Is Empowerment is More about Coercion than Commitment - Essay Example

1 Introduction Social es have always been present from the Agricultural age to urbanization but none has been so remarkable, enduring, lasting and hotly debated as those created by the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century that brought about mechanization and division of labour. Until the nineteenth century work was largely controlled by the worker. He was expected to define the time required to finish a job and the attendant quality that resulted out of his skills. This meant that he had better control over his work and also had to take decision on quality and delivery. This situation is still to be found in jobs that individual oriented require and require personal attention even in present times like plumbing and electrical jobs at homes. In such cases the worker can be said to be totally empowered to take almost manager like decisions and also be responsible for the consequences. In group jobs however the impediment was that not all workers were of the same calibre and standard execution of a job was therefore not possible if all went about in their own fashion for completion of a common job or one that required a common end. Often the work would be shoddy as it could be defined by many and the deadlines were almost always a failure. The owners or managers also were frustrated and profits to the organizations were in jeopardy. One of the reasons for this malaise then was non-availability of sufficient technology to improve work. Others were non-planned production process and unorganized levels of output. By the end of the nineteenth century F.W. Taylor, an engineer, devised a plan to put the worker in his proper place and elevate the manager to his proper place and transferred the power of decision firmly into the hands of the management. This was the first organized step towards disempowerment of the worker. 2 Early History In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, under the capitalist society, first Taylorism and then Fordism changed the way work was organized. In late twentieth century, around the seventies, Post Fordism took over as new classes of jobs were created due to advent of technology. More recently, Globalization has brought about outsourcing of jobs that is generating yet another kind of working class. Environments are dynamic and demand changes for becoming and remaining competitive. Capitalism found that growing markets needed greater production at lower cost but the control was in the hands of the skilled worker and he decided the time and quantity. Taylor suggested that if control was shifted from the worker to the manager/owner, the same work could be performed by relatively unskilled workers at lower cost. This needed redefining the work by breaking it into smaller parts. This division of labour employed greater number of people who would together produce a far greater number of goods. The primary object of the system was to guarantee maximum wealth for the owner along with comparative material improvement for the worker, connoting higher wages, better working conditions and higher productivity. Increase in productivity resulted from such managerial and technological innovations. This was named “Scientific Management” and “Taylorism”. Henry Ford was the proponent of “Fordism”. He surmised that he could produce maximum quantity of goods, in his case cars, if they were identical and where components could be sent to the workers via an assembly line. This too did not leave the worker any space to plan or think the moves; rather he was made more robotic in execution of his work. Ford standardized both the product and work. The foundation of Fordism is mass production, through moving assembly lines operated by semi-skilled workers, and continuous growth cycle that is a result of mass production, mass consumption, productivity related wages, increased profits based on increasing use of productive capacity and finally increased investments to support the increasing activities. 3 Literature Review & Analysis A Taylorism Taylor proposed a radical program of removing planning and decision-making authority from skilled workers on the shop floor and simultaneously centralized both mental and conceptual work in the hands of a new managerial class. Then, splintering the working procedures into simpler components, he achieved both reduced labour costs, by employing fewer skilled workers, and increase in productivity. Production was now controlled by the managers through the transfer of control over the velocity, speed and concentration of the production process itself. This generated further class disparities between workers and managers. This was refined to such an extent that work is now fragmented and deskilled for the working class that makes it more manageable by the employing class (Braverman, 1974, Moody, 1997). According to Braverman, ‘Taylorism provides the answer to the most basic problem for the benefit of management as the representatives of capital and employers’. He therefore declared that Taylorism only represents clear expression of the capitalist mode of production. Criticizing it he went on to suggest that what is required is a theoretically rational integration of organizational control that considers conflicting interests within organizations, and accepts wider structures of domination. This thinking is influenced by the socialistic theory of Karl Marx, but Braverman is also against the adoption of the Marxian concept as applied in Russia. Actually Taylorism provided both the management and the workers a clear division of labour by separating the tasks of conception and execution and later writers have disagreed with Braverman and have stated that both management and workers are prejudiced and have sought to present an understanding of both views (Jermier, Knights, and Nord, 1994). Without doubt the organization and control of the labor process can be shaped by workers subjective experience or anticipation of the requirement and actions of capital, but this in turn raises the possibility of resistance by workers. Inside organizations, Benson (1977) observed that some parties exercised domination of their version of reality and enforced