3.sept - A Historical Perspective on Power in Organizations

Critical approaches treat organizations as sites of power and political struggle – not neutral places where everyone simply works together toward shared goals.

• Critical theory: A critique of society, organizations, and social constructions; it targets power abuse; empancipatory knowledge interest

  • approach that examines and critiques society and organizations rather than simply accepting them as they are

  • The goal is not only to understand society, but also to identify possibilities for changing and improving it.

  • Critical theory challenges things that might appear natural, normal, or inevitable.

• Questions of interest: How is control exercised and why? Who benefits from this? What are possibilities for resistance?

• Social control: Processes and mechanisms that regulate individual and group behavior in an attempt to gain conformity and compliance

  • Social control refers to the processes and mechanisms used to regulate individual and group behavior in order to produce conformity and compliance.

Power

• Is the ability or capacity of an individual, group or institution to influence the behaviour, decisions or actions of others even against their will

Different fors of control in historical context

Management thought and practice do not necessarily aim for control… Instead, they attempted to solve problems

• Addressed problems of their time

• Scientific Management …aimed to address inefficiency

  • How to make work most efficient

  • Workplace became cock and wheel, people needed to function

• Human Relations Movement …aimed to rehumanize the workplace

• Bureaucracy …aimed to replace arbitrary rule and unfair decision making

• Organizational Culture …aimed to renew the social contract and Weak social relationships in organizations

• Governmentality/ Neoliberalism …aimed to restore individual autonomy and lack of freedom

 …but control can be an (unintended) consequence and the solutions created new forms of control.

• Scientific Management ... Hard control

  • The original probelm was inefficiency and the question was How can work be organized in the most efficient way possible?

  • Work processes were carefully studied and broken down into smaller tasks to find the "one best way" of performing each job.

• Human Relations Movement ... Soft control

• Bureaucracy ...Bureaucratic control

• Organizational Culture ... Normative control

• Governmentality/ Neoliberalism ... Neo-normative control/ biocracy

Scientific Management

Key thinker(s) and main assumptions

• Frederick Taylor „Taylorism“

• Work and organizations can be “scientifically” designed and developed.

• His central idea was that work should not simply be organized according to tradition, personal experience, or workers' own preferences.

• Work should be scientifically studied to discover the most efficient way of performing it.

• A perspective that emphasizes the role of organizational design, division of labor and worker training.

• Taylor believed that, in many workplaces, workers used different methods to perform the same task. Some methods were faster and more efficient than others.

• Watch, observe, mesure, who does it best, what is the optimal way, and the do it like that

• Taylor believed that work could be studied almost scientifically, like solving an engineering problem.

• One of the most important assumptions is that there is often an optimal way to perform a particular task.

• This can reduce workers' autonomy because workers have less control over how they perform their own work.

Historical context – which problem did it try to address?

How can work be organized more efficiently?

• Scientific Management developed during a period of increasing industrialization.

• Factories were becoming larger and more complex, and organizations were looking for ways to increase production

• Attempt to solve a problem:

• Reducing inefficiency in order to increase productivity

 Important studies

Time and Motion Studies

• Looking at proccessers with a stop wach and looking how long they are

• Give the job to the most qualified person

• The overall goal: Reduce unnecessary time and movement to increase efficiency.

• This process is how certain from of control came about

School of thought: Principles and managerial practices

Principle: Efficiency requires making work observable, comparable and predictable

• Replace rule-of-thumb methods with systematic knowledge

• Management needs to be able to see and study what workers are doing.

• Once work is measured, workers can be compared.

Methods:

1. Measure and document: Analyze and record how work is actually performed

2. Compare and standardize: Identify the most efficient way of performing a task

3. Train and monitor: Select and train workers accordingly, monitor performance

The consequence: Form of control and resistance

Hard control:

• Through measurement, standardization and monitoring

• Management defines tasks and performance standards

• Low performance is sanctioned (piece-rate system)  

  • You get paid for how much you produce

Forms of resistance:

• Collectively manipulating measurement (gaming the system)

  • Pretending they couldnt do the work as fast as they really could

• Withholding tacit knowledge

• Institutional resistance, unions and strikes

  • Individuals could be punished if they were not performing

  • Strikes to go against that treatment by managamenet

Still relevant today?

What would Taylor recognize in today’s workplace?

