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Where Are We and How Did We Get There?

We are at a unique and paradoxical point in the history of business, due to two forces at work. The first force is that, historically, organizational philosophy has been moving more and more toward participative models which take a holistic view of, and tend to see more absolute value in, the employee. It may be helpful to review some of this history, as summarized by Weissbord [1]. In the burgeoning early industrial revolution, the owners of capital had tremen­dous power. In many instances, employees were seen as just another "tool of production" to be made as efficient as possible. With little regulation, workplaces were often ruled by highly autocratic managers and supervisors who could act as petty tyrants toward the workers, often in capriciously bullying ways. The work of Frederick Taylor in the early 1900's was, in part, a reaction to this. Taylor sought to determine "scientifically" the one best way to do each task on the premise that once this had been specified, managers would have less leeway to be arbitrary and coercive—they would have to reward workers who performed well according to standard. Taylor was not, however, "participative." He held that engineers should design work tasks on the basis of engineering principles, without input from the workers.

The psychologist Kurt Lewin demonstrated, during World War II, that group dynamics play an important role in group performance [1]. He was trying to "teach" house­wives how to feed their families nutritiously while mini­mizing use of certain foods that were in short supply and mainly allocated to the armed forces. He found that a pure lecture approach, while quite capable of conveying all of the relevant information, had little effect on behavior. How­ever, when he tried asking these groups to come up with their own ideas, based on certain parameters, they were much more likely to follow up with behavioral change. This work revealed the power inherent in involvement and participation, placing more value on the individual group member.

Influenced by Lewin, Douglas McGregor described the contrasting sets of management assumptions which he called "Theory X" and "Theory Y"[1]. It was "Theory Y" that asserted that involving the whole person in organizational life would unleash commitment, motivation, and problem-solving skills previously untapped.

In the 1970's and '80's, we became aware, in this country, of the quality circle movement as practiced in Japan, another method for involving people and placing value on their ideas and contributions. Although quality circles have not become a standard part of the American business culture, derivatives such as team building, team-based TQM, and the multitudinous "empowerment" ideas have. Thus, from Taylor to the present, we have in our rhetoric and ideology move steadily toward more participative concepts, which place more value on the whole person.

The second force at work to create a unique juncture for the development of value-rich organizations is what I will call the "new rationalization." This consists of a pervasive movement that began in the 1980's with widespread acqui­sitions, divestitures, asset-stripping, and endless restruc­turing. The recession of the early '90's provided fuel to continue the rounds of layoffs and downsizing, and now "reengineering" is being massively employed to legitimize the continuation of these trends. Most of these trends are driven by executive management efforts to improve short term financial results, on which they depend for their survival. This force directly counters the movement to­ward more human, participative workplaces and in some ways takes us back to the 19th century. Plants are closed, people are laid off, good-paying jobs disappear forever, and people's lives are disrupted if not devastated. Downsizing and layoffs are rarely participative.

So we have continued down a road which allocates progres­sively more rhetoric to participative, holistic concepts, while at the very same time making middle management an endangered species, routinely asking those left in the organization to do 2 and 3 jobs to take up the slack, and in the process sweeping away the whole notion of job security and career-pathing within one company (and their corol­lary, organizational loyalty). We have indeed become lean, but in the process we have also become, in some ways, very mean. And the plain fact is that human beings do not do well in an environment which is "mean." We need to feel not only that we are making a valuable contribution, but that we are valued in and of ourselves. Without this, we can give only a small part of our total talent to an organization. Therefore, in order to create an environment in which people can truly thrive and grow, we need to center our management practices around the valuing of people, and create value-centered organizations.

To be Continued