them on the rest. Consequently control is stated to be an expression of ‘structurally generated conflicts’ (Clegg, 1981). Ever since then, control over pace and intensity of work performance has continually been transferred from workers to owners with the sole objective of increasing the profitability for the enterprise. The technical characteristics of this conversion of work practices have been enforced by the managerial/professional class over the working class. Undeniably, "Scientific management" techniques have become the foundation of industrial engineering, and they continue to dominate the ways in which jobs are designed even today (Kanigel, 1997). B Fordism Fordism is an extension of Taylorism’s concepts of division of labor. It extends this further and believes in the separation of ownership from control in large corporations with a distinctive managerial class involved in multi-divisional, decentralised organization that is subject to central controls. Market economies have three original social classes; a very small elite made up of the most wealthy and powerful members; a large working class whose members produce goods and services and a third class made up of managers and professionals that are characteristically similar to both the above. They are the ‘contradictory class’; although their work involves administration of bureaucratic controls on behalf of the elite, on personal level their work experience, professional training and ethics identifies them with the working class (Wright, 1988; Moody, 1997; Perrucci & Wysong, 1999; ). Fordism is a form of social and economic guideline that engages in monopolistic pricing by large companies; recognises labor unions and collective bargaining; links productivity and wages. It also looks for opportunities for growth and retail price increases with monetary and credit policies for the consumer aimed at generating cumulative demand. While Fordism was based on division of labour the emphasis was more on reduction of wastages and losses due to mediocrity. The object was to produce large volumes of the standard goods by the use of standard production practices. This led to low prices for the customer, who was offered a limited range of choice. The workers lot was monotonous work methods having little or no meaning. However the workers were offered incentives and productivity was linked to wages. The labour was recognised as a separate class and the role of trade unions was accepted. Collective bargaining was also acceptable and the workers got some rights to protest and collectively get better opportunities, improved working conditions and better pay. The state also stepped in as an institution on grounds of offering welfare thereby giving itself an interventionist role. C Post-Fordism The late seventies saw another upheaval. Microelectronics transformed the world once again. Computers appeared and along with them, the internet changed the working ways. Flexible hours and disinterest in unions raised the spectre of post Fordism. This new phenomenon shook the Fordist world out of its rigors introducing a new individualism amongst workers, a reduction of state interference and created a new relationship between production and consumption. Lane (1995) argues that the Fordism came to be related to rigidity and was obviously unable to respond to the new problems and challenges created by new market demands and the competitive challenges facing managements. This created a crisis of sorts in the Fordist’s world. The crisis of Fordism occurred due to a conflict of political-institutional relations and established social power structures. Post-Fordism is therefore an effort to resolve these conflicts, especially to accept the need for specialization, as opposed to ordinary division of labour; and the rising importance of small firms in place of giant companies where Fordism ruled. Prominent features of Post-Fordism are the new reorganization of labor practices, more flexible permutation of people and machines, creation of new hierarchies and a methodical individualization of work relations (Hirsch 1991). 4 Human Resource Management This gave birth to Human Resource Management (HRM) which replaced the ordinary personal department that was until now recruiting people to fill vacancies for routine jobs as decided by management. There was a marked change in the external environment and new business strategies called for satisfaction of all stakeholders. The worker was now given the status of a stakeholder. It was considered that without the workers active participation a company would lose its competitive advantage. In Taylorism context, companies valued their shareholders and profitability alone. For them to make profitability was the fundamental driver of what they do. Under Fordism they accepted that worker motivation was necessary and introduced the concepts of trade unions, collective bargaining and productivity linked wages. However profits to the shareholders continued to be of paramount importance. But the new age companies also see the importance of values and relationships with stakeholders as a critical part of their ongoing success. They have found convincing answers to the two core questions posed by stakeholder theory, which underscore the moral assumptions of managing. Finally human relationships have also become a purpose of successful business. The separation thesis had so far held that ethics and economics can be neatly and sharply separated. The Stakeholder theory now begins with unequivocal statement that values are necessarily and explicitly a part of doing business, and rejects the separation thesis (Freeman 1994). Even if it is argued that the objective of business is profit then it has to be understood that a successful business is about collaboration under which the suppliers, customers, employees, communities, managers, and shareholders are all involved as beneficiaries. It has been concluded by Venkataraman (2002) that at some level, stakeholder interests have to be joint, they must be working for the same purpose, otherwise business will come to an end and new collaborations will be formed. But surprisingly practice does not match the theory. Legge (1995a) finds that the focus of the enterprise is still