Exploitative Management Model - Essay Example

The Writer’s Name] [The Professor’s Name] [The Course Title] [Date] Exploitative Management This paper will discuss and evaluate the idea that despite so much advancement in information technology and extensive knowledge, the management patterns and concepts are still the same and are in vogue with the same exploitative connotations and subjugating attitude. There are still found segregations and diversities and unbridgeable gap between employers and employees. This paper is an explanatory extension of the following quotation, “Critical studies of management share the view that much of what passes for scientific or objective knowledge of management is little more that a recycled version of the thinking of elite groups institutionalized as received wisdom. Such thinking is collusive in reproducing a status quo that is systematically but unnecessarily exploitative, subjugating and/or restrictive by dint of its divisions of class, gender, ethnicity and so on.” (Grey and Willmott, 57) The post-1970s revival of academic interest in the labour process analysis was stimulated by the publication of Harry Braverman's Labour and Monopoly Capital 1999). The book's appearance revitalized and redirected critical investigations of work and employment at a time when the mainstream was becoming preoccupied with a structural mapping of job satisfaction, employee attitudes, and the nature of social values extant in the employment relation. Labour and Monopoly Capital is a powerful "grand narrative" that surveys the trajectory of capitalist development and the fate of the working class under late modem capitalism (Baran and Sweezy 122-34). It served to regenerate a radical tradition of analysis in which power and inequality, control, class struggle, and the dynamics of capitalist competition occupy a central position in the analytical effort to understand organization and management. Notably, Braverman sought to connect an appreciation of the minutiae and detail of day-to-day capital--labour relations at t he point of production, albeit one that is dominated by the deskilling principles of Scientific Management, with the more abstract domains of global capitalism and its tendential systemic movements. His conviction that the social-scientific study of work had become complacent and subordinated to bourgeois analysis led him to restore primacy to the underlying "objectivity" of the capitalist mode of production, an objective phenomena that is understood to "condition" and "inform" subjective attitudes. By penetrating below the mundane surface of management policy and the conditions of work, Braverman sought to demonstrate how, for example, time and motion studies geared to the standardization and deskilling of labour articulate the essential dynamics of capitalism as they secure the growth of capital at the expense of an increasingly impoverished and degraded working class. Braverman's intervention drew an enthusiastic response from students of work and organization, at least amongst those who wished to retain or restore "the bigger picture" in the study of continuity and change in work organizations. From the outset, however, this response was a critical one that pointed to silences in Braverman's analysis. Notably, there was criticism of his representation of workers as rather passive, conditioned victims of "objective" capitalist structures and dynamics rather than active participants in the reproduction of these structures through processes of (class) struggle and accommodation. Relatedly, and increasingly, there has been criticism of the absence, within orthodox labour process analysis, of "a theory of the subject"--an absence that accounts for its inability to appreciate and scrutinize the significance of subjectivity and identity in the organization of work and, by implication, its contribution to the reproduction and change that takes place in "the bigger picture." (Braveman, 75-81) To be clear, we are not claiming that Braverman was misguided in striving to expose, challenge, and correct the triviality and fatuousness of bourgeois studies of work organization. Rather, we are more concerned that the underlying metatheoretical limitations of his project did not allow him and his followers to understand some of the more complex and subtle interactions that take place between capitalist forces of production and social relations in production. It is now a well-voiced criticism that orthodox labour process theory struggles to explain "consent" in the employment relation (Burawoy, 298-302; Edwards 119-24). It is also becoming more accepted that there is a tendency within labour process theory to reify management as an agent of capital instead of locating its practice as a medium and outcome of processual, dialectical struggle between capital and labour. We mobilize the terms "subjectivity" and "identity" to explore the mundane dynamics of capitalist reproduction at the point at which labour is expended to manufacture a product or deliver a service. The term "subjectivity" is used to refer to the open, reflexive, embodied quality of human agency. This openness makes possible the process of interpretation that secures temporary and precarious forms of closure in the understanding of self and the relationship between "world" and "self." The closure is ultimately disrupted by the ongoing capacity embodied within subjects to reflect critically upon its value and plausibility, often prompted by challenges to identity, as we illustrate by reference to Sosteric's study. "Identity" refers to the socially organized ascription of a status (for example, gender, occupation, etc.) to subjectivity. Our analysis covers directly concerned issues and consequences of the differences and mismatch between the identity ascribed to workers by managers, for example, and the identity, or self-identity that workers attribute to themselves. The former more nearly resembles the typified image of labour as a commodity whose unruly tendencies demand managerial supervision if its engagement is to generate productive, profitable activity. The latter identity, or self-identity, corresponds more closely to the outcome of self-monitoring and self-regulation that is conditioned by interactions with significant others, such as fellow workers. