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Bus admin course - keeping order in the workplace

Lecture outline, 21 October 2000

The following is part of some lectures given to final year business administration students at Macquarie Uni, NSW Australia. I thought people may be interested to know what the future managers are being taught - what we're up against. (i've summarised some of it but not changed the words he used.)

1. THE PROBLEM OF ORDER

   The purpose of organisations is profit. In a business, as soon as you have employees you have heirarchy. This leads to the problem of keeping order in the business. The site of conflict is the profit recieved by the business above the amount paid to the employee ('ee). - level of wages v. level of value creation.

   What can mgt do to keep order?

   • DIRECT CONTROL MECHANISMS:

     heirarchy; issuing orders; monitoring the 'ee (cameras, supervisors ...) This is an oppressive form of control. Assertion of managerial control over the 'ee. The separation of conception from execution.

     The dialectic of control and resistance: Any type of control strategy will stimulate resistance: workers reaction to the new form of control. The more direct the control, the stronger the reaction.

     Direct controls have a high cost because they will be resisted.

   • INDIRECT CONTROLS (A more economical way)

     • CULTURE

       The purpose of organisational culture is to promote blind, unthinking, herd-like loyalty, to get the poor dumb bastard to actually think that what's good 4 the co is good for him.

       the genius of effective culture and informal controls is because they dont feel like controls - hence less likely to invoke resistance.

       Teams: Have the 'ees monitor each other. If someone drops the ball, all the other 'ees on the team get pissed off. Mgt doesn't do it - this is very smart because it eliminates the direct supervisory level which is very oppressive.

     • TECHNOLOGY (monitoring & surveillance, info tech)

       these are indirect because the worker is interfacing with technology, not a person. The best way to get resistance is to have a person supervising. If you imbed controls in culture/tech, you make the control an arms distance away. People often dont make the link between mgt & the use of tech as a control.

       Tech appears neutral, but mgt decides which tech's to implement - to further mgt's goals (cash to productivity outcomes). Not to make peoples jobs more interesting/ liberating. (If this occurs it's because mgt has decided - due to links b/w job satisfaction & performance.) If 'ees chose, would make job less stressful, more interesting & would want a voice in setting targets. By & large (unless unionised) 'ees have no voice.

       'ees give up thier citizen rights & submit to authoritarian env't when they go to work. Organisations are fundamentally top-down, anti- democratic and heirarchical.

2. FACTORS IN THE EXTERNAL ENV'T WHICH ASSIST MGT IN SECURING CONTROL

   • UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

     if high, people will take more shit. If low, people will just walk. (In the US at present, the rate is too low to establish effective control.)

   • NATURE OF IR LAW, STATUS OF UNIONS, CONTRACT LAW

     pariticular alignments can be more favourable 2 mgt/'ees. Cant be favourable for both. If IR law undermines or weakens unions, this increases managerial power. if 45 workers are unionised, they're a group, if individuals, 5 mgrs have more power. (additionally, unions inhibit flexibility)

   • SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM

     if elaborate, no incentive to take crappy jobs. Reganism/ Thatcherism - cut down on basic wage and create incentives to work.

   • CONSUMERISM

     if you want to partake in consumerism, must have money - incentive to work hard. People work because they have to due to capitalism and individualism.

     • survival pressure
     • expectation pressure (move up status level)

Fundamental pressures which impose a certain amount of discipline

Is work a right or a privilege?

The company owns the jobs. The worker has no right to their job. Another form of discipline is that we're pre-socialised to work. External conditions impose work ethic & desires impose discipline.