. To the extent that such ‘traditional’ assumptions were also held by Elias, I certainly share his points of view.
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Chapter 5
Figurational sociology, monopolization and corporate governance Ruud Stokvis
Introduction It is not easy to pinpoint the moment when sociologists began to consider social life as separated from economic life. For Weber, in Economy and Society (1922 [1968]), it was still quite normal to consider economic and non-economic processes as completely interrelated and the object of one common method of research. One of the earliest and most influential sociologists who argued for a separation between the study of economic processes and the study of social processes was Talcott Parsons. In the short concluding chapter of The Social System he took the viewpoint that the central concern of sociological theory was with the process of institutionalisation. He meant the learning of social roles and the forms of social control to motivate people to conform to the values and norms related to these roles. According to Parsons, in a modern economy based on monetary transactions the institutionalised system of exchange relationships has become such a highly distinctive complex “that the claim of economic theory to autonomy with respect to it seems quite justified’ (Parsons, 1951, p. 550). Of course the Marxists of the seventies brought the economy back in their analyses of societies. However the situation of the Cold War combined with their dogmatic “materialist” viewpoints created extra resistance against the study of economic phenomena by most conventional sociologists. Only Wallerstein’s work on the world system gained some popularity. For the analysis of the more limited subjects of most sociologists his ideas about the world system are too broad to be very useful. During the sixties and seventies the resistance of sociologists to the study of economic activities was reinforced by the strong position of state governments in economic life. In spite of Polanyi’s warnings about the enduring tensions between market and society (Polanyi, 1954, p. 3), economic processes seemed to be controllable by the state. Politics appeared to be of more consequence for social life than economics. However during the eighties and nineties it became clear that states
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could not control economic life, on the contrary state policies had to be adapted to the realities of economic life. Sociologists were able to study the life situations of the unemployed, about the causes of unemployment they had nothing to say. The real crisis of sociology did not start in the beginning of the seventies when Gouldner announced it in The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. That only was an internal crisis in the field of theoretical perspectives. The real crisis did start during the eighties when sociologists had nothing to say about the economic processes that reshaped the social life of their societies. Since that time we see new efforts to integrate the study of economic and social activities. Probably the most important development in this field is the ethically inspired socio-economics movement (Etzioni, 1988), organised in the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE). At the congresses of this movement a plethora of papers are presented in which the authors try to combine economic and social variables. Until now no more or less unified theory for socio-economics has been developed. Etzioni’s own recent proposals for such a theory are too limited. He stresses the social nature of human beings, but does not offer the possibility to study development as an intrinsic characteristic of societies (Etzioni, 2001). This enduring change is specially pregnant in the societies of late modernity. It is the claim of this chapter that figurational sociology, as developed by Elias, has the characteristics that make it possible to integrate in one sociological theory the ideas of more sociologically inclined classical economists as Adam Smith and Joseph Schumpeter. Such a theory gives sociologists the possibilities to do research in the field of economic phenomena from one consistent theoretical viewpoint. I will demonstrate this with a short analysis of developments in the field of corporate governance.
Figurational sociology Figurational sociologists have tried to label themselves as process sociologists. However this attempt at self-labelling was no success. Yet it indicates the most important characteristic of this form of sociology. It starts from Heraclitus’ believe that “all things are flowing”. This means one can not really speak of the dynamics behind change, for this implicates that stability is the primeval condition and change has to be explained. Change is the all embracing condition of social life. This is quite different from most other forms of sociology. Functionalism, symbolic-interactionism and rational choice theory miss this focus on change. Conventional sociological theory generally starts from the assumption of a society in a kind of dynamic equilibrium. It tries to explain the ways this equilibrium is maintained. From this perspective change has to be explained as forthcoming from external disturbing causes. Also in classical economical theory change is treated as induced
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from forces external to the main economic processes in the field of price formation. The reason to develop a figurational sociological theory of economic life is that it explains phenomena that are not satisfactory explained by economist. Generally this are processes of economic change. The term figuration was introduced by Elias to stress the point that human beings can only exist in relation with other humans (Elias, 1970). As soon as one speaks of individual and society, our vocabularies forces us in the direction of ideas that individuals are conceivable without the societies in which they have been born and socialised and where they live and that societies can be considered independent of the individuals that constitute those societies. People are interdependent. Individuals often experience themselves as autonomous individuals, and this experience should be respected in social life. Yet to come to live and to stay alive, people are in many ways dependent upon others. This interdependence is directly experienced in social interaction and can become very indirect, but is no less important in global relations. It should be a starting point for sociological analysis. The products we use come to us from all over the world, the media makes us enjoy or suffer with people all over the world etc. Generally one can say that in modern times the length, differentiation and complexity of the chains of interdependence have become much larger than before. The term figuration tries to capture this idea of interdependence. One can distinguish many kinds of interdependence (Wilterdink en Van Heerikhuizen, 1984) and the networks of interdependence can be distinguished according to their scale. A figuration is a network of interdependence of a certain kind and scale that can be distinguished from the other networks with which it is related. For the study of economic live this idea of figurations is important because it emphasises the fact that every economic actor always is dependent on many other people and every economic act can be influenced by this dependency. It is directed against the idea of individual actors making rational choices for their activities in economic life. This idea one also meets in Granovetter’s concept of “embeddedness” (Granovetter, 1995). That is another attempt to put economic action in a sociological perspective. However the concept of embeddedness is much less than the idea of interdependence part of a systematic theory of social life. It is in the first place a concept to criticise classical economic analysis. Interdependence always involves power. Every relation of interdependence is characterised by a certain balance of power between the people, organisations or societies involved, that changes with the relation itself. The role of power becomes more obvious in competitive relations than in more co-operative ones. This does not mean that power is absent in that kind of relationships. The attention for the role of power does not mean that economic actors can not act on the basis of rational calculations. Yet the most important factors in their calculations are the
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power balances in their relation with others and the courses of action that are open to them given these balances. That means that to understand the actions of economic actors one has to study the power balances they have to confront. Study of changing balances of power is important to understand processes of monopolisation. Figurational sociology is a broad approach to sociology. Elias’ theory of the civilising process can be considered as a paradigmatic work that demonstrates the usefulness of figurational sociology. It adds to this approach attention to changes in behavioural standards and personality structures. Generally, according to Elias, when the relations between people become more indirect, differentiated and complex they feel more forced to control their emotions and to apply more foresight to their actions. Elias demonstrated this tendency in the transformation of knights into courtiers during the development of France to a national state. It is not difficult to see a parallel with the evolution of the nineteenth century industrial robber barons (Josephson, 1962) into the chief executive officers of more recent times. Monopolisation was studied by Elias especially in connection with processes of state formation, particularly the French state. He analysed how the very fragmented feudal situation in France during the thirteenth century, where the king only possessed nominal power in relation to the feudal chiefs, evolved into a central state with a monopoly on the use of violence and on taxation. In the seventeenth century this enabled the king of France to state: “L’état c’est moi”. According to Elias the tendency to monopolisation always exists in situations in which a number of competitors (states, enterprises) confront each other and have no options to avoid competitions for scarce resources. In that kind of situations, after a certain period the number of competitors will decrease, while the size of the remaining competitors will increase. This tendency he named the “monopoly mechanism” (Elias, 1969a, II, p. 143). Monopolisation is not only important in Elias’ work. For Weber too monopolisation is one of the fundamental processes in political and economic life (Weber, 1922, p. 366). One should study it, not only to learn to fight it, but because it is fundamental to understand the evolution of political as well as economic life.
The tendency to monopolisation in economic life In economics the rise of monopolies is an understudied subject. Economists see monopolies as disturbances of the functioning of market mechanisms. Their main interest is to prevent or to eliminate the formation of monopolies. Their theory on industrial organisation offers many valuable insights in the ways monopolistic
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situations can develop (Scherer, 1980). However what is missing in this theory is a view on monopolisation as a long term process. While conventional economists particularly elaborated Smith’ discussion of the market mechanism (ibid., p. 159), only Schumpeter elaborated his views on “improvements” and monopolies. His choice from Smith’ gold mine paves the way for a sociological theory of economic life. Smith’ book forms a nice combination of realism and idealism. While Smith had an open eye for the monopolistic ambitions of entrepreneurs he urges throughout his book that they should be suppressed, because for the total population the competition that puts the market mechanism at work give much better results than monopolistic actions. This may be the case, but it is no reason to assume that entrepreneurs will not try to acquire monopolistic advantages on their competitors. So, the most realistic way to study entrepreneurs is to look at the ways they try to get these advantages. Economists stressed the idealistic side of Smith work, with the result that their theories generally are not very realistic. The challenge for a more realistic sociological view on economic life is to start from Smith’ realistic observations on the “natural” behaviour of entrepreneurs as summarised in his famous phrase: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices” (ibid., p. 232).
In his discussion of the influences of what he called improvements and what Schumpeter called innovations on the prices of commodities Smith also indicated their potential in the formation of monopolies: “A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly under-stocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate” (ibid., p. 164).
Smith and nearly all the economists after him did not like this monopolistic strategy of entrepreneurs. Yet for each individual entrepreneur, if he has a chance to create a monopoly, it is the most rational way of acting to take that chance. They have never been idealistic priests or politicians -assumed they exist- that looked to the welfare of society. This was also recognised by Smith. Did not he write: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (id., p. 119).
His idealism and his ambitions to liberate economic life from the chains of the mercantilist state, blinded Smith for the fact that it was with regard of their own interest that entrepreneurs “conspired against the public”. One reason for the need
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of a sociological perspective on economic life is that it can offer a theory that is based on actual tendencies in the activities of entrepreneurs and not on an idealistic conception of their actions. Smith was too intelligent not to see the monopolistic tendencies in economic life. However as a liberal he was a little bit too optimistic about the possibility to suppress them.
Schumpeter as a proto-Eliasian Many of the main viewpoints of Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) are easy to place into the figurational sociological framework that can be derived from the works of Elias (Elias, 1969a, 1970). Schumpeter formulated the starting points for a realistic analyses of economic life, in which processes of monopolisation are not treated as deviations from the right and ideal way action in economic life should proceed, but as the natural result of the self-interest on which the actions of entrepreneurs have to be based, if they want to maintain themselves in their competition with others. One can call Schumpeter a proto-Eliasian. He developed a theory about the evolution of economic life that implicitly contained all the fundamental ideas about men and society that later were formulated in the work of Elias. The figurational sociological interpretation of Schumpeter can be summarised in four points: a. The evolution of economic life is based on the competition between enterprises in the same and in competing branches. Their interdependence is based on their competition. Firms have to struggle for survival in competitive figurations with other firms. Schumpeter’s expression “the perennial gale of creative destruction” (Schumpeter, 1976, p. 84) exactly captures how he characterised economic life as an evolutionary process. In the competition between firms those that are not creative enough to introduce successful innovations will perish, while the successful innovators obtain large profits and are able to enlarge their firms. From this selection of losers and winners results the progress of a capitalistic civilisation. Market mechanisms play a secondary role in this evolutionary process. This also is a central point in the economic theory of industrial organisation. The relevance of a market mechanism to understand the relations between producers and consumers is limited. It depends on the nature of the firms in a branch of industry, on the nature of their relations and on the way they approach their potential clients. Only in situations with many small sellers and buyers it operates according to the theory. But these situations do not often arise. Leaders of enterprises try to gain competitive advantages by introducing innovations. This are new ways of performing the activities a firm has to do. Schumpeter distinguishes five main types of innovation: new products, new processes of production, new markets, new supplies and new
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forms of organisation. However any other new way of getting things done that offers competitive advantage can be considered as a Schumpeterian innovation. b. Just as in Elias’ evolutionary view on state formation, monopolisation is central to Schumpeter’s vision on the evolution of economic life. According to Schumpeter, monopolisation not only can have positive functions, it also is a fact of economic life. Large as well as small firms try to obtain monopolistic advantages: “And as regards practically all the finished products and services of industry and trade, it is clear that every grocer, every filling station, every manufacturer of gloves or shaving cream or handsaws has a small and precarious market of his own which he tries — must try- to build up and to keep by price strategy, quality strategy — “product differentiation”- and advertising” (Schumpeter, 1976, p. 79).
He is one of the very few economists with a realistic view on monopoly. With his conception of monopolisation Schumpeter enlarges the field of economic analysis to include activities that generally are not part of economic analysis. He explains that the competition between firms as he conceives it does not just affect the margin of profits and the output of firms, but their foundations and their very lives. Textbook competition is only about prices, quality and sales effort. However what he considers is the competition from new commodities, technologies, sources of supply and new types of organisation. On the long run it is not the competition with prices etc. that counts, but this broader kind of competition.(ibid., p. 84–85). According to Schumpeter the promise of obtaining monopolistic profits is an encouragement for entrepreneurs to risk large investments in new forms of enterprise that take some time to become profitable. In rapidly changing social, economical or political conditions they need means to limit their risks with protective devices as patents, temporary secrecy of production processes or long-term contracts secured in advance (ibid., p. 88). Further he argues that a number of important firms that obtained monopolistic advantages did not make use of their position to rise prices. On the contrary, because of their large investments in innovative products and production processes they contributed to the lowering of prices. This was the case with automobiles and rayon (ibid., p. 90–91). c. Schumpeter did not formulate a broad vision on individuals and the societies they form. Yet the way he relates the actions of entrepreneurs with each other and with the wider society in which they act can easily conceptualised in terms of figurational sociology. The innovations that enterprises try to introduce in their competitive struggles can have wide repercussions on the societal networks of interdependencies. For that reason the introduction of most innovations is accompanied with all kinds of resistance’s of people and organisations
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that feel themselves threatened in their existence. The result is that the characteristics of many innovations partly are shaped by the resistance’s that have been met with their introduction. The central characteristic of entrepreneurship Schumpeter called “getting things done” (ibid., p. 132). Getting things done is difficult because of the resistance’s that arises in the networks of interdependence in which entrepreneurs do have to act. The idea of embeddedness of economic actions is so evident that one does not need to talk about it if one chooses to view economic life in the perspective of figurational sociology. d. The relation between sociogenetic and psychogenetic developments is less elaborated by Schumpeter compared with Elias. But the important point is that the more superficial analysis of Schumpeter fits completely in Elias vision on the civilising process. In Schumpeter’s argumentation that the successes of capitalism will bring its decline and a transformation to socialism, he discusses changes in standards of behaviour and personality structure of individuals in capitalistic societies. He connects these to the disintegration of the bourgeois family. Because of new forms of socialisation individuals lose the capitalistic ethic that enjoins working for the future irrespective of whether or not one is going to harvest the crop oneself (ibid., p. 160). It seems that Schumpeter was not right on this point. The second half of the twentieth century showed a lot of entrepreneurial activity. This does not diminish the soundness of his reasoning, only the soundness of the facts he could take into account.
Corporate governance and the managerial revolution Corporate governance pertains to the division of power between the individuals and organisations, in particular shareholders and top management executives, who decide on the broad strategies of an enterprise. The nature and distribution of rights and obligations in enterprises between shareholders and top managers is framed as a figurational sociological problem if one asks for the social and economic conditions that press for changes in the balance of power between these categories. During the last two decades of the twentieth century the balance seems to move in the advantage of shareholders. In terms of Wildenberg there is a “revolt of the capital market” and “a come back of the entrepreneurs who owns his firm” (Wildenberg, 1990, p. 10–11). According to Lorsch “the 1990s are the decade when empowerment is sweeping corporate boardrooms” (Lorsch 2000, p. 26). I will argue that to understand this development one has to consider the nature of the competition between states and between firms in the present stage of the evolutionary process of economic life. This can be done by applying the figurational
Figurational sociology, monopolization and corporate governance
sociological framework derived from Elias and Schumpeter as presented in the foregoing paragraphs. The framework enables us to see how the friction in the field of corporate governance is connected with world-wide political and economic changes. It shows how corporate governance is linked with monopolisation and how monopolisation is connected with the process of globalisation. Looking for answers on questions of property rights or economic efficiency, lawyers and economists have to reckon with this context. In their search for solutions they have to take into account the new economic and political realities. Since the Second World War in the Netherlands investors lost much of their influence in the enterprises that used their money. One way in which this happened was the issuing of non-voting shares, while keeping the limited number of shares with voting rights in a management controlled administrative office. Another step in diminishing the power of the shareholders was the introduction in 1971 of a law that prescribed that in big enterprises one half of the members of the board of outside directors has to be appointed by the workers council of the enterprise (Raaijmakers et al., 1997, p. 61). This changing power balance was part of a process that happened also in other modern western nations (Wildenberg, 1990: pp. 353–62). In the Netherlands one recent indication for a reversal in this trend are the forty recommendations on corporate governance formulated in 1997 by an important commission, installed by the Dutch Union for Trade in Shares (Vereniging voor Effectenhandel). Gist of these recommendations was that investors should have serious possibilities to influence the policy of enterprises (CCG, 1997, p. 21). One important condition to do so is that they should have possibilities to control the integrity of the governance of an enterprise. That should be transparent for all its stakeholders, with special attention to its investors (ibid.:p. 9). Observers of the American scene also notice a tendency in favour of active shareholder oversight (Pound, 2000, p. 170; Wildenberg, 1990; p. 63). However there is also a contraindication. During the nineties of the twentieth century and the first years of the next one a number op top managers obtained huge increases in their salaries, that, in many cases were augmented by valuable stock-options. An explanation for an relative increase in power of the investors must be compatible with explanations for the rise in incomes of top managers. A change in the balance of power between management and investors to the advantage of investors is remarkable because it runs counter to the idea of a “managerial revolution”. This revolution used to look irreversible because the managing of enterprises, especially big ones, became always more complex and only professional managers would have the abilities for this task. The other important reason was that capital ownership of companies became dispersed among many persons and organisations. These were not able to act toward management as a unity and as far as they were able to do so, they lacked the
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expertise to act independent of the top managers. And as already referred to, with some juridical constructions management was able to protect itself against unwelcome influence of its investors. It was this situation Galbraith referred to when he stated that the “technostructure” owned the power in the large American corporations (Galbraith, 1967).
A new phase in political and economic monopolisation The reaction against the “managerial revolution” is a consequence of a wave of organisational innovations that became important during the last quarter of the twentieth century, when the intensity of competitive relations increased. In this new phase of monopolistic competition states as well as firms combined to be able to act as larger and more powerful entities. The basic condition that underlies these economic and political transformation is the increasing ease of transportation and communication over large distances. The rise of large international markets in which distances do not offer important problems for economic activity has brought national states and state unions in the position that they have to compete for the establishment of business firms within their frontiers (Kapteyn, 1993, p. 76). States opened their frontiers for each others citizens, products and services. Neighbouring states created new supranational unions with a governing body that took over some of the rights and obligations of the old state governments. In the process of globalisation the competition between states to attract enterprises has increased (Reich, 1993). The formation of larger political entities than states generally had mainly economic functions. Yet to realise these functions all kinds of arrangements of a more political nature had to be made. In the competition between states not only, as Reich pointed out, the educational level of the population and the professional qualifications of workers were important, but also the level of taxation and the costs of labour. State governments diminished the deficits on their yearly budgets, even tried to acquire a balanced budget and tried to reduce the state debt in order to lower taxes. The management of firms felt two kinds of pressure to enlarge the scale of activities of their firms. Within the large markets that were created by the unionisation of neighbouring states firms from each participating state began to compete more fiercely than they used to do in other states. A new round of monopolisation started. This process was accelerated because for a number of very big firms it became also possible to act on a real transnational world-wide base. Buying up other firms from other states or continents became the main method to acquire the scale of operations needed for large firms to survive in a globalised world. The money needed for buying firms was ample available on the capital markets, where
Figurational sociology, monopolization and corporate governance
institutional investors were in need for profitable ways to invest. European companies were able to emancipate themselves from the dominance of American firms and a number of firms from Japan and other East-Asian countries entered the competition between the American and European firms (Stokvis, 1995). Firms of each part of the world tried to penetrate in the original markets of their international competitors. Firms organised as conglomerates generally could not muster enough competitive power in each of their divisions to maintain themselves in this new situation. Management sold divisions for which they had not the right organisational capabilities or that lacked the scale necessary to compete successfully. It tried to buy firms or divisions of firms that fitted their abilities or that were active in fields where the firm could act on sufficient scale to be competitive. Divisions and even entire enterprises became commodities in a market for enterprises (Wildenberg, 1990, p. 180)
Financing monopolisation The direct causes for a contra revolution of the investors are relatively simple. Institutional investors became more active in the stock market than they used to be. They controlled large amounts of money and became so important as shareholders that the management of enterprises could not neglect their interests (Wildenberg, 1990, p. 152). At least they felt obliged to inform these investors better than they used to do and sometimes had to adapt their policies too. Also small shareholders became more active in the stock market. This was furthered by the easy access of stock market data on teletext and other devices and the new services offered by banks and investment companies. These shareholders united themselves and their unions started to protect the interests of their members with actions that often could count on much publicity (CCG, 1997, p. 9). The expertise to control and even to manage the big enterprises could be hired from very large consultancy offices. These direct causes leave open some other questions. First it may be asked why the institutional investors became more active in the stock market than they used to be and secondly why the management of big enterprises began to care so much for the value of the stock of their company even in times when they did seem to make enough profit to finance most of their own investments and bank credit was available on easy terms. For the institutional investors the balancing of state-budgets and paying of the state debt diminished the possibilities to invest in state obligations. Those who used to invest in these obligations acquired liquid money as far as the states diminished their debts. This save opportunity for investors, with its guarantees from the state governments is vanishing. The institutional investors had to look
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for other opportunities. The stock market offered them ample opportunities, but more risks too. One of the means to diminish these risks is to urge the enterprises that they inform their investors as good as is possible (Raaijmakers et al., 1997, p. 31). The arrival of big institutional investors in business changed one of the basic conditions that shaped the managerial revolution. This condition was the dispersal of stock among a very large number of small shareholders. None of them was able to put pressure on the management of the big enterprises. However the large institutional investors could obtain a decisive voice in shareholder meetings and more directly on the boards of directors that nominate the top managers (Pound, 2000, p. 166). And as far as the small investors united, their representatives were also able to wield more influence than used to be the case. The big investors nearly had no other choice than to take more active care for their investments. Once they owned a great number of shares in an enterprise, when they did not like the strategies of its management they could not sell their shares without decreasing their price (ibid., p. 30). In a situation in which many institutional investors compete for the shares in enterprises not only stock prices rise, but the management of each firm with rising stock prices does not have to care particularly much for its relations with the investors. It enhances the position of the managers. To understand why in a situation with rising stock prices the management of a firm feels obliged to serve their investors as good as possible, one has to look for a threat to their position that can be met by having good relations with the investors. This threat is a direct result of the process of monopolisation in economic life. In theory stock prices just reflect the relative success of a firm, they do not influence the effectiveness of its productive or marketing operations. Normally, when a firm is profitable, one can expect its stock prices to rise and vice versa. Rising stock prices are advantageous when the management of a firm wants to make large investments and does not want to use bank loans, for example because this does increase the control of a bank over the company. However during the last decade of the twentieth century care for high stock prices seemed to be more permanent than the need for new big investments. Often firms were so profitable that they were able to make large investments from their own financial reserves. The wish to keep stock prices high was derived from other motives. The crucial point seems to be that when the prices of its stock are relatively low in relation to the potential profitability of the firm, the firm itself becomes an attractive target to buy for people or institutions that can control enough money. The management of a firm can never be secure that new owners will keep them on their places. During the eighties groups of investors tried to buy firms because their stock prices indeed where low relative to their assets or their potential profitability (Wildenberg, 1990, p. 10). In 1992 for example prices of stock of Philips, one of the largest electronic concerns in the world and the flagship of
Figurational sociology, monopolization and corporate governance
Dutch industry, had sunk so low that the concern could be bought for $ 2.5 milliard. At that time prices of this order were paid for much smaller companies. Potential buyers were discouraged by a protective construction that made it possible for a Philips controlled foundation to buy so much new stock for a very low price that the foundation would always keep a majority share (Lakeman, 1991, p.228). In the present phase of monopolisation in economics many firms are looking for possibilities to enlarge the scale of their enterprises. To acquire a strong presence in all parts of the world they need the productive, marketing and research facilities of other established firms and when they see a change to do so they will buy these other firms. By trying to keep stock prices high, management protects itself against attempts of the management of other firms to buy their firms and, on the other side, with high valued stock they become in the position to buy other firms with less valued stock. So high stock prices become an important weapon in the struggle for supremacy among firms. Keeping stock prices high depends on the organisational capabilities of management, but one aspect of these capabilities has become the ability to keep good relations with potential and actual investors. To keep as much of their former autonomy as possible, the top management of large firms had to give in to the wishes of capital owners.
Wages for top management A contra indication for the idea that the balance of power between investors and top management is moving to the advantage of investors seems to be the rise in salaries and other forms of reward, such as stock options, for top management. In Holland this became a hot issue at the end of the nineties of the past century. While workers, employees and their union representatives bargained for moderate increases in their salaries, the rewards for top managers multiplied disproportionately (Wilterdink, 1993, p. 15). To understand that this increase in rewards is not a sign of an increase in power of top managers in relation to investors, one has to analyse it from the perspective of the new phase in the process of monopolisation of states and firms. With the advance of free trade zones states compete for the establishment of the factories and offices of firms on their territories. These contribute to the employment opportunities for the population. To become or remain attractive for the establishments of firms it is important not only that the level of taxation is attractive for firms but also the level of labour costs. This means that state governments use their influence to keep increases in wages as small as possible. Trade unions co-operate with this policy because for them employment opportunity is more important than high wages. At the same time in the process of monopolisation in
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economic life firms become more internationally oriented. The composition of the boards of large enterprises becomes more international. The level of rewards of top managers is based on the international competition between firms for high quality managers (ibid., p. 32). The reference groups of top managers are not the workers in their own country but the top managers from other countries, especially the highly rewarded top managers in the United States. The result is that changes in the level of their rewards follows a completely different pattern than the salaries of most workers and employees. However this does not mean, as Wilterdink believes (ibid., p. 32), that the high rewards they are able to obtain are the result of a strengthening of their position in their firms in relation to their investors. It is only a sign of an increase in power in relation to the state, trade unions and employee councils. If top managers do not obtain results that satisfy the owners of their firms they are easily removed, just like highly paid soccer professionals that do not satisfy the board of their clubs. Only on the surface these rewards look as a contra indication for the idea that the power balance between investors and top management has changed to the advantage of the investors.
Conclusion Those who study economic processes and especially the behaviour of the firms involved in those processes, students of industrial organisation, institutional economics, socio-economics and economic sociology, have a great deal in common in the approach to their subject. Much of this common ground can be covered with Schumpeter’s evolutionary interpretation of economic life. This interpretation coincides completely with what one might call the basic characteristics of figurational sociology. This is a more abstract theory, but for Schumpeter as well as for Elias processes of monopolisation are central to understand long term developments in politics and economics. The more abstract character of the main principles of figurational sociology makes it possible to study in the field of economics all kinds of developments, that have not been covered by Schumpeter, according to the same principles as the objects he did cover. In this article this was demonstrated for the subject of “corporate governance”. Relations between management and investors are framed in terms of power balances that depend on the changing interdependencies within the world-wide figurations of states and enterprises. Figurational sociology enables the analyst to connect developments on the level of particular firms with those on the level of international politics and economics. One needs a wide ranching perspective like this to be able to asses the forces behind a reversal of the “managerial revolution”.
Chapter 6
Boundary behaviour and organizational dynamics Tor Hernes
This chapter draws upon some of Norbert Elias’ thoughts on social groups in developing perspectives on boundary behaviour in organizations. Boundaries are conceptualised as areas of potential tensions and change, where existing organizational orders are subjected to erosion. Elias’ work is useful for understanding such processes, as it assumes interaction between the individual and social structure. Elias argues that rather than to search for explanations of change among specific actors, in specific states of social structure or in origins of processes, it makes more sense to search for explanations in the interaction between individual and structure, with the understanding that individual and structure are perpetually in a state of transformation. Central is the assumption that while the individual is formed by the structure in which he is embedded, he takes part in (re) forming the structure in turn. The focus on boundaries in this paper is done from the tenet that boundaries form the basis of orders, hence that change takes place through erosion of the order at the boundaries. Erosions take place through transgression of organizational limits as individuals come to be confronted with conflicting norms, views and affiliations. This makes boundary zones risky areas while embodying potential for organizational change. Thus the argument here, is that increased attention should be given to micro level processes in boundary zones of organizations, which enable people to wield influence on organizational decision processes. The point is made with the help of empirical illustrations of boundary transgression from interviews held with persons from four different organizations.
Introduction
“One could spend a lifetime on nothing but boundaries. This would be worthwhile work.” Edward T. Hall (1996)
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The citation, taken from an anthology in social anthropology edited by Deborah Pellow, reflects a growing interest in boundary issues and corresponding systematic research efforts to study boundaries as phenomena in their own right. Epstein (1997) notes in particular that the interest in boundaries has attracted renewed interest in the social sciences in the past decade. The interest may be ascribed changes in national and international orders, such as the tensions between nation states and supranational mechanisms made evident by events such as the EU mad cow affair and the Balkan crisis. The boundary phenomenon has attracted the interest of researchers in disciplines as varied as political geography (e.g. Paasi, 1996), sociology (e.g. Abbott, 1995; Giddens, 1984), gender studies (e.g. Gerson and Peiss (1985) economics (Coase, 1937), political science (e.g. Shapiro HackerCordón, 1999) and linguistics (Gal and Irvine, 1995). Linguistically the word “boundary” signifies, among other things, a “limit-line” (The Concise Oxford Dictionary), such as edge, wall or fence (Longman). The use of boundaries in the study of organizations may be sorted under three broad categories. At a conceptual level, boundaries are used as a means of analytic convenience (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978: 30). They allow breaking up otherwise entangled entities in analytically manageable units. It has facilitated much of the work in systems theory, which has been explicitly premised on the assumption of organizations as being differentiated from their environments by some sort of boundary (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). The bounding of elements has allowed actions and reactions to be attributed identifiable parts and thus to enable causalities and correlations to be established. This can be seen in studies such as population ecology (e.g. Hannan and Freeman 1989), new institutionalism (e.g. Scott and Christensen, 1995) and organizational sociology (Ahrne, 1994), where organizations are modelled as bounded systems so as to distinguish them, at least analytically, from their environments. Second, boundaries are used as a means of understanding organizational actions. Works demonstrate how organizations establish boundary spanning mechanisms for buffering their core activities (Thompson, 1967), how they adjust their boundaries to co-opt influential persons from the institutional environment (Selznick, 1949), how they interact with the wider environment to attract resources (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978) or to attain legitimacy (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Third, boundaries are used to understand behaviour. Organizations draw boundaries to organize behaviour of people. The boundaries represent in various ways the organization’s outer tolerance limits for what are acceptable actions and behaviour among organization members. This is done in different ways, as will be shown below. It is at this third level of analysis, i.e. the behavioural implications of boundaries, that the thrust of this paper is aimed. We will therefore focus the analysis explicitly on behavioural implications of boundaries.
Boundary behaviour and organizational dynamics
Boundaries in contemporary organization studies The concept of ‘boundary’1 has not been held in high currency in organization studies in the past couple of decades. For example, the almost 700 pages long Handbook of Organizations (Clegg, Hardy and Nord, 1996) does not include the term ‘boundary’ in the otherwise comprehensive alphabetical index. This may seem curious at first sight, given that the boundary concept has historically been almost inextricably linked to the idea of ‘organization’. Indeed, students of social groups maintain it is hard to talk about groups without invoking the concept of boundaries (Berg and Smith, 1990, p. 115). Major and widely cited works, such as Parsons (1951), Katz and Kahn (1978), Thompson (1967) and Scott (1998) consider boundaries to be integral to ‘organization’. Still, there are (surprisingly) few studies published in the past two decades that seem to think boundaries worthy of exclusive attention. The relative silence about boundaries may be explained by the more general development in organization studies in the last couple of decades where, with a few notable exceptions (e.g. Donaldson, 1996) the trend has been away from structural explanations and towards interactionist and constructivist studies, an early impetus being Weick’s (1979) appeal to shun the noun ‘organization’ in favour of the verb ‘organizing’. At organization level, process has been favoured over structure, as structure has been seen to represent a paradigm of positivism and dominance (Benson, 1977). Emerging forms of organization, such as “chains”, “networks”, “clusters” and other post-Fordist forms have been used as arguments that we are entering an era where process and not structure dominates (Clegg and Hardy, 1996). In this development, emerging theories such as critical theory and postmodernism have been offered as counter positions to structuralist perspectives, and little has been spared in the efforts to argue that organization is something that should be seen as “becoming” rather than “being”. Partly for this reason, the last two decades have witnessed a distancing away from structural explanations, which has left little room for middle ground. Some distancing may have been necessary to counter very strongly embedded paradigms, but the same distancing may also have discouraged the development of composite perspectives. As Rorty (1994) formulates it,“…if we don’t want something like Parsons we have to take something like Foucault — that overcoming the deficiencies of Weber’s Zweckrationalität requires going all the way, repudiating the will to truth.” The boundary concept has been associated with structuralist perspectives, and for good reason. Parsons’ (1951) definition of a social system was exactly that it was a “boundary maintaining system”. In other words, the boundary drawn between functions against a common external environment formed the very raison d’être
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for the organization. In a related area, systems theory used the boundary as an analytical means for drawing lines between parts of the overall system. Weber’s bureaucracy was premised on the drawing of boundaries (Brunsson and Olsen, 1998), such as to separate the official from his private sphere and thus to make it probable that he applied objective criteria in his work. Weber (1968) is clear about the demarcation made by the boundary of the office: Rather, entrance into an office, including one in the private economy, is considered an acceptance of a specific duty of fealty to the purpose of the office (Amtstreue) in return for the grant of a secure existence. It is decisive for the modern loyalty to an office that, in the pure type, it does not establish a relationship to a person.” (959)
It could be argued that if the boundary concept has been left fallow, it is not for lack of organizational relevance, but for its association with extant ideas about organization. Anti-structuralist thought has not adopted the boundary concept, hence it has led an exile existence as an implicit entity, as something that organizations happen to have to distinguish themselves from the environment, or as the researcher’s means of analytic convenience (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978, p. 30). It has not been rejected, either, maybe because it is hard to see, even in a process view of organizations, how boundaries can be ignored. Nor has it been developed, because of a lack of intellectual parenthood as the pendulum has swung from structuralism to more process oriented perspectives.