Then:

• Stopwatch

• Direct supervision

• Output measurements

Now:

• Efficiency imperative

•   Digital, real-time tracking

• Performance analytics

Human Relations

Key thinkers and main assumptions

• Elton Mayo

• Mary parker follet

• Workers’ motivation and performance are shaped by their social relations and psychological needs

• Workers are human beings with social and psychological needs, and these needs influence their motivation and performance.

• The “humanist challenge” shifted attention from the task to the person performing it.

• So workers aren't simply motivated by money. They cared abput other meaningful things

Historical context – which problem did it try to address?

How can the workplace better attend to human needs?

• Attempt to solve a problem:

• Addressing neglected social needs at work

• The Human Relations Movement developed partly as a response to the limitations of Scientific Management.

• How can the workplace better attend to human needs?

• The idea was that workers might perform better if organizations paid attention to their social and psychological well-being.

• So rather than treating workers like parts of a machine, organizations should recognize them as social human beings.

School of thought – principles and managerial practices

Principles:

• For employees to flourish in the workplace, it is important to recognize human needs, increase motivation, improve working relationships and enable cooperation

Managerial practices:

1) Participative leadership: Involving employees in decision-making

2) Social relations: Attending to informal group dynamics

3) Motivation and self-direction: Providing recognition and responsibility

Important studies

• Measuring the production groups’ performance at Hawthorne ~ 1930 through the manipulation of the working conditions (e.g. light)

• They experimented with working conditions, including things such as lighting, to see whether changes would affect productivity

• Productivity sometimes increased even when the physical conditions were not necessarily improved.

• Production increased just because workers in groups were paid attention to

• Social relations became a legitimate management concern

  • Workers are understood as members of groups, not just individuals performing isolated tasks

• They needed social interaction to work

From “Power Over” to “Power With”

• Power over: This is traditional hierarchical power.

• Power with: Power is understood as something that can be created together with others.

Integration

• Finding solutions beyond domination

• Instead of solving organizational problems through domination, organizations try to integrate different interests.

• The goal is cooperation rather than constant conflict.

Participation

• Involving organisational members

• Employees are involved in organizational processes and decisions.

• They are not simply passive recipients of management decisions.

Mutual Relations

• Power as relational rather than purely hierarchical

The consequence: Form of control and resistance

Soft control: Operates through shaping the social environmen

• Human Relations wanted to humanize the workplace.

• But this can produce a new form of soft control

• The control becomes less visible and more indirect.

The worker

• Participative leadership

  • (generates consent)

  •  Employees are invited to participate.

• Social relations

  • (create expectations and peer pressure)

  •  Employees don't only respond to managers.

  • They also respond to their colleagues.

• Recognition and support

  • (influence conduct)

  • Organizations can use recognition to encourage particular behaviours.

Forms of resistance:

• Strategic compliance/ impression management

  • Employees may appear to accept organizational expectations without genuinely accepting them.

• Not internalizing expectations

  • They comply with the organization but do not internalize its values.

• Refuting narrow recognition scheme

  • Employees can also challenge the ways an organization defines "good behaviour."

Still relevant today?

• Focus on the informal

• Colleges, informal dynamics

• Organizations see that there is recognizion in the form of promotion, responsibility, being asked, participation

 

Bureaucracy

Key thinker(s) and main assumptions

Max Weber

• Why do people accept that someone has the right to tell them what to do?

• Weber wanted to understand how power becomes legitimate authority.

• Bureaucracy is the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge. It is about rational legal hierarchical power: not the leader is important but the bureau.

• A perspective which shifts from how work is performed to how authority is legitimized.

• This means that the office/position/system is more important than the individual person occupying it.

Historical context – which problem did it try to address?

How can organizations reduce arbitrary personal authority?

• Attempt to solve a problem:

• Adressing arbitrariness, inconsistency, and personal favoritism

• This makes decisions more predictable and impersonal.

Background: Authority and Rationalization

Authority is a question of ‘why should people obey?’

Weber had a typology of three authority-based organisations:

• traditional: Authority based on tradition and precedent; “this is how it has always been”

• charismatic: Authority based on personal qualities; "I believe this person”

• rational-legal: Authority based on formal rules and procedures; “that’s the rules”

  • buerucratic way Importantly,

  • people are not supposed to obey someone simply because of who they are.

  • They obey because that person occupies a legitimate organizational position within a system of rules.