profitability. She finds a gap between what she calls Rhetoric and Reality (1995) and fails to find empirical evidence to prove that the soft HR, or the people centric HR, is really being practiced. Indeed Legge (2005) finds that in actuality hard HR is still dominating soft HR which is facing slow diffusion or dispersal. In other words, the reality is that corporates are predominantly profit centric instead of people centric. The fact is that it is true to an extent in manufacturing, where competitive pressures, increased mechanization and advance technology is replacing people or deskilling them as per Taylorism practices. But at the same time a new kind of industry has come into existence. This is the service industry. These Companies feel that the workplace has to become a second home and have introduced the concept of organizational culture, a soft HR approach. This perception is highly appealing to the working class as now they work alongside the managerial class. HRM now has a new meaning and is considered as the most important resource. Indeed there are the advocates of this thinking as found in Storey (1995), Sisson (1993) and Walton (1985a) who believe that it is people that make the difference; that the workforce is the most vital asset; and that human resources are the real sustainable competitive advantage. 5 Management by Fashion Another angle to the HRM story is Management Fashion. This concept of ‘management fashion’ is used as a brief term for the entire knowledge and practice which is currently seen as constituting good management. As against it there are ‘fads’ which are intermediate practices that relate to the more established fashions. These fads are promoted by management gurus who are named as ‘organizational witchdoctors’ by Clark and Salaman (1998). Clark and Salaman, (1998:137) have surmised that these gurus claim to revamp and revitalize organizations by changing their HR practices and reinvent the organization, its employees, their relationships, attitudes and behaviour. They advocate a higher empowerment for the worker for improving performance levels. The reason why gurus become popular, and some are famous too like Lee Iococca of Chrysler fame, is that management studies are relatively new and as yet incomplete. It is only recently that people like M.E.Porter have begun to leave their mark in this field. These gurus have however promoted HR management and contributed greatly to leveraging good HR policies for competitive advantage that were based on stakeholder involvement and empowerment of the individual for the benefit of the organisation. 6 HR Theories Taylorism’s input to management fashion was a Fordist model that believed in mass production through assembly lines. But the human relations theories made contributions on a different level. They proposed that financial incentives and production planning could not ensure optimal production, but that managers should consider the needs and wants of workers, individually and collectively. Management and human relations are constituents of the management fashion, and offer knowledge which can assist in developing how workers would perform their jobs at best level. Amongst the many theorists of HR one outstanding contribution was that by McGregor (1960) that is still practiced today. Negative or Positive attitude of the management is explained by Douglas McGregor (1960) in his theory X and theory Y. According to him a negative attitude of the management, theory X, presupposes that workers are lazy, passive, without ambition, willing to be led and resist change. Hence management is through control, coercion, threats and punishment. This results in low productivity, antagonism, unionism and subtle sabotage. In contrast positive management, theory Y, believes that people are motivated, active and interested, ambitious, prefer to lead and are interested in change. Hence management is through open systems, communications, self-managing teams and peer controlled pay systems. The result is high productivity, bonhomie and care for the organization. Most industries operate on the X theory and therefore there is the usual mistrust and struggle between the management and the workers. Unions are stronger and teamwork is only on paper. Self actualization is narrowed to self empowerment at the cost of others. The abysmal results are there for all to see. Bankruptcies and failures abound and productivity is at all time low. 7 Empowerment – the new Mantra People management has always fascinated everyone and various theories have been expounded to explain how people act and react in different situations. The primary image of an organization is akin to family, clan or tribe where relationships, needs, feelings and skills are the characteristics of its members. The objectives are empowerment, liberation, fulfilment and self actualization of both the individual and the group and the challenge is how to develop attitude to achieve this goal. The most valuable assets of any business are its people. This is one fact that is singularly recognised as a winner. Through effective utilization of a person’s talent the firm will achieve concrete results and build up a highly productive labour force (Harrington 2003). On the above basis various HR theories have attempted to explain why employees perform their duties the way they do. Abraham Maslow (1954) described this in a hierarchy, starting with human psychology, safety and security, belongingness, self esteem and finally self-actualization. According to Maslow, employees have a basic human need and a right to strive for self-actualisation, just as much as the corporate directors and owners do and, by this fulfilment, the organisation becomes stronger, more competitive and profitable. Frederick Herzberg (1959) propounds that there are indeed only two factors that motivate a person to work and they are hygiene and motivators like self actualization. Hygiene does not motivate but its absence will reduce motivation and a good hygienic environment enhances motivating factors like achievements, responsibility and advancement. However the level of performance of employees is not just a result of their skills but also the result of motivation each person exhibits. There are two sources