Renewed legitimacy through dualism Reed (1997) draws on critical realism in arguing for a “layered” ontology in organization studies. His concern is to incorporate both structure and process as distinct entities in the same theory and thereby avoid what he refers to as the “flat ontologies” of ethnomethodology, actor-network theory and post-structuralism. A ‘dualist’ view of agency and structure is an alternative2 way to the divide between structure and process approaches that has reigned in organization studies in the past couple of decades. Relatively recent approaches in organization studies respond to a dualist perspective that is also referred to as recursivity-based perspectives (Hernes and Bakken, forthcoming), such as autopoietic theory (Luhmann, 1995), structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) and critical realism (Bhaskar, 1978). The gist of the dualist perspective is that agency possesses “its own causal powers which are revealed in its interplay with structure” (p32). Past actions results in structures, which again influence the actions taken. Structure acts both as a barrier to action and as a medium of action, which again serves to maintain or to change
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the structure. This establishes mutual mechanisms of modification between actor and structure: Structure enables people to act, which may recursively modify the structure in turn. Seen through the lens of Elias’ thinking, the concept of ‘boundary’ is applicable to a dualist perspective. First, boundaries can be seen as both process and result; they are continuously socially constructed and reconstructed. In other words, boundaries are not seen as incidental to organization, as suggested by Etzioni (Goffman, 1961). On the contrary, it is legitimate to consider boundary creation to lie at the heart of organization. With Chia (2000) we may view organization as being essentially about framing human activity in time and space. An essential part of this framing, or boundary setting, is about establishing social limits. Through interaction, groups and organizations create and maintain their boundaries in order to have an idea of their identities and as entities capable of acting as a whole (Berg and Smith, 1990, p. 116). Partly for this reason, boundaries are sometimes mentioned in connection with culture (Kunda, 1992). Hence, because boundaries are in part symbolic (this applies also to physical boundaries) the process of construction (or re-, or de-construction) takes place through social interaction (Cohen, 1985). Boundaries are given meaning, not only as demarcations of where a group ends and another begins. They convey meaning of what it means to be part of the group and what this implies in terms of appropriate behaviour. Further, the creation of boundaries of identity relates to the exercise of social power and the maintenance of norms of behaviour. Once created, boundaries may serve to order behaviour, but they also serve as media of influence. People and groups who are able to influence the perceived location of the boundary are in a privileged position to wield organizational influence. This can be seen particularly in historical or longitudinal studies of production of social and physical space. In an extensive discussion of the meaning of ‘social space’, its creation and maintenance, Lefebvre (1991, p. 74) suggests, for example, that “itself the outcome of past actions, social space is what permits fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others and prohibiting yet others.” More concretely on boundaries and groups, Berg and Smith (1990, p. 116) refer to the construction/reification as a paradox: “The paradox is that boundaries simultaneously make it possible for a group to take actions and at the same time limit those actions by what the boundaries define”. It is precisely this inherently paradoxical property of boundaries that connect them to organizational change: boundaries enable individuals to act because they provide a sense of stability and space in which relations, ideas and legitimacy are established. However, as individuals experience the demarcations created by the boundaries, tensions develop which lay the basis for further change. Elias and Dunning (1986) point to the sort of dualism that is created by boundary setting in the case of setting norms and rules
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by arguing that norms and rules are created by human beings in order to remedy specific forms of malfunctioning, but that malfunctioning in turn lead to other changes in norms and rules that govern the conduct of people in groups.
Boundary behaviour, transgression and organizational dynamics In suggesting that the boundary concept be admitted into dualist territory, it takes on qualities that are not commonly attributed to it. Probably most importantly, it invites the boundary concept to take on dynamic qualities. The term ‘dynamic’ here carries a double signification. I mean ‘dynamic’ in the sense that boundaries are not seen as static.3 They are not limited to being immutable entities like factory walls (although walls are also boundaries, both in the symbolic and physical sense), but they are seen as movable and remouldable entities. Some boundaries may indeed remain for long periods of time, whereas others may change overnight. The process of change may vary as well. Some boundaries may erode little by little over time, whereas other may be moved or removed abruptly. Of course, this invites the individual actor of the group into the analysis. An organization’s boundary is often stipulated by the researcher to make the analysis manageable (somewhere a line has to be drawn if one is to make any sense of what is organization and what is environment). However, as we descend into the realm of the organization, neither the location nor the nature of the boundary is the same for everyone, nor is the boundary the same for every situation. I also mean ‘dynamic’ in the sense that they engender social dynamics. In their reified state, boundaries are both media of order and disorder. On the one hand they provide shelter for groups; they provide a sense of security and comfort in helping to make social life predictable and ordered. On the other hand, boundaries, whether they are immutable structures or symbolic demarcations of identity, can be seen to engender reactions simply because they are there or because they are being constructed. Literature tells us how this may work in a variety of ways. Camus’ novel “The Plague” shows how a town struck by the plague closes its walls to the outside world to prevent further contamination, and how the closing off of the town leads to various attempts among the population to negotiate the city walls. A different tale, in Umberto Eco’s book “The Island from the Day Before”, relates how European nations in the seventeenth century competed in the discovery of the ultimate meridian, the crossing of which was thought to permit exact navigation and consequently mastery of the seas. Both the wall of Camus and the ultimate meridian of Eco symbolise thresholds holding promise of something unknown, yet tempting. As such, boundaries may invite transgression or conversely they may act as deterrents to transgression. In the first instance they open up for change, in the second they order behaviour, actions and cognition.
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In organizations, bureaucratic rule has been held up as deterrents that stifle initiative and creativity. This means that they affect cognition and actions by their very presence. Maybe for this reason, the removal of boundaries associated with bureaucratic rule in organizations has been heralded with such force by management writers referred to by Lewin and Stephens (1993, p. 402) as “bureaucracy busters”. We may envisage at least two types of limits and corresponding dynamics formed by organizational boundaries. As structural limits, boundaries invite transgression as people find that the boundaries block co-operation. As social tolerance limits (Harshbarger, 1973), boundaries are located in the margins of the social system, and the margins exhibit two characteristics. First, they are dangerous places, as the anthropologist Mary Douglas (1966) points out in her book “Purity and danger”. As places of danger they tempt those who wish to test the limits of the legitimate. Second, boundaries signal thresholds to an external world where alternative statuses and truths reign. At these edges, or ‘fringes’, influence may be exercised as members connect with other sets of norms. This may threaten the group because those who have championed the “ruling rules” may see the basis of their influence eroded. As Douglas (1966, p. 114) formulates it, “There is energy [society’s] margins and unstructured areas”. By negotiating edges organization members experience alternative worldviews. In connection with structural change, for example, Greenwood and Hinings (1995, p. 1045) ask if members who cross the organizational boundary and come into contact with new ideas and possibilities are not more likely to question existing organizational arrangements. By inference, tangling with boundaries contains seeds of change. What we know relatively little about, are the dynamics that take place as result of boundaries and how such dynamics might influence organizational change. Some of the most illustrating and telling data may often be provided by historians. Greek historian Herodotus shows how boundary transgression perpetrated by two individuals might have impacted upon the early history of European civilization.4 As it happens, the story is about boundary dynamics and organizational influence. By transgressing covertly the structural/social boundaries between two armies, a messenger manages with the support of his commander (Themistocles) to make both armies act on false information, the ultimate aim of Themistocles being to hold the Greek army together in the defence of Athens at Salamis. Themistocles was anxious that by retreating from Salamis, some of the muchneeded commanders, notably the Peloponnesians, would defect and leave the rest to be overrun by the Persians at Salamis. Herodotus (1972, p. 550): At this point Themistocles, feeling that he would be outvoted by the Peloponnesians, slipped quietly away from the meeting and sent a man [Sicinnus] over in a boat to the Persian fleet, with instructions upon
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what to say when he got there. …Sicinnus made his way to the Persian commanders and said: ‘I am the bearer of a secret communication from the Athenian commander, who is a well-wisher to your king and hopes for a Persian victory. He has told me to report to you that the Greeks are afraid and are planning to slip away. Only prevent them from slipping through your fingers, and you have at this moment an unparalleled success. They are at daggers drawn with each other, and will offer no opposition — on the contrary, you will see the pro-Persians amongst them fighting the rest.’ His message delivered, Sicinnus lost no time in getting away. The Persians believed what he had told them, and proceeded to … an encircling movement … The Greek commanders at Salamis were still at loggerheads. They did not know that the enemy ships had blocked their escape at both ends of the channel. Aristides [an Athenian] went to where the conference was being held and, standing outside, called for Themistocles. … [Themistocles]“… If I tell them, they will think I have invented it and will not believe me. Please, then, go in and make the report yourself.” … Aristides accordingly went in and made his report, saying he had come from Aegina and had been hard put to it to slip though the blockading enemy fleet, as the entire Greek force was surrounded. He advised them, therefore, to prepare at once to repel an attack… At dawn the fighting men were assembled and Themistocles was chosen to address them.’
Herodotus’ story describes one way of negotiating boundaries, which we may refer to as transgression. It illustrates on the one hand how boundaries contain processes and beliefs in groups; the commanders ignored that the boundary demarcating the armies had been crossed, and hence decisions were made in the belief that their assumptions about the enemy’s positions were correct. In a way, the boundaries of their beliefs corresponded to the boundaries between the armies. On the other hand, the story demonstrates how the existence of boundaries permitted those who crossed them to influence decisions in the group. Through covert behaviour they misled the perceptions of the group as to where the boundaries were drawn between the two armies. This particular story is thus an illustration of deceptive behaviour, of what we may call ‘covert transgression’. It is important not to assume that this is a description of what constitutes boundary dynamics, but that it is one illustration of how boundaries contribute towards certain dynamics. A fuller account of boundary generated behaviour needs to work from a broader basis, notable by studying overt as well as covert behaviour and collective as well as individual behaviour.
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Four cases of boundary transgression and organization change and non-change As part of my investigative work on boundary related behaviour, I have interviewed four longstanding friends, all of whom I have known for 10 years or more. The choice of interviewing close friends was made to make it easier to obtain information on covert as well as overt behaviour. Even though they manifestly trusted me, some of the information was hard to obtain from them, because it was obvious that they would be disclosing illicit actions. One of them, for example, would not take the risk of sending me written information electronically of fear of leaks. Some reactions indicated clearly that the issue was both taboo and at the same time present, and at times an important part of their work.5 One of them said cryptically, “you know, (at the edges) is where the real action takes place”. Over a period of 12 months I met with them 2–3 times. At the end of the period I wrote a summary of the discussions with all of them, which they were all invited to read and comment on. Based on their comments, the accounts were revised. The context within which the informants worked varied considerably. Table 1 sums up some salient features. Table 1.The persons and organizations in the survey. Type of organization Observations on norms Status in relation to the unit studied The UN official
International organi- bureaucratic, strong adviser, no particular zation norms of adherence to personnel responsibility hierarchy
The ministry adviser Public administration strong social norms of behaviour
adviser, no particular personnel responsibility
The bank manager Commercial, private sector
highly regulated struc- middle management ture and behaviour within the unit
The headmaster
informal, congenial
School
responsible for the unit
The empirical data used in the paper are not intended to constitute a valid quantitative base from which testable propositions can be derived. Nor is it considered a “thick” base, such as can be derived from ethnographic data. In other words, the data are not to be attributed autonomous evidential status. Rather, they are meant to serve as illustrations that position the choice of actions of individuals finding themselves in boundary situations in organizations. Given that the empirical base is thin in relation to the complexity that the constructs represent, the accounts
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and the profiles making up the empirical material aim to assist in the discovery of relations rather than constitute their scientific validation (Lindblom, 1987).
Drawing on Elias in explaining boundary behaviour In the following, I will concentrate on three aspects of social groups which are central to the thoughts of Elias, and which appear useful for understanding boundary dynamics. For each of them I will weave empirical illustrations from interviews held with the four persons into the theoretical discussion.
Civilizing processes — the learning of secondary rules The civilizing process in Elias’ work is much about the convergence of social forces in groups that serve to stabilise internal conditions while protecting the group outwards. What is being “civilized” is members’ behaviour, or “etiquette”. Contrary from being some side effect of a social order, etiquette is intertwined with it. The relationship between the two may be described as a sort of “double bind” (Bateson, 1972) in the sense that etiquette cannot be broken because breach of etiquette would signal upsetting the social ordering, i.e. the power balance between important groups. The “etiquette” corresponds to the expected behaviour that people perform because it is pertinent to their roles in society. Sartre’s (1966, in Burrell and Morgan, 1979, p. 305) penetrating observations of a waiter in a Parisian café illustrates the point quite well: “Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes towards the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes, expresses an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automation while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tightrope walker by putting in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand. All his behaviour seems to us a game. ……… But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: He is playing at being a waiter in a café. There is nothing there to surprise us.”
Translated into the world of organizations, the civilizing of members is similar to the development of organization specific cultural rules of behaviour. Although there are different interpretations about the meaning of ‘culture’, it is by many associated with a regulation of behaviour through normative control (Kunda, 1992). Members learn to live by these norms and not overtly transgress the boundaries they describe. The adherence is done through overt behaviour, where
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members learn to act in conformity to the roles appropriate to the norms of the particular organization. Kunda (1992, p. 156) makes this point explicitly from detailed observations in the organization he labels “Tech”: “The most dominant response to the exertion of symbolic power in the context of ritual life at Tech is the expression of role embracement; participants express their acceptance of the member role, including not only the prescribed behaviours but, more crucially, the beliefs one must espouse and the emotions one is to experience and display.”
The behavioural codes exist before the individual enters the organization and the individual will normally internalise them as an organizational member (van Maanen and Schein, 1979). Social norms act to preserve the organization in an uncertain environment. Since the environment consists of other groups, an important part of the development of norms consist of the creation of the “otherness” (Harvey, 1990); projecting characteristics onto external groups in order to preserve internal cohesion and a sense of identity. In Elias’ writings we find this in the idea of “group charisma” and “group disgrace” (Elias and Scotson, 1994), which brings to our attention the importance of processes of social sealing as groups establish identities distinguished from other groups. Individuals become impregnated by the “we-image” (Elias, 1991a) of the group or organization, which they learn not to upset through self-regulation and adherence to etiquette. In my probes into boundary behaviour, the adherence to etiquette came out quite clearly in three of the organizations, all three of which are relatively formalistic cultures. The ministry adviser works in a ministry of foreign affairs, where he describes the etiquette as being much about “old diplomatic protocol”; prime is put on polite behaviour and overt disagreement is avoided. In line with this etiquette, decisions are supposedly made based on internal agreement. He claims to adhere to this code of behaviour, although covertly he breaks out of the bounds of the organization to form allegiances with actors outside the ministry in order to get things his way internally. In a similar way, the UN official abides overtly by bureaucratic rules, the very rules he breaks in transgressing structural boundaries. These two persons work in organizations with primarily social objectives. The bank manager, on the other hand, deals with large company clients in a commercial bank whose objectives are wholly financial. Work is relatively heavily regulated through systems, as errors are fatal and so is any loss of faith on the part of the clients. Within this atmosphere the bank manager claims not to transgress important boundaries, but she emphasizes the importance of adhering to the behavioural norms of banking, in particular with respect to secrecy and discretion. Of the four informants, these three work in the most “regulated” cultures in terms of behaviour. The school headmaster puts significantly less emphasis on behavioural aspects of his work.
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The attitudes taken towards what we may call “etiquette” were that it was partly a game that was played to remain a legitimate member of the organization. The term ‘game’ carries a notion of deception, which is not really taking it too far. Adhering to norms is not done with complete and deliberate detachment in the way that Goffman (1959) draws a line between backstage and front stage behaviour. Nor, on the other hand, is the behaviour a sign of embeddedness of norms to the extent that they impregnate the hearts and minds of members, which students of organizational culture might lead us to think. Between these “extreme” possibilities — the detached and manipulative on the one end and the obedient and indoctrinated at the other end — the compliance with etiquette seems to lie somewhere along the scale. Elias’ metaphor as dancing for social order seems somehow to make sense, although the comparison will not be pursued further here. However, as we shall see, the sealing processes in groups create tensions and mechanisms of change.
Differentiation and centrifugal forces — the outward pull on organization members The evolution of society brings with it, Elias points out, an increasing variety of functions of specialization. Other sociologists make this point as well. Durkheim (1997) and Habermas (1987), for example, point out the increasing ‘functional interdependencies’ (Habermas, 1987) accompanying the transition from traditional to modern societies. A point of Elias’ is that industrial development in particular contributed to longer chains of interdependence between individuals over increasing distances (Goudsblom and Mennell, 1998, p. 98). The point is of course no less pertinent in today’s globalized work environment where, on the one hand, the mobility of workers increases sharply while, on the other hand, communication technologies enable links between people to be maintained. Bonds between individuals may be weaker than in earlier times, but they may exercise as much or even more outward pull on organization members as the loyalty to organizations decreases with shorter employment contracts. A marked effect of increased differentiation is that individuals in organizations are subjected to multiple bonds to external bodies. External bonds subject individuals to competing loyalties between external and internal forces.6 These external bonds may be of an ethnic, a national, professional, institutional or personal nature. With the proliferation of external affiliations, it is reasonable to say that an increasing number of people find themselves in what we may refer to as ‘boundary situations’. The interviews revealed that some of the persons found themselves in areas of tension between organizational norms on the one side of the boundary, and adherence to externally generated forces on the other side. Three of the accounts illustrate two quite different types of factors that created tensions. The ministry
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adviser and the UN official found themselves in situations where their personal ideological convictions differed with that which was practiced by their organizational units. The ministry adviser, who has a background in social sciences, differed with his colleagues and his superior on actions to be adopted by the ministry in relation to developing countries. His convictions are directed towards alleviating social injustice such as inequality and poverty, whereas others favour financial actions, such as to encourage investment and industrial growth. The difference is about ideology and is perceived by him as fundamental. The result of their work, i.e. the contents of their collective report, influences the lives of many people in the receiving countries, hence the stakes are high. The “grass-root” ideology of the interviewed adviser is echoed in external ‘networks’ (his own term) of social scientists to which he is affiliated. These ‘networks’, being well outside the structural boundaries of the organization, represent an outward force on him. As will be related below, he transgresses covertly functional boundaries to respond to the tensions. The UN official experienced a similar tension between organizational actions and his own convictions. The organizational policy was to reach out to developing countries solely by working through public institutions. The official, on the other hand, was convinced that private organizations, being more efficient than public institutions, were better placed as channels of international aid. These convictions came from working extensively with private organizations that evidently are external to the organization’s boundaries. As in the case of the ministry adviser, the tensions caused the official to transgress boundaries. The school headmaster has overall responsibility for the running of the school. As a public institution the school has numerous bodies acting to guarantee democratic governance through participation by a variety of stakeholders, such as parents, unions, pupils, local authorities and national authorities. His major dilemma is not so much related to differing ideologies but rather consists of maintaining some degree of coherence between the actions and decisions of the various bodies within the ideologies of the school. Structural boundaries in terms of membership of the various bodies are established by an act of the Ministry of Education. Whereas tight boundaries between the different bodies would seem ideal in a logic of democratic governance, it is problematic in a management logic of harmonizing decisions into a whole. To avoid the disruptions arising from potentially disparate group decisions, the headmaster resorts to a strategy of “defusing” the boundaries between the bodies.
Social tensions and change — boundaries as fracture lines Boundary “problems” are invoked by tensions between external and internal forces. These tensions form the basis for organizational change, something that
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invites us to examine the processes arising from such tensions. Elias and Dunning (1986) (in Mennell and Goudsblom, 1998) are concerned about the dynamics in social figurations. Behaviour cannot be traced to singular actors who are vested with the largest power. Elias and Dunning refer to the Oedipus complex from Greek legends to illustrate their point. The argument connects to Elias’ concern for the importance of understanding how power is acted out in the dynamics between actors. His example is that a child, although it appears powerless in a parent-child relationship, exercises power through interdependence. With time, the interdependence between actors changes as power balances tip and other factors enter into the game. It is the unfolding of this process of changing interactions, which Elias points out. However, the process of change cannot be reduced to descriptions of different states and the descriptions of change as simply the difference between the states, as Elias points out, which is why he warns against the reduction of processes to states (Elias, 1970). Instead, it is more useful to examine possible causal forces at different levels within the figuration. These forces undergo modification with changes in figuration; hence change is neither definite nor linear, and consequently the pace and consequences of change are unknown to the individual actors, however powerful he or she is.7 The significance of the causal forces existing within the figuration is that change of the figuration is explained partly by the endogenous dynamics of the figuration itself (Goudsblom and Mennell, 1998). In other words, a state of a figuration contains the seeds of its own change. There is a definite similarity between this line of reasoning and the dualist perspective described above. One type of causal forces that leads to change are the tensions arising between social groups — “established and outsiders” — who have different resources of power available to them. This is where we let the boundary concept enter again. When a boundary is established, its presence creates differences between the two sides of the boundary. The differences may consist of many different things, but among the more poignant ones are differences in social rights and access to resources. By defining spaces and thereby areas and rules of inclusion and exclusion, boundaries consequently become arenas of contention (Low, 1996), which again may lead to change. Boundaries will inevitably be wrongly placed for some individuals inside the boundary, and tension arises between individual motives and collective orientations (Meyerson and Scully, 1995; Crozier and Friedberg, 1977), which forces individuals to behave strategically in order not to go too far out of bounds while still satisfying their own motives. Such differences in particular eventually give rise to discontent and lead sometimes to change through a variety of mechanisms. One example of change triggered by enduring boundaries is that which is created by individuals who experience conflict between private and institutional ideologies and who resort to
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what Meyerson and Scully (1995) label “tempered radicalism”. This is covert behaviour which individuals resort to in an attempt to keep a foot on each side of the boundary. Second, boundaries, when drawn, will inevitably be wrongly placed for some situations. As pointed out by Epstein (1989) in the case of gender research, the drawing of boundaries requires investment by social actors. Hence, like organizational orders, they are persistent and cannot be changed at will to suit unanticipated circumstances. Their lack of flexibility invites various forms of negotiation. This point refers back to the (paradoxical) dualism of boundaries suggested earlier: whereas they are created to provide some form of order, their very creation cannot but invite reactions because they create distinctions that were not present before they were drawn. The ministry adviser was able to influence the policy of the ministry his way. He involved his ‘network’ in exerting influence on his superior in a cunning fashion. One of the members of the ‘network’ was a social scientist of international repute. The adviser managed, through various channels, to stage an event where the international expert influenced the views of the superior. The only persons who were not aware of the “coup”, were the superior and the adviser’s colleagues. The boundary was here both obstacle to influence and the medium of influence. It was an obstacle in the sense that it had to be negotiated. On the other hand, once it was negotiated, it became a powerful medium of influence because it had been transgressed covertly. The account bears resemblance with Herodotus’ story above. The UN official employed a similar tactic in exerting influence. In his attempts to bring private organizations on board as channels of aid, he short-circuited the hierarchy through contacts in the department dealing with policy and programming for the organizations. In other words, he transgressed covertly the boundaries of the hierarchical structure. Again, the change is hardly decisive, but still significant. Also in this case did the boundary act as both obstacle and medium of influence. The bank manager worked in an environment with a significant degree of surveillance of adherence to norms. He told of minor transgressions, but none that compromised the running of the bank. On the contrary, his transgressions of a few regulatory rules were done to improve the performance of his unit, and subsequently the bank. What he did, was to obtain information from someone with whom he had attended the banking academy about particular clients. This is breach of good banking practice because it violates the agreement between the bank and the customer. The boundary in question relates not so much to structure, but rather to a cognitive agreement between banks and clients. Between on the one hand a rigid set of regulations and, on the other hand, an organization structure which imposes participation by different groups, the headmaster needed to navigate through numerous decisions while adhering to two
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important issues. First, the issue of administrative efficiency and safety. Second, this particular school’s “ideology” of consistently accentuating the pupils’ positive qualities, of which he was one of the main architects. One particular strategy he used to navigate his way through the different bodies while making sure decisions are in line with these two priorities, was to manipulate boundaries by means of memberships. Although he was required to respect the system of democratic representation (and he does), he was the one person who was by far most involved at all levels of decision. This gave his a unique view of how the different decisions flow between the various bodies, and consequently the possibility to anticipate and hence influence decisions. In a way, he managed his own presence in the various bodies to influence the decisions in the direction he saw as being most beneficial to the school and the constituents. In other words, he influenced where the structural boundaries were perceived as being located for the membership of the various bodies. Thus, in the school’s highest advisory body, of which he was formally the secretary, he exerted influence well beyond the position of secretary: “I could almost make them decide anything”. In other words, what he did is to “import” agendas from other groups, but without disclosing the fact that he did it. The other members of the committee were not (at least explicitly) aware of this and assumed that they made decision within the boundaries of the committee. The influence exerted by the manipulation of boundaries helped him ensure that the school stayed grosso modo within its sets of goals and ideologies.
A brief discussion The accounts illustrate, along with Perrow (1986), Knuf (1990) and Friedland and Alford (1991, p. 254), that boundaries are repeatedly negotiated and subjected to selective interpretation. Contrary to the idea that boundaries form neutral lines between an internal order and the external environment they indicate that boundary zones may be areas of intense social and psychological activity. They suggest that members deal with boundaries in different ways and that, depending on the issue at stake, they transgress some boundaries while keeping within others. For example, outward pull of an ideological character, which is likely to proliferate with the increase in chains of interdependence, is likely to lead to transgression of structural boundaries. This is shown in three of the four accounts. The UN advisor and the Ministry advisor had clear ideological allegiances to the external environment, whereas the headmaster played with boundaries to keep the school within the stipulated ideology. We have also seen that transgressions may influence strategic decisions. Influence may be exerted by manipulating decision makers’
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perceptions of the boundaries within which decisions are de facto made. Although the accounts may not be quantitatively representative, they suggest how boundaries both form obstacle and become media of influence. Social boundaries form norms of behaviour and lay the basis for etiquette, which is rarely broken. Under the surface of etiquette, however, is a world of deviance and clever footwork play to wield influence. When clever footwork enables boundary transgression so that perceptions of the boundary change, organizational orders are eroded. The game is not limited to selfish interpersonal power struggles, but may just as well have to do with wanting to champion legitimate causes.
Conclusion In the foregoing I have worked from the assumption that boundaries are both obstacles to, and media of, organizational influence. I have drawn on some of Elias’ thoughts in assuming that organizations consist of people with an increasing number of connections to the outside world. These are the growing “chains of interdependence” that Elias pointed out. I have also worked from the assumption that the civilizing effects of organizations and the external affiliations combine to create tensions which people inside organizations have are confronted with. Tensions between the inside of a boundary and the outside lead to reactions, which again may lead to organizational change. Elias expressed a pragmatic scepticism towards dichotomization between concepts such as order versus disorder, integration versus disintegration (Elias, 1970). He was concerned that new and better vocabularies be used to be better able to explain social processes. In organization studies we face such a challenge at present in trying to make sense out of the complexities of the so-called post-Fordist organization. No one metaphor will be entirely “right” for describing a particular organization type, or organizing process. Nevertheless, it matters that we try and find metaphors that are somewhere near that which we want to explain. Today’s and future organizations (or what we wish to call them) require terms and imagery that describe some of their more salient aspects. Certainly, the notions of structuralism, which explained quite well Weberian bureaucracies and early twentieth century factories, are no longer our best bets. Neither are processual theories that reject entirely assumptions of any kind of ordering mechanisms. Theories linking boundary behaviour to organizational dynamics offer potential for describing what happens when existing order and human efforts interact, and may be one step towards alternative interpretations of complex organization.
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Part III
Crossing Cultures
The chapters in part three all share an emphasis upon the historical development of organizations in close relation with changing power balances in the societal configuration. A third important factor proves to be the national and international influence of cultural factors: codes of behaviour, standards of knowledge, models of management education and professional identity. Tatjana Globokar builds upon Elias’s argument in order to suggest that the different behavioural characteristics of French court behaviour manners and German bourgeois tradition can be used to account for differences in contemporary work orientation in France and Germany. The French aristocratic pattern had the following characteristics: individual strategies of step-by-step ascension, a need to distinguish oneself from others through a strong hierarchical position, and a habit of acting within self defined territories to master one’s own situation. By contrast, the German bourgeois pattern involved: an assertion of the middle-class through work and professional activities, co-existence of different social groups with precise positions within the professional chain, and an interest on the identity of German middle-class based on work belong to the characteristics of the German socio-historical model. The chapter draws on Elias’s comparative approach to explore the character of French and the German organization. Stephen Chen’s chapter broadens this comparative perspective through his wide-ranging discussion of Chinese business systems. Drawing on a variety of Chinese exemplars, Chen shows how current research suggests stark differences between the institutional structures of Western and Asian business systems. He discusses typologies of different international business systems (e.g. Whitley, 1992; Chen, 1995) and notes that though these typologies are useful as an initial point for analysis, they also have a number of limitations. First, they gloss over the diversity of organizations within each system (e.g. Hung and Whittington, 1997). Secondly, they neglect the importance of political interests, power and ideology in the design and maintenance of business structures (e.g. Wilkinson, 1996). Thirdly, they are largely static and do not consider how different organizational forms have arisen or how they change in response to local conditions.
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Chen attempts to resolve some of these criticisms in the case of Chinese businesses by adopting an historical analysis of social and organizational change in the tradition of Norbert Elias. Using examples from the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan as well mainland China, the paper traces the development of different forms of businesses found among the Chinese community worldwide and shows the need to see them within a historical context that is attentive to economic, political and social issues. Nidhi Srinivas further extends this comparative analysis through his examination of the institutionalisation of North American models of management education and development in the Indian sub-continent. Firstly Srinivas explores the links between management disciplines and the process of state formation and professional-identity. He suggests that Eliasian argument offers a useful conceptual basis for such study. This is because Elias eschewed the micro and macro divides in sociology; while his research on power balances, changing self-identities, and theories of knowledge, anticipated current interest in bridging agency and structure. Srinivas then goes on to describe how in 1959 the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) were started in Calcutta and Ahmedabad, with the assistance of American schools, and thereafter became influential models in the subcontinent. His account focuses on the emergence of IIMs, including changing managerial roles in Indian business, and modernizing imperatives of the post-colonial state. He traces the different actors, interests and networks involved in the process. Srinivas argues that the IIMs influenced class identity because professional affinity came to be predicated on expertise in particular concepts and techniques. The institutes naturalized American theories and practices, in two phases. Initially managerial knowledge was treated as universal, and local traditions were declared obstacles to progress. But later, such naive universalism would be decried, with interpersonal theories, on leadership and motivation, discussed in terms of reinstituting Indian tradition. Srinivas concludes that the creation of the IIMs brought a distinct shift in professional identity, a confluence in the imperatives of nation building and class-identity. His account also shows the contextual basis of managerial knowledge, its vulnerability to shifting patterns in recruitment, government funding and knowledge standards.
Chapter 7
From the socio-historical macro model to organizational behaviour A comparative study of coordination in organizations in France and Germany Tatjana Globokar
In his opening chapter of The Civilising Process, Elias (1994a) analysed the evolution of the French and German bourgeoisie in the 18th century so as to explain the differences between the German notion of “culture” and the French notion of “civilisation”. In doing so, he compared the construction of two contrasting types of behaviour that helped to form, in his view, the national character of each country. Tracing the construction of the two distinct bourgeois identities, Elias pointed out some substantial behavorial elements that, we claim, are still persistent in present-day France and Germany. However, the aim of this chapter is not so much to point out such behavioural differences, but rather to show the fruitfulness of Eliasian analysis. In other words, the ambition of this chapter is to demonstrate the usefulness of a historical “macro-to-micro” and “micro-to-macro” approach to intercultural issues in organizations. In addition I try to link the Eliasian approach to the concept of the “social bond”, since it are the vital components of a “social link” that relate basic values in a society into a “meaningful puzzle”.
The notion of social bond The following hypothesis will be central to this chapter: Each society develops specific characteristics of the social bond that represents the core of its identity (cf. Dosse, 1995). These characteristics correspond to the ways a society has forged its identity through time. And that identity remains essential to the way the members of each society act and behave. What Elias calls national character — developed in the examples of French “civilisation” and German ”culture” — will be considered, then, as the social bond that is constructed in the respective countries of analysis. The notion of social bond is central to our hypotheses because it helps in understanding a number of aspects of the macro-to-micro analysis we propose to develop.
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First of all, it allows us to define where we position our observations. Being “at the core” of the identity of one society, means to summarise the fundamental behaviour that, in that given society, governs all other possible behaviours from the point of view of their legitimacy and sense making. Secondly, the representative fundamental components, which define a specific social bond, persist over time because they express the identity of a certain society and are inseparable from it. By choosing Elias’ analysis of 18th century France and Germany, we deliberately start with the construction of the social bond from a historical point of view. Such an approach gives us the opportunity to test how far a historical approach is justified in analysing current behaviour differences in organizations in different countries. Thirdly, the notion of defining the social bond as the result of historical movements and further identified in numerous manifestations, allows us to establish relationships between these various manifestations. Building a “meaningful puzzle” seems to be a convenient expression for describing this kind of ambition. The need to test the usefulness of a historical approach in organizational behaviour analysis results also from personal experience in intercultural management (Globokar, 1996). I noticed that mutual understanding of behaviour of partners in multinational organizations might increase if specific historical facts are presented as the basis of given behaviour patterns. Such a historical reference gives business partners the opportunity to take into consideration their own as well as the other’s link to the societies they belong to. It makes them reflect upon the meaning of their behaviour and prevents them from simplistic behaviour comparisons that are based on isolated observations turning often into schematic visions provoking contempt, disappointment and tensions. However, in international cross-cultural management research, the study of historical continuities is still underdeveloped. Examining the historical evolution of the research field (Sackmann et al., 1997) one can find some explanation for this fact. In the postwar decades we witnessed the introduction of cultural dimensions in management studies, based on definitions of culture by authors such as Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952), Kroeber and Parsons (1958), Hair et al. (1966), Triandis (1972). Hofstede’s pioneering work Culture’s consequences (1980) began the prevalence of quantitative analysis in cross-cultural management studies. Hofstede never failed to contextualize the scores on his cultural dimensions. He presented numerous supportive examples from the social, political and economical history of the nation(s) concerned. Nonetheless, the quantitative approach in cultural management studies is largely non-dynamic in nature. Partly as a reaction to the quantitative analysis approach, qualitative analysis of national and organizational culture gained dominance in the 1980s. This approach was strongly informed by cultural anthropology. Not only did it make use of ethnographic methods and took advantage of the interpretation of anthropological
From the socio-historical macro model to organizational behaviour
field results (d’Iribarne et al., 1998), it also has been concerned with the role of temporality in modern anthropology (Thomas, 1989). In discussing the continuity of cultural references, Levi-Strauss introduced the notion of “structural elements”. A structural element is “something that gets stored and what a historical observation permits to free progressively” (1958, p.30). Still, however, qualitative researchers are not at ease with the question of the part the historical approach should play in their studies. In some aspects, this situation is partly due to misinterpretations of Clifford Geertz’s perception of the role of history — Geertz being a major influence in current qualitative cultural research. In contrast to those who see Geertz’s systems of meaning as synchronic and defend their value for historians (Sewell, 1999), Geertz himself gives a clear statement on the role of history in anthropological analysis (Geertz, 1968). Although he is clearly aware of the dangers of historical determinism, it is, for him, perfectly legitimate, while observing a state of things, to look for the historical forces that might have produced it. In full approval of Geertz’ standpoint regarding the role of history, we try to combine the results of anthropological fieldwork and historical analysis as undertaken by Elias. Proceeding this way does not mean applying some deterministic historical method but showing that a developmental method makes sense. To claim that the social bond is a historical construction that provides certain coherence in the behaviour of the members of one specific society can easily be misinterpreted as a kind of permanent boundary between progress and tradition. Are human beings able to change and confront new challenges if they are not able to change their fundamental behaviour characteristics? The answer to this question is to be found in the process of socialisation. Human beings as social beings learn in the society in which they grow up the substance of the social bond, which in a certain sense becomes part of their personality. The question is not if they are able to face changes but with what kind of cultural knowledge they can respond to these changes. For that reason I emphasize the importance of the level at which the substance of the social bond is integrated by the individual. Being part of his learning process, it is fixed deeply in his mind, often unconscious and invisible. Therefore the behavioural characteristics of social bond become visible through the comparison between members of different societies. The confrontation of different behaviours acts like a mirror that these members hold up to each other. The surprises, provoked by different reactions, can then become at the same time questions about one’s own origins of behaving, in other words, on characteristics of the social bond one is part of. Leaving beside the ongoing discussion about what exactly defines a social bond (Dosse, 1995), we use this notion because it favours the idea of a permanent transformation of something that possesses its deep roots in the past and might be
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able to explain the existing differences in a more open way. From this point of view, we will define the social bond as the social construction of behavioural characteristics that allow the individual to be integrated and to progress within a given society.