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that subjectivity and identity have become more central to contemporary debates in labour process theory as writers in these broader disciplinary fields explore their significance for understanding the dynamics of social relations (Game 67-73; Giddens 95-99; Laclau and Mouffe 10-11; Laclau 130-32; Lash and Urry 121-24). It is a shift that resonates, for example, with Garsten's (1997, 211-28) understanding that systems do not produce themselves but require the active production and reproduction of human subjects. This paper also attempts to argue that without more explicit attention to how subjectivity and identity "work out" in the practical accomplishment of the capitalist employment relation, labour process theory is unable to address the lines of tension and the dispersed sites of struggle within the contemporary organization of work. Despite origin, implications and orientations of so many management theories, organization is increasingly recognized to be a partial accomplishment of order made up of cross-cuffing tensions--and of allegiances that are plural, contested, and fragile (Law 71-72; Casey 144-47; Parker 25-45). It is becoming more difficult to identify simple lines if division based on capital and labour, or in terms of the perennial opposition cast between "us" and "them." As a consequence it seems to behove theoretical analysis to acknowledge and explore, rather than marginalize or deny, those machinations of "identity politics" found on the shop floor and in the office. A framework is founded on the understanding that labour power is simultaneously "a malleable commodity" and one that is "controlled ultimately by an independent and often hostile will" (Friedman 113; Marx, 283). It was this understanding of the subjectivity of labour that led Friedman to critique orthodox Marxist analysis for its equation of management with "direct control" e.g., Taylorism as "the theory and practice of capitalist control over productive activity" (Friedman 114). A strategy of "responsible autonomy," Friedman argues, is an alternative and, in certain circumstances, a more effective strategy for raising productivity, and thereby pumping surplus value out of labour. When applying a strategy of "responsible autonomy," managers are understood to harness the adaptability and flexibility of labour power--rather than seeking to restrain it--by "encouraging them to adapt to changing conditions in a manner beneficial to the firm" (Friedman 113-16). Later on, management researchers altered Friedman's analytical framework to a dualistic management choice: either impose rules with close supervision or co-opt labour by encouraging the internalisation of norms and values that circumscribe the discretion of labour in ways deemed consistent with management objectives (Edwards 119-24). In contrast, we understand "direct control" and "responsible autonomy" not as timeless ontological categories that capture the control of the labour process as it is, but instead as analytical heuristics that invite reflection upon the dynamics of control and resistance. Friedman challenges this kind of appropriation of his work (Friedman 113-16). Yet, even when the framework is understood to provide a valuable analytical heuristic, we also want to challenge the capacity of this framework to adumbrate the complex processes enacted in organizing and reorganizing the contemporary employment relationship; and more specifically for analysing "subjectivity and the labour process." New employees had to learn about the social hierarchy and the methods that were used to construct it in order that they could take a place in the systematic manipulation of customer needs. All this was done through informal after-work staff gatherings. (Sosteric, 303-4) In Sosteric's narrative, phase two is distinguished by management's imposition of disciplinary and surveillance technology. Management attempted to regulate and control labour though programming the staff-customer interaction in an effort to eradicate the elitism and favouritism that had become institutionalised in the customer hierarchy during phase one. Open communication between staff was curtailed so that individuals became increasingly isolated. "Mystery shoppers" were employed to check that individual staff was complying with the standards set by managers. Evaluation forms and warning slips were introduced. This is not an understanding of discipline and surveillance that Foucault sought to develop, and it is not one that does justice to the complexity of Sosteric's empirical material. In contrast, we find evidence in Sosteric's account of discipline and surveillance already being present during phase one. Consider the sophisticated hierarchy that operated to grade and locate customers by economic worth. Sosteric ascribes to individuals attributes such as agency and personality, attributes that in our view are better thought of as historically contingent--the outcome of power relations and "negotiations" that mediate and enable the reproduction of both capitalist economic activity and wider patterns of social organization. Therefore, we might say that self-identity is in a continuous process of reflection, reformation, and work, and not something that is a given, or self-evident and inviolable, possession of "individuals." This critique of humanist assumptions in labour process analysis may be viewed as a bold, wild, or even heretical analytical departure. Yet it allows us to draw out points of connection between the minutiae of employment and the "bigger picture" made up of broader social and historical forces. In doing so, we recognize that making connections between the point of production and the wider complex of politico-economic relationships is one of the undoubted strengths of labour process analysis. The most successful and influential exponents of its genre have problematised bourgeois separations of the macro with the micro; political economy with organization; and historical forces with the employment relation (Burawoy 298-302). We find forms of discipline and surveillance to be present during phase one where workers are governed and "managed" by a socially disciplined sense of what it is to express themselves. The key point here is that discipline is a socially mediated activity that operates through networks of power/knowledge regimes (Foucault 88-92), rather than the simple product of hierarchical and "cantered" management imposition. Management is not plausibly equated with the work or demands of "managers," nor is discipline and control simply the preserve of management and managerial strategy. Contra Sosteric, we have also argued that more modem means of management control exercised during phases two and three do have the effect of individualizing people by rendering them directly accountable as individuals to management for the "quality" of their "service." Sosteric, however, is unable to move beyond the liberal-humanist understanding that "individualization" indicates a process whereby "individuals" regain an autonomy and control of themselves (Ezzy 427-44). It is here that we find the nub of the problem. As a consequence of this unreflexive conceptual straitjacket, the