of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. Since it is not always possible to have external rewards all the time for all activities the management has to promote intrinsic motivation that is the outcome of internal factors like self satisfaction or the pleasure of satisfactory performance (Hagedoorn and Van Yperen 2003). The intrinsic motivation is also preferable as in this environment the employee develops affinity with the organisation and considers the welfare of the organisation to be his wellbeing. This improves his productivity and performance since it will go along with his personal satisfaction. Such employees are also loyal to the company’s cause. In contrast the employee who looks for extrinsic motivation becomes greedy in anticipation and looks for alternatives to promote his own wellbeing. When there is an external reward like money or bonus attached to performance the motivation is extrinsic. The importance of extrinsic incentives cannot be ruled out as apart from intrinsic incentive the emoluments are required to fulfil material needs. The questions that arises here is that are incentives, rewards and benefits the right road to better performances or is empowerment the answer to this need. In the larger canvas, there is an increasing demand for cultural change in enterprises. This is an unstructured perception, which in fact is a call to secure ideological changes that will usher in new work systems. It aims at empowerment, but its supporters often use it without any real understanding of what power really means and of how difficult it is to assign or redistribute power. The fact is that often it does not result in a redistribution of power at all, but ‘all that happens is that employees assume higher levels of accountability and responsibility’ (Marchington, 1995:61). 8 Empowerment Explained The new work environment and work ethics need to give back some planning and decision making power back to the worker. This is the real way he can be motivated to perform better. This need is understood as the new methods of work need more skilled worker and such skills need planning and decisions even at the execution stage. By default such empowerment also raises the performance and it is conceded by management that strict deskilling has indeed killed performance. While it has been proclaimed that empowerment is good there are some fundamental issues that will have to be dealt with first. Every organisation has some method of working called the culture of the organisation. This may be defined and planned or may come about through practices adopted over a period of time. This is an influential factor on the level and degree of empowerment. The individual worker has to fit in the organisation’s cultural pattern and the empowerment has to be within its confines. Therefore understanding the culture becomes important. The real test of the individual fitting the organization, or the person-organization fit, is tentative at best and has been defined as the similarity of patterns of the organizational values and individual values. These may be further defined as those things that the individual values in an organization, such as being team-oriented or innovative (Chatman, 1989). Values are fundamental building blocks in most definitions of organizational culture (Barley, Meyer, and Gash, 1988), and culture plays a key role in determining how well an individual fits into an organizational framework (Rousseau, 1990). When individual values and priorities match the values and priorities of a particular organization the individual is happier and more likely to maintain an association with that organization. Value systems offer detailed and comprehensive justifications both for suitable associate behaviour and for the activities and functions of the system (Enz 1988). Organizational values are often considered as a group or collective product (Schein 1985: 7), and while all members of the group may not hold the same values they will support a given value. A central value system exists when a number of key values concerning behaviours and the way things are done or are shared in an organization across units and levels (Weiner, 1988: 535). Besides, it has been observed that strong organizational values are those that are both intensely held and widely shared. There is however great disagreement on the level at which values are considered to be meaningful to individuals (Enz 1988). These values have been theoretically measured by Hofstede et al. (1990) at the subunit level and OReilly, Chatman, and Caldwell (1991) have done the same at the organization level. Within the organizational context, an individual has to understand that he has to uphold the organizational values and therefore these values guide his actions, attitudes and judgments beyond the immediate or distant goals (Rokeach, 1973: 18). Both the organizations and people influence each other’s behaviour and attitudes; the person-organization fit is a therefore a consequential way of evaluating the person-situation interaction. This is because values are fundamental and relatively enduring and both individual and organizational values can be directly compared. Person-organization fit focuses on how the content of a persons values will affect that individuals behaviour and attitude, when put side by side with the value system in a particular organizational situation. This then becomes the limiting factor of the worker’s empowerment. In other words the empowerment is organization led and oriented. If the organization culture is overpowering then the workers’ creativity is curbed and the organization will loose an opportunity to gain from it. This becomes relevant in creative jobs that abound today. Empowerment therefore becomes a subjective issue. Indeed it may be said that the worker is coerced into a situation of compliance with the organizational demands. Empowerment means offering flexibility to the worker (…..). It also means power sharing, information sharing, upward problem solving, task autonomy, shaping of attitudes and self management (Wilkinson 1998). Legge (1995) sees it as a promoter of trust and collaboration between managers and workers. This relates to relationship between manager/worker as well as promotes motivation for improved performances. The perception of empowerment becomes meaningful only when it is perceived as an enabler by the worker. The psychological advantage is phenomenal as he perceives it as power, self-control, efficacy and competence (Psoinos and Smithson 2002). The four dimensions explained by Lee and Koh (2001) elucidate this concept further. Meaningfulness, competence, self determination and impact are the results and can bee seen as powerful measures to improve performance. 