The French court society The work of Elias (Elias, 1994a; 1983) is extremely helpful in analysing the social bond as it developed at the French court. At the French court, economic activities were not considered as noble, which led to that particular political orientation of the bourgeoisie. Integration into this politicized court lifestyle implied a highly developed sense of strategy — not only for personal survival but also, and even more so, for personal advancement. The French bourgeoisie had to be able to adapt rapidly to court manners, i.e. to develop personal skills to act in an appropriate way at any moment in order to be accepted at the court. A personal strategy was needed in order to be accepted by the upper class. The way the individuals built up their social promotion represented the main issue in their struggle. To become part of the court society, the French bourgeoisie had to adopt more than good manners and smooth talking. Adhering to the hierarchical code of the French court, was also essential to the survival of the aristocratic society. Hierarchical positions and statuses have been changing names within the changing society but the meaning remained the same. In the aristocratic society, each hierarchical position had its strict power definition. This principle was directly transplanted into hierarchical structures of rising bourgeois organizations and institutions. While each member of the aristocratic society had a very strictly defined role according to his hierarchical position, the rising bourgeoisie had to invent its roles. Entry into the court environment through political activities gave space enough for such self-definition. In fact, this meant inventing one’s own position within the political sphere. The court life gave enough examples of how to claim and defend individual positions. The individual strategy was intimately connected to the way everybody defined his own role and protected its boundaries. Selfprotection called for careful handling of information thus for limited communication in order to master one’s own situations and territories. Sharing information in a political sphere is dangerous in general but even more in the court environment. The slightest slip could cost one’s head. Therefore the information could only pass between friends and supporters although they were not directly connected to the “affaire”. For security’s sake all others had to be considered as potential enemies or at least as dangerous rivals. Accepted by the court society, political activity was considered as a noble activity and it allowed a distinction from other members of French society that
From the socio-historical macro model to organizational behaviour
were occupied with less noble activities such as agricultural production, manufacturing and trade. Political activity could be considered as an extension of intellectual activity, the first bourgeois offering accepted by the French court. The art of smooth talking, of using sensitive descriptions and “demi-mot” expressions served perfectly its purpose. Following Elias’ statements, the bourgeois behaviour expanded rapidly in the raising middle class and became integrated in the French national character. Corresponding to our analyses, the behaviour that represents this character can be summarized as the individual capacity to handle strategies that allow one to get and to keep a position within a strictly codified hierarchical order. In our interpretation this capacity represents the substance of the social bond in France.
The German middle-class German bourgeoisie evolved in a totally different societal context. It developed in opposition to the German court lifestyle, that was copied from the French one. The struggle to build something “German” and different from the French speaking German court was first of all intellectual. As Elias pointed out, the survival strategy of the raising German bourgeoisie was based on ideals that contested those of the court. This opposition was first of all expressed through the fact that the political activities were exclusively in the hands of the German court so that the German bourgeoisie remained excluded from this sphere. Thus, its interests were oriented toward intellectual, scientific and artistic activities within which it found justification. Its aim was to mobilize the middle-class through writings that favoured not only the German language but also the feeling for knowledge and “natural” behaviour. Compared to the situation in France while the French bourgeoisie tried to behave in the most appropriate way to be adopted by the court, the German bourgeoisie favoured anything that might be in opposition with the court. This opposition struggle called, as Elias pointed out, for radicalism and efficiency. Achievements in science, literature and art were put forward by the French as well as by the German intellectual bourgeoisie. However the role of these achievements differed between the two social contexts. In France, such achievements contributed to the bourgeois integration within the court; in the German environment they were associated with the building up of an autonomous bourgeois class. The conditions of their social acceptance in France corresponded to the conditions of bourgeois integration, while the German bourgeoisie used them for its own emancipation. Thus while the French court, as Elias stated, “colonised” the elements of other social strata, German bourgeoisie kept an authentic relationship
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to its own “production”. In opposition to the court, it chose the university as the place were its identity was to be forged. For Elias, it was the identity of the avantgarde of the German middle-class that reflected in a much more authentic way this class as it was the case in France and determined what appears today as the German national character. The strenght of the German bourgeoisie was not its power, this being kept by the German aristocrats, but its knowledge. The German bourgeoisie did not concentrate on how to get and keep power but how to get and keep knowledge. Its behaviour developed as a function of its struggle. To get knowledge in order to put it in counterbalance to political power meant to be totally devoted to work and its results. But as Elias shows, in order to confront the power of the court, not an individualistic but a collective struggle was necessary. The intellectuals all over the German space cooperated and shared their ideas. There was a common interest based on knowledge and visible achievements. The conflictual character of the German bourgeoisie struggle required a totally opposite kind of behaviour from the one that could be found in the court lifestyle: not smooth talking but a very direct expression of thoughts, not abstract but very practical approaches to the matter, no speeches “à demi-mot” but well spelt-out discourses. To progress in knowledge meant to concentrate on more and more specific fields, to specialise on more and more particular tasks. At the same time to progress in knowledge meant also to exchange and to share with others within the specific area of interest. Respect was paid to those who had more knowledge, not more power. Concentration on the work, in other words, on the task to be resolved, with the participation of the knowledge of all who are concerned with it, became the behaviour that brought together the German bourgeoisie in its struggle. Individuals defined themselves trough their specific knowledge in relation to the know-how necessary for the work to be done. From intellectual achievements to simple working tasks, the substance of the behaviour remained the same: concentrate one’s energy on one’s working result and put in common the knowledge that can lead to this result. The close relation to the task, which calls for sharing of experiences of differently cultivated and skilled individuals, might be defined as the most important behaviour that the German middle-class has carried on and turned into the main substance of the social bond in Germany. There is no doubt that Max Weber’s analyses could bring us to the same conclusion, based on the protestant ethic (Weber, 1930), but the equivalent for French bourgeois evolution would be less precise. Certainly, as Weber explains in his analyses of Catholic ethics, the distance from the material world and the struggle with the spiritual give more space to interpretations of duties and behaviours, i.e. more space for different personal issues.
From the socio-historical macro model to organizational behaviour
But without Elias’ analyses it would be difficult to define the behaviour related to such issues that is specific to the French case.
The personal strategic issue in French organizations Having defined the specific social bonds to which Elias’ work has brought us, we will extend our analysis by discussing a number of aspects of organizational behaviour in France and Germany. As already mentioned above, in the case of France, our purpose is not to reconstruct the analysis of French organizational behaviour. This has been done with brilliance by Philippe d’Iribarne (1989). Our ambition is to analyse the French characteristics of the social bond with specific relation to cooperation as one of the dimensions directly connected with the concept. We will study cooperative behaviour characteristics from the point of view of the information and decision making processes. We defined “the personal strategic issue” as being at the core of the social bond in French society, meaning that this same principle acts also in work relations within French organizations. To carry out our study, we will be interested first of all in behaviour components that favour or stop information flows within organizations. What makes the individual give and receive information in the context where priority is given to the “personal strategic issue”? What kind of information and for which purpose? To answer these questions we have to follow the individual’s position in a French organization. As we elaborated above, his strategic issue calls for selfdefined action territory that allows him to act as much as possible on his own, without the participation of his colleagues and also without control of his superiors. What d’Iribarne calls “the principle of honour” leads to self-defined personal tasks within the precise hierarchical order and behavioural components as established by the Ancien Regime ethics and values. In the sense of personal strategic issue, an interesting piece of information is less of a technical and far more of a “political” character and helps to get access to potential advantages or to avoid potential failures in controlling one’s self defined action territory. Getting information is a continuing process that takes place through discussions and exchanges at any time during work. The individual’s interest goes beyond his working task and leads him towards a constant testing of directions in which he might develop his action. The higher his position the more he is attentive to discussions and talks that become especially intensive after official working hours, when offices are less “controlled” and there is more time available to ring the phone and have some talk with the usual network of good colleagues.
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There are two different ways of obtaining information. There are the usual working meetings where work and other information might involve rich discussions that each participant can use for its own purposes. The art of discussion is to make the talk last so long that a maximum of opinions can be expressed. The hierarchical order defines who is to speak and who is to listen. In the meetings with participants of more or less the same hierarchical level, the non-written rule according to which each participant has to express himself is the result of a competitive spirit that leads everybody to show what he is able to say. A selection is further done automatically between the brilliant speakers, the dangerous rivals and the less interesting rest. The other way to access information is direct exchange between colleagues within a good personal relationship. As d’Iribarne points out, the degree of transparency among those who cooperate is very different according to the quality of the relationship. He underlines the need for a “good contact” and “trust” that makes the information circulate (p. 52): “To act in this world of relationships where anybody who moves away from the “normal” functioning gets very vulnerable (he exposes himself to the risk of losing the autonomy that he is so very much attached to), it is necessary to maintain a relationship based on complete trust.” In fact the origins of such trust relationships might be affective but also and even more so, based on the belonging to one particular group of interest such as the family, an elite school or a profession. From this point of view, the extent and the structure of the cooperation network often does not seem to be directly connected to the task to be fulfilled. Some connections that appear marginal to the task might be the most important information exchanges needed in order to carry out one given activity. The flows of information are strongly affected by the hierarchical order. There are two kinds that differently influence power relationships. The first one is more implicit but no less effective. It is the distinction between the noble and the less noble as a primary hierarchical division whose origins are not difficult to situate in the past. Within the French organization, these two notions design indirectly the classification of a task as well as the power position of a professional status or of a department. According to the French concept of “noble”, activities that call for more intellectual than physical involvement are classified in this category. In this sense there is a strong difference between designing and manufacturing, the design engineer and the production engineer, the design and the production department (d’Iribarne and d’Iribarne, 1987). Those whose activity is considered as “noble” have implicitly a more powerful position and can therefore decide more freely what kind of information they want to pass or keep. Each specific hierarchical structure affects the information flow in the most direct way. There is the question of its transition on its way from the top to the
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bottom and from the bottom up. How much information is “lost” on the way, kept by superiors because it is considered as strategic? How much information the subordinates retain in order to protect themselves? In both ways, strategic issues play an important role even if the purposes of the action are varied. Nevertheless, the importance of the hierarchical order within the French organization is such that it automatically orientates the information flow. Any deviation from it is possible only if the conditions of “trust” and “good contact” exist. Otherwise the information flow runs only within the “chimneys”, a current expression for the vertical information flow within the French organizations with strong hierarchical structures. In such conditions, lateral information flow is very difficult to obtain which further means that lateral cooperation is not a typical behaviour to be found at the core of the social bond in France.
The close relation to the task in German organizations Product oriented behaviour within German organizations is a direct consequence of “the close relation to the task” representing the core of the German social bond. The cooperation possibilities and information flows are conditioned by it and, as we will see, these are quite opposite to the French case. The interest of the individual is to fulfil his working task within the best knowhow conditions. Therefore, he needs to combine the information of all those who might be useful. Regardless of hierarchical status, he will ask for and exchange technical information necessary at any moment to his work. In comparison to the French situation, it is interesting to distinguish here between action and work and further between strategic and technical information. In the French situation, the strategic issue puts the working task in the context of action, in the German context it remains in the context of work. Action calls for larger “space and time”, i.e. for more varied relationships, and the time involved even after official working hours corresponds to the importance of the individual’s status. In comparison to “action”, the notion of work is precise and limited; the working tasks are defined as well as the working territories. The established relationships are directly related to this definition and the time for fulfilling the defined tasks is clearly fixed. Within this frame, working outside official working hours to fulfil the task means not being able to carry it out in time. The distinction between strategic and technical information is of particular importance when seeking to understand the German organizational behaviour. In the French case, the technical information is hidden within the strategic one and the reason for meeting lies first of all in a strategic issue. In the German situation, the exchange of technical information is the main interest. The strategic information
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is here a matter of hierarchy, which has to deal with policy decision-making. The interests and functions are separated as well as the corresponding behaviours. There is no need to seek other information besides what is related precisely to the working task. The work place is silent, nobody looks for extra conversation, and everybody is concentrated on his work. Therefore, the breaks are strictly considered as rest time and, during this time, discussions among colleagues are oriented toward other subjects than work. As Pateau shows very clearly, the need for meeting in German organizations is first of all driven by the need for technical information, the need to find “the real discussion partner to work with him” and the need “to get simple answers to the questions that have been asked” (Pateau, 1994, p. 212, 213). No long discussions are necessary; the participants have precise questions and information to exchange in order to be able to fulfil their tasks. They do not ask for more than that. The speakers are those who have precise information to give, the participants are specialists and speak only if necessary. When Pateau gives a description of a French/German meeting, its composition seems to be directly related to the character of information the partners are looking for. The French send their hierarchy, the Germans their technical specialists and there is no exchange possible. When participating in the meeting, the first follow their “political” and the second their “technical” approach. With the main importance being given to the technical information, the cooperation structure in Germany is built up on other principles than in France. The strategic aspect being secondary and subordinated to technical one, the technical information in the German organization is exchanged directly among individuals concerned by it. There is no need for trust relationships, no strategic advantages or disadvantages are seen at the core of the information. Several hierarchical levels can be concerned at the same time with the same information, which passes from one to another following the sole interest of fulfilling a given task. This means that the cooperation among different hierarchical levels can be established rapidly for a given working purpose. Task oriented, such cooperation puts all needed hierarchical levels in a group that works tightly together. Thus, cooperation in the German organization is based on the exchange of technical know-how and leads therefore to a flexible, transversal type of cooperation. The strategic information is separated from it and is far more hierarchical. The “political” approach being separated from the technical one, it remains out of the specialist’s field and gives the German hierarchical structure the necessary support. But not being at the core of social bond, power based on political information is dominated by power based on technical information and will always be put to the service of the latter. Such a pattern flattens the hierarchical structure because the power position is in this case conditioned by the priorities of know-how. No
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such situation exists in France where, on the contrary, the importance of the strategic information strengthens each hierarchical position continuously.
Global versus specific The importance of strategic issues in organizational behaviour in France broadens the field of individual action, leaving the definition of the working territory to the individual himself. The “political” interest strengthens hierarchy and gives priority to status-authority. This means that the interest in having a given hierarchical status lies in the power of this status that makes carrying out a given action possible. Information is needed to obtain global knowledge of a given situation in order to be able to adopt, at any time, the necessary strategy. In contrast, the task-oriented behaviour in the German organization forces individuals to obtain very specific knowledge about the work they are supposed to carry out. Their interest is protected by a precise task definition and responsibility. Their hierarchical position is bound by their professional capability and specific knowledge. Therefore one can speak of professional authority in German organizations as opposed to status-authority in France. Comparing cooperative capabilities in both contexts, one can claim that in France, because of status-authority, cooperation is more flexible in the decision making process. Permanent information networks — which imply global knowledge of a given situation — allow quick decisions by those who hold important hierarchical positions. According to their status they are able to act without consulting other individuals concerned with the decision. In German organizations, the information will first have been collected from each holder of it and the decision made step by step within the hierarchical structure, through a long and inflexible process. On the other hand, in Germany, professional authority leads to a flexible cooperation on a specific working task. For such a purpose, a ‘lateral’ working team can be set up at any time with participants of all departments and hierarchical levels involved directly with it. The team will meet regularly, if necessary, on the shop floor, in order to exchange the participants’ observations and reactions. In French organizations, as we tried to make clear, this kind of work cooperation is very difficult to obtain. Therefore, when a new working task appears, the normal reaction is to create a position for the individual who will be in charge of this new task. It is up to him to choose the strategy that will enable him to fulfil it. When Frenchmen and Germans work together, they will notice their behavioural differences but do not always possess the tools to understand them. As we can see, the capacities to approach different aspects of cooperation, are developed in
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both societies, each taking advantage of one particular aspect. Intercultural management allows such differences to be identified once they appear in practice and helps to prevent tensions suggesting adopted behavioural patterns. It can help to reduce the tensions that result mostly from misunderstandings. The approach based on the social bond analysis and on the work of Elias, as both developed in this chapter, opens possibilities toward a deeper understanding of different behaviour patterns. It may provide the tools with which each partner is able to seek for the meaning of specific behaviour in specific contexts.
Chapter 8
The evolution οf management theories in China An Eliasian analysis Stephen Chen
Introduction There is now a wealth of research showing that there are significant differences in national culture and institutional structures around the world and that these differences influence theories and styles of management. Culture researchers have shown how differences in national culture are reflected in different management styles (e.g. Hofstede, 1980; Lachmann et al., 1994). Meanwhile institutional researchers have shown how these factors are also reflected in the various types of institutional structures found in Europe, the US and Asia (e.g. Whitley, 1992; Chen, 1995). However, some researchers have criticised these typologies for being too crude and ignoring the diversity of organizations within each system (e.g. Hung and Whittington, 1997) and neglecting the importance of political interests, power and ideology in the design and maintenance of institutional and business structures (e.g. Wilkinson, 1996). Without wishing to ignore the significance of other aspects of Elias’ immensely rich work, the argument presented here is that there is much to be gained from analysing the social and individual processes of development in parallel as illustrated most elegantly in Elias work. Elias takes a broader and longer-term perspective than most social and management theorists and his approach promises to uncover patterns that might otherwise not be evident in a narrow focused, shorter-term analysis. China is particularly suitable for such an analysis because its long history provides a rich source of data for an historically based analysis and also provides an useful contrast to the processes Elias observed in Western civilization. The civilization of China is the oldest continuous civilization in the world with a documented history and culture stretching back 5,000 years. However, for much of its history it
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was isolated from the Western world and the development of society and organizations has taken a quite different path from that in the West. Only relatively recently has it developed the capitalist economic system and business organizations commonly found in the West. Moreover, the form of capitalist system and organizations developed in China exhibit distinctive characteristics compared with those in the West. As Shenkar and von Glinow (1994) suggest, examining how the Chinese context affects the applicability of commonly held Western theories of management could also be a first step in developing a contingency model of management theories in different cultures. By examining how management theories in China have changed over time with social and economic developments, it can better inform us about the historical factors that influence management theories.
Previous explanations of Chinese-style management As Wilkinson (1996) describes, conventional organization theory has failed to explain the organizational forms characteristically found in East Asia, including China. The two main schools of thought that have developed in trying to provide a better explanation are the culturalist and the institutionalist schools. The culturalist school provides a cultural explanation for the modern organizational forms found in East Asia. This stems from the work of Max Weber (1930, 1951), who argued that Western capitalism is founded on the Protestant work ethic, and failed to develop in China owing to the dominance of Confucianism, which perpetuated traditional values and institutions. Other scholars, while accepting Weber’s argument for the cultural basis of economic activity, have rejected the notion that only Western Protestantism is the only or best basis for capitalism and argue that other cultures can give rise to other forms of capitalism. Some scholars (e.g Hall and Xu, 1990) have attempted to describe specific organizational structures and behaviours that arise from Confucian ethics. These are based on ‘five human relationships’ that form the basis of a stable society — father-son, husband-wife, elders-juniors, friend-friend, ruler-minister. These five relationships provide a set of ethical codes that are readily translated into the workplace: loyalty to the ruler translates into company loyalty; the benevolence of parents translates into a benevolent management style; senior-junior relationships translate into an acceptance of hierarchy; and trustworthiness among friends becomes cooperation between co-workers. Confucianism also encompasses values, which Hofstede and Bond (1988) refer to collectively as ‘Confucian dynamism’: perseverance, thrift, a sense of shame and the hierarchical ordering of relationships by status.
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In contrast to the culturalist school, the institutionalist school seeks to explain the variant organizational forms in East Asia through specific institutional arrangements. Although institutional theorists accept that norms and values can play a significant role in shaping organizational structures, they have focused on the significance of the cultural messages transmitted by distinctive institutions such as the family and the state. There are several versions of institutionalist theory (Scott, 1987), but they share a common view of human behaviours and relationships as essentially being socially constructed. Institutionalization is defined as … the social process by which individuals come to accept a shared definition of social reality — a conception whose validity is seen as independent of the actor’s own views or actions but is taken for granted as defining the “way things are” and/or the “way things are to be done”.’ (Scott, 1987, p.496)
In applying institutional theory to Asian business organizations, institutionalists have emphasized different traditions and patterns of industrialization in different societies. In particular they have focused on the role of the state. For example, Hamilton and Biggart (1988) note how following each war: ‘In each case, the first independent regime of the postwar era attempted to legitimize state power by adopting a reformulated model of imperial power of the kind that had existed before industrialization began. Such a model built on the pre-existing normative expectations of political subjects and contained an ideology of rulership.’ (p. 81)
Although cultural and institutional theories have made significant contributions to our understanding of how social institutions such as the state have influenced organizations in East Asia, critics argue that it does not explain why certain norms and values become promulgated. For instance, Hofstede (1980) attributes differences in organizational structures to differences in value systems but this does not explain how different values arise in different cultures. As Wilkinson (1996) points out, another problem is that both the culturalists and institutionalists have tended to gloss over differences between societies. Although they may all have a Chinese cultural heritage, there are differences between organizations in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere. As an example, Wilkinson cites Singapore as a society that seems to have drawn selectively from its own indigenous cultures while taking on elements from Western cultures and elsewhere. Haggard (1994) has suggested that in order to explain the different organizational structures found in Asia it is necessary to consider the political motives of state elites, namely to build support and maintain power. He suggests that the state-business relationship can be conceptualised as an ongoing negotiation in which the state seeks political support or seeks to enforce its power while businesses
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seek to influence or to control the political agenda. Thus, he argues differences between forms of business organization can be found in the different motives of the ruling party. One problem still with this model is that changes in the political elite and organizations do not always proceed perfectly in tandem. There is sometimes a lag between changes in the current political environment and changes in organizational structures. For example, organizations in the former Soviet bloc are still undergoing transformation long after the break up of the Soviet Union. In such cases contingency theories that posit a match between the environment and organizational structures may fail.
The Eliasian method The particular relevance of the work of Elias to this debate stems from his distinctive approach to social analysis. The criticisms of existing theories of Asian management outlined above echo the criticisms made by Elias of the static analytic approach of Talcott Parsons: ‘Parsons and those who see the world as he does cannot understand the need for theories and concepts which ‘include spatial figurations and time sequences of long duration’…They are stuck in a world of ‘short-term statics’…They are blind to the ‘structured backbone’ of ‘development’ with its ‘long-term dynamics’ (Smith, 2001, p. 74).
As Mennell (1992) notes, the escape route first recognised by Elias is to recognise that people are bonded together in a ‘continuum of changes’ through time as well as at any particular moment in time (p. 256). To quote Elias: ‘in many processes of change the unity is not due to any substance which remains unchanged throughout the process, but to the continuity with which one change emerges from another in an unbroken sequence. Take the example of a specific society, the Netherlands in the fifteenth and twentieth centuries — what links them to each other is not so much any core which remains unchanged but the continuity of changes with which the twentieth century society emerged from that of the fifteenth century, reinforced by the fact that it is a remembered continuity.’ (1992, p. 202)
The method suggested by Elias has three features. First, Elias emphasises the primacy of process over structure (Arnason, 1987). In contrast to structuralfunctional theorists in the Parsonian tradition, who have focused on identifying laws derived from a static analysis of social systems, Elias argues for the need to consider changes over time sequences of long duration. Secondly, although he
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himself apparently came to dislike the term, Elias focuses on examining ‘figurations’ or ‘networks of interdependent human beings, with shifting power balances’, in contrast to the approach of many social theorists who focus on examining individuals in isolation or as identical units in a larger system. As Newton (1999) points out, ‘the asymmetry of interdependency networks is likely to condition the deployment of new organizational practices, such as those of organizational psychology, strongly.’ (p. 427) Thirdly, what is also distinctive about Elias’ approach is that it is multilevel, examining the interconnections between social and individual development as shown, for example, by his analysis linking changes in social manners on the one hand with state formation on the other. Elias thus considers not only the changing patterns of relationships between people but also how the constitutions of people themselves change, such as ideas of “I”, “we” and “them” (Bogner, 1986). In common with Elias, I believe there is much to be gained in our understanding of organization and management theory in different societies from such an approach. As Kieser (1994) suggests, such a historical approach adds three things. First, structures and behaviour in organizations reflect culture-specific historical developments. So differences between organizations in different cultures can only be adequately explained by including the historical dimension. Second, the diagnosis and remedies to organizational problems is often ideologically bound. Examining the historical context enables us to better identify and possibly overcome these prejudices. Third, current organizational structures may have arisen as the result of past decisions rather than in response to current environmental demands. The rest of this paper adopts this approach to explaining the variety of forms of Chinese business found today. The analysis is structured as follows. First, the paper highlights major periods of change in Chinese history and philosophy and discusses their impact on social behaviour, individual mores and administrative systems and methods. Reasons why the Western capitalist organizational form was so slow to evolve and what alternative organizational forms developed in their place are discussed. Four major periods in Chinese history are distinguished: – the Imperial era (1500 BC — 1911 AD) characterized by the development of a feudalistic society and organizations based on Confucian and Legalist philosophies – the Republican era (1911–1949) characterized by the fusion of Western democracy with traditional Chinese values exhibited by establishment of a Western style legal system and capitalist forms of organization – the Communist era (1949- 1976) characterized by the adoption of Marxist-
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Leninist dogma culminating in the abolition of capitalist organizations and their replacement by socialist forms of organizations the post-Maoist era (1976-present) characterized by the introduction of freemarket reforms
Arising from these periods, three main types of Chinese capitalist business organization are distinguished: 1. Mainland Chinese — those organizations established in mainland China following the economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiao Ping 2. Taiwanese — those organizations established by mainland Republican Chinese on Taiwan following the Communist revolution in China 3. Hua-Qiao — those organizations established by overseas Chinese, for example, in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia Finally, commonalities and differences among these different organizational forms are highlighted and also compared with Western organizations. Inevitably in attempting to cover such a long history in a short paper, it has been necessary to concentrate only on the key historical developments and many incidental details have had to be glossed over. However, I believe such an approach is justified since the aim is not to prepare a comprehensive account of Chinese history but to describe the major changes in management thinking that have taken place in China and how these changes can be related to the changing social structures.
Management in the Imperial era The earliest written records in China date from the Shang dynasty (ca. 1500 BC — 1000 BC) but the most significant Chinese management thought dates from the Zhou dynasty (1100–221 BC ) when several important philosophers like Confucius, Mo Zi, Han Fei and Lao Zi established the schools of Chinese philosophy that have been significant in forming the Chinese theories of government and management. In order to understand the assumptions behind these theories it is necessary to understand the nature of the social conditions at the time. Consistent with Elias’ theory of the civilizing process, as Chinese society changed from a slave owning society to a feudal society during this period, this was accompanied by a need for greater self-restraint in behaviour. Codes for socially appropriate and acceptable behaviour were written down by scholars in texts very much like the European mediaeval ‘manners books’ studied by Elias. For example, the teachings of Confucius were aimed at laying down codes of conduct for the ‘gentleman’. One of the central principles of this code was the idea of proper behaviour according to status
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(Li), a complex system of rules governing the relationship of man to nature, based on the belief that the spirits of land, wind, and water influence human affairs and that human acts are reflected in acts of nature. According this theory, man is so much a part of the natural order that improper conduct on his part will throw the whole of nature out of joint. The idea of harmony of the elements also extended to social spheres. Thus social harmony was achieved by paying attention to the five cardinal human relationships: the relationships between ruler and subject, between father and son, between elder brother and younger brother, between husband and wife, and between friend and friend. Although many of the restraints placed on social behaviour were similar to those noted by Elias in the West, in one respect there was a significant difference. Unlike attitudes in Western capitalist societies, it was considered shameful to pursue personal gain in Chinese society. The traditional Chinese attitude to profit is illustrated by the following anecdote of the encounter between Mencius and King Wei taken from the book of Mencius. Mencius went to see King Wei of Liang. The King said “You have not considered a thousand Li too far to come, and must therefore have something of profit to offer my kingdom?” Mencius replied “Why must you speak of profit? What I have to offer is humanity and righteousness, nothing more. If a king says, ‘What will profit my kingdom?’, the high officials will say, ‘what will profit our families?’, and the lower officials and commoners will say ‘what will profit ourselves?’ Superiors and inferiors will try to seize profit one from another, and the State will be endangered… Let your Majesty speak only of humanity and righteousness. Why must you speak of profit?”
Nevertheless, despite the institutional and ethical restraints on the accumulation of capital, a merchant class did develop, one of the principle drivers being foreign trade, especially during the Ming dynasty. The growing interest in and demand for Chinese goods such as silk, tea and porcelain, led Western nations such as Great Britain to send diplomatic missions to China in order to seek trading rights. This in turn stimulated the growth of Chinese merchants who could secure such goods. As these merchants became more numerous and widespread, they gradually established merchant communities in commercial centres around the country and then overseas. In 1684 the Ming dynasty lifted the ban on overseas trade and overseas Chinese (Huaqiao) business communities were established throughout South East Asia in places such as the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand, and later Australia, New Zealand and the West. By 1900 it was estimated that there were at least 3 million overseas Chinese, ninety percent of them living in South East Asia (Wickberg, 1999). As Elias and Scotson (1994) showed in their study of the Winston Parva community in the UK, in order to understand the distinctive nature of these
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overseas Chinese communities, we need to examine how they developed over time. These overseas Chinese tended to congregate according to their place of origin and dialect group, with certain countries being favoured by emigrants from certain areas of China. For example, the Philippines was favoured by Hokkien speakers, Thailand by the Teochiu and Vietnam by Cantonese speakers. These communities also tended to organise their activities according to the traditions in their native villages. A Chinese village ordinarily consists of a group of family or kinship units which are dependent on the use of certain land holdings passed down from one generation to the next. Each family household is both a social and an economic unit from which its members obtain their social status and economic security. This practice was carried over to Chinese communities overseas (Redding, 1996). Example of Huaqiao Chinese business: Kin Tye Lung An example of such an overseas Chinese business is Kin Tye Lung, the oldest existing Chinese import and export firm in Hong Kong, founded in the 1850’s by Chen Xuanyi and his brother Xuanming. Both brothers came from the village of Qianxi in the Chaozhou prefecture in the south east of China, where they belonged to the “five families”, a group of uncles and cousins who all claimed descent from the same founding ancestor. In the 1840’s members of the five families including Chen Xuanyi left their village to work as seamen and returned a few years later with enough money to start their own business. Xuanyi, probably with his brother and cousins, founded his own company to import rice from Thailand to Hong Kong and Guangdong province and export local products to Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia. The company flourished, establishing associate companies in Bangkok, Singapore, Shantou and Saigon, and the family became respected members of the business community in Hong Kong and south China. As is typical of many overseas Chinese businesses, the associate companies were run by members of the family, all male and usually of paternal descent. In the Tan Guan Lee associate company in Singapore, for example, although the company employed professionals to manage certain business departments, key financial positions such as the cashier, treasurer, managing director and general manager were all held by family members. Source: Choi, 1998
Similar histories and patterns of management control can be observed in other overseas Chinese businesses dating from this period (Limlingan, 1986). Despite the long history of some overseas Chinese communities, the relative cohesion and insularity of Chinese communities have ensured that organizations in such communities have retained many of the characteristics of those in Imperial China.