School of thought – principles and managerial practices

Principle: Legitimate authority requires making organizational decisions rule-based and impersonal.

Replace personal authority with rational-legal authority.

 In Bureaucracy, not the leader is important, but the bureau (the administrative apparatus).

Managerial practices:

1) Define roles and hierarchy: Establish clearly defined lines of authority

2) Formalize rules and procedures: Govern through rules and standardized procedures

3) Select by competence: Appoint people based on qualifications and apply rules impersonally

The consequence: Control and resistance

Bureaucratic control:

• Exercised through rules, hierarchy, and written procedures

• Power rests in the hands of rule-makers and people in senior positions

• Rules can legitimize hiring, firing and promotion decisions

• Red tape, iron cage, rigidity and slow decision-making

• Red tape means excessive or unnecessary rules and administrative procedures that make things more difficult or slow.

• The iron cage refers to a situation where rational systems, rules, procedures, and bureaucracy become so dominant that individuals feel trapped within them.

Forms of resistance

• Rule bending and informal workarounds

• Employees may deliberately bend rules when the formal procedure doesn't make sense.

• Using discretion despite strict procedures

• Complaints, contestation, and collective resistance

Organizational Culture

Key thinkers and main assumptions

• Organizations were more focused ont he organization than the people

• Organizational Culture focuses on the shared environment, values, meanings, and identity that connect people within an organization.

• How can an organization create employees who feel committed to, connected with, and identified with the organization?

• If employees genuinely identify with the organization, they may control their own behaviour according to what they believe the organization expects from them.

• Edgar Schein

• Gideon Kunda

• Joanne Martin

• Culture shapes how organizational members understand their organization and their place within it.

• When organizations create belonging and identification, managerial focus shifts to the employee’s self.

  • part of your identity becomes connected to the organization.

Historical context – which problem did it try to address?

• How to create stronger employee commitment?

• Attempt to solve a problem:

  • Creating shared values and a stronger organizational identity to ensure loyalty

School of thought – principle and managerial practices

• Principle: The more individuals identify with an organization, the more they tie their sense of self to it.

Managerial practices:

1) Define and communicate values: Make organizational ideals explicit

2) Socialize employees: Use stories, rituals, bootcamps, and culture talk

3) Foster identification: Connect membership to belonging, pride and identity

Important study

Is culture manageable?

• Engineering the culture: speeches, bootcamps, publishing rules

• Management might attempt to shape culture

• "We are one” – talk; emphasizing organizational uniqueness

• Culture cannot necessarily be completely controlled by management. Therefore, culture is not simply something management can "install" into employees.

The consequence: New form of control and resistance

Normative control:

• Control through norms and values rather than direct commands.

• Operates through shared values, identification, and internalization

• Seeks to shape not only employees’ behaviour, but also who they are at work

• Works through organizational norms and the pressure to fit in

• Employees regulate themselves according to these norms, reducing the need for direct supervision

  • The employee monitors their own behaviour according to internalized expectations.

• External control becomes internal self-control.

Forms of resistance:

• Mocking the culture through cynicism, irony, and humour

  • Employees may make fun of organizational culture.

  • Humour allows employees to create distance from official organizational messages.

• Performing commitment without internalizing organizational values

  • An employee may act committed without believing the organizational values.

• Creating countercultures and alternative meanings

  • Employees can develop alternative cultures. The employee group creates its own values and meanings.

• Protecting one’s sense of self through selective identification, distancing, or disidentificatio

Governmentality/ Neoliberalism

Key thinker(s) and main assumptions

• Michel Foucault

• Peter Fleming

• A perspective that shifts attention from organizational control to how individuals govern themselves across all areas of life.

• Individuals are free to govern themselves as entrepreneurial, responsible subjects. Yet, freedom does not replace control - it becomes a means of governing

• Instead of controlling people by telling them what to do or making them adopt one organizational identity, modern forms of power can govern people by encouraging them to be free, autonomous, responsible, and entrepreneurial

• The individual becomes both the person being governed and, in a sense, the person governing themselves.

Historical context – which problem did it try to address?

How can cynicism towards normative control be repaired?

• This model can be understood as a response to the limitations of normative control and strong organizational cultures.

• Strong Culture

  • Be like us

  • Shared identity

  • Shared values

  • Conformity

• The employee was expected to fit into a particular organizational iden          

  • A new ideal

  • Be yourself.”