9 Discussion During the past and up to the end of the nineteenth century work was predominantly planned a decided by workers as individuals or very small groups and was highlighted by their dominance in deciding quality or workmanship and the time of deliveries. As tools and technology improved work conditions, the decision making role of the worker became more accurate and standardization further eroded his power over plans and decisions. Competition further reduced his authority and finally the customer could lay specifications and delivery schedules and got a better deal. With industrialisation and organised work, the worker got a raw deal and became a tool himself and produced goods more mechanically. Although this helped in mass production but this did not improve quality beyond a certain level. In the late twentieth century, with the past world wars becoming history, prevalence of comparative peace and harmony, and increasing globalisation of industry, trade and commerce, the need for better quality arose to capture greater markets and to cater to the improved standards of living of the domestic populations. The emergent markets, with fresh dose of liberalisation also demanded better products at competitive prices. The managements realised that this was not possible without bringing back the worker into the planning a decision making pool. With the acceptance that in this new age the well being of a company rested in the well being of its workers not just in monetary terms but also in the satisfaction the worker could draw out of this association, it became evident that a more proactive worker should replace the passive worker. With the introduction of this concept, the old reality reverted and the worker was elevated through empowerment to some of his past stature in the expectation of improved performance and better quality. However things did not turn out to be entirely as expected. There were two new factors that were not generally accounted for. The first factor was that the worker was himself better educated and aware of what was actually going on around him. He felt short-changed by this limited empowerment that made him more accountable for his actions that still were encompassed within company policy. This inhibited his actions. The second factor was that there was a limit to extrinsic rewards and the employers were again short on the intrinsic returns. This needed a deeper study of human nature and behaviour that was advocated over five decades ago but largely ignored by both Taylorism and Fordism. The worker needed self-actualisation and this fulfilment was not coming through the kind of empowerment that was management perceived. It dawned on the management that in its present form, empowerment was mere coercion and will proceed to a certain level and stop. It was also realised that the organisation itself has to become a performer by instituting policies that will raise its own excellence level. During the last two decades therefore a new kind of organisation is being observed. One, that is vying in the marketplace as a model of excellence that cares for the all its stakeholders including the worker. The trust that is now developing between the organisation and the stakeholders is propelling the worker to new performance level and empowerment has finally come a full circle. Indeed this concept of excellence is the new driver of empowerment and it is expected to increase the workers role in achieving this through his active participation in the planning and execution process. 10 Conclusions The Capitalist society rests on few principles. Chief among them are the concept of free markets, dominance of capital, subjugation of labour to the extent that it follows the dictates of capital, higher productivity, low cost, mass production and consumptions. The free run of capitalism is given rein to by market forces and competitive environment. The classical theories of Taylorism and Fordism are generally seen as having been characterised by deskilling labour, monotonous labour processes, mass production, rising wages linked with productivity, the development of the welfare state and a central role for the trade unions. The new pattern of post-Fordism capitalism is notable by its new methods of production based on microelectronics, by its flexible working practices, and, significantly, negligible role for trade unions, new born individualism, reduced state intervention and evolving new relationships between production and consumption. The rigid supervisory procedures under Taylorism and Fordism were a demand within that social and educational context, and were both a need and an opportunity within that evolving economic context. The evolution still continues and as a result Post-Fordism revived the individualism and specialization of the pre-Taylorism days, but with a difference that Fordist productivity paradigm still dominates the situation. The assembly lines still rule the day; mass production is still the calling for satisfaction of mass consumption. What has changed is the sophistication of the consumer, who is also a worker in another context and values his individualism, but is willing to accept basic norms required for high productivity. The introduction of high technology has neither replaced Taylorism nor Fordism but has given a new impetus to how work is organised in a capitalist society and has brought the importance of empowerment to the forefront. This has begun to change the old industrial ways, where empowerment is still controlled, but in the new age industries, especially the service oriented industries that are of a global nature, empowerment can be seen to be the main drivers of success. 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