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Management in the Republican era Although they have many characteristics in common with the Huaqiao businesses, which have retained much of the Chinese culture dating from Imperial times, businesses in Hong Kong and Taiwan exhibit some distinctive characteristics. In order to understand why it is again necessary to examine the social structure at the time when they were founded. The origins of the typical forms of organization found in Hong Kong and Taiwan date from a later era. By the end of the nineteenth century, whole sections of cities, such as Shanghai, were under foreign control, as were the main transport and trade networks in and out of China. In order to run their vast commercial networks Western enterprises had to create new institutions, such as Western style commercial banks, and train up a class of Chinese workers in new management techniques, such as double entry bookkeeping. This led to the emergence of a new Chinese managerial class allied to the West. Just as influential as Western military and economic power was the impact of Western ideas. The foreigners established new schools and universities to teach the new Chinese workforce created a group of scholars and students that were less interested in the Chinese classics as they were in the ideas of Western thinkers such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The relationship between the Western ruling class and their colonies can be considered as another example of the established-outsider relationship such as the relationship between the Western aristocracy and the bourgeoisie and that between the bourgeoisie and the working class that were analysed at length by Elias. As predicted by Elias, ‘In each of the waves of expansion which occur when the mode of conduct of a small circle spreads to larger rising classes, two phases can be clearly distinguished: a phase of colonialisation or assimilation in which the lower and larger outsider class is clearly inferior and governed by the example of the established upper group which, intentionally or unintentionally, permeates it with its own pattern of conduct, and the second phase of repulsion, differentiation or emancipation, in which the rising group gains perceptibly in social power and selfconfidence’ (Elias, 1994a, p. 507). In Hong Kong, under the control of the British, the process did not progress much beyond the first phase until the recent handover to China in 1997. Although there was little direct state control of business, businesses were strongly influenced by Western values, partly through the British-style educational system and as in other British colonies, many British-educated Chinese sought to mimic the values of their colonial masters. In contrast in mainland China, the first phase of assimilation of Western ideals was followed by a second phase of repulsion and emancipation in the 1930’s. Many Western educated scholars concluded the only way for China to regain its position
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in the world was to overthrow the old regime and to regain control from the foreigners. Among these was Sun Yat-sen who advocated the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic. Sun’s manifesto (San Min Zhu I) proposed three principles to save the country. The first was the Principle of Nationalism. China must win back its sovereignty and unity. The foreigners must be forced out of concessions. China must have all the powers that foreign nations had. The second was the Principle of People’s Democracy. China must be a nation in which the government serves the people and is responsible for leading it. The people must be taught how to read and write and eventually to vote. The third was the Principle of People’s Livelihood. The core industries of China must be nationalised. The Government should assume responsibility for vast industrial sectors and reconstruction of the economy. Sun’s doctrine won support among the new middle-class, particularly in the southern provinces, from overseas Chinese and from sympathetic foreign powers, such as Japan, who saw the weakening of the Imperial regime as an opportunity for economic expansion in China. On the 9th of October 1911 the revolution began with the explosion of a bomb at the headquarters of the Common Advancement Society, a group of revolutionary intellectuals in Wuchang, and when the Imperial police moved in, four battalions of the Army mutinied and took over the town. By December the revolution had spread to all of the provinces and on January 1, 1912 Sun was inaugurated as the first President of the Chinese Republic. The ideology of the ruling Nationalist party combined elements of Chinese tradition and Western ideas, designed to appeal to the traditional Chinese administrative class as well as the emerging Western educated business class. Chinese students who had gone abroad to study returned to China to take advantage of the new business opportunities in such large numbers that the American philosopher John Dewey, who visited China in 1920, commented that the country was “full of Columbia men”. These returned students brought back with them Western democratic ideals as well as Western management methods. Example of Republican Chinese Business: Wing On and Sincere Two well known examples of Chinese enterprises dating from this era are the Wing On and Sincere companies, both of which were able to grow spectacularly in Shanghai and Hong Kong during the 1910’s and 1920’s by adopting Western management methods. Interestingly both were founded by men who had spent time abroad, in both cases Australia, and on returning to China had modelled their respective stores after the well known Sydney store Anthony Hordern and Son. Both were established as limited companies after the Western model and adopted Western style retail techniques such as shop windows, fixed pricing of goods and trained sales staff. However, harking back to Chinese paternalistic traditions, sales staff were expected to attend Christian church services on Sunday
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led by the owner in order to receive moral instruction. Each company also had extensive rules governing their professional activities enforced by fines. (Adapted from Chan, 1996)
The impact of Western influences was also seen in the national institutions established by the Nationalists. The Nationalists also drew eclectically from Western models such as Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, in which business was seen as an extension of the state summarised by the slogan “nation-army-production”. Through state organizations, such as the Commission for National Resources, the leaders of the Nationalist party controlled large sectors of commerce and industry. Many of the new factories were controlled directly or indirectly by members of the four great families — the Chiang family headed by Chiang KaiShek, the Soong family headed by T. V.Soong (who was also Chiang’s brother- inlaw), the Kung family headed by H. H.Kung (who was also a brother-in-law of Chiang) and the Chen family headed by the brothers Chen Li-fu and Chen Guo-fu (nephews of a long-time supporter of Chiang). Through the Central Agricultural Bank they also controlled the network of village moneylenders. Following the Communist Revolution, these personal and business networks were transplanted to Taiwan. For example, even today much of the financial sector in Taiwan remains heavily state controlled while there are strong interlinkages between major companies (Redding, 1996). ‘Among the 50 largest firms, only 15 are single corporation type without belonging to any business group. Among the rest, 18 firms are controlled by one group and 17 firms can be “consolidated” into 7.’ (Chou, 1995, p.219). Example of Taiwanese Chinese business: Cathay Group An example of the close connection between the Nationalist party and business is the Cathay Group. The Cathay business empire was founded by Cai Wanchun, the eldest son of a poor peasant family in southern Taiwan. He came to Taipei at the age of sixteen and began working as a cosmetics salesman for a Japanese company during the Japanese occupation. In 1938 with the personal savings he bought a small department store and then a soy sauce factory. After the war, taking advantage of the vacuum created by the Japanese withdrawal, Cai branched out into real estate, lumber, pottery, and private banking, and in the early 1950’s, together with his brothers, he founded the Cathay business group and took over management of the Tenth Credit Cooperative Association of Taipei in the late 1950’s. The group rapidly expanded and diversified as Taiwan shifted to export-led development in the 1960’s and 1970’s. By the end of 1977, Cai and his brothers owned 24 firms with combined assets of nearly $1 billion and over 20,000 employees. Cathay was Taiwan’s largest corporate group measured in assets, including the largest private insurance company, the largest private investment and trust company, the largest equipment leasing firm, and the largest private construction firm. After being
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paralyzed by a stroke in 1979, in accordance with Chinese tradition, Cai divided the Cathay empire among his two brothers and four sons, with each controlling a key component of the original group. The Cai family long understood the value of political connections and like many of the other Taiwanese business groups, they often hired retired Mainland government officials or military officers as nominal heads of Cathay Group companies. In addition, several Cai family members served as elected government officials. Cai Wanchun served two terms on the Taipei City Council. His younger brother Wancai served as a Legislative Yuan member from 1972 to 1983. Both were members of the Nationalist Party. When Cai Wancai retired from the Legislative Yuan in 1983, he was replaced as political representative of Cathay’s business interests by his nephew Cai Zhenzhou, who soon joined twelve other young Nationalist Party businessmen-lawmakers in a clique that came to be known as the 13 Brothers. Members invested together, borrowed money from each other and introduced business opportunities to each other. They also pooled money and other resources for elections and voted en bloc on legislation affecting their commercial interests. (These political connections were later to come out in the course of a financial scandal that rocked the Taiwanese establishment.) Source: Fields, 1995, p. 170–182
Management in the Communist era While the Nationalists tried to preserve the old Chinese institutions and culture in Taiwan and the British established Western style institutions and culture in their colonies in Hong Kong and Singapore, business organization in mainland China took a quite different route. Following their victory in China, the Communists began a process of dismantling the old institutional structures and reforming the traditional culture. Confiscation of foreign enterprises took place immediately and was largely complete by 1950. The takeover of Chinese enterprises took place more gradually. The Chinese enterprises could at first continue with the management as before and they also had some opportunities for expansion. Jointly owned state private enterprises were formed where the state took full ownership and the capitalist received annual interest on the capital he had given to the state but in 1956 the Communist Party moved towards transformation of enterprises. The story of management theory and practice in Communist China is one of a series of experiments with different forms of collective organization. From an Eliasian perspective the various attempts at collective organization in China can be seen as an attempt to create a new sense of collective identity in the face of an increasing individualisation tendency similar to that which occurred in the West. Initially the Chinese Communists drew their inspiration from Marxist ideology and
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one of the most important influences was a large influx of Soviet advisers (Laaksonen, 1988). Links between the Chinese and Russian Communists had begun long before 1949 and were strengthened during the Civil War against the Nationalists, when the Americans supported the Nationalists. This obliged the Chinese Communists to rely on economic and military aid from the Soviet Union and in 1950 China and the Soviet Union signed an agreement for 30 years of friendship and mutual assistance. It has been estimated that at least 10,000, perhaps as many as 20,000, Soviet advisers worked in China during the 1950, primarily in construction and planning. These advisers influenced Chinese organizations at both the macro and micro levels. Immediately after the Revolution in certain areas of China, mainly around Shanghai, the Chinese had experimented with a system of collective leadership based on the Chinese communist experiences in the long years prior to the revolution. However, in response to Soviet influences, in 1953 the Communist Party decided to adopt the Soviet system. The typical features of the Soviet management system were a tight integration of the so-called scientific management system of each enterprise and the tight central planning system with the industrial system. Scientific management involved detailed work for each phase production and administration (Taylor, 1911). These plans were based on exact measurements of mechanical, technological, and human performance. Secondly, each plant was organized according to a strict hierarchy — the factory, the workshop and the work team. Thirdly, at each level one individual held full responsibility for production by that unit. Finally, the Soviet system also contained a corresponding incentive system to motivate compliance. Managers kept daily production logs for each worker, recording daily output, rate of production and rate of material consumption that became the basis for a complex system of individual rewards and sanctions. However, there were some problems in transferring the Soviet system to a Chinese context owing to the smaller units in China and the lack of trained engineers and technicians. Furthermore, many members of Chinese Communist Party opposed a system which seemed at odds with the cooperative egalitarianism of the revolution and which threatened their own authority and status. The Soviet system was also opposed by the former Chinese capitalists who were still influenced by traditional Confucian ethics and by Chinese engineers and technicians, many of whom had trained in the US or Britain and were accustomed to American or British methods. The problems caused by the one-man management system forced the Communist Party to change its official line on management practice. In 1956 at the Eighth Party Congress it was decided to combine Party collective leadership with individual responsibility, a policy officially called “factory manager responsibility under the leadership of the party committee”. One of the main outcomes, or perhaps an aim,
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of this new system was the growing power of the Communist Party in planning and decision-making in enterprises. The party committee was responsible for integrating the enterprise into the National Plan, for ensuring that the enterprise met the targets set for it in the central plan, and also for political leadership in the enterprise, ensuring that employees followed the “correct” political line. Despite these institutional changes, the changes in individual behaviour were seen as insufficient by many hard-liners, prompting Mao and his supporters to instigate the Cultural Revolution. The Communist Party structure which was responsible for the management of the party and of state enterprises generally remained the same. However, the line management structure that was responsible for operational management was greatly changed. Revolutionary committees were introduced in every workplace. Each committee consisted of 20–50 members depending on the size of the firm. Not all members of the committee were members of the Communist Party but usually the chairman and vice chairman were. Furthermore, there was a shift from the use of economic rewards to the introduction of ideological rewards. The bonus system in enterprises was abolished. Chief criteria determining wages included level of technical knowledge or skill, years spent on the job and ideological purity. Secondly, enterprises were set production targets set by central authorities, instead of profit targets. However, the Cultural Revolution was aimed at more than economic and institutional reform. Implicitly recognising the link between social structure and individual behaviour that forms much of Elias’ theorizing, Mao and his followers also attempted to reform individual personalities and the character of the whole nation. Thus, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party declared at its eleventh plenary session on August 8, 1966: At present our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to crush and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic “authorities” and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure that do not correspond to the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system. (quoted in Hiniker, 1977, p.218)
Central in the reforms was reform of the educational system and the government mounted a concerted drive to reform the teaching in schools. ‘The “new socialist men” whom the school system was supposed to mould were pictured as possessing two sets of contradictory attributes: on the one side, consciously self-abnegating and submissive to the collective; and on the other, self-motivated, purposive and creative’ (Chan, 1985). Despite these lofty aims, this period proved to one of the most destructive and decivilizing periods in recent Chinese history. Intellectuals, particularly Western-
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educated intellectuals, were singled out for humiliation and reforming, and all things Western including theories of management were despised as being capitalist inspired. Space does not permit a detailed analysis of all the events during this period but parallels can be drawn with the decivilizing period following the rise of Hitler and the Nazi movement in Germany that was analysed by Elias. Like Germany, China was attuned to ‘an absolutist-monarchic or dictatorial regime’ under which ‘the individual person still remains in a child-like status in relation to the state’ (Elias, 1996, p. 291) As in the case of Germany, the Chinese people experienced a long period of decline from greatness and humiliation by foreign powers. The response as in the case of Germany was to seek revenge. The intellectual class, like the Jews in Germany, became easy targets. As in the case of Germany there were countless excesses in the quest for retribution and the Cultural Revolution is now generally recognised as being a disastrous period in recent Chinese history for numerous Chinese and on a national scale.
Post-Maoist Management Following Mao’s death in 1976, such overt attempts to mould the national character and individual identity were abandoned for a more pragmatic policy. Under Deng Xiao Ping an economic policy based on Western capitalism was introduced emphasizing the “Four Modernisations” of agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defence. A hybrid form of organization mixing public and private elements developed (Peng, 1997) or as Chen (1995) puts it, ‘between hierarchy and market’. This provides some degree of independence to enterprise managers but there is still considerable government intervention and the need to ensure that decisions made by an enterprise conform to the state policies at the macro level (Child and Lu, 1996). One of the changes implemented was the Contract Management Responsibility System (Forrester and Porter, 1997). This involved two types of contract. Under the state contract system an enterprise would either: 1. turn over a fixed percentage of its annual profits to the state throughout the duration of the contract; or 2. turn over an amount, which would be increased each year at a fixed rate. Under the internal contract system, a target-setting cascade similar to those adopted by firms in capitalist economies. The targets encompassed a broad range of criteria including operational efficiencies, use of raw materials and consumables, the maintenance of facilities, and conformance to regulations. In some instances, a system of financial incentives was developed whereby production workers’ pay is linked to their performance. However, the CRMS was criticised by managers for being too confusing, often leading to conflicting goals of encouraging increased
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output from industry, giving enterprises a greater measure of independence, and reaping a bigger financial return for central government. Consequently, the new modern enterprise system (MES) was introduced to replace the CMRS in 1993. This reform encompassed the adoption of new management mechanisms and practices (gaige), technological transformation and facilities improvement (gaizao), and reorganization and establishment of a legal framework for property rights and assets (gaizu). Three new forms of business organization were created: -
-
-
‘state-owned, limited liability corporations’ such as most enterprises in the metallurgical, mining and heavy manufacturing industries, as well as the railways, airlines and other capital-intensive enterprises. ‘shareholder corporations’, owned by their shareholders, who may be employees of the company, including managers and workers. Alternatively, the enterprises may have issued shares on the stock exchanges in Shanghai or Shenzhen. Management frequently consists of senior managers and a board of directors. ‘shareholder partner companies’, in which the government has actively invited individuals to invest money. Example of Modern Chinese Corporation: Shenzhen Investment Holding Corp. A model for how state enterprises are developing is Shenzhen Investment Holding Corp., the holding company for most of the city government’s vast business empire. These include over 1,000 companies from the airport, a textile mill and a food distributor to a commercial bank, a computer-parts maker and a petrochemical plant, with a combined turnover of over $4 billion. SIHC was set up in 1987 as China’s first holding company for managing state enterprises. The idea was to put them out of the reach of bureaucrats who would run them into the ground. As a special economic zone far from Beijing, Shenzhen has long been a testing ground for economic experiments deemed too politically sensitive to try elsewhere. One of the changes introduced has been an emphasis on performance and freedom from constraints that other state holding companies in China have such as preserving jobs, providing cheap public services, keeping more than 50% ownership in companies and monopolizing sensitive sectors like telecoms. Innovations include making use of stock-markets, incentive pay and mergers to improve performance. Source: Gilley, 2001
Despite these significant institutional changes, however, some traditional individual values have been slower to change. For example, Ralston et al (1999) found that new Chinese managers are more individualistic and more likely to act independently but have still not forsaken Confucian values of societal harmony, virtuous interpersonal behaviour and personal and interpersonal harmony. The modern Chinese manager, therefore, has to deal with an accumulation of unwritten rules and codes of behaviour, some centuries old.
MANAGEMENT
BUSINESS ORGANIZATION
SOCIETY
clan based working
feudal society
centrally planned enterprises
surviving examples in S.E. Asia guandu shangban
sino-western model
surviving examples in Taiwan
soviet model
revolutionary committee control
political family firms
family firms yangwu movement
Economic Chaos
Economic Depression
Economic Expansion
Increasing Weakening Overseas Trade Economy
power struggle
1966–1976
Cultural Revolution
social reform
civil war
pre- 1966
REPUBLICAN ERA COMMUNIST ERA
rise of merchant class
increasing western influence
1840–1911
1368– 1644 AD
770– 221 BC
early western missions
Late Qing
Ming
Eastern Zhou
confucian legalism; growth of bureaucracy
slave owning society
Early dynasties
IMPERIAL IMPERIAL ERA
transitional organizations?
fall of gang of 4
post 1976
Post Mao
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Figure 1.Key historical developments in social and management thought in China.
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Discussion This review of Chinese management theory and practice is admittedly brief but certain features can be seen by taking a broad perspective over time. First, the review shows distinct differences between organizations in different Chinese communities worldwide and in different epochs. An Eliasian analysis allows us to better understand why different forms of organization exist in Chinese businesses in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or the Philippines. A key factor is the dominant social structure and ideology in the locality and in the era when they were established. For example, business organizations in many overseas Chinese communities exhibit characteristics that hark back to their village origins in Imperial times. Similarly, organizations in Taiwan exhibit characteristics that reflect the social and economic system transplanted by the Nationalists from the mainland, while organizations in the People’s Republic of China have successively adopted a Western capitalist model, a Soviet style management model and now a hybrid capitalist-communist model (see Figure 1). Despite the massive macro-level changes in society and the economy, certain threads common to the Chinese business organization can be seen, whether in different geographic or time settings. Some values of Chinese managers appear relatively unchanged. Features such as family loyalty, respect for seniors and social harmony can be found in disparate Chinese communities. Despite the outward appearance of conforming to the norms of the new society, actual practices within overseas Chinese organizations still conform to values and social relationships dating from a bygone era (Wang, 1999). To quote Elias, what links each community to each other is ‘a remembered continuity’. What is also most striking in the case of Chinese businesses is that changes in the social structure and shifts in power of certain groups have been clearly reflected in management theory and practice. This is most immediately evident in Communist China where the successive reorganizations of enterprises have been accompanied by attempts to reform society and individual behaviour on the lines of the prevailing ideology. However, taking a longer view it is also possible to see how other ideologies, such as Confucian and Western, have had similar effects in shaping the views of Chinese managers over the centuries. Each of the major changes in organizational forms has been the result of ideological movements. First, Confucian ideology was supplanted by the Republican ideology, which in turn was supplanted by Communist ideology. Political ideology influences organizations not only through overt political instructions on how to organize enterprise but also through more subtle pressures placed on managers. While this evidence in this review is obviously limited, it suggests that much of what Elias observed of the civilizing process in the West does also apply to China.
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The picture that emerges over time is one of shifting power between groups in society and increasing social complexity accompanied by increasingly complex patterns of behaviour, specifically managerial behaviour. Thus, modern mainland Chinese corporations exhibit characteristics of each of the earlier epochs — Imperial, Capitalist and Communist. Managers and workers in such corporations are also subject to an increasing and often conflicting range of pressures to conform with various traditions — to be a modern capitalist in thinking, while adhering to good communist ideals and respecting Confucian teachings. More generally the review also shows the value of taking a longer-term historical view of change in socio-economic systems. Whitley (2000) in his study of change within business systems in East Asia suggests that increasing internationalization has had comparatively little effect on dominant forms of economic organization in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. However, taken over a period of a hundred years, the effects may be greater. Over a long period one can discern in China both the effects of ‘diminishing contrasts’ and ‘increasing varieties’ as noted previously by Elias (1994a, pp. 460–465). At the same time as Western civilization has spread, this has been accompanied by a fine-tuning or nuancing depending on the local history. While cross-sectional frameworks can be useful for highlighting differences between organizations, they do little to explain how these differences have arisen or how they may change in future. Clearly this paper is only a first step but hopefully it has shown there is a rich vein to be explored in applying Elias’ theories and method to the study of Chinese society and management and to other non-Western cultures in general.
Chapter 9
Cultivating Indian management Institutions, subjectivity, and the nature of knowledge Nidhi Srinivas
But I, too, have ropes around my neck, I have them to this day, pulling me this way and that, East and West, the nooses tightening, commanding, choose, choose. I buck, I snort, I whinny, I rear, I kick. Ropes, I do not choose between you. Lassoes, lariats, I choose neither of you, and both. Do you hear? I refuse to choose. Salman Rushdie (1994: 211)
Relying on the work of Elias, this chapter1 discusses the rise of Indian business education in terms of institutions and knowledge. The Indian institutions of management education were the unanticipated result of interdependence between three disparate classes: government bureaucrats, Indian capitalists and managers. These educational institutions generated an unusual self definitional process, where a dominant civilizational standard (Western universalism) was challenged and in the process an alternative civilizational standard (Indigenous localism) proposed. Accordingly this chapter proceeds through the following arguments. First I note the relative inattention to historical questions within the field of management, at least at its center of influence the United States. I argue that such inattention leads to a dangerous assumption that management simply ‘happened’, as an inevitable (and necessary) function of societal development. However through figurational sociology can properly situate the transfer of management knowledge as a figurational process, where lengthening of chains of interdependence gradually connected a wider network of social actors, and established institutions and fields of knowledge.
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Second, I illustrate this argument by describing the rise of Indian management education, through an account of how the country’s first management institutes were created. Third, I discuss two implications of this account: the importance of networks of interdependence in establishing institutions that are unanticipated, but enable shared class interests to be realized; the unexpected effects of such institution building on management knowledge, particularly on the definition of Indian management. Gradually the transfer of management knowledge became controversial, requiring a careful differentiation of indigenous management from western knowledge. I argue that such differentiation was not as much self evident as self defined — an anxious response by Indian management intellectuals to their rising ties of knowledge to American management centres. Therefore the role of Indian academics in the transfer and transformation of managerial knowledge has been quite complex. Forced to mediate between multiple civilizational standards and to act as brokers for different class interests, they preferred to “choose neither, and both”, establishing an ambiguous accommodation with Western managerial knowledge.
Business education North American management studies are notable in having little interest in its disciplinary history (Kieser, 1994). Despite recognition of the cultural values of management theory (Hofstede, 1994a), the inter-relation between managerial knowledge and organization forms (Rao, 1996), and the historical origins of work disciplinary systems (Kieser, 1987), management studies tend to focus on the contemporary, on enduring themes of work performance, control and environment adaptation. An important aspect of management’s disciplinary history is its dissemination from American centres to peripheries around the world. By the late 1950s, as postwar Western economies recovered, countries in Europe had already become sites for management education (Boyacigiller and Adler, 1991; Guillen, 1994; Marsden, 1994; Thomas, 1993). Again there is documentation of the origin of Organizational Behavior (Roethlisberger, 1977), Business Policy (Bowman, 1995; Rumelt, Schendel and Teece, 1994) and Marketing (Leach, 1993), but relatively less research on the process through which such knowledge was transferred to nonAmerican settings. The ubiquity of management knowledge today can lead to disinterest in the ways it became naturalized in new settings. The consequence of ignoring disciplinary history is that the discipline’s knowledge seems inevitable, is naturalized. The
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question of how management education was established becomes secondary, its export unproblematic. Unless we address the relationships and understandings that constituted management transfer, exploring avenues avoided, we lose sight of the motivations and interests of those generating management theory. Ultimately we treat management as an actor in its own right, ignoring the relationships that constitute its knowledge. The export of North American management to India, in the 1960s, was a significant process. Conscious of their country’s newly independent status, Indian policy makers were wary of foreign dependence. But the imperative of industrializing the Indian economy required professional training, especially in applied disciplines like engineering and management. Indian planners were increasingly seeking out American educational institutions and intermediaries (like the Ford Foundation) for applied knowledge, despite their desire for autonomy. The IIMs came at a significant moment in modern India: the country was in the midst of development plans that required rapid industrial investment and trained manpower. These institutes were expected to contribute to the larger vision of a modern India, industrially and scientifically developed. India’s two self-styled “Institutes of management” (IIMs) were established in the late 1950s. They were graduate-level educational institutions offering two-year residential programs that culminated in the awarding of “Post graduate diplomas in Management”. The institutes were not connected to India’s university system. Probably the earliest transfer of management knowledge, establishing the IIMs was a remarkable effort: government planners worked closely with Indian corporations, with the financial support of the Ford Foundation to start the two IIMs. In the ensuing collaboration Indian academics played an important role, mediating the modernist aspirations of GOI planners while also situating the American contribution to this process. In understanding this knowledge transfer process, Elias’ work is a significant resource, though a hitherto little used one. Mennell and Goudsblom (1998: 38) discuss the significance of Elias’ work in terms of rebutting ‘process reduction’. Elias avoids the tendency to reify ongoing social processes into finished discrete permanent objects. Concepts of social theory and sociology “appear to refer to separate motionless objects, but on closer scrutiny they actually refer to people in the plural, who are now or were in the past constantly in movement and constantly relating to other people.” Two particular aspects of Elias’ work are useful for understanding management knowledge transfer, figurational sociology (Elias, 1978) and the civilizing process (Elias, 1994a). Figurational sociology refers to the study of society in terms of networks of interdependence. A figurational process involves “networks of interdependent human beings, with shifting asymmetrical power balances”
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(Benthem van den Bergh, 1971; cited in Mennell, 1992, p. 252; Elias, 1978). Elias strongly believed it was inappropriate to conceptually separate micro sociology from macro sociology. Such a separation could potentially elide the similar processes of interdependence that characterize micro and macro levels of social behaviour. An early use of figurational sociology was Elias’ (1983) study of the French court society. The intimate and visible proximity of the court compelled participants to adopt hierarchically ordered codes of conduct that regulated their daily interactions. Such codes reduced individual discretion, first by moderating emotional displays towards other court members, but later also by generating internalized dispositions of appropriate court conduct. His study connects the macro level institution of the court (and the nation and state it represented) with the micro level behavior of court members. Closely tied to figurational sociology is Elias’ (1994a) celebrated study of the civilizing process. His contribution was identifying the close relationship between changing codes of interpersonal conduct and changing structures of Western European states, during a period when monarchical courts became bureaucratic nation-states. The text shows how lengthening chains of interdependence constrained individual behavior, promoting codes of behavior that became synonymous with ‘civilization’. Indeed the rise of ‘civilization’ as a term of approbation (as in the phrase ‘western civilization’) was closely tied to the process of civilizing oneself and others. Similarly the rise of the nation state as a monopolist of violence and sole user of organized means of violence was closely linked to the control of the self. An important contribution of The Civilizing process is the discussion of selfcontrol and self-image. As chains of interdependence lengthen, not only do participants in these networks become more constrained in their behavior but they also imitate certain behavioral standards. As early as The Court Society Elias explained that interdependence led to codes of court conduct that were rapidly imitated by others, thus transmitted along the network. Therefore one of Elias’ projects was to historicize the modern self and knowledge. Elias was interested in the continuous processes through which the subject developed and stressed the “inseparability of self formation and state formation” (Ogborn, 1995, p. 65). As a consequence, macro level power-balances, such as between courts and parliament, shaped micro-level subjectivity, restraining individual behavior over time (Elias, 1978; Fletcher, 1997). As monopolies of force emerged, everyday life became more stable and predictable, increasing the possibility of foresight (Giddens, 1987). There was an overall tempering of drives and affect, i.e. a rise in emotional restraint and bodily control. ‘Psychologization’ became possible that is the “precise observation of oneself and others in terms of longer series of motives and causal connection” (Mennell, 1992, p. 98, p. 3 102). The modern self is conceptualized in terms of a
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mind “sharply demarcated from the external world” (Mennell and Goudsblom, 1998, p. 3) conceptualized in terms of a social world. This conceit of ‘homo clausus’ encourages a belief that the self is individual, distinct and distinguishable from the surrounding social world. Regimes of selfhood now encourage self-restraint to a point where the social world in which the subject is embedded becomes externalized.
Business schools in India The Indian Institutes of Management at Calcutta and Ahmedabad were started through the initiative of the Government of India and the Ford Foundation. The establishment of the IIMs was a consequence of the growing interdependence of three disparate groups of people: policy makers within the Government of India, Indian capitalists and an inchoate semi-professional class of managers. While the IIMs were a consequence of growing interdependence, I argue that such interdependence was unanticipated offering opportunities for other actors to intervene, notable the Ford Foundation.2 To understand the significance of the IIMs it is useful to summarize the changing status of managers within India. Before Indian independence in 1947 the economic policies of the colonial State were not specifically designed to encourage indigenous business. Nor was there a coherent vision of the region’s economic development or the role to be played by educational institutions in it. As a result there was only a limited level of interaction between government policy makers and indigenous business, largely in the arenas of capital sanctions. But by the mid 1940s this situation was starting to change. A significant development in the relationship between the state and Indian business was the ‘Bombay plan’, an ambitious initiative of Bombay based businesses to set the agenda of the Indian government. Backed by extensive data, the plan argued for limiting the state control of the economy while also demanding significant government protection and support (Chattopadhyay, 1991). Clearly Indian business leaders were aware that independence could potentially undermine their economic control and profits, if the nationalist government decided to curb the private sector. However they faced a severe disadvantage in actually implementing the ‘Bombay Plan’. To truly reap the benefit of government protection, Indian businesses required a large pool of manpower, particularly skilled in specialized finance, marketing, engineering and accounting. However such a pool was lacking in India at this time. In fact the ‘manager’ as a professional employee was absent from many levels of Indian enterprise. However there were two prominent managerial positions prevalent in Indian businesses at that time:
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the managing agent and the expatriate manager. Indian-owned corporations heavily relied on both sources for their needs of labor supervision, technology, work design, capital investment and financial planning (Chandavarkar, 1994; Kumar, 1982; Morris, 1983; Ray 1999). Expatriate managers were usually hired to discipline labor and coordinate shop-floor operations. They relied on local foremen known as ‘jobbers’ to hire and deploy workers on the shop floor. ‘Jobbers’ mobilized ethnic networks, local language and their interpersonal skills in ensuring labor compliance (Chandavarkar, 1994). The second source of managers was the managing agency (MAs). The managing agency was a private firm hired exclusively to run a business. Analogous to today’s consultancy firms, the managing agency was hired for its expertise. However in reality the agency’s expertise allowed it to control a host of diverse businesses, to modify production technologies, and ensure swift distribution. Since it was common practice for the managing agency to often promote businesses that it did not own, the line separating managerial control and ownership was a murky one.3 Recruitment into the managing agency emphasized personal ties, either through ethnic links, family-connections or personal recommendations. By the late thirties agencies did expect senior staff to have a basic degree and qualifications in accountancy (Goody, 1996; Kling, 1969/1992; Rothermund, 1988; Tripathi and Mehta, 1990). It is useful to note that these primary sources of managerial talent were in some ways quite different from managers in the contemporary sense of the word. Today managers are understood to be specialists whose knowledge is partly acquired through accredited institutions and offered to a competitive labor market. Neither the expatriates nor the managing agents saw themselves, in this sense, as mobile professionals based within a single organization, accountable to its organizational hierarchy. Performance expectations were specified largely through contracts rather than career paths. Indeed these managers were either estranged or detached from their place of work. Their status was liminal: either visibly foreign in a setting where employees, colleagues, and employers were all Indian; or working for an external organization, the managing agency. The manager of that time lacked a long-term career presence within the organization where he worked. Instead he was estranged from it if as an expatriate, since he relied on the indigenous jobber for many matters of personnel management, thus alienated from the complex juxtapositions of language, caste and community on the shop floor (Chandavarkar, 1994). Or he was detached from the organization as a managing agent, since he ultimately answered to his own agency and not his workplace.
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In both instances there was limited interdependence between the State and Indian business, and ultimately between the manager and the organization where services were used. The State did not institute standards of technical education or evolve a strategy for their use. Nor did Indian businesses seek external assistance for enhancing managerial skills. The interdependence between managers and owners was dealt with mostly by contracting out to a separate organization (the managing agency), or through short-term agreements (with expatriates). Business organizations did not have an internal set of experts with a distinct shared identity, on whom they were dependent.
The situation after independence: 1957 Ten years past India’s independence the relationship between the State and Indian business had had changed dramatically. By 1951 India’s development aspirations were expressed through prominent, ambitious and wide-ranging developmental national plans, five years in length. From the second five-year plan onward the emphasis was on industrial growth. Public investment during the first three plan periods amounted to a total of 163 billion rupees. But only 19 billion was devoted to agriculture. India’s planners “looked upon industry as the only key to India’s economic development.” Given the direction of investment, it is hardly surprising that the country’s industrial growth increased dramatically: “the index of industrial production (1950 = 100) stood at 200 in 1960 and at 280 in 1964” (Rothermund, 1988, p.135–136). These national plans and their attendant policies encouraged a particular relationship of the State and private capital. The Indian economy was to be a ‘mixed economy’ with complementary investments from the State (heavy industry was relegated to the public sector) and private capital (industrialists were to produce consumer products).4 The Indian State’s development policies were highly interventionist, seeking to direct the entire economy toward industrial growth. Public enterprises were to invest in supportive infrastructure and capital goods. Private organizations would produce consumer goods and benefit from protective tariffs. Government intervention was accompanied by increased regulation. Permission was now required for significant decisions, such as capital investments and technology acquisition. A ‘license Raj’ had been created. Therefore at the same time as industrial investment expanded the scale and scope of India’s corporations, they also became more closely linked to the Government of India’s developmental aspirations. Their greater interdependence with the Indian State had two broad effects on the private sector. On one hand corporate decision-makers began to influence government policy makers. It became imperative to have a voice in policy making, to lobby for approval of capitalization, technology and tariffs. On the other hand
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the demand for skilled technicians and supervisors increased dramatically, particularly in engineering and management. The policy changes rapidly changed the availability of managers. The earlier sources of managerial talent had changed. A stream of expatriates began leaving the country, uncomfortable with political changes. In the nationalist spirit of the times they were also controversial appointments, less desired than domestic managers. As for the managing agencies they required new recruits and new skills to respond to increased industrial growth. But the traditional system of recruitment within the agency was ill equipped for the new scenario. The old recruitment channels of personal recommendations and family ties could not match the high demand for managers. They also did not ensure the necessary skills. Therefore the post-independence situation saw increased interdependence between the state, private business, and one of the two sources of managerial talent, the managing agent. The State required the cooperation of the private sector for its strategy of industrial growth and self-sufficiency. Businesses required state permission: the regulatory environment made it imperative they rely on state ministries for investment and technology licenses. This growing interdependence led to increased interest in establishing a steady source of trained staff in engineering and management. At the same time interdependence also increased shared uncertainty: unless all the parties cooperated the situation could swiftly become chaotic, and disadvantageous to all. But how were they to ensure such cooperation? Thus interdependence also led to a search for modes of cooperation between these parties that could ensure economic stability. I would argue that the initial concept of professional management, in India, was rooted in the recognition of a dual necessity: the need for skilled staff and for reliable liaisons between the State and business. The state controlled licenses, quotas and tariffs, all of which affected businesses. Such controls were maintained by its career bureaucrats, themselves hired and groomed through an intensive and prolonged selection process, to join the exclusive government services.5 Career bureaucracy had originated with the British who created the Indian Civil Service (ICS) to control the entire administrative apparatus of British India (Mason, 1967). The ICS sought to be prompt and efficient in its services and prided itself on a severe, extensive and prolonged selection and training process. Recruits underwent a series of gruelling examinations, and carefully chosen postings. As the balance of power now shifted towards the State, the behavior and values of civil service bureaucrats became influential markers in defining the profession of management. Elias noted that high interdependence and power imbalance necessitated modes of stable interaction. In The Court society (1983), for instance, he described the growing interdependence of royalty, nobility and gentry. This interdependence
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necessitated a hierarchy of appropriate models of behavior for court members. Influential courtiers became models of behavior and served as markers of the behavior necessary to access decision-power, to access the monarchy and key noblemen (Fletcher, 1997; Mennell, 1992). Similarly in post-independent India, the values and behavior of career bureaucrats became a significant influence in Indian business, encouraging the adoption of similar professional modes of behavior within corporations (Kochanek, 1974). Promoters from traditional merchant backgrounds in particular, “due to lack of western education and proper grooming in convent (school) system…found it hard to tame the more sophisticated and anglicized bureaucrats. To fill this gap of communication and to maintain constant rapport, they had to create a corps of their own agents or business bureaucracy which could exercise influence over IAS-ICS officers” (Kumar, 1982, p. 95).