empirical material relating to phases two and three is uncomfortably forced into the "direct control" category. Interventions designed to change the social organization of production during phases two and three might, we suggest, be better interpreted as a response by senior management to a threat to their own sense of self-identity, a threat posed in the first instance by the "gradual accumulation of complaints" about the club. Let us explore this interpretation a little further. Sosteric conveys the impression that, commercially, the club was a highly successful venture prior to the interventions by senior management. The receipt of customer complaints would therefore appear to have posed little direct or immediate threat to its economic success. An explanation of their intervention must therefore be found elsewhere. One possibility, necessarily speculative, is that complaints were acted upon because they presented an emotional and existential challenge to corporate management's valued sense of professional identity, namely their own competence, control, and omniscience; and, more specifically, a threat to their identification with the idea (or rhetoric) that every customer deserves equal and best service. The challenge, we might speculate further, led managers to take what with the benefit of hindsight might be viewed, and indeed is regarded by Sosteric, as the precipitate and commercially irrational action (Sosteric, 315) of dismissing the club manager and introducing more fashionable ideas of management control. Employees and management are ascribed an independence of will and an identity that is abstracted from their mutual constitution within the social relations of material and cultural production. By forcing his empirical material into the direct control-responsible autonomy framework, and in assigning strategic coherence and sovereignty to management and its efforts to restructure the labour process, Sosteric is unable to satisfactorily challenge bourgeois assumptions about managerial efficacy and omnipotence. In common with many practitioners of labour process theory, he remains complicit with these assumptions. Note how, for example, disciplinary and panoptic technology is something that is introduced and imposed by management--management, moreover, which is understood to embody and exercise autonomous agency. Likewise, but more predictably perhaps, management appear to have overlooked or ignored relations of interdependence with their staff. They seem to assume a sovereignty of "lofty isolation" (Foucault, 93), an assumption that confers a sense of power and omnipotence encouraging managerial pretension to redesign and change working practices unilaterally (Fox 75-78). The denial of interdependence incorporated into management's diagnoses and prescriptions served to confirm their sense of sovereignty. New practices were imposed without considering how these might be constructed and received within and through the social relations. Problematising identity permits an exploration of the complexity of relations through which work is organized and reorganized, showing how forms of behaviour, control, resistance, and discipline emerge from the interplay of its structural and existential features. This interplay takes place within an ontologically elusive space of organization--its "structuration," "medium," or "fabric"--that space where Foucault saw discipline taking place. A key contribution of poststructuralist analysis, we have argued, resides in its appreciation of the problematic nature of the taken-for-granted independence and autonomy--that is, the sovereignty--assumed of human action. Poststructuralist thinking shifts analysis and praxis away from a defence of the liberal humanist myth of autonomy toward a radical questioning of the imbrications of subjectivity and identity in the production and reproduction of capitalism. That this demands a move beyond the conceptual straitjacket of "core" labour process theory is intimated by Sosteri c (pp. 298, 316), but it is a step, which he appears theoretically and methodologically ill prepared to make. Contemporary studies of management and organization interested in the question of how order is reproduced and maintained have a lot to learn from labour process analysis, but a critical edge to research can only be advanced if the study of labour process takes seriously the contested terrain of subjectivity and identity. Works Cited Baran, P. A., and P. M. Sweezy. 1996. Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press. 122-34. Braverman, H. 1999. Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. London: Monthly Review Press. 75-81 Burawoy, M. 2001. The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism. London: Verso. Casey, C. 2000. Work, Self and Society: After Industrialism. London: Routledge. Edwards, P. 1998. Conflict at Work: A Materialist Analysis of Conflict at Work. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Ezzy, D. 1997. "Subjectivity and the Labour Process: Conceptualising 'Good Work."' Sociology 31, no. 3:427-44. Foucault, M. 2002. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, trans. and ed. C. Gordon. London: Tavistock. Fox, A. 1999. Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations. London: Faber. Friedman, A. 2003. "Managerial strategies, activities, techniques and technology; towards a complex theory of the labour process." In Labour Process Theory, ed. Knights and Willmott. Game, A. 2002. Undoing the Social: Towards a Deconstructive Sociology. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Garsten, C., and C. Grey. 1997. "How to become oneself: Discourses of subjectivity in post-bureaucratic organizations." Organization 4, no. 2:211-28. Giddens, A. 2002. Modernity and Self Identity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Grey, Chris (Editor), Hugh Willmott (Editor): Critical Management Studies: A Reader (Oxford Management Readers). Oxford University Press (14 Jul 2005). Laclau, E. 2003. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso. Laclau, E., and C. Mouffe. 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso. Lash, S., and J. Urry. 1994. Economies of Signs and Space. London: Sage. Law, Morris. 1994. "Strategies of resistance: Power, knowledge and subjectivity in the workplace." In Resistance and Power in Organizations, ed. J. Jermier, D. Knights, and W. Nord. London: Routledge. Marx, K. 1976 [1867]. Capital, vol. 1. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Parker, M. 1999. "Capitalism, subjectivity and ethics: Debating labour process analysis." Organization Studies 20, no. 1:25-45. Sosteric, M. 1996. "Subjectivity and the labour process: A case study in the restaurant industry." Work, Employment and Society 10, no. 2:297--318. Read More