Unanticipated events: Ford Foundation and the business schools Despite these propitious factors, industrial growth need not have translated into the establishment of management institutes. There were other avenues for creating professionals at this time. Such avenues included corporate in-house training and undergraduate programs in commerce. The particular choice of a graduate-level institute specializing in management was an unanticipated decision shaped by two other factors. The American Ford Foundation was eager to increase its presence in India. Local Foundation administrators seem to have focused particularly on industrial aid because agricultural aid was already well provided by other American foundations (Hill, Haynes and Baumgartel, 1973). The second factor was the existing policy commitments of the Indian government. By 1959 the government had already recognized the discipline of engineering as crucial for industrial development. Accordingly an Indian Institute of Engineering had been set up in Kharagpur in West Bengal. This institute was unprecedented in being independent of existing Indian universities. There was a precedent for setting up an autonomous specialized institute. These two factors not directly related to management, now interacted in an unanticipated manner with the existing interdependence of the State, Indian business, and professional managers. In March 1955, Douglas Ensminger of the Ford Foundation contacted representatives of the Government of India (GOI) and the Government of the United States to discuss management development. At the time Indian policy makers had shown interest in applied training, of the sort offered in engineering institutes. Good management, like good engineering could generate economic development by increasing productive efficiency. In this formulation what was noted was the management discipline’s contribution to efficiency. But such emphasis on efficiency also led some Indian planners to believe managerial training was already provided within the existing framework of engineering education. Engineering
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institutes did offer courses on industrial engineering and production (Hill, Haynes and Baumgartel, 1973). Ensminger however made a significant argument. In letters to Indian policy makers he argued that management required separate attention beyond the coverage offered by engineering institutes. Management could not be seen only in terms of production-related tasks; rather, it involved overall skills in marketing, financing, and general management functions within companies. Therefore a separate institute was required. In December 1959, the GOI’s Planning Commission accepted the recommendations of a report commissioned by the Foundation. From this point onward this Robbins Report became the blue-print for management education. It asserted that these institutes should be autonomous of the existing Indian university system, and modelled on American business schools. The Report also anticipated that such an institute would serve as a model for subsequent Indian management schools (Hill, Haynes and Baumgartel, 1973). Funded by the Foundation, Faculty from the Harvard Business School and MIT visited India to establish the curriculum. With the collaboration of Indian academics they transferred teaching, hiring and tenure methods to these schools. Libraries were built to house American management texts, journals, and later Indian texts and journals.6 A community of management academics emerged in the 1960s, through the collaboration of American faculty with Indian business leaders and faculty.
Cultivating Indian management: Universalism and localism Hills, Haynes and Baumgartel’s (1973) account shows that from the start the relationship between Indian and American faculty was ambiguous, with moments of tension and friendship. From the Indian side the ambiguity was encouraged by their dual role. On one hand Indian academics were essential conduits for transferring American pedagogic methods. However they also had to fine-tune these methods to Indian classrooms. Over time some of them would become consistent critics of American pedagogy, for being ill-suited to Indian conditions.
The knowledge transfer An inherent assumption in the transfer of management knowledge was that it would aid the industrializing effort. The industrialization imperative led the IIMs to adopt an initial disseminating role, where accumulated managerial knowledge was offered to students. As Marsden (1994: 45) notes, “Products of these various institutions replicated views of management promoted in the United States, where management was seen as being based on a general set of principles and analytical
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techniques which could be applied to organizational problems in a universalistic way. The local context and culture were deemed to be unimportant”. The two IIMs were treated as sites for transforming Indian culture, for changing values and modifying traditions (Hill, Haynes and Baumgartel, 1973, p. 131). But despite a disseminatory emphasis, both partners were sensitive to criticisms of “Americanization”. To be effective the knowledge transfer required attention to Indian social and economic conditions. Indeed the case-method was expected to enable better description of actual working conditions. But the emphasis on dissemination did impede efforts to develop local knowledge. ‘Indianizing’ took second place to the primary task of transferring American management knowledge. The underlying thrust was to acquire management knowledge that could enable India to industrialize its economy. The concerns of industrializing were closely tied to modernization. On both sides of the partnership people believed that Indian cultural values were impeding its adaptation from a traditional agrarian society to a modern industrial economy. The transfer of management knowledge was expected not only to provide necessary management skills but to also encourage new cultural behaviors and values.
The transfer relationship Three important issues became rallying points for Indian academics in critiquing the transfer relationship: Indianization, role-definitions, competence. Each issue became a site for debating civilizational influences, and rejecting or integrating them. One issue was the need to ‘Indianize’ the management curriculum. Overdependence on American course material could reduce the relevance of the curriculum to Indian culture and economy. Shortly after India’s independence from a Western power, some academics argued, there should be a greater effort made in creating an educational experience that was genuinely indigenous. A more specific issue was role conflict. In February 1962 “nine conditions of successful cooperation” were discussed between IIM, Ahmedabad and its transfer partner, the Harvard Business School. One condition stated that Harvard should be consulted in decisions of who was appointed the IIMA Director. In 1963 the appointment was made without consulting Harvard. In this dispute, by negotiating the tasks inherent in their role, the Harvard and IIM leaders were testing the limits to the transfer relationship. A final issue was that of competence. Some Indian academics believed their American partners were not well qualified. They also questioned their understanding of Indian business and history. They also criticized their interpersonal behavior, especially their willingness to listen to their Indian colleagues (Hills, Haynes and Baumgartel, 1973). It would be incorrect to characterize the Americans as intent on westernizing the institutes, the Indians as hostile to such efforts. In fact both Americans and
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Indians in general believed in the modernizing role of the IIMs and management education. Both sides were committed to disseminating scarce management concepts in Indian academic and practitioner audiences. However some American visitors did become supporters of internal IIM factions (Hill, Haynes and Baumgartel, 1973) feeling that the institutes should be more attuned to Indian social and economic conditions. Therefore the American and Indian academics could at any given moment be involved in collaborative, conflictive, even conspiratorial relationships, complicating any easy generalization of their motivations and influence. The situation while complex did remain one where American faculty had a high level of influence, defined formally through the Foundation’s arrangements, and informally through their visible status and access to senior leaders. The Foundation linkage necessitated their involvement as advisors and ‘experts’ making closer contacts with the Director inevitable. Their status also entitled the Americans to far better living standards than their local colleagues (Hill, Haynes and Baumgartel, 1973: pp. 127–128).
The Pedagogy transfer Through these interactions the IIMs developed teaching methods sharply distinct from those of other Indian educational institutions. Four innovations are notable: a competitive exam was used to select candidates, the case method was emphasized, foreign course materials were commonly used, and the program was residential. The methods were subsequently adopted by other schools offering postgraduate management programs. Interestingly, the competitive exam and residential program were both features of the training program for Indian civil servants. The IIMs used an entrance exam, the Common Admission Test (CAT), for selecting candidates to the post graduate program. CAT emphasized numerical, (English) language, and logical skills. Such an exam implied entry to the training was merit-based, open to everyone with the apt skills. The test was later supplemented with an interview and group-discussion process, to identify applicants with communication and interpersonal skills. The CAT emphasized the importance of both merit and neutrality as important aspects of IIM education. The test was an affirmation of the IIM’s professional image, and raised favorable comparisons to the well-known and reputed Civil Service exams. New teaching methods were introduced. In the third volume of his reminiscences, the former Chairman of the multinational Hindustan Lever, Prakash Tandon (1980: 127), recalls his visit to IIM Ahmedabad during this period. He was struck by the new teaching methods, particularly the use of cases. “The case study method was in itself a new and absorbing experience in participation between the teacher and the taught…The teachers drew knowledge out of the students
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instead of drearily pouring it in during long lecture hours; and tested you while you were learning”. But students were not used to such innovations. As Tandon (1980) proceeds to describe, there was confusion and resentment at such impositions. American faculty had to constantly justify, explain and refine these teaching methods. Essential to case teaching was class participation. But it was an unusual requirement for students used to the lecture method. Participation required debating issues, taking sides. The experience could be aggressive and disquieting. There was a high foreign content to the program. The IIMs were institutions of applied learning, expected to teach concepts directly applicable in work settings. However their concepts were mostly based on American experience: textbooks, readings, examples, and authors were foreign to India. The sharply foreign flavor of such teaching added a piquancy to the program, emphasizing its close roots to the West. At a time when the United States was held up as a paragon of economic success, the foreignness emphasized the importance of learning American management. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the program was its residential nature. The IIMs operated as a “total” institution. They were designed to be enclosed campuses with all the facilities students required, including food, health, sports and recreation. There was therefore no need for students to leave the institute until they graduated. In fact they hardly found the time to do so, given the intensive curriculum. Gates kept the outside world a safe distance away allowing students to concentrate on the novel courses, teaching and evaluation methods. As Goffman (1961) has shown, total institutions encourage high internalization of norms by reducing information about the outside world.
Management knowledge as universalist and localist These four features, in shaping the pedagogy of the IIMs, also had important civilizational consequences. They were part of the socializing process through which students developed the understanding of themselves as professional managers. But given the foreign content and the disseminatory emphasis, these features representative of the civilizing mission of the institutes, were initially situated against Indian traditions; as their leaders saw it the institutes would transform India into a modern nation state. The collaborative arrangement led to institutes that propounded American management knowledge as appropriate for Indian managers. American management practices were seen as most successful, proven by that country’s phenomenal economic growth. While there were internal disagreements on the extent of relevance, in general the modernizing role and disseminatory tenor of these institutes emphasized that practices and theories received from the technology transfer were universal in application (Marsden, 1994; Osigweh, 1989; Kanungo and Jaeger, 1990). This universalist civilizational space urged knowledge dissemination
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with cultural change. Traditions and local cultures could constrain the universal application of management theories. In general students were socialized to be individualistic and merit-oriented. Timeliness, orderliness were emphasized. Written communication was to be clear and to the point. Similarly oral communication was to be developed, through class presentations and later courses on verbal communication skills. The knowledge community sought to change “native” values to accommodate these new practices. But over the next decade this universalist emphasis began to be slowly questioned. By the mid 1970s questions were being raised about the content of transferred management education. Some felt western management came with inherent assumptions that had to be discarded for success. Mendoza (1977) and Moris (1977) urged modification of management approaches to the local work values of Asia and Africa respectively. The Indian policy environment was also changing. By the 1980s India’s ‘license Raj’ was under attack. High protectionism had reduced competitiveness and economic growth (Bardhan, 1984). There was criticism of management institutes (Kumar, 1982) for not generating industrial growth, while supporting a monopolistic corporate system. Lackluster economic growth, high deficits, and conditions imposed by the IMF and World Bank for granting loans, eventually led to the lifting of tariff barriers. In the 1990s, as the government of India cut back public investment, it also reduced the funding received by the IIMs (Business World, 1991). By the late 1980s there was a lot of criticism of the universalist assumptions of Indian management. Indian academics urged a shift away from universalism (Khandwalla, 1988; Sinha, 1980; Srinivasan, 1989; Tripathi, 1988). Typically the criticism was worded in terms of the efficacy of management knowledge for Indian business. “The Indian manager today, educated either in the west or on western management literature attempts to manage and administer the Indian industrial structure on western principles. This, he finds, does not work under Indian conditions” (Virmani and Guptan, 1991, p. 17). Some argued that western management theory was contributing to employee alienation and declining work effectiveness (Garg and Parikh; 1993). “The introduction of newer work systems designed around Western technology and organization structures created major upheaval. It separated the individual from the social role structures, role processes, and activities of the primary system and demanded from him action which was in harmony with the structure, processes and action expectations of the new secondary system” (Parikh and Garg, 1990, p.177). At the same time the dramatic growth of Japanese economy led others (Chakraborty, 1991; Tripathi, 1988) to point to “Japanese management” as the new exemplar. The Japanese example was treated as a portent for poor management theories. In particular the choice of American theories was criticized: such theories
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Table 1.Two civilizational spaces: Universalist and indigenous. Universalist management
Indigenous management
Focus
Disseminate
Transform
Impetus
Outward: the West
Inward: within India
Culture
Constraint: impedes transfer
Resource: aids transfer
Goals
Development: economic, social
Development: economic, social, moral
Necessity
Would lead to professionalism and prosperity, like in the West
Would lead to spiritual peace, commitment, and real prosperity like in Japan
Scope
The entire organization
Internal organization
were culturally ill-attuned to problems of motivation and team-work, it was alleged. However, it was believed that Japanese management was well focused on local values and thus better able to tackle motivation. In these ways management knowledge started to include localist management knowledge, to consciously incorporate Indian values. Its exhortation seems to have been: Return to the traditions that define India; locate native values and incorporate them in management theory. This indigenous civilizational space was described in terms of corporate paternalism and Hindu spirituality. Its benefits included “anxiety reduction in superior-subordinate relations and promoting mutual understanding and loyalty, with positive effects on performance at the workplace” (Sheth, 1996, p. 24). Rather than a constraint, indigenous culture was now a resource to be tapped for the long-term success of an organization. S.K. Chakraborty (1987, 1995) argued that Indian civilization, as reflected in its Hindu religious and philosophical texts, provided guiding values that were better models for motivation and work performance than Western theories. But to focus on these values required a return to the past, to an understanding of Indian history, religious philosophy and traditions. It would also require an explicit and prolonged resistance to Western society, challenging its prestige. “Shall we forever stop ourselves from asking then: what has done more harm to the world, Indian casteism, for example, or western colonialism for instance? Such then is the great curse of the closed Indian mind of today” (Chakraborty, 1991: pp. 24–25). The indigenous revival was situated within the larger framework of three decades of management knowledge transfer. Therefore even the more determined critics did not decry all management knowledge. Rather these authors identified an
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indigenous civilizational space, grounded with the larger management discipline. Generally indigenous management focused on the internal: on employee behavior, on the management style of company founders, and the induction and training systems used. The important concepts were motivation, leadership and teamwork. Implicitly then the concepts not covered under indigenous management included the economic motivations of industrial capitalists, their interpretation of Indian values, and the social, political and economic relationships of the organization to its external constituents. Those management spheres not critiqued, retained earlier connotations (Chakraborty, 1991).7 Within the sphere of internal organization, the shift was now towards “native” civilizations. For Chakraborty (1991), Garg and Parikh (1993) and Virmani and Guptan (1991) the effort was to identify a dominant civilizational code, one reflected in all religions, castes, and traditions of the nation state of India, to serve as the basis of work organization. Such a civilization was traced back to Hindu philosophical texts by Chakraborty (1991). The effort was to inculcate the defining values of such a tradition. Through such inculcation managers would develop an alternative mode of self-restraint, based on asceticism, withdrawal from material pressures (Chakraborty, 1995). Thus, while shifting from a universalist to a partially indigenous civilizational space, management knowledge also retained a concern with disciplining the management.
Discussion and implications This historical account of knowledge transfer shows the value of a processual understanding of management knowledge. In this section I would like to discuss the implications of Elias’ work for our understanding of two particular areas of management, institutional theory (Selznick, 1996; DiMaggio and Powell, 1991; Scott, 1995), the process through which institutions are created; and cross cultural management, the interaction of culture with management knowledge.
Institutional theory The management literature on institutions has been characterized as the ‘old’ and ‘new’ institutionalism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991). Selznick (1957, 1992) exemplifies the ‘old’ institutionalism, where the research question is how leaders generate cultural value around organizational procedures, thus raising goal commitment. The ‘new’ institutionalism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983, 1991; Tolbert and Zucker, 1996) emphasizes how strategies and operational procedures can become habitual modes of sense making. The old institutionalism has more explicitly dealt with the question of institution creation, the methods through
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which new social systems come into place. However the discussion of ‘new’ and ‘old’ institutionalism has tended to downplay relational embeddedness of institutions. Elias’ attention to shifting interdependencies and changing power balances work is important for our understanding of institutions. His studies of the court society and civilizing process explore the causes and consequence of spreading interdependencies, between diverse sets of actors (Mennell and Goudsblom, 1998, p. 39). Such interdependencies necessitate the creation of institutions that can regulate and routinize interactions, whether macro institutions like the court, or micro level codes of conduct. Elias offers a processual alternative to questions of structure and agency, focusing instead on the historical relationships underlying institutions. Establishing the IIMs cannot be treated solely as a question of agency, of individuals able to knit organizational actions to larger social goals (as in Selznick, 1957:p. 17); nor can it be treated solely as the accretion of social pressures (as in DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Rather the IIMs were the unexpected consequence of increasing relational interdependence between actors. As the network constraints increased, certain avenues became more prominent. The Government of India, Indian businesses and professional managers, all wished to establish management education in India. However there was room for the unexpected: the particular form of management education was the result of the sustained intervention of the Ford Foundation. Finally it is worth noting the consequence of these interdependences on the constitution of management knowledge. The IIM academics initially accommodated to the transfer by emphasizing dissemination and universalism. But later the knowledge transfer was questioned in part and localism emphasized. The definition of what constituted management knowledge changed over time.
Cross cultural management In cross-cultural management studies like Boyacigiller and Adler, 1991; Khandwalla, 1988; Kanungo and Jaeger, 1990; Redding, 1994, an important criticism has been the national and cultural boundedness of management theory. In short its American origins are problematized. The extent to which such theories can be used in other settings becomes an important question. However such critical reaction tends to generate extreme responses that affirm the context in terms of static cultures. The historical process that constitute such knowledge tends to be ignored. Criticisms of Western managerial knowledge (such as Hofstede, 1994b; Osigweh, 1989) emphasize cultural difference at the expense of history. Discussions of culture also reduce to the values emphasized in managerial theories. This renders the influence of surrounding social institutions silent and unaccounted. The issue devolves into an opposition of cultures, of West and East, America and “the third world”.
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India’s colonization process has been an important influence on the subsequent development of Indian knowledge communities, such as of psychoanalysis (see Nandy, 1995; Roland, 1988). But its traditional institutions and the colonial process interacted in complex ways. The civilizational influence of the British in India was complex and inchoate (Loomba, 1998; Metcalf, 1994). For instance the caste system created a multiplicity of civilizations, increasing the heterogeneity of cultural influences and thus the necessity of contextualizing them (Singer, 1972). “Colonialism fitted India with a techno-social frame of comparable scale for its own purposes; but the highly segmented Indian social space had carried a multiplicity of codes: each segment — jati — functioning in terms of its own more or less distinctive code, its own normative order, which had once been subject to regulation principally from within the group” (Saberwal, 1996, p. 19). The case of the IIMs points to the underlying complexity of knowledge transfer. It is inappropriate to describe such transfer as a one-way cultural influence. Indian business leaders and academics actively sought out American management theory. Yet it was IIM academics who responded ambiguously to their imported knowledge, improvising a domestic civilizational space. A strength of Elias’ work is the breathtaking links made between micro and macro levels of society, between the subjectivity of the habitus and the power structures of nation-states. Indeed Elias himself spoke of colonialism as a “late — if not final — phase of the civilizing process” (Mennell, 1992, p. 110). While there have been few discussions of Eliasian theories in terms of Europe’s former colonies, the trends of self-restraint, psychologization and rationality that Elias outlined (Elias, 1994a; Mennell, 1992) were partly transferred as important cultural codes, to be imitated by the colonies. However these codes also emerged with the growth of nation-states and coordinated economies. I would argue that it is difficult to separate the civilizing process from the civilizing mission of Indian colonialism. While the civilizing mission was to inculcate Western values and knowledge in the colonies, it was closely connected to the growing emotional, bodily and social controls established by colonial states. I do not believe Elias used the term ‘civilization’ normatively.8 But it is difficult to distinguish between the civilizing process and the civilizing mission, though both were at the heart of colonialism. Without a civilizing mission (the exaltation of western culture) the act of imperialism was itself hard to justify to subjects and oneself. As Nandy (1983, p. 11) has said, “Colonialism minus a civilizational mission is no colonialism at all. It handicaps the colonizer much more than it handicaps the colonized”.9 The civilizing mission was never completed — local cultures of the subcontinent adapted to the Europeans, creating a hybrid of civilizational influences. As Chatterjee (1993) describes it, the Indian accommodation to the British helped shape nationalist self-identity. To the bhadralok, the Bengali upper-class, imitating
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the British was imperative. They wished to learn their alien ways. They partially westernized their attire, became educated in English, well versed in English literature, and translated Shakespeare into Bengali. In these and other ways they ‘translated’ the alien presence of the colonial into cultural terms they could understand. An important aspect of such translation was spatial. The foreign and the domestic were separated into relatively rigid spatial boundaries. Western civilization, as represented by the alien British, was situated in the external sphere of the office; thus the bhadralok wore Western attire in their offices. However local customs and civilizational norms were retained at home; pants were replaced with dhotis. In this manner they adapted to the British influence, while retaining local identities. Singer (1972) and Roland (1988) have also discussed such multiplicity in terms of a strategy of contextualization. Roland (1988) in particular argues that Indian selves retain sharply distinct identities that co-exist, mobilized in different settings. The transfer of management knowledge in the 1960s generated separations between the foreign and the domestic, that echo the strategies of assimilation depicted by Chatterjee (1993), Singer (1972) and Roland (1988). These strategies of assimilation can also be treated as points of resistance (Clegg and Hardy, 1996). Local academics negotiated the transfer of knowledge by locating the points where the transfer could be challenged. But the resistance was partial. The existing managerial vocabulary was retained, with culturalist explanations for existing concepts like motivation and leadership. Indeed while universalist and indigenous management formulations differ in that the former relies on civilizational sources alien to the subcontinent and the latter claims one rooted in it, both emphasize self-discipline. Thus Chakraborty (1995) for all his decrying of Western influences on Indian management, describes how individuals can become motivated to work, and be willing to forego personal needs for organizational goals. This is a description that belongs well in any American textbook of management.
Part IV
Theorizing Practice
In this final section of the book, we aim to show how Elias’s work can be used to analyze and reconstruct organizational practice in a variety of ways. The three chapters share a common concern with the interconnections between self-discipline, complexity and ordering. The first chapter by Willem Mastenbroek focuses on the relationship between self-discipline and the complexity of military and civilian organizations, the second by Tim Newton looks at the relationship between complexity of ecological processes and the ordering of organizational networks, while the third, again by Mastenbroek, further examines the relationship between the ordering of organizational interdependencies and self-discipline. Although they share an emphasis upon ordering and complexity, the three chapters nevertheless differ in their particular emphasis and orientation. The first by Mastenbroek adopts a historical and developmental perspective; the second by Newton focuses upon ecology and the natural environment; the last by Mastenbroek emphasises traditional managerial concerns. Yet together these chapters illustrate how Elias’s attention to ordering processes can help in re-interpreting organizational analysis and practice. In the first chapter, Willem Mastenbroek explores the paradox that modern organizations allow more freedom of behaviour but assume a greater degree of self-control by managers and workers. Mastenbroek unravels this paradox by locating these trends within a wider societal and historical perspective which stretches back to the formation of royal courts and forward to the emerging ‘postmodern’ organization. Drawing on Elias, he illustrates how interdependency networks within and without organizations have gradually become more complex and dense, an ordering process which has encouraged self and social discipline. Current management ‘fads and fashions’ can therefore be seen within this developmental context. Tim Newton then uses Elias and actor-network theory to present a critical analysis of current approaches to the ‘greening’ of organizations. He shows how current work in this area takes too much for granted in its representation of ecology and nature, and how it pays insufficient attention to the difficulty and complexity of ordering projects. From the perspective of Elias, and actor-network
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theorists such as Callon, the desire to create a ‘new ecological order’ can appear audacious and complacent to the extent that it underemphasises the complexity of ordering processes. Newton employs an interdependency network perspective to show how we can understand the networks that surround both environmental degradation and ‘greener’ organizational alternatives. He also considers the processes which sustain the stability of networks such as standardization and network convergence. At the same time, he underlines the complexity of green issues through exploring the global context of environmental degradation. In so doing, this chapter uses the work of Elias and Callon to indicate a possible research direction for ‘green’ organization studies. In the final chapter, Willem Mastenbroek shows how Elias can bring fresh insights into the ways in which organizations are ordered, reflected in the traditional attention within organization studies to issues such as organizational structure, and centralization and decentralization. Mastenbroek refocuses such traditional interests by attending to the ‘tension balance’ between autonomy and interdependency. He then examples this tension balance through an exploration of a quality management project in a commercial bank in the Netherlands. Influenced by Elias’s work on interdependency and ordering, Mastenbroek shows how this quality management project involved a balance between direction and ‘steering’ by senior managers and processes of self-organization.
Chapter 10
Norbert Elias as organizational sociologist Willem Mastenbroek
An historical perspective on organizations makes the steering — self-organization tension balance stand out as an essential aspect of competitive strength. The process in which steering and self-organization are gradually taking shape in organizations has been going on for centuries. New types of organizations are not new, they are recent variations on an old theme. The never ending stream of fads and fashions from the practices of management and organization contributes mainly to confusion. Organizational sociology, which distinguishes parties and systems models, also threatens to put us on the wrong track by utilizing competitive and mutually exclusive views on organizations as either market and arena, or as cooperative systems. The dual nature of organizational relations is the key characteristic of organizations. Concepts that give this dual nature a central position and integrate it in one perspective can help us to make some progress. The work of Elias provides an important contribution.
Introduction The study of management and organization offers an ongoing stream of so-called innovations. Reengineering, total quality management, empowerment, outsourcing, core-competencies, organizational architecture and time-based competition are some recent examples. Are these valuable additions to our knowledge or doubtful fashions inspired by trendy business schools or consultants with a keen commercial interest? This stream of innovations is barely influenced or adjusted by contributions from the scientific community. Managers and consultants are unfamiliar with first-class journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly. To practitioners, the theory development that scientists engage in is little more than noncommittal ‘armchair philosophy’. Or scientists are so concerned with empirical precision that their detailed research results seem trivial and not very coherent. There is a large gap between theory and practice. In specific fields practical experiences are integrated and published in journals like Harvard Business Review and California Management
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Review. Although these journals enjoy excellent reputations in Business Schools, they are not really taken seriously by organizational sociology and organizational theory. Elias (1994a) advocates an historical approach to social phenomena. Can this approach contribute to theory ànd practice in the field of organization, or is it just another excursion into noncommittal ‘armchair’ theory? Elias was no organizational sociologist and definitely did not feel great affinity with the activities of managers and consultants. Still, in my opinion, his work can be of great value. A brief description of the historical development of organizations will clarify the concepts useful to capture the most crucial aspects of organizational change. The changes in army organizations as introduced by Maurice of Orange will be our arbitrary starting point. We will focus especially on changes in mutual dependencies in connection with the psychological ‘habitus’ of the people involved. You will see that the concepts which are gradually introduced and clarified have a high ‘Elias content’. I will then present some theoretical and practical applications.
Historical perspective Early army organizations Let me introduce a man who was an authoritative pioneer in his own time, Prince Maurice of Orange (1567–1625). Armies are among the oldest large-scale organizations. In the period between 1590 and 1600 Maurice introduced a number of innovative organizational principles. His central problem was the discipline of a riotous soldiery against the overwhelming force of the Spanish troups in the Netherlands. Three examples of his interventions: –
The common formation in the 16th century was the so-called Spanish Brigade: 50 men across and 50 deep. A square formation, completely filled with troups. So most of these men couldn’t even use their pikes. Their only function was to provide moral and physical back-up (by pushing!) for the front ranks. Maurice succeeded in greatly increasing the performance of the available troups by introducing a shallow formation. This change in battle-array required major psychological changes. The earlier support of the mass was lost, vulnerability increased. Better training and tighter discipline were intended to result in the required increase in personal effort and self-confidence.
–
Self-confidence was enhanced by, among other things, a thorough training. The use of the musket was based on a precise ‘motion-study’ of every handling procedure. The 43 (!) separate actions were classified in series of functional acts. Special commands were developed for these acts. Endless practice resulted in independent and fast execution.
Norbert Elias as organizational sociologist
–
Brief, clear, and most of all standardized commands were introduced. This style of command required silence from the troups. That was something new. The troups did not only have to be quiet, they also had to learn how to line up in fixed places in organized ranks and files, whereas before, they had been a motley, swarming horde.
In all three examples we see a mutually enhancing interaction of increased external discipline and growing individual discipline in terms of self-control and self-confidence. Maurice’ military genius sensed exactly where earlier army reforms had failed. He gave shape to an interaction between both mechanisms. This mutual enhancement, consistently maintained over longer periods of training and also in the everyday functioning of the army, resulted in a level of strength never attained before. Victory upon victory was the result. These successes were so impressive, that between 1600 and 1630 most European states adopted Maurice’ reforms. Maurice achieved increased tactical flexibility. The massive and inflexible square was replaced by a shallow formation. However, the disappearance of the massive back-up demanded a different type of soldier: one with more discipline and self-confidence, the ability to react instantly to orders, and the ability to retain group cohesion in spite of increased mobility. The French Colonel Ardant du Picq wrote his ’Etude sur le combat’ in 1868. In his day, the first quick-firing arms were introduced. To reduce his troops’ vulnerability, he pleaded for an open battle-array. Just like in Maurice’ situation, this change demanded a different attitude from the soldiers. Ardant du Picq wanted well-trained, relatively small formations: the platoons. The soldiers in these formations had to make good teams and also needed their own responsibility to act. To be able to utilize this responsibility, autonomous thinking and action became important and had to be practiced. Army organizations still wrestle with this problem. Key issue is: to what level of detail should we steer and command versus how much autonomy can we give local commanders. Since 1806 (defeat of Prussian army by Napoleon at Jena), command in the German army has been geared towards this and has been further developed. In this way the ‘Auftragstaktik’ emerged, which was actually a method of delegation. This command doctrine was recorded by Von Moltke around 1860. Its implementation was a process of gradual perfection that took decades, if not generations. Ogilvie (1995) shows how just misplaced the stereotypical ‘Befehl ist Befehl’ notion about the German army really is. In the context of ‘worauf kommt es eigentlich an’ the German army trained its local commanders, up to and including the lowest in rank, to solve problems independently. This was purposely coupled with increasing the autonomy of smaller units and strengthening their internal cohesion.
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The steady continuity in the development becomes apparent: from Maurice, via Ardant du Picque to the ‘Auftragstaktik’! During World War II the Americans had not reached the same level in this combination of central command and autonomous action from tight-knit units. According to Dupuy (1977, p.234–235) this resulted in their casualties being no less than 50% higher in all circumstances than those on the German side. What we see here is the ongoing development of external means of control interacting with increased responsibility of individuals and small groups. Continuous discipline, formalization of behaviour, strengthening of the hierarchy, growing solidarity and increased self-control, coupled with expanding responsibility are the most important behavioural changes in this context.
Early capitalism and organizational innovation Our industrial organizations went through similar developments. In his description of the emergence of the factory regime in the 19th century, Iterson (1992, p.82) wrote: ”The problems for the manufacturers were first of all problems of discipline and coordination. Factory regimes are based on a tangled combination of i) coercion (from the side of the manufacturers) and ii) willingness or motivation (on the workers’ part).”
The discipline which seems so natural to us now, was not in evidence then: ”Bringing together men, women and children in one space implied the danger that people would get in each other’s way, that arguments could erupt, sexual relations engaged in, or that they would ‘overindulge’ in other activities which were considered debauched (drinking) or idle (games). Labourers also had to learn to control their language: subversive and obscene utterances also posed a threat to orderly labour and they were fined heavily. The same dangers also existed outside the factory, especially in combination with alcohol consumption. So conformance with the industrial regime was indirectly threatened by ‘corruption of the morals’ in their free time.” (Iterson, 1992, p. 83–84)
This can be illustrated by the case of the earthenware industry of Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1790), a liberal reformer in public affairs and a patriarchical factory owner in eighteenth century England. During his lifetime he transformed a local pottery, with a dozen men at work, into an international firm . When he started his own firm, called Etruria (Staffordshire), he recruited from his personal network of family and friends two partners with whom he formed a team in which the functions of technique and product innovation, marketing and management of two separate factories, one for useful ware and one for ornamental ware, were integrated. How did Wedgwood find a balance between discipline and motivation? Wedgwood had two disciplinary adages: To make Artists …(of)… mere men and second to ‘make such machines of Men as cannot err’.
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First he concentrated all workers in one general workplace and held to his original ‘scheme of keeping each workshop separate’. They were not allowed to wander around as they were used to doing in the traditional workplaces. At the same time the work was original in such a way that there was a smooth progression from the ware being painted, to being entered into the books to being stored’. (McKendrick, 1961, p. 32) By doing so he heightened the interdependence of his workers and at the same time gave them some task autonomy in separate places. But the traditional ‘careless habits of the older generations’ presented an ongoing problem in the development of high-quality production for the new markets. Wedgwood had to fight a long local tradition of ‘customs in common’, in particular the ‘stoppages for Wakes’, (a local annual feast lasting several days and nights which were spent eating and drinking intemperately and ‘fornicating’), but he also had to combat ‘waste’, ‘idleness’, ‘the bane of drinking’, ‘working by the rule of thumb’, ‘inefficiency’, ‘arbitrariness’, ‘irregularity’, (McKendrick, 1961, p.38). His own personal control over his men was effective enough. But he was ‘forced with increasing frequency to leave them ‘without any head to look after them’ (McKendrick, 1961, p. 39). There was no tradition of supervision in his factory in his absence. For instance when he put an older worker in charge, it turned out that this man lacked authority, due to his familiarity with colleagues. The resulting informality ‘lapsed too easily to irregularity’. An example Wedgwood described to Bentley: ” Daniel does pretty well at work and I am here every day, but he often leaves the work and drinks two or three days together, and has no taste to direct at any time” (McKendrick, 1961, p. 39). The problem was not only the absence of Wedgwood himself, it was also the growing complexity (more workers, more tasks, all kinds of interdependencies). Wedgwood wrote to Bentley comparing the small-scale pottery with his own firm: ”To keep 150 hands of various professions and more various tempers and dispositions, in tolerable order was a more difficult task “ (McKendrick, 1961, p.39). Wedgwood solved his problem by introducing functions with responsibility to ‘one steady man’ for each process — the ‘Clerk of the Manufactory’, the ‘Clerk of Weights and Measures’, the ‘Porter and General Inspectors’ — to ‘look after the men and wages’. For all task and supervising functions he formalized his disciplinary rules by writing them down in the Potters Instructions (1780) and in the ‘Common Place Book’. Some examples of external rules and regulations and sanctions for enhancing and steering the regulation of self control: ”Any person seen throwing within the yard of this manufactory forfits 2s.6d,..”, “any workman strikeing or otherwise abuseing an overlooker to lose his or there place..”, any workman conveying Ale or Licquor into the manufactory in working hours forfits 2s…”, “any person playing at fives against any of the walls where there are windows forfits 2s..” (McKendrick, 1961, p. 45).
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McKendrick summarizes the ‘instructions and regulations’: ”They cover every aspect of factory discipline. Containing a remarkably detailed knowledge of every workshop and every process, the Instructions recognize all the minor techniques, the tricks and petty evasions of the idle workman”. In this way Wedgwood armed his overseers with the experience, his knowledge of prevalent faults and his remedies. They also provided clear instructions on ‘how to show marks of approbation’ to the skilful and the punctual and how ‘to reprimand those more slovenly and careless’. (McKendrick, 1961, p. 40).
Wedgwood lacked trained, specialized painters and modellers. So it was not easy ‘to make Artists …(of)…mere men’, just as it was not possible ‘to make such machines of Men as cannot err’. He contracted well-known artists from ‘outside’. But these artists disappointed him. They had a disrupting influence on factory discipline: they proved too lofty for the factory system or were selling industrial secrets or worked not hard enough and were idle (McKendrick, 1961, p. 36). Wedgwood separated their activities from the rest of the factory labourers and contracted them for buying and/or commissioning their designs by piece. In that way the artists, in fact, ‘submitted to a discipline hardly less stringent than the common workmen’. (McKendrick, 1961, p. 37). The other side of this sometimes harsh regime was that Wedgwood offered his workers housing and care for the sick. That was not only out of economical reckoning. He felt a moral obligation. He wanted to improve his workmen’s lot. He was concerned with civilizing their behaviour and educating them to discipline and self-respect. ‘Liberal but unsophisticated in his ideals, he felt that his workmen should be disciplined for their own good and offered security in return for obedience’ (McKendrick, 1961, p. 50). The remarks of Iterson (1992, p. 82) that early factory regimes are based on a tangled combination of coercion (from the side of the entrepreneur) and willingness (on the workers part) are illustrated by these examples. Also we witnessed a process of trial and error towards an articulation of interdependency as well as autonomy in factory relations. Taylor, the founder of scientific management (1856–1915), made a contribution to organizational science that fits well into this perspective His methods were largely intended to impose discipline on the activities of subordinates, something which was sorely needed as far as Taylor was concerned. He gave many descriptions of how employees managed to restrict production by ‘soldiering or loafing’ (Taylor, 1947, pp. 19–24). He repeatedly stated that his ‘scientific method’, using individual training, separation, special reward systems and other measures, could gradually overcome these tendencies (Taylor, 1947, pp. 32, 34, 69, 72–74). Taylor vividly described his experiences as a foreman in a steelworks:
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No one who has not had this experience can have an idea of the bitterness which is gradually developed in such a struggle …. And there are few foremen indeed who were able to stand up against the combined pressure of all the men in the shop …. If the writer had been one of the workmen, and had lived where they lived, they would have brought such social pressure to bear upon him that it would have been impossible to have stood out against them (Taylor, 1947, pp. 50–51).
From these tumultuous experiences Taylor distilled his, as he called it, ‘scientific management’ (Taylor, 1947, pp. 52–53). His experiences provide a good impression of how personal coercion can be replaced by more ‘neutral’ mechanisms. Despite the strong resistance Taylor encountered, his methods were introduced on a large scale. This was possible because of the much greater power of management. At the same time management was forced to exploit this power surplus due to the fierce competition with other companies. Taylor’s own intentions were entirely different. He believed that the interests of employers and workers were essentially the same. ‘The great mental revolution which occurs under scientific management’ would do away with contention and antagonism and replace them with ‘friendly co-operation and mutual helpfulness’. This idealistic dream can be seen as a forerunner of more recent images like the learning organization, empowerment and shared values.
The essence of the historical development of organizations The progressive extension and condensation of dependencies within and between organizations raise problems with regard to coordination and flexibility: If we cannot combine these increasing interdependencies with the right kind of selforganization, the result will be increased rigidity. It is especially interesting that in conjunction with a growing self-control, new opportunities for entrepreneurial initiative emerge while the risks of disorganization are kept under control. In his description of the organization phenomenon, Van Doorn distinguishes the ‘lateorganizational stage’ in which he observes a shift from social control to self-motivation. This, however, does not imply a shift to chaotic individualism or anarchy. ‘On the contrary, the realization of this social control has only become really possible in a societal structure, whose members have learned through the centuries to — in psycho-analytical terms — regulate their drives.’ (van Doorn, 1956, p. 200).
Stronger interdependence, more steering
versus
Figure 1.The steering — self-organization balance.
More autonomy, more self-organization
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Van Doorn observes that in this phase direct external control has been replaced by more indirect, more subtle binding agents and a greater evenness and allroundness of restraints. According to Van Doorn it is the combination of this all-round control and the internalization in terms of self-discipline and a sense of responsibility that makes the ‘late-organizational stage’ possible. This is an explicit link with the work of Elias (1994a). Van Doorn remains a bit vague about the nature of ‘allround control and control mechanisms’. Nevertheless, he clearly sees the link with self-discipline. He also makes the connection with Mannheim’s principles of ‘selfrationalization’ and ‘self-organization’ (Mannheim 1935/1940, p. 55–57). So the skill of self-organization, which has been so highly praised and recommended recently, turns out to have a long history. Apparently we have become more successful over the centuries at combining a wide array of steering and coordination mechanisms with bigger opportunities for autonomous functioning. We could even say that organizations which develop a more articulate balance, either by accident or thanks to the intuition of a talented leader, gain a substantial competitive advantage. The balance of steering — self-organization (Figure 1) evolves over the centuries. The need for detailed daily supervision decreases as self-control increases. But self-control does not increase automatically. It takes pressure and coercion by co-workers and superiors, and increasing interdependency in the relationships between units to let this become ‘second nature’. Steering then shifts to output norms, and after that to factors such as quality and customer orientation. At present, self-organization is exacted in areas like entrepreneurship and joint result responsibility. In each case it is a question of the interaction between the extremes of steering and self-organization. A certain acceleration in this development, as we saw with Maurice and Wedgwood, benefits the clout and competitive strength. Note, however, that a balance can also be out of balance and favour one side for long periods of time. In the days of Wedgwood the balance was more severely tilted than it is today in Western organizations. Over the centuries this balance has moved towards a more horizontal position. This development is connected with the increasing mutual dependency in relations between ‘those who steer’ and ‘those who are steered’. There are several levels of abstraction to this concept (or, to follow Elias terminology: several levels of synthesis). At the more concrete level there is the tension between departments and the management of the organization, and between subsidiaries and the management of the business unit. It is also expressed in the central — decentral balance in every organization. In more general terms: an organizational unit has its own interests, but there are also all kinds of mutual dependencies with other units. There is autonomy ànd interdependency. The ‘autonomy — interdependency’ tension balance is the most abstract variant of this concept.
Norbert Elias as organizational sociologist
‘Steering — self-organization’ is already more specific. And ‘central — decentral’, for example, is even closer to concrete phenomena.
Theoretical and practical applications Organizations are seen here as changing configurations of relations. The changing tension balances in these relations are clarified by means of the historical perspective. Over the ages up until our time we see a gradual development towards more and stronger interdependence and steering as well as more autonomy and selforganization. External controls become internalized as self-discipline. This higher level of self-organization and autonomy enables more adequate steering. Gradually, the ability of organizations to deal with complexity improves. We are talking about processes of managerial and organizational civilization. The steering and coercion towards more discipline and a stronger sense of responsibility are internalized. This in turn provides possibilities for more autonomy. Gradually, direct supervision and attention are reduced. Steering efforts can then be focused on restraints that are not yet internalized. At present, for example, we observe in some organizations that the relatively autonomous organizational units are forced into an attitude of mutual exchange and openness. Learning from one another, initially heavily managed and monitored from the top and gradually driven by more autonomous action, enables a further strengthening of competitive power. More and more organizations are attempting to incorporate this type of steering. (Senge, 1990; Evans, 1991) An historical perspective makes it possible to better capture the essence of organizational changes. It functions as a sound means of orientation to find one’s bearings in the chaos of change. The materials presented above show how change relates to the changing tension balance of ‘steering — self-organization’. There is a great need for such orientating concepts because the turbulence created by specific changes makes it difficult to see the wood for the trees. Our knowledge in the area of organization and management is still very much fashion driven: Reengineering, empowerment, the learning organization, shared values and chaos management are but a few of the ‘breakthroughs’ and ‘innovations’ we have enjoyed in the past five years. A sound concept makes it possible to see beyond the trends and fads. We then see a historical process of trial and error, a process which shows a structure. This structure provides a framework. Specific facts and events remain ‘loose’ not to say ‘lost’ if they can not be connected in a larger framework. An awareness of the structures or patterns in historical processes provides us with a criterion of relevance to guide us amidst the confusing turbulence of events and trends.1 Some recent recommendations on management and organization fit clearly in the
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pattern as described above. These will have the best chances of survival. Take for instance recommendations such as integration of functions into forms varying from autonomous task units to business units and more responsibility for one’s ‘own’ products and customers. The idea of strengthening the central — decentral balance also has a place here: A stronger centralism on a limited number of critical areas can actually be combined with a higher degree of autonomy of organizational units. We also see more clearly the defects in recent trends like ‘empowerment’ without good steering, or top-down ‘reengineering’ without the active involvement of the basic units. Are such orientating concepts not already available in organizational sociology? So far only on a very limited scale, although some impulses in that direction can be detected. The classic work of Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) is a good example. They observe in organizations processes of both integration ànd differentiation. This dual movement receives much attention, although they do not use an historical perspective. Historically speaking it is interesting that by now the mechanisms of differentiation and integration as described by them 30 years ago, show a clear development. For Lawrence and Lorsch the dominant type of differentiation is that into functions such as Purchasing, Sales, Production, R&D. They do not yet differentiate into units based on product/market categories, whereas the units which are now emerging in the shape of autonomous task forces, profit centres and result areas are functionally integrated. This means that attempts are made to reintegrate links in the production chain into units. In this way more shared responsibility is established in larger parts of the production process. This development is another example of both increasing interdependency and stronger autonomy; or, speaking with Lawrence and Lorsch: a further differentiation coupled with a higher level of integration. The integration mechanisms dominant in their work — formal regulations, coordinating institutions, informal contacts and conflict handling — are also found, more fully elaborated, in another classic by Mintzberg, in the form of the 5 (and later 6) coordinating mechanisms which are the foundation of Mintzberg’s typology. With a little good will we can consider this typology a series of organization designs in which the autonomy of units is gradually given more opportunity through a better utilization of the coordinating mechanisms. For example, strict supervision decreases, shared values become stronger. We can also detect traces of an historical perspective in the stages of growth and development which Greiner (1972) and Scott (1970) observe organizations going through. Other impulses we find in the work of Weber (1947) who emphasizes the mixed nature of social relations, and Gouldner (1954) who already writes about the paradox that more leeway for parties to pursue their own interests makes the organization as a whole more enduring. This is in line with what Lammers (1983)
Norbert Elias as organizational sociologist
calls the dual nature of organizations. “It is simultaneously a cooperative system and a market plus arena.” Still, despite these initiatives by Weber, Gouldner and Lawrence and Lorsch, organizational sociology lacks integrated concepts which accommodate both the parties and the systems models. Elias’ work makes it possible to turn this dual character into the cornerstone of an organizational-sociological theory. He describes how the parties model and the systems model can be viewed as stages in our thinking about human relations in connection with the development of increasingly complex networks (Elias, 1971, p. 99). As the networks they are part of become increasingly complex, players develop new concepts. Elias (1971, p.99) pointed out that the ‘players’ in increasingly complex networks gradually alter their ideas about the course of the game: ”Rather than reducing the course of the game to individual moves, their assimilation of events gradually starts to develop into more impersonal concepts that take more account of the relative autonomy of the players than of the motives of individual players. But working out such vehicles to accomodate the increasing awareness that the course of the game is uncontrollable for the players themselves is a long and arduous process. The comparisons people use constantly shift back and forth between the idea that the course of the game can be reduced to the actions of individual players, and the idea that there is something superhuman about it. For a long time it has been extremely difficult for the players to understand that the uncontrollability of the course of the game for them, which they readily perceive as something ‘superhuman’, results from their mutual dependency, from being interdependent as players and from the tensions and conflicts that go along with this”. ”The action theories do not come to grips with the questions brought up here of the nature of human interdependencies and of power balances and their implications. At most, they simply assume that intentional interactions have unintended consequences. But they obscure the fact central to the theory and practice of sociology that every intentional interaction is based on unintended human interdependencies .” (Elias, 1971, p. 103).
And a little further on: ”a game which is the exclusive result of the interaction of the individual moves of many players takes a course that none of the individual players intended, determined or foresaw, so that precisely the reverse is true: it is the unintentional course of the game that determines the moves of the individual players.” (Elias, 1971, p. 103)
So we may see both parties and systems models as a typical phase in the development of our thinking which parallels the development of more complex networks.2 The work of Elias contributes to the integration of parties and system models into a ‘parties in a system’ model. Elsewhere, I have elaborated this view (Mastenbroek 1991a, 1993). Crucial is the concept of the tension-balance because it encompasses
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the dual nature of organizations. This is not only a better theoretical concept, it also provides a better practical model.
Practical models Practice-oriented authors often come up with organization models ordered around a few basic categories: The categories used most frequently are strategy, structure, culture and information systems (Figure 2). Some authors add categories such as technology, human resources and leadership. One of the best-known models of this kind is the 7S model introduced by Peters and Waterman (1982). These models provide for a neat clustering of important factors. They are much used by managers and consultants. At the same time they show some serious limitations. One problem is of an analytical nature. The various elements are difficult to separate. A way of working, does that come under culture, under structure or under strategy? If it is defined in terms of delineation of tasks and procedures, we call it structure. But if it is not formalised in this manner, does that mean it is culture? If it is proclaimed by the top, do we call it strategy or maybe ‘shared values’? An even more important problem concerns the way in which the separate elements are linked. Authors design boxes with arrows and connecting lines. What do these arrows and lines stand for? This remains obscure. Specific relationships and influences are suggested. The ‘what’ and ‘how’ remain implicit. This problem is all the more urgent because the everyday practice of organizations often entails a multitude of changes: not only developing a clearer strategy, but also structural adjustments, and information projects, and changes in management style and communication. How can we make all this into a coherent whole? How do we ensure that the separate changes fit into an integrative framework? How do we gain such a clear understanding of their relationship that we can make sure they complement and reinforce each other, and that we do not steer them as separate processes? The models in question are too shallow to accomplish this. Despite these disadvantages and despite their weak academic reputation, these models are used frequently. Apparently they have much more to offer to practitioners than the more sophisticated, scientific models which are available. One of the advantages they offer is a simple and elegant way to arrange important issues and processes. This classification may be primitive, more like a checklist of categories. And it may also be rather crude: categories overlap, and there may be a lack of understanding the relations between categories and more basic processes. Nevertheless, it is a classification, and it provides an overview in understandable terms. So, for instance, many recent incentives for organizational succes fit in easily. If we are concerned with the way in which strategy, structure, culture and information systems influence each other, the concept of interdependencies
Norbert Elias as organizational sociologist
STRATEGY
CULTURE
STRUCTURE
INFO SYSTEM
Figure 2.A practitioner’s model.
provides promising possibilities. Structure and culture are both characteristics of interdependencies; structure in a formalised way, culture more in terms of attitudes and perceptions. Strategy and information systems also give shape to interdependencies. For us, organizational design is arranging interdependencies in such a way that both the autonomy and the interdependency of units are reinforced in a sound balance. In this way an understanding of the relation between separate changes becomes possible. From this concept, a reordering of the incentives for organizational success (as described in Figure 3) leads to the classification as expressed in Figure 4. This reshuffling shows more clearly how things fit together. The separate elements under the headings strategy, structure, culture and information system can be ordered in a more meaningful way on the basis of their impact on the autonomy-interdependency balance. More meaningful because this makes it easier to show how elements can be designed in a coherent and mutually reinforcing way. More meaningful also because of the more direct relationship with the crucial issues of less complexity and more competitive strength. Elias focuses our attention to this deeper and more integrative level of understanding: organizations are to be viewed from a dynamic relational perspective. From this perspective many recent recommendations begin to gain importance. It becomes easier to see more structure in actual developments. In line with the historical articulation of autonomy as well as interdependency, organizations are becoming more and more networks of units that are free to act while retaining links to one another. Units are autonomous, while cultivating simultaneously those
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STRATEGY Inspiring company goals, Clear unit policy STRUCTURE Central safety net Units with own products/clients
CULTURE We-feeling Common identity Team development
INFO SYSTEM Feedback of results Comparison of results
Figure 3.Incentives for organizational success (1).
interdependencies that give them a competitive edge. In addition, organizations rely on more horizontal market-like coordination mechanisms. One of the most important is continuous feedback on results. This gives a different substance to the relationship of centralized to decentralized. The swing of the pendulum from central to decentral becomes a dynamic tension balance of both central and decentral. The direction in which the network moves and the quality of relations within it are shaped by the more central units, but the units also show responsibility for this. The horizontal exchange and coordination in particular, demand that every unit be an active network member. This theme is repeated within units: Teams are effective only if they know they are responsible for the organizational unit; individuals can be prominent only if they feel a responsibility for the team of which they are a part. Sharing and stimulating, cooperation ánd competition, are other recent expressions of the same tension-balance. Mutual exchange, learning from each other and also prodding each other have a mobilizing effect. Revans (1983) uses this idea to make organizations more competitive with remarkable results. His point of departure is refreshing. Managers learn most from other managers, and in particular from those who struggle with the same problems. Revans called this ‘ActionLearning’. We now refer to it with a term like ‘The learning organization’. This learning from one another is often obstructed by awkward mutual communication and a lack of openness and trust. From this perspective, Evans (1991) hits the mark when he makes the building of personal relationships and the systematic development
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more autonomy
more interdependency
Units with own products/clienst
Central management development, safety-net
Clear unit policy
Inspiring company goals
Team development
We-feeling, common identity
Feedback of results
Comparison of results
Figure 4.Incentives for organizational success (2).
of openness and easy communication the cornerstone of his approach to management development. The importance of this concept cannot be separated from the growing number of organizations that more and more clearly derive competitive strength from combinations of apparently conflicting organizational principles. Like Maurice and Wedgwood these organizations are experimenting with a further articulation of autonomy as well as interdependency. They try to function both central ànd decentral, ‘loose ànd tight’, small ànd large. Central involvement is limited to exchanges and dependencies in only a few critical areas. Which areas these are depends on what would yield competitive advantage in specific markets. Sometimes it will be economies of scale combined with production-technological virtuosity. Sometimes a central ‘New Business Development’. Sometimes a standardized shop formula, coupled with a central purchasing organization. The organizational design of ‘small-in-large’, as a network of relatively autonomous units, blends into network organizations in which the units also
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retain their autonomy as independent firms in various degrees. There are entrepreneurs who find their strength primarily in organizing such networks. Take for example the following situation: an ice hockey helmet is designed in Scandinavia, made ready for production and tuned to the demands of the global market in the US, it is produced in Korea and distributed from Japan. Miles (1989) presents a series of examples of such network organizations in the fashion industry, the film industry and publishing companies. In itself such a network organization is not new. The new element is the diffusion of this model to an increasing number of market sectors. Are these complex designs? Not really. The underlying pattern is quite simple. Strengthening coordinating power ànd developing maximum selforganization of units.
Summary An historical perspective on organizations makes the steering — self-organization tension balance stand out as an essential aspect of competitive strength. The process in which steering and self-organization are gradually taking shape in organizations has been going on for centuries. New types of organizations are not new, they are recent variations on an old theme: Try to strengthen the coordinating power on the most critical aspects by also increasing the self-organization of units. Recent expressions deviate considerably from what Taylor came up with a hundred years ago. No wonder. In his day the focus was primarily on designing types of organizations to condition the discipline of employees. The increase of discipline — enforced at first, later becoming second nature — in turn enabled the emergence of more stable and denser relational networks within and between organizations. Increased competition and the growing density of interdependencies now make co-responsibility and initiative imperative. Organization design evolves further. This historical development directs our attention to the key factors of organizational change. The never ending stream of fads and fashions from the practices of management and organization contributes mainly to confusion. Organizational sociology, which distinguishes parties and systems models, also threatens to put us on the wrong track by utilizing competitive and mutually exclusive views on organizations as either market and arena or as cooperative systems. The dual nature of organizational relations is the key characteristic of organizations. Concepts that give this dual nature a central position and integrate it in one perspective can help us make some progress. The work of Elias provides an important contribution.
Chapter 11
Elias, organizations and ecology Tim Newton
Introduction This chapter provides an example of work that draws directly on Elias with the aim of developing a critique of current literature on organizations and the natural environment, or that attending to the ‘greening’ of organizations. The chapter is an abridged version of an article originally published in the Academy of Management Review and appears with permission of the US Academy of Management. It uses the argument of Elias and of actor-network theory in order to begin to develop an alternative research programme within ‘green’ organization studies. In writing the paper, I assumed that its international audience would not necessarily be familiar with either Elias or actor-network theory. In consequence, some of the complexity of argumentation is ‘back-grounded’ so as to maintain a focus on issues relevant to the greening of organizations. In particular, I have not addressed the clear differences of emphasis between Elias and actor-network theorists, though I have considered these elsewhere (Newton, 1999). The chapter does not contain a simple or linear application of Elias, and additionally, as noted above, Elias’s argument is interwoven with that of actornetwork theorists, especially that of Michel Callon. Yet the work of Elias strongly influenced the development of my thinking about organizations and ecological issues. In what follows, I firstly consider the current green project and its representation of nature. Drawing on Elias and actor-network theory, I then advance an ‘interdependency network’ perspective, applying it to the greening of organizations, green technologies and issues of globalization. I go on to argue that this perspective offers an alternative theoretical rationale and a potential basis for future research.
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Green visions The greening of organizations is intertwined with the broader project of greening societies. This overall project represents, in effect, a quest for a ‘new ecological order’ where sustainable practices replace those that occasion environmental degradation. Yet the question arises as to whether it is really possible to create ‘new orders’, whether ecological or otherwise. As John Law implies, visions of a new order have rarely been realized as intended: ‘How many generals have seized power in order to “clean things up”? … How often have we heard that Communism, or Socialism, or free-market economics, or cost-benefit analysis, or monetarism would bring the good life (for those who remained) if only they were systematically imposed and all the deviant elements were rooted out? (1994: 6)
Visions of a new ecological order can be readily found within current green literature and organizational ‘greening’ literature. Jonathan Porritt and David Winner provide an example of the former with their argument that the ‘Green Movement’ should seek: ‘.. nothing less than a non-violent revolution to overthrow our whole polluting, plundering and materialistic industrial society and, in its place, to create a new economic and social order which will allow human beings to live in harmony with the planet’ (1988: 9, added emphasis)
Richard Welford provides an example from the organizational literature concerned with greening through his argument that ‘we must challenge the existing order’ (1997a: 14). Such is his commitment to the new ecological order that he exhibits a clear desire to ‘root out deviant elements’ (cf., Law, 1994, above) who do not share this vision: ‘If there are members of management or the workforce who are not convinced of the need for ecological management strategies then they must be motivated to change’ (Welford, 1995, p. 146, added emphasis)
A desire to re-order relationships with the natural environment can be observed elsewhere in the green organizational literature, albeit not always in quite such a totalizing manner as Welford prescribes. For instance, Paul Shrivastava argues for ‘a fundamental reversal in the focus of managers’ attention’ (1995: 123) toward an ‘ecocentric management’ paradigm (1995: 127ff), and Param Skrikantia and Diana Bilmoria seek the replacement of the ‘dominant corporate paradigm’ by an ‘alternative sustainability paradigm’ (1997: 394). In a similar fashion, David Cooperrider and Gurudev Khalsa argue for ‘a new paradigm in our way of relating to our environment’ (1997: 335) and Ronald Purser suggests ‘a fundamental change
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in cultural perception’ (1997: 362). Such language directly echoes the argument of ‘deep ecologist’ and ‘ecocentric’ writers who demand ‘a new ecological paradigm’ (Capra, 1995, p.20). The present chapter seeks however to question this and other conceptions of a new green order, and of the manner of its achievement. In so doing, I will draw on the sociology of order and networks, particularly the work of Elias and Callon. Not all writers assume that there is a single path to a ‘green’ redemption. On the one hand there are writers, including those writing on organizations, who champion ‘total solutions’ that human beings must follow if they are to save the planet. They base their argument on a perception that ‘needs must’: that is to say, given a supposedly immanent environmental Armageddon, a total and totalizing strategy toward a ‘new eco-order’ is required wherein all members of organizations ‘must be motivated to change’ (Welford, 1995, p.147, added emphasis). On the other hand, some writers argue that a more pluralistic view is required because it is unlikely that we can arrive at uniform agreement on the ‘green agenda’ (Naess, 1992, 1995a). Others sympathetic try to reconcile the modernist thinking of approaches such as ‘deep ecology’ with postmodernism and poststructuralism (Zimmerman, 1994). Yet whether totalistic, pluralistic, or even postmodernist, there remains a concern to replace the environmentally degrading patterns of past industrial society with activities which protect rather than destroy the planet. The question remains however as to how such projects can be achieved. As John Law (1994) notes, other ‘new orders’, whether fascism, communism, or free market liberalism, have floundered, and their desire to deliver supposed ‘goods’ (e.g., racial purity, equality, enterprise) have occasion a variety of ‘bads’ (e.g., genocide, inequality, oligopoly). Similarly, questions arise with the project of a new eco-order. Just as the promised ‘goods’ of industrial society (e.g., material prosperity) have occasioned a variety of ‘bads’ (e.g., environmental degradation; Beck, 1992; Adam, 1998), so the ecocentric dreams of deep ecologists have been seen by some as the stuff of nightmares (e.g., ‘eco-fascism’, misanthropy, or a pessimistic risk-averse society). Though such critique can be questioned, we need to examine to what ends green writers ‘use’ nature, and whether those ends are achievable. The particular concern in this chapter is with organizational literature on greening and ecology, especially its more ‘ecocentric’ variety. Though sympathetic to the green cause, I believe that there are a number of limitations with existing work in this field. To illustrate the difficulties within the green project, I shall firstly examine the representation of nature that is found within current green discourse, particularly that employed by organizational writers. I will then explore the sociology of order and ordering, particularly that of Elias and Callon. I will suggest that this work provides an alternative perspective through which research in this
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area might advance. In particular, I shall argue that a focus on interdependency networks can aid researchers understanding of organizations and ecology. Such work challenges the argument that organizations should shift to strong green cultures. Instead it suggests that it is more productive to research the configuration of interdependent networks which support or impede greening processes. In exploring this argument, I will examine the interrelation between the concept of the actor and the networks that surround environmental degradation. In addition, I shall address the challenges in building global green networks. In so doing, I aim to move beyond earlier critique (e.g., Newton and Harte, 1997) toward a framework for research on ecology and organizations. I must stress however that my aim is to indicate a possible research direction rather than deliver a fully elaborated research platform.
Representing nature How people in the West have seen nature has varied considerably over recent centuries, from the mediaeval depiction of nature in the ‘Great Chain of Being’, to Enlightenment distancing and ‘progress over’ nature, to Romanticist desires for human re-integration with nature, to counter-Romanticist ‘denunciations of the quest for humanist redemption through “nature”’ (Soper, 1995, p.32) ranging from Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde to Foucault. With this very broad discursive heritage (just in the West), it does seem remarkable how simplistically notions of nature are sometimes treated within ‘green’ literature, ecocentric or otherwise. There is a tendency to fall back on romanticist beliefs, idealizing the ‘innocence’ of preindustrial hunter-gatherer societies where life was supposedly ‘shared with the bird, bear, insects, plants, mountains, clouds, star, sun’ (Steiner, 1976, p.113, quoted in Sessions, 1995, p.158; cf., Glendinning, 1995). Yet as Eric Darier notes, ‘justifying human actions in the name of “nature” leaves the unresolved problem of whose (human) voice will be legitimate to speak for “nature” (1999, p.24). As Soper comments, ‘romantic conceptions of “nature” as wholesale salvation from cultural decadence and racial degeneration were crucial to the construction of Nazi ideology’ (1995, p.32). As Zimmerman observes, though deep ecology may not lead to ‘eco-fascism’, there are ‘some disturbing parallels between Nazi rhetoric and the claims made by deep ecologists’ (Zimmerman, 1994, p.173–174). In sum, work such as that of Soper, Darier and Zimmerman suggests that our notions of nature are open to contestation and dispute.1 Other writers, including Al Gore (1992, p.217), have questioned whether the green desire is fundamentally misanthropic, particularly its ‘ecocentric’ variety which seeks to remove ‘the privileged position of humans as the sole locus of value’
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(Purser et al., 1995, p.1073) and live in ‘harmony with nature’ (Shrivastava, 1995, p.131, Table 1; Srikantia and Bilimoria, 1997, p.395, Table 4). Critics argue that such ecocentrism tends toward an idealized view of nature which assumes that we can somehow give equality to ‘pathogenic microbes, animal vectors of lethal diseases’ (Bookchin, 1994, p.22). Tim Luke argues that an ‘ecocentric’ would ‘be bound ethically to save a California condor hatchling over a human child, because the former — given its rarity — is much more valuable’ (1988, p.87). Eco-writers might counter such arguments by suggesting that they are frequently polemical in tone, and selective in the treatment of environmental information. For example, contrary to Murray Bookchin and Tim Luke, some deep ecologists do argue that ‘in situations involving vital interests … humans have … overriding obligations towards their own kind’ (Naess, 1995a, p.76; cf., Sessions, 1995, p.157). However the problem with such counter-argument is that it is the rather polemical tone of many green writers (Cheney, 1989) that invites the counter-polemic of writers like Bookchin. In addition, the ecocentric desire to try to promote species equality does remain questionable. As Judith Green (1995) argues, this desire for ‘bio-equality’ reflects a misguided and decontextualised liberalism which projects human concerns on to natural processes which are not inherently equal (cf., Zimmerman, 1994). To take just one example, contrary to Disney World, carnivores don’t usually consult herbivores before they eat them. This and other argument (see Newton and Harte, 1997; Newton, 2002b) challenges central aspects of green argument, particularly in its ecocentric instantiation. It is beyond the scope of the present chapter to undertake a more wide ranging critique of current ‘eco-change’ discourse or rationale within the green organizational literature. However as Newton and Harte (1997) note, difficulties with green argument are not unique to the examples considered above. Given such difficulties, the question remains as to what can be done to move toward a situation wherein organizations and societies are more likely to act in an ecologically supportive manner. I shall now address this question. I will firstly examine the ‘interdependency network’ perspective, with particular attention to the work of Elias and Callon. I shall then explore the networked nature of environmental degradation and the significance of how we conceive of the actor within such networks. Finally, I will consider the implications of global networks for organizational research.
Nature, ordering and networks: Elias and Callon ‘The management of an (always partial) order is, therefore, always incomplete, less than perfect and bound to remain so. There are many outer dependencies
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and unaccounted-for human purposes and drives which … interfere with the designs of the managers. The planned and managed sector remains no more than a shack erected on moving sands … At best, we can speak of islands of (temporary and fragile) order scattered over the vast sea of chaos (that is, the unplanned and undesigned flow of events)’ (Bauman, 1990, p.183)
For Zygmunt Bauman, any sense of order, whether economic or ecological, is always partial and temporary. The initial logic of his argument is quite simple, and derives from the observation that ‘all power has its limits, as control over the universe as a whole is beyond human potential and eludes even the most audacious of human dreams’ (1990, p.184–185). In consequence, it remains difficult for any individual or group to create a permanent order with ‘all the deviant elements .. rooted out?’ (Law, 1994, p.6, see above). To further explore why the creation of order remains tenuous, it is helpful to go back to the earlier writing of Elias. For Elias, human action is defined by power relations, and pre-dating Foucault’s argument that ‘power is exercised only over free subjects’ (Foucault, 1982, p.221), he argues that a power relation can only occur if one party does not have total control over another. In such situations, there exists a power ‘game’ where ‘the participants always have control “over each other”’ (Elias, 1970, p.81, original emphasis), and in consequence are also always to some extent dependent on each other. This also means that over the long term it is difficult for any one individual or group to ‘determine history’ because their intentions and actions are always likely to be moderated by others on whom they are dependent. Particularly within modern democracies there is unlikely to be any simple relation between a particular ‘strategy’ and a particular ‘outcome’, because any outcome represents the ‘interweaving of countless individual interests and intentions’ (Elias 1994, p.389, added emphasis). In consequence, ‘something comes into being that was planned and intended by none of these individuals, yet has emerged nevertheless from their intentions and actions’ (Elias 1994a, p. 389). In societal terms, this means that linear attempts to plan, say, ‘ecocentric society’ are likely to be nothing if not problematic. ‘Planners’ are always likely to have their ambitions moderated. If, as Zygmunt Bauman (1992) asserts, the search for order represented the basic project of modernity, then following Elias, it is one that was bound to fail because power relations are rarely about total control, but instead represent the interweaving of interdependencies between actors. As Elias argues, ‘Underlying all intended interactions of human beings is their unintended interdependence’ (Elias, 1969b, p.143, quoted in Kilminster, 1991b, p.101). The problems of car use provide a striking ecological ‘tragedy of the commons’ metaphor that is relevant here. Cars were intended to deliver a previously undreamt of personal mobility. Yet they have also delivered traffic jams, air and noise pollution etc. as a consequence of the
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unintended interdependence of millions of ‘autonomous’ car users. As people now have to drive to work or to the shops, ‘travelling therefore becomes more necessary … or alluring (“running away from it all”, even for a few days holiday) than ever before, while becoming at the same time more difficult and exhausting’ (Bauman, 1990, p.188). The unintended consequence of car use thus becomes the increased necessity of travelling, and the difficulty of so doing as millions of interdependent autonomous drivers exercise their right to automobile transport. In a similar vein, any attempt to create a new eco-order will be interwoven with the actions of a global network of actors. Yet it is difficult to predict the actions of others in this global network or how a particular eco-strategy will interweave with those actions. The language of such interdependency networks is not likely to be that of deliberately realized ecological plans but one of ‘fertilization’, ‘mutation’, ‘amputation’ or ‘elimination’ as such plans interweave with those of a vast array of others. Such difficulties of eco-ordering are generally not sufficiently addressed within the current green organizational literature.2 However there are theoretical frameworks available that do offer organizational researchers some purchase on these issues. One such is the actor-network theory associated with Michel Callon, Bruno Latour and John Law, particularly Callon’s work on ‘techno-economic networks’ (1991, p.132). Another comes from the wide-ranging studies of Elias. There are distinct similarities between both these theoretical perspectives: as John Law notes, ‘the explanatory attitude of [actor-network] writers is not so different from that of Norbert Elias’ (1994a, p.113). Both contain argument that resists epistemological categorization through labels such as modernist/postmodernist (Law, 1994; Latour, 1999a; Newton, 1999). With both, there is an emphasis that agency is best viewed from the perspective of interdependency networks, whether that of a single organization or the dense, complex and global interdependencies surrounding environmental degradation. In consequence, I shall refer to the points where their theoretical orientation overlaps as an interdependency network perspective. Central to this perspective is a questioning of the traditional conceptualization of the actor. For instance, a common view of the actor within traditional management literature is one who is self-contained, sovereign and autonomous, and whose thoughts, feelings and actions can be treated as relatively independent of the networks in which they operate (see Newton, 2001a). From this stance, we just need to know that a key actor such as a chief executive has been converted to the green cause, not how or why. There is also an assumption that such actors will semi-automatically act as powerful green agents, ‘lightning rods for environmental actions’ (Shrivastava, 1996, p.188). The work of Elias and Callon however seriously question this view of the ‘independent’ actor because it obscures the need to attend to the way in which ‘outcomes’ — such as the decision of a chief executive to ‘go
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green’ — reflect a complex interweaving of interdependencies amongst people, a ‘networked agency’. For instance, in understanding the actions of ‘visionary’ green organizational leaders (Kaczmarski and Cooperrider, 1999), we firstly need to explore the networks through which business leaders become enrolled as ‘green’ strategists. Secondly, we need to understand the interdependency networks through which others in the organization are translated into ‘greening agents’. If we follow Elias and Callon, understanding this process means attending to the interdependencies between actors inside and outside the organization — and in so doing, shifting our attention from the traditional image of the individual (and organization) as a ‘closed box’, or what Elias (1970, 1991a) calls ‘Homo clausus’. Elias argues that the portrayal of the actor as a ‘closed box’ is a common yet limiting assumption of much of the social sciences, especially psychology. He argues instead for a recognition of people as Homines aperti, which represents a vision: ‘.. of people in the plural; we obviously need to start out with the image of a multitude of people, each of them relatively open, interdependent processes’ (1970, p.121)
In understanding power and human agency, the focus is necessarily therefore on interdependencies and networks, rather than the decisions and actions of individual ‘sovereign’ actors. In addition, actor-network theory stresses the theoretical centrality of non-human actors, such as in the case of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant which became ‘an uncontrolled and autonomous force … an actor in its own right’ (Callon, 1991, p.142). Common to Elias and actor-network theory is the critique of the ‘person closed in on himself — homo clausus, to use Elias’ expression’ (Callon, 1999, p.185, original emphasis). The traditional, yet often tacit, assumption of Homo clausus draws attention away from the way in which environmental degradation occurs through complex interdependency networks. As David Goldblatt notes: ‘..pollutants almost invariably come from many sources. Thus a collective danger from collective origins must be legally pursued through the fiction of the individual legal person or corporation’ (1996, p.167).
To the extent that legislation is based on Homo clausus, the sovereign individual or corporation, it becomes difficult to enforce a desired eco-order because environmental degradation is a quintessentially network phenomena. Pollution might be contained if it were ‘independent’: the problem is that pollutants interweave with a range of other natural processes and thereby become difficult to control. In consequence, unless we acknowledge the networked form of agency — Elias’s Homines aperti — we will have difficulty in dealing with environmental risk and degradation. As Orssatto and Clegg (1999) argue, ‘a shift to greener strategies … is not the effect of a singular agency, no matter how powerful’ (1999, p.274). This is
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not to suggest that individuals or groups, human or non-human, have no influence but rather that their actions may be amplified, modified, subverted or erased as they interweave with the actions of other ‘players’. What does all this imply for green organization studies? It suggests that researchers need to explore how existing ‘ordering’ is created (Law, 1994). In relation to Elias, we need to analyze the geometry and strength of the interdependencies that surround particular industries. In Callon’s terms, we need to examine how human and non-human networks align, converge, and become standardized around processes that encourage environmental degradation. To undertake either of these projects, it is necessary to move beyond the often pre-conscious conceptualization of the actor as Homo clausus. I shall now turn to the implications of these interdependency network perspectives for the greening of organizations. In particular, do they suggest a change of approach, and if so, what might this look like?
Greening and networks In what follows, it is important to remember that we are developing a research perspective rather than outlining a finely defined research platform. The latter is not possible because we currently lack sufficient application of Elias and actornetwork theory to green organization studies. In addition, actor-network theorists are generally resistant to the closure implied by standardized research platforms or research ‘factories’ (Latour, 1999b). One way of approaching the interdependency network perspective is to explore how it challenges current rationales for the greening of organizations. For instance, an assumption witnessed within a range of green organizational literature is that organizations should strive, as far as possible, to translate all their employees into ‘green employees’ through HRM or culture change programs (e.g., Welford, 1995, p.21, 82; Shrivistava, 1995, p.131, Callenbach et al, 1993, p.66, 77). More generally, as Dryzek notes, much eco-philosophy assumes that eco-change will happen through education by ‘an enlightened vanguard educating everyone else in how to think and behave in an environmentally sound fashion’ (1996, p.30–31). Within organizational literature, this can be witnessed in the somewhat imperial ambitions of culture change programs and among ecocentric writers who assert that ‘environmental strategy must therefore begin with real commitment on the part of the whole organization’ (Welford, 1995, p.11, added emphasis). Yet an interdependency network perspective questions this ambition because it begs the question of whether one needs such ‘saturated’ green networks in order for organizations to become aligned around green issues. Recent research by Andrew Crane (2000)
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suggests that ‘green organizations’ do not require such total employee commitment. Crane found that organizations that were clearly associated with a green ‘mission’ did not generally have staff who were committed to the ‘green cause’ and furthermore they ‘exhibited little success in promoting and sustaining a companywide environmental ethic’ (2000, p.691). Crane’s research ‘clearly calls into serious question the “deep ecology” prescriptions … which suggest that only through a fundamentally moralized business culture can radical greening possibly take place’ (Crane, 2000, p.691). In a similar fashion, Ken Green, Barbara Morton and Steve New found that those responsible for promoting green procurement and purchasing did ‘not necessarily [have] a keen personal commitment to environmental issues’ (2000, p.219). Instead, their research indicated that ‘green procurement careerists’ often pursued green agendas for ‘personal or organizational agendas’ other than a commitment to the green cause (2000, p.219). Taken together, the research of Crane (2000) and Green et al (2000) suggest that it is neither easy to create green corporate cultures, even for ‘green mission’ companies, or necessary. In consequence, it questions current arguments for green corporate cultures and human resource management policies: if ‘green mission’ organizations can operate successfully without strong green cultures, why do we need green culture change? Instead it may be more profitable to research the minimal interdependency network that is necessary to sustain greener organizations. In practical terms this means researching the interdependency ‘webs’ through which green market or regulatory demand is translated inter-organizationally and intra-organizationally. Yet these are areas where we still lack sufficient research. As Green et al note: ‘.. the exact mechanisms inside organizations by which demand signals are received, understood by marketing and (where applicable) RandD departments, and then translated into practical innovative product or process development have been relatively unexplored’ (2000, p.219)
As Green et al. (2000) add, there can be considerable variability in the ways in which organizational greening is currently supported. For example, in relation to greener purchasing decisions they found that one ‘green’ company used a committee, another had created a ‘separate departmental body’ to analyze the ‘green credentials of suppliers’, while yet another had ‘an intricate web of influencing bodies and parties to the purchasing process’ (Green et al., 2000, p.218, added emphasis). The advantage of the work of Elias and Callon is that they direct attention to such variety of interdependency ‘webs’/networks. They can be used to examine how the interdependencies between the technologies and personnel of purchasing, sales, marketing, and RandD affect an organization’s ability to translate ‘green demand’ into greener products.
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The question of course still remains as to how sufficient networks can be sustained to support green issues. A greener network is likely to involve a host of different actors such as scientists, governmental and inter-governmental agents, clean technologies, audit mechanisms and a range of texts, technologies and personnel. The problem is how to make this heterogeneous network converge. Callon (1991) notes that a convergent network is one where there is strong agreement between the key actors involved. A convergent network does not however mean: ‘that everyone does the same thing, for networks usually include a range of complementary actors — for instance, scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, salespersons and customers. Rather it points to the way in which the activities of actors fit together despite their heterogeneity … Thus in a convergent network, faced with an angry client, the salesperson immediately knows which engineer to call and how to describe the problem so that the engineer can work on it’ (1991, p.148, added emphasis).
If we follow Callon, a range of factors will shape network convergence. For instance, it is likely to be affected by rules of engagement, such as government regulations encouraging clean technology, environmental audit, ‘green’ contract compliance etc., or the cultural custom to comply with, or resist, government legislation. In addition, network convergence will be influenced by the degree of standardization within a network (Callon, 1991). A truly standardized green network would be one where all actors followed standard green procedures such as the use of renewable energy supplies, waste minimization, clean technology etc. However Callon notes that ‘strongly convergent networks only develop after long periods of investment, intense effort, and coordination’ (1991, p.148). From this perspective the problem for the green cause is that we are a long way from this kind of ordering. Nevertheless examples exist where convergent green networks have been successfully created. One such comes from greener alternatives to automobiles, such as that of the light electric vehicle (LEV). In order to persuade people to use this ‘greener technology’, it is necessary to build a convergent network around it. The ‘Mendrisio’ project in Switzerland provides an example of such a network, based on an aligned network of LEV technology, manufacturers, dealers, components, recharging stations, maintenance techniques and facilities etc. This network alignment and convergence enabled an ease of use and maintenance for the LEV driver and thereby aided the effectiveness of the Mendrisio project (Harms and Truffler, 1998; Orssatto and Clegg, 1999). Yet there remain major challenges in maintaining such network convergence. As Callon (1980, 1986a) shows in his study of LEV development in France, building a convergent green technology network is highly problematic because of the diverse array of actors which may be involved (academics, local and national government
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agencies, technologies such as fuel cells and technical procedures). At the same time, greener networks are likely to remain fragile given that they often exist within global networks which are geared around environmentally degrading processes (Gray, 1999). In the case of the Swiss Mendrisio project, LEV networks remain reversible to the extent that they exist within strongly aligned networks based on the Fordist production of automobiles driven by internal combustion engines (ICEs), and all steel car bodies. Furthermore, as Renato Orssatto and Stewart Clegg observe, the development of greener automobiles is constrained by ‘the difficulties of breaking the “lock-in” situation created around the automobile system’ (1999, p.264). Central to this system are strongly convergent networks of ICEs, car components, manufacturers, supply procedures and suppliers, petroleum technologies and companies, gasoline stations, garages, dealerships etc. Changing the environmentally degrading automobile technology means analyzing such interdependent networks. For instance, a shift away from ICEs would impact the network of petroleum technologies and companies, gasoline stations, garages, components and suppliers. Any ‘eco-change’ strategy therefore has to be cognizant of the challenges of disentangling and re-working interdependency networks that are highly convergent, if not irreversible (Callon, 1991). What is the relevance of the above argument for green organization studies? Firstly, it suggests that we need to re-appraise existing eco-change rationales such as green culture change, and the model of learning upon which they implicitly rely. The ecocentric call to convert all to the green cause may be neither achievable, nor necessary. Instead, it may be more productive to study how and why interdependent networks converge. Although there is no clear program to deliver a greener world, this does not detract from the potential benefits of studying green network formation. Though in need of further application, Elias and actor-network theorists such as Callon provide a range of concepts that are directly relevant to such analysis. These concepts can be used to address the processes through which greener products or services move beyond the stage of ‘fragile’ networks and gain a measure of stability through network alignment, coordination and convergence. Some relevant research examples do already exist, as with the studies of LEV networks provided by Callon (1980, 1986a), Harms and Truffler (1998), Kemp et al., (1998), and Orssatto and Clegg (1999). As the example of the automobile industry however suggests, we also need to examine the interdependency networks that currently supports environmentally degrading industrial processes if we are to understand the challenge of greening them. In sum, research is likely to be most productive where it simultaneously explores network convergence processes that surround environmentally degrading activities and alternative greener processes.
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Globalization and networks The problems of eco-reordering are further highlighted when we examine global interdependency networks. Though a detailed discussion of globalization is beyond the scope of the present chapter, it is nevertheless worth attending to some of the implications of global analysis. It is difficult to ignore the global dimension because environmental degradation is not contained within either national or continental boundaries (Yearley, 1996): global warming is ‘global’. Not surprisingly, ecocentric and deep ecology writers have addressed globalization issues, particularly its potential to advance or constrain their dreams of a greener world. For example, Arne Naess argues that in order to green the globe, ‘occasional coercion’ will have to be used with developing countries that seek to follow the West’s history of environmentally degrading industrialization (Naess, 1995b, p.449). Naess suggests that the rationale for such ‘coercion’ should be the ‘application of the norm of universalizability’ based on the argument that ‘if ecological sustainability is a necessity for any area, then it is a necessity for all areas’ (1995b, p.449). Yet there remain serious ethical questions about such desires because it is difficult to ‘wash out’ the image of neo-colonialism which they engender. In addition, the central question remains as to how universal global green norms are to be enforced. In Callon’s (1991) terms, such network alignment and standardization represents a supreme challenge when undertaken at the global level. It is very difficult to establish global ecological agreements, as illustrated by the resistance of developing countries to neo-colonial coercion at Rio, Kyoto and Bonn. Furthermore, it is not easy to ‘police’ such agreements. As Yearly notes: ‘.. in the absence of a global authority, countries have to consent to work together [and] … bargain until an approach is agreed. Most countries can be relied upon to approach these negotiations selfishly, wanting to secure as advantageous a deal for themselves as possible. The monitoring of agreements can also be costly, and countries are unlikely to want to spend more than the minimum on civil servants and scientists to check that they are sticking to the agreed measures’ (1996, p.62; cf., Parker, 1996).
The case of fishing provides one documented example of the difficulties of global green policing. There is firstly the problem that fish do not respect national boundaries (relating to agreed fish quotas etc.), and secondly that policing fish catches is both difficult and likely to be undertaken with varying degrees of national enthusiasm (Peterson, 1993; Yearley, 1996). In Callon’s (1991) terms, neither fish nor human will align within a convergent network. Such ‘tragedies of the commons’ are therefore not easily controlled even when international agreements are attained.
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Such observations again underline how the problematic of order remains central to the ecological dilemma. In relation to Elias and Callon, they emphasize the challenges of building global green networks. Firstly they suggest that such networks are currently characterized by what Callon calls weak coordination because they ‘have no specifically local rules’ (Callon, 1991, p.147). On the one hand, the Bonn agreement is a further step toward global network coordination, albeit that it represents a watered down version of the Kyoto protocol that, critically, lacks U. S. involvement. On other hand, the Bonn agreement may have limited impact at a local level, particularly in developing countries. Secondly, there is some evidence that global networks are becoming less convergent (Callon, 1991). As Waters notes, the development of instantaneous globalized information technology and the dedifferentiating of financial markets means that ‘the entire system has become more difficult to control’ (Waters, 1995, p.88). As Waters adds: ‘States are placed at the mercy of financial markets — the collapse of the European Monetary System in 1992 was the consequence of persistent market attacks on its weaker elements, for example. All the power of the Bundesbank could not save it’ (1995, p.88)
As Orssatto and Clegg also suggest, if global financial markets ‘are largely beyond the control of national or international authorities’, this also means that ‘ecological threats … are not adequately dealt with’ (1999, p.266). The obvious solution to this dilemma is to further pursue global interdependent networks to limit environmental degradation. Yet as Barbara Gray (1999) notes, this is a tortuous journey. In the first place, there are doubts as to the efficacy of current international agencies. As Zimmerman observes, critics such as Gary Snyder and Gus diZerega argue that ‘calling for the United Nations or some other centralized organization to protect the planet is like inviting foxes to guard the henhouse’ (Zimmerman, 1994, p.330). In the second place, attempts to reach global agreements have been hampered either because ‘advanced industrialized nations were unwilling to accept concessions (Gray, 1999, p.205) or because of mistrust between the parties (as witnessed recently in negotiations at The Hague). Such difficulties might be seen as just a temporary problem that can be resolved over time. Yet such optimism is countered by the argument that it may be hard to unravel networks that currently support environmental degradation, particularly as many are strongly convergent (see above). In addition, we must consider whether we are moving toward global disorder rather than order. Kyoto and Bonn do represent a strengthening of global network coordination, and to that extent, an eco-ordering. Yet we must also remember that many writers on globalization argue that cultural heterogeneity and ‘hybridization’ represent the trend of globalization rather than the homogeneity implicit in a new ‘world order’. For these writers,
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visions of a new world order often represent an unwarranted and triumphalist Western myth that detracts from growing global heterogeneity. This applies both to writers who emphasize the cultural hybridization of globalization processes (e.g., Nederveen Pieterse, 1995), and to those who stress the salience of global ‘systems’ (e.g., Friedman, 1992, 1995). As Barbara Parker (1996) notes, there is wide global variety in ethical codes. As she comments, ‘what is bribery in one country might be viewed as standard business practice in another’ (1996, p.498). Such observation suggests that a single world ‘order’ is presently unlikely, whether cultural, economic or ecological. What does the above imply for green organizational research? Firstly it suggests that a green perspective necessarily draws attention to inter-organizational and global networks as well as intra-organizational networks. Secondly it underlines the challenge of both formulating and policing global green agreements. In Callon’s (1991) terms, there is likely to be weak network co-ordination. Thirdly it emphasizes the difficulties of standardizing green practice at local levels around the world. If there is one universal norm, it may be localized hybridity and variation in ethics and practice rather than global uniformity.
Conclusion Green organizational writers need to recognize the immense challenge of reordering organizations and societies. Eco-ordering involves a vast array of global actors whose actions are likely to interweave with one another in ways that may be difficult to predict or control (Elias, 1994a). At the same time, the representation of ‘nature’ is problematic (e.g., Soper, 1995), and the solution of environmental degradation is seriously disputed by environmental versus industrial groupings, by social and life scientists, by governments (e.g., of the ‘North’ vs. the ‘South’) etc. Given such contestation, and the wide variety of actors involved, it is difficult to predict the form of any future global eco-ordering. It is not that eco-ordering is futile or that all need be ‘gloom and doom’. Yet we need to recognize that ecostrategies are unlikely to be realized quite as intended. So how can organizational research aid our understanding? In this chapter, I have tried to show the need to move beyond the theoretical constraints that sometimes circumscribe this field. Firstly, this requires a critical approach to current green argument because its representation of nature and its eco-change rationales are open to question. Secondly, researchers need to acknowledge the interdependencies of natural and social processes, a perspective that challenges the image of Homo clausus and draws attention to the networked character of human and non-human agency. It seems strange that although green organizational
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writers increasingly emphasize the interdependent nature of environmental responsibility, they still tend to implicitly employ notions of autonomous independent actors. Thirdly, I have argued that the work of Elias, and actor-network theorists such as Callon, provide one framework relevant to environmental degradation and the development of greener alternatives. It has not however been my intention to suggest that this is the only vehicle for such analysis. In particular this framework requires further development through application to green organization studies. Yet notwithstanding such constraints, an ‘interdependency network’ perspective offers (1) an alternative theoretical reading, (2) a potentially promising basis for research analysis and (3) a progression beyond the limitations of current green organizational prescription. With the first, it questions prescriptions for, say, green culture change because these may be neither realistic nor necessary for a convergent green network (see above). With the second, the work of Elias and Callon provide a range of concepts through which to begin to analyze the difficulties of green network convergence such as those associated with greener technology. With the third, Elias and Callon provide an avenue that diverts energy away from the indiscriminate application of conventional management prescription (see above) and toward a consideration of how greener networks are constrained or sustained. It is important to emphasize that I have only skimmed the surface in terms of the potential relevance of Elias and Callon to green organization studies. For example, the work of Callon, and other actor-network theorists such as Latour and Law, are also of interest because of the way in which they try to traverse the traditional dualism between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ (e.g., Callon and Latour, 1992; Latour, 1999a, 1999b), and attend to the non-human actor as much as the human. Similarly, as Victor Roudometof and Roland Robertson (1995) note, Elias’s work is of particular relevance to globalization issues because of its potential to work at both micro and macro-analytical levels (Newton, 2001a, 2001b). In sum, I feel that this chapter merely represents an ‘initial foray’ into the ways in which Elias’s argument, and actor-network theory, can inform work on organizations and the natural environment. Their work provides a resource directly relevant to understanding current networks of environmental degradation and the possibility of their realignment around networks that move, however haphazardly, toward the enhancement of the natural environment.
Chapter 12
Management and organization Does Elias give us something to hold on to? Willem Mastenbroek
Introduction How do we organize and manage organizations? An historical perspective on organizations provides some specific clues about key-elements of successful organizations. In particular the concepts of Elias are helpful to get a clear view of these elements. The chapter ‘Norbert Elias as organizational sociologist’ clarifies the balances between unit autonomy and inter-unit dependency and between steering and self-discipline as crucial characteristics of organizational relations. In this chapter I will describe how these concepts are to be related to some practical problems of management and organization. I will briefly explore how the work of Elias has helped me with practical notions and specific interventions on three topics: (1) Organizational Design, (2) Change Management, (3) Management Styles. My work in these areas is still in progress. Tentatively, I am sharing with you my experiences and explorations. In the chapter ‘Norbert Elias as Organizational Sociologist’ a pattern in the development of modern organizations has been described. Apparently we have become more successful over the centuries in combining a wide array of steering and coordination mechanisms with more opportunities for autonomous functioning. To express the characteristics of this organizational perspective, I summarize it in the following way: –
–
An organization is a continually changing network of relations. What we witness over the centuries is a progressive extension and condensation of organizational networks and an increasingly complex interweaving with suppliers and customers. A crucial characteristic of organizational relations is the autonomy-interdependence balance. From a historical point of view this balance shows a development towards greater and more interdependence and steering as well as more autonomy and self-organization.
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–
Relations among units show certain patterns according the way the balance between autonomy and interdependence is managed. The tension between these two impulses can be expressed as in Figure 1.
Stronger interdependence, more steering
versus
More autonomy, more self-organization
Figure 1.The tension balance autonomy-interdependence.
If the balance tends very strongly towards steering and interdependence, an organization can become sluggish and complacent; if too much towards autonomy, then disorder tends to become dominant. – The progressive extension and condensation of dependencies within and between organizations raise problems with regard to coordination and flexibility: If we cannot combine these increasing interdependencies with the right kind of self-organization the results will be increased rigidity and demotivation. This development is not linear and progressive. It concerns a process of trial and error. The concept of a balance between autonomy and interdependency even is a bit misleading because most often this balance is out of balance! Only a long time perspective shows the structure in the development of this balance. The concepts I use to describe this structure lean heavily on the concepts Elias developed in observing the changes in European societies from the middle-ages onward. This structure in the development of organizations has an empirical foundation as described in the chapter ‘Elias as organizational sociologist’ and more elaborately in another publication (Mastenbroek, 1997). This development also has normative implications. Because if organizations with more articulate balances prove to be more competitive then this will offer some guidance in matters of organizational design and change. This guidance will be made more explicit in the next sections of this chapter.
Organizational Design: The emerging model of organizations In the eighties and nineties of the 20th century more and more business authors try to elaborate modern organizational designs (fi. Grove, 1983; Handy, 1992; Miles, 1989; Pascale, 1990). I will summarize their conclusions concentrating on the way relations between organizational units are perceived.
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The model of the organization as a functional pyramid or as a divisionalized structure is no longer suited for the modern type of organization; rather, we need a model that views the organization as a network of units that are free to act while retaining their links to one another. Units are autonomous, while simultaneously cultivating those interdependencies that give them a competitive edge. In addition, organizations rely on more horizontal market-like coordination mechanisms, one of the most important of which is the continuous feedback on results. This gives a different substance to the relationship of centralized to decentralized. The swing of the pendulum from centralized to decentralized becomes a dynamic tension balance between both centralization and decentralization. The direction in which the network moves and the quality of relations within it are shaped by the more central units, but the units also share responsibility for this. Horizontal communication and central coordination demand that every unit be an active network member. This theme is repeated within units: Teams are effective only if they know they are responsible for the organizational unit; individuals can become prominent only if they feel a responsibility for the team of which they are a part. These processes demand certain social skills of the participants: initiative and an eagerness to show results, combined with the ability to activate flexible horizontal relations in which integrative potential is developed and new combinations can be formed. The ability to negotiate constructively and creatively and to function well in teams is indispensable for this. In its most advanced form, we see the ‘both/and’ nature of relations in such a network expressed at each intersection. There is a feeling of responsibility for the unit as well as for the larger whole of which it is a part. Each unit focuses on improving its own results, but it is also a microcosm of the totality and can help compensate for others where capacities are lacking. By means of trial and error this type of organization is gradually on the rise because it is better able to deal with competition. The most important reasons for this are the reduction of complexity, less bureaucracy, and the mobilization of a high energy level. We are going through a transition to a higher integration level, one that is equipped for more complexity! Managers of organizations are compelled to adapt their organizations in this way because of competition with other organizations. Figure 2 shows some characteristics of this type of organization. Grove, 1983; Handy, 1992; Miles, 1989; Pascale, 1990, describe these changes very much as organizational innovations. However, the historical perspective (chapter 10) shows the continuity in the development of these so-called ‘new models’, ‘transformations’ and ‘new paradigms’. Modern organizations build on organizational designs and behaviors which have taken centuries to evolve often painfully and precariously. Moreover, the perspective of Elias brings into the light the most crucial changes. His work focuses on the qualities of organizational
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Table 1.Emerging balances Central – Decentral. Central: – Specification of the strategy (a statement of the core business and common values). – Development of the organization in the direction of units that have their own products and clients. – Pressure on units to make their results visible and to work systematically on improving performance. If results are negative there is severe pressure to stop activities. – Attention to the quality of communication, for example by ensuring a good horizontal exchange of results and ideas to improve performance. – Selection and strengthening of critical interdependencies, for example the company formula, management development and financial systems. Decentral: – Units have their own performance indicators within the company strategy. – Units set up their own plans to improve results. – There is a high degree of unit autonomy to determine what means will be employed in what ways to achieve better results. Units bear responsibility for results. – Units have resources of their own to achieve their plans; decision making about investments is less bureaucratic. – Supporting services are often farmed out; there is a market relationship with the remaining central services.
relations and on the way steering and self-organization are gradually changing. Or, in other words, the gradual development of the competencies to steer and coordinate together with the capabilities of temployees to take on more responsibilities. Crucial is the ongoing articulation of the dependency and autonomy balance among units. Structure, strategy, culture and information systems all provide levers which contribute to this articulation. See also Chapter 10 ‘Norbert Elias as organizational sociologist’ This perspective makes it a easier to adapt and to redesign organizations. Some practical ways to achieve this are presented in Tables 1 and 2. In my experience this concept of the interdependency-autonomy balance (on other levels of synthesis: steering — self-organization, centralization — decentralization) offers a guide for discussion and decision making among managers about the design of their organization. In the next part of this chapter I will demonstrate the relevance of this concept by applying it on the topic of change management.
Change management towards the improvement of results Improvement plans are introduced in many organizations. Continuous Improvement, Performance Management, Total Quality Management, Kaizen, Cultural
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Table 2.The tension balance between autonomy and interdependency: Examples of incentives. Autonomy
Interdependency
Profit centers with high degree of autonomy Company facilities in areas such as: concerning: – internal structure
– research
– investments
– venture capital
– product development
– management development
– market strategy
– rare expertise
‘flatter’ organization, less control
horizontal synergy
encourage initiative/experiments
safety net for setbacks
team spirit, management by walking around clear mission, sense of belonging, house style, informal relations constant feedback and comparison of results increase of mutual effectiveness by ‘learning per unit from each other’
Change, Motivation Programs. Most of these plans and approaches have ambitious goals. These goals are not temporary; the spirit of improvement has to catch every worker, not just for a few weeks but in an enduring way. These approaches are very popular but also receive some severe criticism; about 75% of these efforts are reported to be failures. Why? The concepts described above focus our attention on the way these projects are organized. In what way are they linked to an articulation of the autonomy-interdependency balance in organizations? Could the link with this balance be a crucial factor in the difference between success and failure? Does change-management link with better steering and more self-organization? Very often attempts to bring about change are programmed in ways that are difficult to link with steering and self-organization. In my experience this may severely hamper the change process. I will start with two examples of this kind of change management. Next, I will give two brief cases to demonstrate how the link with steering and self-organization can be preserved. Change management always means steering and directing. But are we steering in such a way that something of lasting value is developed in the organizational web of relations? Is more responsibility combined with more adequate steering? The next two examples show how good intentions may have doubtful effects. A few years ago a commercial bank set out on a large-scale project of quality improvement. The campaign was launched by a few top managers with much fanfare. Spectacular events, special start-up days, posters and special quality
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symbols typified the first phase. Task forces and project groups got to work throughout the company and an extensive training program was implemented. The central project organization, which coordinated all the efforts, worked out a wellconstructed 18-step plan that was to be used as a scenario. Today the project is stagnating. Employees are disappointed. For the most part, the measurement and analysis techniques to which the expensive training program devoted so much attention are not being applied. The top managers who launched the project now give the impression that they have lost both their interest and their enthusiasm; a few of them are even suggesting that “now things are back to normal”. Many of the middle managers are acting in a downright obstreperous way; they feel that blame is being thrust upon their shoulders, even though they never had any influence on the project. They were the ones who had to keep things moving despite the loss of their personnel to training and project group activities. It is becoming increasingly apparent that, although there are plenty of ideas for improving quality, the old points of contention such as struggles for competencies, centralization versus decentralization and faulty communication and inflexible relations are making progress difficult. In a recent evaluation, the central project group revealed that the project, with its carefully worked-out 18-step plan and exemplary organization of project committees, had in fact stimulated bureaucratic tendencies, whereas the objective had been to convert rigidity and bureaucratization into motivation and entrepreneurial action. They are now looking for a way of breaking through the impasse. Thus, change came to a halt. Steering and self-organization were not developed; even worse, they were hampered. Line management was drawn into irresponsible behavior. The next example explains this in greater detail. A visibly pleased manager of a large production department remarked that the quality project was as good as dead. At last, work could get back to normal. He felt that for years he had been pressured by all kinds of requests (i.e. orders) to have employees participate in project groups. A merry-go-round of training and education had put impossible pressure on planning. Everybody had been forced to improvise and work overtime to keep things going. In addition there were countless research activities by external characters who kept getting in the way. The report on avoidable quality costs in particular had gone down very badly with him and his people. “As if we don’t work like crazy here!!” Anyway, the training courses were over, the project groups had done their jobs. There were just going to be some meetings to pass on the results. “Well, let them figure it out, maybe the coordinators will know what to do with it.” By then most of the Q-coordinators had chucked it in. The man presently in charge did not have to be taken seriously, and his assistant was still a rookie!
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People always agree that the responsibility for improvement belongs to the line organization. But it often seems that every effort is made to undermine that responsibility through the liberal use of project groups, steering committees, training programs, and nice-looking 10-step change packages. How can this be prevented? By relating change to steering and self-organization. The next two cases describe the approach.
Case ‘Client orientation’ “Higher demands are made on managers and employees, particularly in the areas of supplying quality and customer-oriented service, aimed at achieving intended (and visible) results. This requires the employees taking and propagating responsibility in this new situation, as well as optimal communication between the employees, between teams and between employees and customers.”
The text above was taken from the starting document for a change project in a policy and consulting organization active in the catering and recreation industry. This organization (approximately 200 employees) experienced a radical shift in activities from executive training institute to trend-setting policy and service institute. The approach as developed by the management teams focuses on five questions: – – – – –
who are our external and internal customers, and what do they want; which wants should we meet more adequately; how can we increase the quality of our service; what actions are we going to take; do we need to improve our communication skills to become more clientoriented?
All teams in the organization have to develop an action plan working with these five questions. Discussion along these lines proves useful and they generate important input for improvement actions. This process is accelerated by kickoff meetings of all teams. Action plans are drawn up, improvements executed, and results realized. The results are made visible with the aid of indicators formulated by teams. Less than a year later the management team concludes that working on improvements has become more normal practice. The following questionnaire responses allow a comparison between the starting situation and the situation scarcely a year later (Table 3). This case exemplifies some important issues. The change process was organized in a way directly related to the concept of steering and self-organization as crucial
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competencies: There were no project groups. The steering group was the top team. The line organization was included every step of the way. Each manager was challenged to show more responsibility for the (internal) customers of his unit. Issues on the inter unit level were the responsibility of the higher manager in question. Every unit in the company was expected to show results. In this way change management is more in line with developing the capacities of steering and self-organization in the normal work organization. Does this approach mean that there are no problems? Not at all; there is no easy way out. A case where the process went much less smoothly will be described next.
Table 3.Response to questionnaire. Question
YES
YES
+/-
% at start
% after 1 year
%
1.
Do you know what your customers think of the products/services of our organization?
57
84
27
2.
Do you know where the quality of the products/ services fails, i.e. does not meet the wishes and expectations of the customers?
52
82
30
3.
Is the quality of your products/services measured/made visible on a regular basis?
27
64
37
4.
Are the department’s quality problems subject to.systematic analysis of causes and solutions on a regular basis?
29
65
36
5.
Is specific attention paid to the quality of the cooperation and communication in your department?
50
81
31
6.
Is the quality of the internally supplied products and services explicitly discussed in interfacemeetings.
46
76
30
Management and organization
Case ‘Cost reduction’ Let us also look at a change process where the change did not proceed so smoothly and everything went much slower. It concerns a company in the chemical industry, aiming to achieve ‘cost leadership’. An elaborate program of kick-off meetings, work conferences and training courses (about improvement meetings and planning and working with indicators) provides important impulses. After a promising start it turns out that concrete improvement actions are slow to get off the ground. Progress is made, but sporadically. Examples: – – –
Considerable reduction of the re-setting times between particular types of products. Reduction of rejection rates for two products. Reduction of production breakdowns thanks to improved cooperation between operators and the technical department.
However, it takes two years before important actions are discussed on a regular basis at both the company and the team level. Even then, the results are disappointing. Apart from occasional actions as described in the examples, there is little movement. Mentality and company culture have an obstructing effect. Also, there is a growing doubt about management’s motivation. Things don’t really get moving. Management declares its maximum commitment time and again, but they are not able to translate this into action. They are distracted by other matters, including many operational problems. Eventually, two interventions were needed to put the project back on the rails. (1) All managers are obliged to put the improvement project on the agenda of every meeting they have with their people. (2) Each unit must report on the results using performance indicators. These indicators are usually kept up to date by the people involved, and they are displayed in such a way that all can see and examine them. These two powerful stimuli, consistently maintained, even enforced, by management, prove to work. What causes the different pace of change in these two examples? The difference lies in the steering capacity. In the first case management steers more powerfully. They are able to do this because they are more of a team. Also, this steering produced a better response from the organizational units. They have the ability to extract the message and go to work. In the second case managers are enticed into getting involved with operational details time and again. One might say: the managers in the first case are better able to delegate and coach. But also: their job is much easier, because the lower echelons show more responsibility and are better able to develop a plans for their own units.
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Core of the approach The core of the approach as applied in the two cases can be summarized as follows: Direct the desired change by organizing two types of activities: 1. For the entire organization: – The top indicates: what, why and how to improve. – Mutual exchanges and progress reports on the action plans of the units are organized. – All units participate. “If you’re not with us, go and do something else.” 2. – – – –
Per unit: Formulate improvement goals within the strategy of the company. Agree on actions. Make results visible. Improve communication and team performance.
Support is available to the units, and they also have the opportunity to decide their own pace and make their own choices within the overall framework. In this mix of two types of activities you may recognize a strong articulation of steering as well as self-organization. Subsequently, on each level of the organization the approach shows the same characteristic: steering and self-organization. Put concisely: policy down, improvement actions up. Often there are impediments. Teams and managers are not always able to work along these lines. These impediments appear to have a slowing effect. Yet, it only seems that way, because the development of the abilities to steer and to take responsibility is of primary importance. The approach helps to clarify shortcomings in management style and communication skills, which can subsequently be developed all the more effectively. “More effectively” because they can be focused directly on the behavior necessary to improve results. Steering capacity and self-organization and their implications in terms of management style, cultural change and improvement of communication come into focus and can be worked upon in direct relation to concrete results like cost reduction, quality improvement or a greater client organization.
The medium is the message The importance of this concept of steering and self-organization as a guide for change processes may easily be overlooked. Common change practices, however, imply interventions which often are very different from the interventions as described in the two cases above. For example they imply:
Management and organization
– – – –
working with committees or project groups; having external consultants do thorough research; appointing special project leaders, improvement managers, task forces and quality coordinators; using training programs as a means for change management.
These change management methods may be accepted and familiar, but they are diametrically opposed to the development of steering and self-organization. In this context ‘the medium is the message’ holds true: The change methods undermine the change goals. We take the responsibility for improvements away from the line organization. We do not plan or intend any of this, but it happens! For the steering and commitment of the top disappear into the background and line-managers are not held responsible for improvements. Others get going with it or people work on it outside their normal work situation. The two examples at the start of this section clarify how this is brought about. “Well yes, but”, I sometimes hear, “our organization is not ready for this yet.” Or: “We as the management haven’t quite figured it out yet.” Or: “Middle management can’t handle such a process.” Or: “If you leave that kind of responsibility to the people, nothing much will come of it.” Even if that is true, we must not skirt around these issues with all kinds of auxiliary constructions! These are problems that deserve to be solved. First of all by leaving responsibility where it lies and subsequently giving substance to it. It is better to build it up step by step than eventually being stuck with major implementation problems.
Responsibility in the line By placing the responsibility in the line organization from the start, change management exacts the required cultural changes. The line organization must steer and foster responsibility. Teams must develop their own improvement actions within the company strategy. They should make their own results visible and take responsibility for their own (internal) customers. To make sure that this actually happens, management must provide direction in terms of style, attitude and behavior. Training courses should take the shape of short work conferences with existing teams; they should be about solving actual problems in the work situation and developing concrete actions to improve team results. The sense of responsibility, communication and management style often show gaps. Specific steering can bridge these. What I am saying is that enabling and pushing the organization towards a more articulate balance is an essential part of the process towards improvement. Better steering and a higher level of self-organization come together in this concept of a balance as shown in Figure 2.
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steering
Top management develops focus for the organization The line organization directs and monitors
selforganization
Each unit develops its own actions within the focus Each unit shows visible results
Figure 2. The tension balance steering — self-organization.
This tension-balance functions as a source for continuous reflection and practical interventions. It focuses attention on behavior and competencies that really matter.
Management style A few final words on the important issue of managerial competencies in facilitating the change processes as described above. Figuring out the balance between steering and self-organization also applies to management and leadership. Improvement of results, organizational change and design are all directly related to managerial competencies. In what way should managers deal with these issues? More specifically: What managerial behavior facilitates change in the direction of the improvement of results? Before closing this chapter, let me explain very briefly what kind of recommendations I think are appropriate and how these recommendations are related to the concepts discussed above. The concrete and practical detailing of the managers role to improve results and to get people responsible for improvements is of major importance. Key words
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are attention and commitment. However, we have never heard a manager say he lacked attention or commitment, so these buzzwords do not express what this is about adequately. The essence is concrete behavior, that shows active and personal steering and facilitation. Table 4 shows a brief questionnaire that provides some examples of the behaviors that count in this respect. Behavior in the 1–2 areas come close to the mix of steering and self-organization I experience as appropriate. Again, it concerns an articulation of steering as well as self-organization. Table 5 provides a compact overview. This style has to be seen in a developmental perspective. The steering of Wedgwood as described by me in Chapter 10 provided detailed and very close supervision to raise discipline and channel affects and moods. Later steering became more focused on output. A rather high level of self-discipline was taken for granted; this has been internalized over the generations. Now we try more and more to steer on initiative and taking responsibility for improving results.
Table 4.Change Management. Six behavioral distictions 1. Stimulates ideas and initiatives 1
Only the regular job counts 2
3
4
2. Clear about his ideas and expectations 1
Cautious, vague 2
3
4
3. Has an overall vision, steers on outlines 1
2
3
4
2
3
4
5 Makes things complex
2
3
6. Adressess employees clearly on their responsibilities 1
5 Already has his reaction
5. Keeps it simple 1
5 Operationally minded
4. Is a good listener 1
5
4
5
Remains vague or ‘nice and easy’
2
3
4
5
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Table 5.Management style: Steering and self-organization. Management Style Steer Top-down Direct
and and and
support bottom-up delegate
This means: – Clarify frameworks – Make people accountable for responsibilities of their own – Coach for results – Ask for ideas and initiatieves
Conclusions Organizations are always in a state of change. This chapter clarifies the pattern of change. In this pattern we see specific manifestations of the interdependenceautonomy balance. This balance was figured out for three important managerial areas; organizational design, change management and managerial styles. Many efforts in these areas are hampered because they do not sustain each other. And even worse, they may sap the responsibility of the managers and employees involved. The concept of ‘both better steering and more self-organization’ provides a framework for integrating many important insights and focusing more precisely on those elements that matter most. This concept is very close to the concept of interdependence and autonomy as a crucial characteristic of relations between organizational units. The latter concept is on a slightly higher level of synthesis. The insights in this chapter are inspired by the works of Elias. They are developed in such a way that they can be used in practical and business-oriented discussions and recommendations. In fact, the figures in this article have been used in such discussions as an aid to decision making. They are part of a much broader effort partly published in the English language (Mastenbroek, 1988, 1990, 1991a, 1991b, 1996, 1997, 2000b, 2000c). It concerns more scientific work as well as more business and practice oriented publications. As mentioned before, this work is still in full development. A more historical and developmental approach has a ring of tales from the past, at the most a source of anecdotes. However, the insights discussed in this chapter are closely tied to the present reality of organizations. Elias does give us with something to hold on to!
Notes
Notes to the Introduction 1. See issues of Administrative Science Quarterly for September 1998, December 1998, September 1999, March 2000, June 2000, September 2000, December 200, March 2001. 2. See issues for March 1998, June 1998, March 1999 and September 1999. This cluster of themes may also be extended to include concerns with injustice, inequality and related ethical issues. See issues for March 1998, September 1998, September 1999, March 2000 and September 2000 3. See issues for March 1998, June 1998, September 1998, December 1998, March 1999, December 1999, March 2000, June 2000, December 2000 and March 2000. See issues for March 1998, June 1998, September 1998, September 1999, March 2000, December 2000. 4. See issues for March 1998, June 1998, December 1999, June 2000, September 2000 and December 2000. 5. See issues for March 1998, June 1998, December 1999, June 2000, September 2000 and December 2000. 6. See following issues of Organization Studies: 19(i), 19(ii), 19(iv), 20(ii) (interlocking ties), 20(v), 21(i) and 21(v). 7. See 19(i) (discipline),19(vi) (power), 20(ii) (power, politics), 20(iv) (surveillance, control), 20(v) (domination) 21(i) (domination, power, control), 21(iii) (power, control), 22(ii) (control) and 22(iii) (power). Relevant keywords in brackets. 8. See 19(i) (narratives), 19(ii) (legitimacy, culture), 19(iii) (reading entrepreneurs as texts, Foucault, values, culture), 19(v) (culture, subtext), 19(vi) (social construction, metaphors), 20(i) (discourse, learning), 20(iii) (culture, language), 20(iv) (culture, aesthetics, discourse), 20(v) (cognition), 20(vi) (paradigms), 21(i) (moral ethos), 21(iii) (knowledge, learning, symbolic displays, representation), 21(iv) (amoralization, constructing organizations, symbols, sensemaking), 21(vi) (Foucault, culture, learning), 22(i) (conversation, culture, learning), 22(ii) (talk, discourse, construction) and 22(iii) (legitimation, cognition, learning). 9. See 19(ii) (change), 19(v) (change), 20(iii) (history, change), 20 (iv) (transformation), 20(v) (transition, change), 21(ii) (which contains four articles with historical analyses) and 21(v) (innovation). 10. See 19(iii) (subjectivity, identity), 20(i) (subjectivity), 20(iii) (bodies, identities), 20(iv) (subjectivity), 20(v) (self), 21(iii) (subjectivities), 22(i) (identity, self), 22(ii) (identity), 22(iii) (identity). 11. See Mills 1959, especially 33–86.
220 Notes
12. Elias was born in 1897, Lazarsfeld in 1901, Parsons in 1902. Parsons and Heidelberg both attended the university at Heidelberg in the 1920s though it is not clear whether they met. Lazarsfeld and Elias were both one-time associates of Theodor Adorno. 13. For useful introductions to Elias’s work, see Krieken 1998; Mennell 1998; Smith 2001a; Fletcher 1997. See also Kilminster 1998. 14. The Court Society may be read in conjunction with other important contributions to the understanding of the sociogenesis of social discipline such as the work of Foucault and van Doorn (see, for example, Foucault 1977 and van Doorn 1975). 15. On the relevance of Elias’s analysis to the European Union, see Smith 1999b. 16. For examples, see Smith 2001. 17. Our term, not one used by Elias. 18. See also Krieken 1996. 19. Along with acclaim came critique. For instance, Giddens, Bauman and Coser also all presented critique of Elias (e.g., see Fletcher, 1997). 20. Two other aspects of Elias’s biography should be noted. Firstly he was a ‘German Jew’ (Elias 1994b: 79) who ‘loved Germany very much’ and who ‘identified very much with German classicism’ (1994b: 18). The extent to which he was ever able to reconcile the two categories, German and Jew, has been the subject of some debate (Smith, 2001), in part as a consequence of his seeming reluctance to directly address them. Elias did not address ‘the question of Germany’ until the early 1960s while an extended treatment had to wait until the publication of The Germans (Elias, 1996). Yet their influence on his life seems unmistakable. His mother died in Auschwitz, the image of which Elias stated, ‘even after forty years, I cannot get over it’ (1994b: 79). What should also be noted about Elias is that, like Marx, he grew up in a German bourgeois habitus from which he felt some alienation, which he later described as ‘too bourgeois for me’ (Elias, 1994b: 6). It is an open question as to how much either of these experiences informed his work, such as his interest in Freud or in ‘outsiders’, or in the redemptive possibilities of a longer-term direction to human history, or in the way in which, as with the bourgeois attitude to ‘sexuality and death’, much of life lies ‘completely hidden behind the scenes’ (1994b: 15), a ‘characteristic of this whole process which we call civilization’ (1994a: 99, added emphasis).
Notes to Chapter 1 1. The author has conducted a large part of the research in conjunction with Gerard Bos. 2. The important points of the international series were found by comparing bibliographical data and some key words of the Dutch, English/American, and German series. Key books are books which were edited more than once and translated into at least one other language.
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Notes to Chapter 3 1. On humiliation and shame see Barrett and Brooks 1992; Elias 1994; Garfinkel 1956; Gilbert 1997; Goffman 1967; Giffin 1991; Klein 1991; Klein 1992; Lindner 2000; Lindner forthcoming; McAleer 1994; Margalit 1996; Miller 1993; Nisbet and Cohen 1996; Scheff 1990; Scheff 1994; Scheff 1997; Sennett 1980; Sennett 1998; Silver et al 1986; Smith 1999a; Smith 1999c; Smith 2000; Smith 2001; Urban 1990. 2. I am grateful to Evelin Lindner for helping me to clarify these distinctions. The terms used here were first introduced in Smith 2001. 3. See Smith 1999b. 4. See Smith 1999a. 5. This not to deny that some people enjoy humiliation and may, indeed, seek it out. Others may simply accept it as their lot. It is possible that resentment is felt most keenly either when there is a strong memory of a former time when the underlings were free and independent or when there is evidence that other people who are ‘like them’ are achieving freedom and independence. 6. The terms used in this section of the paper were first employed in Smith 2001. I am grateful to Tim Newton for his very helpful comments. 7. Further discussion of the ideas of legible authority and rational authority is to be found in Moore 1972, 55–9; Sennett 1980, 165–90. 8. Piore and Sabel 1984, 226–34. 9. Employers sometimes try to cut themselves free of such problems by recruiting ‘green’ labour (e.g. women or rural immigrants to the city) which has no tradition of paid labour in urban workplaces. However, this often entails a return to absolutist or quasi-absolutist hierarchy.
Notes to Chapter 6 1. The boundary concept may be, and has been, used in different ways to make sense of organizations. The different epistemologies of boundaries will not be pursued in this chapter other than to consider boundaries as social and physical limits created in organizations. This is of course a restricted definition, based on a simplified, or what Harvey (1990: 201) calls a common-sense or self-evident meaning of social space. For example, the term ‘boundary’ may also be used in the abstract sense. It may, for example, represent an imaginary line beyond which “one feeling, quality stops and another starts” (Longman 1995). Applied to social behaviour, boundaries may, in the abstract sense, denote outer tolerance limits for what is socially allowable in a group. This point in particular opens up for a discussion of how boundaries may be distinguished from rules in social life. Rules, deriving from organizational ordering structures can be seen as stipulations of choices of courses of action (Giddens 1984: 178) and specify transitions in space or time beyond which reactions related to rules may be evoked. Uses of boundaries are also found in psychology, such as in writings of Bateson (1972) and Piaget (1963). 2. Alternative, but evidently also controversial. One could well argue that a dualist perspective fails to incorporate conceptual and moral foundations of both structure and agency theories.
222 Notes
3. Dynamics of boundaries has of course not been entirely ignored in organization studies. Boundaries have been suggested to be fluid (Blau 1986), ambiguous (Blau 1986; Scott 1992; Pfeffer and Salancik 1978), changing (Weick 1979) and permeable (Perrow 1986; March and Simon 1958). Most studies, however, limit themselves to point out that boundaries move and do not pursue the dynamics generated by the very presence of boundaries. 4. Herodotus, hailed as “the father of History”, is also called the “father of lies”, as the veracity of some of his writings is seriously questioned. However, his accounts of the battles of Athens are seen as fairly reliable (see the introduction to the book by A. R. Burn. 5. The observation concurs with that of Kreiner and Schultz (1993), who observed from studying inter-organization networking among researchers that, “As such (the networking activities) are tolerated and unofficially legitimated, but, according to our observations, are never publicly condoned or even discussed.” (202–203) 6. In a world of increasing tensions between organizational loyalty and external bonds, the adherence to etiquette may become more difficult, as Elias formulates it: ”The closer the web of interdependence becomes in which the individual is enmeshed with the advancing division of functions, the larger the social spaces over which this network extends and which become integrated into functional and institutional units — the more threatened is the social existence of the individual who gives way to spontaneous impulses and emotions, the greater is the advantage to those able to moderate their affects, and the more strongly is each individual constrained from an early age to take account of the effects of his own or other people’s actions on a whole series of links in the social chain.” (Mennell and Goudsblom 1998: 55) 7. The non-intentionality of the results of change has been made by other sociologists (Merton 1936, Elster 1989). Nevertheless, it is a point which does not seem to have been pursued at depth in organization studies. Exceptions are Van de Ven and Poole (1995) and Weick and Quinn (1999).
Notes to Chapter 9 1. Readers should note that I studied in an Indian management institute. Also see Srinivas (1994). 2. Information on this notable transfer of knowledge is very limited. I have relied heavily on Hills, Haynes & Baumgartel (1973), and on Ganesh (1984) and Srinivasan (1989). 3. MAs had complicated ownership of the organizations they managed. In some cases clients hired agents while retaining their ownership. But often agents promoted their own businesses, controlling ownership. The case of the Tatas illustrates this: they indirectly controlled most of the organizations they managed, through a network of cross-ownership and majority shares. 4. The concept of a mixed economy stemmed from an underlying belief in self-sufficiency. Indian nationalists saw economic dependency on external markets as a crucial weakness. Thus imports were restricted; instead import-substitution encouraged transfer of technology so that dependence on foreign vendors would be reduced. Import substitution was one of many policies that protected domestic markets from foreign competition. Protective tariffs and import restrictions also benefited private business.
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5. At the time of Indian independence the Indian government service, earlier known as the Indian Civil Service expanded into several services, including the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Foreign Service. 6. Eventually the IIM at Ahmedabad established one of the more influential management journals in India, Vikalpa. 7. But to some extent there was concern for “ethical practices” by owners, for instance, eschewing socially irresponsible strategies (Chakraborty, 1991). 8. He was more interested in tracing the Western concept of ‘civilization’ than implying its benefits to other parts of the world. 9. Nandy proceeds to identify the important contours of the civilizing mission as gender and age related. The British characterized Indian society as effeminate and immature. Such a characterization legitimized their social interventions. There is some resonance here with Elias’ note that the civilizing process leads to an increasing psychological distance between youth and adulthood (Mennell, 1992: 49). Possibly the British were transferring the result of their civilizing process (the distance between youth and adulthood as social states) towards India, enshrined within their civilizing mission.
Notes to Chapter 10 1. This statement about the structure or patterns of historical processes, covers something of great relevance but is also very controversial. In the social sciences it seems as if only the facts and figures of today have relevance. Historical studies have the ring of tales from the past. As anecdotical evidence maybe of some odd interest. On top of this already unfamiliar approach is added the concept of stucture in a process; meaning that processes may take a discernible — though unplanned — direction over time. Even to historians this is a very disputed idea. Every generation writes its own history and every generation uses its own logic, isn’t it!? Current postmodernism with its emphasis on relativism makes the idea of a possible progression in the reality-orientation of the social sciences also very doubtful. Elias firmly challenged these positions. With only very limited effects up until now. An awareness of the unsatisfactory state of the social sciences may pave the way for a reappraisal of our current standards. 2. This brief epistemological examination touches the foundations of our thinking about organizations. Scientists disagree thoroughly on this. Concepts based on the natural sciences such as open-system theory and chaos theory clash with another powerful school of thought, which emphasizes the voluntary nature of human relations. Until now the prestige of the natural sciences provided the systems theories with a considerable advantage in this battle. Elias distances himself from both of these approaches. People can only be understood in terms of the changing relationships they form with each other. That means aqn historical perspective and an emphasis on important relational aspects such as power an dependency.
224 Notes
Notes to Chapter 11 1. This contestation is increasingly apparent following recent challenges to deep ecology and green orthodoxy (e.g., Easterbrook, 1996). In particular, a central tenet of current eco-orthodoxy, namely that global warming is proceeding apace, continues to be the subject of controversy amongst climatologists. Some argue that there is little clear evidence that global warming is a consequence of human activity rather than ‘natural’ cyclical variation, or else suggest that climatological complexity calls ‘into question our ability to make any reliable projection of future global climate change’ (Hansen et al., 1997: 239; cf., Bate, 1998). One can however counter such climatological controversy by arguing that it is still far better to adopt the ‘precautionary principle’, and adopt ‘eco-friendly’ policies as a precaution against the likelihood that global warming is due to human action. 2. Organizational researchers do address related issues in work on strategy. Yet the limitation of current work on corporate environmental strategy is its tendency to rely on the idealized visions of order of classical strategy models and their ‘dream of purity’ (Bauman, 1997: 5) wherein corporate life is parceled into its ‘proper’ place, the boxes and arrows of the strategy model diagram. Many of the writers adopt a taxonomic approach close to the Darwinian category of ‘lumpers’ whose main desire is to ‘have pigeon-holed something into one box or another’ (Mintzberg, 1988: 762). Companies are ‘lumped’ together according to the seriousness of the environmental orientation (e.g., Welford, 1995; Beaumont et al., 1993), or according to the kind of environmental strategy they do or can adopt (e.g., Bhargava and Welford, 1996). Although there is some modeling of organizational processes, these tend to remain stylized and idealized (e.g., Hutchinson, 1992). It remains surprising that the corporate environmental strategy literature has not given more attention to less ‘linear’ perspectives on strategy (e.g., Mintzberg, 1988, 1990; Weick, 1987) or to more critical orientations (e.g., Alvesson and Willmott, 1995; Barry and Elmes, 1997; Hardy, 1995; Knights and Morgan, 1991; Whittington, 1993). However though these alternative approaches to strategy acknowledge its complexity, they raise a problem for the green endeavor because they emphasize the frailty of any strategy, whether corporate, environmental or ecological.
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Index A absolutist hierarchy 48, 50, 51, 54, 55, 221 Actor-Network Theory xviii–xxi, 195–197 agency xix, 76, 82, 102, 167, 195, 196 Albrow 78 army organizations 174, 175 asymmetries xviii, xix authority 129 professional authority 129 status-authority 129 autonomy 46, 175, 179–183, 185, 187, 188, 205, 206, 208, 209, 208, 209, 218 see also self-organization B bargaining xxiv Bateson 108, 221 Bauman xviii, xxvi, 47, 68, 69, 194, 195, 220, 224 Bendix xvi, xxvi, 10, 11, 20, 21 Bogner 135 Bombay Plan 155 Burkitt xxvii Burnham 20 Burns 32 C Callon xviii, xix, xx, 195–204 capitalistic civilisation 90 chains of interdependence 87, 110, 114, 154 Chandavarkar 156 change 86, 87, 112, 181, 224 figurational change xiii, xxv management 208, 209, 212, 215 Chen 145 Child & Lu, 145 coercion 176, 178–181, 201 colonialism 168 company culture see organizational culture competition 89–92, 94, 95 Confucius 136
conquest-humiliation 46, 47, 50, 53, 55, 56 Contract Management Responsibility System 145 control ix, xxv, 7, 12–15, 21, 23, 26, 28–30, 35–38, 42, 47, 50, 85, 86, 88, 93, 95, 96, 108, 125, 139, 154, 155, 175–177, 179, 180, 194, 196 increasing control 36 controlled decontrolling of emotional controls xiv, 38 see also informalisation corporate culture see organizational culture Coser xxvi, 220, cost reduction 213, 214 courtiers ix, xiii, xxi, xxiv, 4, 17, 88, 159 courtly society xix, xxi culturalist school 132, 133 Czarniawska xvi D De Swaan 34 decision-making processes 65, 66, 75, 77, 81, 128 differentiation 13, 15, 24, 38, 39, 73, 87, 110, 139, 152, 182 discipline xiv, xxv, 23, 38, 39, 56, 166, 169, 174, 175, 176, 178, 180, 181, 188, 205, 217, 220 external discipline see steering social discipline xiii, xiv, xxiv, xxv, 220 double bind 108 Douglas 72, 73, 105, 159 Durkheim 110 E early capitalism 176 eco-order 191, 195, 196 Elias passim emancipated hierarchy 48–51, 54 emergent strategy xi emotion codes xxi, xxiv, xxv emotion in organizations xiv, xxiv
248 Index
empowerment 65, 76, 77, 81, 179, 182 etiquette 5, 6, 17, 23, 43, 108–110, 115, 222 Etzioni 86, 103 exclusion 5, 25, 27, 28, 40, 46, 69, 70, 112 expulsion-humiliation 46, 47, 57 external constraints 37, 40 F factory regime see factory system factory system 37, 176, 178 feelings of superiority 27 figurations ix, viii, xi, xiii, xiv, xviii, xxi, xxiv, xxviii, xxii, xxv, 24, 25, 36, 40, 87, 90, 98, 112, 134, 135 see also interdependency networks Fineman xiv, 78 Fletcher 70, 154, 159, 220 Ford Foundation 153, 155, 159, 167 Fordist regime 46 Foucault viii, ix, xiii, xvii, xxi, xxii, xxvii, 101, 192, 194, 219, 220 Four Modernisations 145 French bourgeoisie 122, 123 French court society 17, 122, 154 French organizations 125, 127, 129 G Galbraith ix, 94 Gastelaars x, xii, 70 Geertz 121 Gergen 11, 62, 63, 66, 67, 69–71, 76, 80–83 German bourgeoisie 119, 123, 124 German organizations 127–129 Giddens xxvi, 66, 75, 76, 78, 81, 100, 102, 154, 220, 221 globalization x, xxiii, 18, 23, 189, 201–204 Globokar x, xxiii, 120 Gluckman 26, 28 Goffman xxvi, 63, 71, 103, 110, 163, 221 gossip x, xxv, xxviii, 25–37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 73 amongst women 33 and company culture 31 as a power instrument 34 blame gossip 25, 28–32, 34–36, 39, 40, 42, 43 horizontal gossip 35 informational 26, 34
moralistic 26 praise gossip 25, 28, 30–34, 36 gossiping from the bottom to the top 35 gossiping from the top to the bottom 34 Goudsblom 3, 12, 110, 112, 153, 155, 167, 222 government bureaucrats 151 Granovetter xviii, 87 green corporate cultures 198 green technologies x, 189 greening of organizations x, 189, 190, 197 Greiner 182 group charisma 29, 109 group disgrace 29, 109 H Habermas 110 Haggard 133 Hamilton 133 Hardy 101, 169, 224 Hernes x, xiii, 30, 102 Herodotus 105, 106, 113, 222 Herzfeld 71–73 Hills, Haynes & Baumgartel 222 Hochschild viii, xiv, xxiv, xxv, Hofstede viii, 32, 120, 131–133, 152, 167 homines aperti xii, xviii, xxii, 196 homo clausus xii, xv, xviii, xx, xxi, xxii, 61, 155, 196, 197 human Relations 10, 183 human rights 45, 46, 48–50 I identity xii, 40, 56, 67, 103, 104, 109, 119, 120, 124, 142, 145, 157, 168 Imperial era 135, 136, 147 incentives 145, 185, 184–186, 209 inclusion 40, 64, 69, 70, 80, 112 Indian business education 151, 159, 160 Indian capitalists 151, 155 Indian Institutes of Management 155 individualization xii, xviii informal codes xiv, 12 informal manners 9, 12 informalisation xiv, xxv, 36, 38–40 information systems 34, 184, 185, 208 institutional theory xvii, 133, 166
Index 249
institutionalism 100, 166, 167 institutions 45, 52–54, 56, 69, 71–73, 96, 111, 122, 132, 133, 139, 141, 142, 151–156, 160, 162, 163, 166–168, 182 integration 4, 12, 16, 22–24, 26, 39, 41, 115, 122, 123, 143, 182, 183, 192, 207 interdepartemental frictions 35 interdependency networks xi, xii, xiii, xv, xvi, xviii, xx, xxi, xxii, xxv, 135, 192, 195, 196, 200, 201 see also figurations minimal interdependency network 198 intimacy 32, 63, 66, 65, 71, 77–81 investors x, 93–98 K Kanter 33 Kieser xvi, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, 37, 40, 135, 152 Kilminster xv, 194, 220 Kin Tye Lung 138 Klein 221 knowledge viii, xviii, xxi, xxii, xxv, 13, 19, 22, 26, 40, 50, 69, 121, 123, 124, 129, 144, 151–154, 156, 160–169, 173, 178, 181, 222 Kunda 33, 103, 108, 109 Kuzmics xiv, 39 L Lammers 34, 182 language viii, ix, 5,, 123, 156, 162, 176, 191, 195, 218–220 Latour xviii, xix, xx, 195, 197, 204 Law xviii, xix, xxii, 190, 191, 194, 195, 197, 204 legitimacy 100, 102, 103, 120, letting go 39, 40 Levi-Strauss 121 liminal 156 line organization 211, 212, 215 long-term perspective xv, xviii long-term social processes ix, 43 longue durée see long-term perspective Luhmann 102 M Maguire xxiii management
education x, 151–153, 160, 162, 164, 167 cross cultural 167 indigenous 152, 165, 166, 169 intercultural 120, 130 Japanese 164, 165 one-man 143 post-Maoist 145 Scientific Management 143, 178, 179 Soviet 143 styles x, 131–132, 166, 184, 205, 214–216, 21 universalist 165 managerial revolution 20, 92–94, 96, 98 managers 16, 17, 20–22, 32–34, 37, 45, 46, 74, 92–94, 96–98, 143, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 155–159, 163, 166, 167, 173, 174, 184, 186, 190, 194, 207–211, 213–216, 218 managing agent 156, 158 Mannheim xiii, 180 March 33, 76, 159, 219, 222 Marx xvii, xviii, xxvii, 139, 220 Mastenbroek x, xiv, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, 3, 12, 15, 30, 39, 183, 206, 218 Maurice of Orange 174 McKendrick 177, 178 meeting books 5 manuals and textbooks 3, 4, 6 regimes of 3, 19 specialists 11 Tables 17, 18 units 4, 10, 22 Mencius 137 mergers 23, 146 Merton 25, 28, 222 Mill 65, 78, 146 minority of the best 28 minority of the worst 28 Mintzberg xi, 16, 34, 182, 224 Modern enterprise system (MES) 146 modernity xii, xv, 86, 194 monarchy ix, xxiv, 140, 159 monopolisation xiii, xiv, xxi, 37, 88–91, 93–98 Moore ix, 62, 64, 73, 76, 78, 81, 221 Mouzelis xxii, mutual adjustment 35
250 Index
N megotiation xxiv, 10, 23, 72, 82, 113, 133 networked agency xii, xviii, 196 networks viii, xi, xii, xiii, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxv, 4, 15, 20, 34, 43, 50–52, 55, 87, 91, 92, 101, 111, 129, 135, 139, 141, 152–154, 156, 183, 185, 188, 191–193, 195–205 creative network 51, 52, 54, 55 network convergence 199, 200, 204 network standardization 199, 201 Newton x, xii, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, 37–39, 64, 135, 189, 192, 193, 195, 204, 221 nobility ix, 46, 158
R rationality xiv, xvii, xxiii, 42, 49, 168 Redding 138, 141, 167 Reed xxii, 102 reinforcement-humiliation 46–50, 53, 54 relational self 61, 63, 67, 69, 76, 80–82 relative autonomy xxiii relegation-humiliation 46, 47, 49, 54 representing nature 192 Republican era 135, 139, 147 reserve 63–66, 73, 74, 77, 81 Revans 186 rhetoric xvi, 46, 49, 55, 192 Robert’s Rules of Order 7–9, 12 Rorty 101 Rose xxi, 15, 19, 83
O Ogborn 154 organization men 17, 20 organizational civilization 181 organizational culture 30, 31, 39, 71, 110, 120 organizing x, 19, 33, 101, 115, 188, 214
S Sackmann 31, 120 San Min Zhu I 140 Scheff 221 Schumpeter ix, 86, 89–93, 98 Scotson 25, 27–30, 34, 41, 42, 109, 137 Scott 35, 100, 101, 133, 166, 182, 222 self-constraint xiii, 22, 36–38, 40, 136, 155, 166, 168 self-determination 65, 66, 75, 76, 82 self-image 29, 40, 154 self-organization 173, 179–181, 188, 205, 206, 208–212, 214–216, 218, 217, 218 self-restraint see self-constraint Selznick 100, 166, 167 Senge 181 Sennett 74, 221 shame x, 12, 27, 29, 33, 37, 41–45, 132, 221 shaming 43–45 shareholders xxii, xxv, 6, 7, 49, 92, 93, 95, 96, 146 Smith x, xxi, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, 27, 62, 86, 89, 90, 101, 103, 134, 139, 220, 221 social bond 43, 48, 119–125, 127, 128, 130 social control see control socio-economics movement 86 sociogenesis xvii, xviii, 40, 220 Soeters x, xxv, 28, 29, 31, 36 solitude 63–66, 73, 74, 76, 81 Srinivas x, xxiii, 222
P Panopticon 68 Parsons viii, ix, 85, 101, 120, 134, 220 participation see empowerment parties-in-a-system 30 Pascale 206, 207 Pateau 128 performance indicators 45, 208, 213 Perrow 114, 222 Piaget 221 poststructuralism 102, 191 power relations xi, xii, xxvii, 12, 126, 194 balances ix, xiv, xxiv, xxv, 17, 29, 88, 93, 98, 108, 112, 135, 153, 167, 183 practical models 184 principle of honour 125 privacy x, xvi, xxviii, 61–66, 65–68, 70, 73–82 process reduction 153 Q quality improvement 209, 214
Index
state formation xvi, 36, 88, 91, 135, 154 governments 85, 94, 95, 97 structures ix states of privacy 62–64, 66, 74, 80, 81 steering 173, 175, 177, 179–182, 188, 205, 206, 208–218, 217, 218 stock market 95, 96 stock prices 96, 97 Stokvis x, 95 structuralism 101, 102, 115 subjectivity ix, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xx, xxii, xxiii, xxvii, xxviii, 151, 154, 168 supervision 177, 180–182, 217 surveillance 68, 69 Swaan 34 T Tannen 5, 33 Taylor 143, 178, 179, 188 Thoenig xvi Thompson 35, 73, 100, 101 time xiv, xv, xvi, xx, 127, 128 total institutions 71, 163 transfer of management knowledge 153, 160, 161, 169 trust 51, 56, 65, 77–81, 126–128 reciprocal trust 65, 77, 79 U unintended consequences 62, 183 unintended interdependence xi, xvii, 194, 195 unintended order see unintended interdependence
V Van Iterson x, xxv, 38, 176, 178 Van Krieken xiii, xviii, xxvi, xxvii Van Vree x, xxiv, xxv, 3 Veblen 20 violence xiii, xiv, xxiv, 4, 24, 76, 79, 154 voice 65, 66, 76, 81 Von Moltke 175 W we — I — balance 70 Weick 101, 222, 224 Westin 62–66, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79 Whitley 131, 149 Whittington 131, 224 Whyte 20 Willmott xvii, 224 Wilterdink 22, 87, 97, 98 Winston Parva 27, 28, 42, 43, 137 Wouters xiv, xxiv, 3, 12, 15, 36, 38 Wright Mills viii Z Zald xvi, 30, 40 Zelko 9, 11–13, 21 Zijderveld 26
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John Benjamins Publishing Company publishes Advances in Organization Studies as a reformulated continuation of the De Gruyter Studies in Organization. 1. ZEYTINOGLU, I¸sik Urla (ed.): Developments in Changing Work Relationships in Industrialized Economies. 1999. 2. HENKE, Holger and Ian BOXILL (eds.): The End of the ‘Asian Model’? 2000. 3. QUACK, Sigrid, Glenn MORGAN and Richard WHITLEY (eds.): National Capitalisms, Global Competition, and Economic Performance. 2000. 4. MAURICE, Marc and Arndt SORGE (eds.): Embedding Organizations. Societal analysis of actors, organizations and socio-economic context. 2000. 5. CHAN, Andrew: Critically Constituting Organization. 2000. 6. BOS, René ten: Fashion and Utopia in Management Thinking. 2000. 7. RHODES, Carl: Writing Organization. (Re)presentation and control in narratives at work. 2001. 8. HOSKING, Dian Marie and Sheila McNAMEE (eds.): Organization Behavior. Social constructionist approach. n.y.p. 9. CLEGG, Stewart R. (ed.): Management and Organization Paradoxes. 2002. 10. ITERSON, Ad van, Willem van MASTENBROEK, Timothy NEWTON and Dennis SMITH (eds.): The Civilized Organization. Norbert Elias and the future of organization studies. 2002.