  • Individuality

  • Authenticity

  • Autonomy

• Resistance to strong-culture conformity coincided with a growing emphasis on individuality and autonomy.

School of thought – principles and managerial practices

• Principle: The more individuals are governed through freedom and autonomy, the more responsibility they assume for their own success and failure.

Managerial practices:

1) Shape the environment: Define the “rules of the game”

2) Mobilize autonomy: Encourage initiative and self-organization

3) Promote self-optimization: Encourage continuous personal development

4) Individualize responsibility: Make individuals bear the risks of their choices

The consequence: New form of control and resistance

Neoliberal control:

• Operates through freedom rather than restriction

  •  The organization does not necessarily need to restrict your choices.

  • Instead, it encourages you to make choices that align with organizational or economic goals.

• Channels individual choices towards productive ends

• Makes individuals responsible for success and failure

• Extends into all areas of life

• Biocracy: Putting life itself to work

Forms of resistance:

• Refuse self-optimization: Reject constant improvement

  • This means resisting the idea that you must always become better.

• Reclaim private life: Restore work–life boundaries

  • The goal is to protect areas of life from becoming productive resources.

• Withhold the self: Protect personal qualities and relationships

• Redefine success: Detach self-worth from productivity

• Resist collectively: Share responsibility and risk

1) What are the main elements of bureaucracy?

The main elements of bureaucracy are hierarchy, division of labour, rules and procedures, specialization, and impersonality. Hierarchy means that there are different levels of authority, where some people have more power and responsibility than others. Division of labour means that work is divided into different jobs and roles, with each person having specific responsibilities. Bureaucratic organizations also depend on formal rules and procedures that tell employees how things should be done. People are usually hired based on their qualifications and expertise rather than personal connections. Finally, decisions are supposed to be impersonal, meaning that they should be based on rules and the person's role rather than on personal feelings or relationships. Written documents and records are also important because they make decisions easier to track.

2) What are the three main perspectives on bureaucracy developed in management and organization studies?

The first sees bureaucracy as a rational and efficient way of organizing. Rules, hierarchy, and clear roles can help an organization run smoothly because everyone knows what they are supposed to do.

The second perspective sees bureaucracy more negatively, as a way of controlling and dominating people. Rules and hierarchy can limit employees' freedom and give managers more control over workers.

The third perspective looks at bureaucracy “in action.” This means looking at what people actually do with bureaucratic rules in their everyday work. People do not always follow rules exactly as they are written. They may interpret them differently, adapt them, or sometimes bend them when a situation requires it. This perspective therefore sees bureaucracy as something that is constantly being created and changed through people's everyday actions.

3) How can a ‘bureaucratic ethos’ be seen as furthering emancipatory potential?

A bureaucratic ethos can have emancipatory potential, meaning that bureaucracy can sometimes help protect people and make organizations fairer. Clear rules can prevent managers from simply doing whatever they want or treating people differently based on personal preferences. For example, if there are clear rules about hiring or promotions, a manager cannot simply give a job to their friend without having to justify the decision. Rules can therefore limit the power of people in higher positions and provide employees with some protection. Bureaucracy can also make decisions more transparent because there are procedures that everyone is expected to follow. So, even though bureaucracy can control people, rules can also protect people from unfair or arbitrary uses of power.

4) Why is bureaucracy seen as a vehicle of domination and inherently dysfunctional organizational paradigm?

Bureaucracy can be seen as a form of domination because it controls people through hierarchy, rules, procedures, and supervision. Employees may have little freedom to decide how they do their work because they are expected to follow the organization's rules. This gives managers and people higher up in the hierarchy significant control over employees. Bureaucracy can also become dysfunctional, meaning that it can make an organization work worse instead of better. This happens when people become more focused on following rules than on solving actual problems. For example, an employee might know that a certain rule does not make sense for a customer's situation but still follow it because they are not allowed to make exceptions. This can make organizations slow, rigid, and frustrating. Therefore, bureaucracy can create order and efficiency, but too much bureaucracy can also create control, lack of flexibility, and unnecessary problems.

5) How can approaching bureaucracy as a situated activity – in action – lead to new questions and streams of research?

Looking at bureaucracy as a situated activity, or bureaucracy “in action,” means studying what people actually do when they work with bureaucratic rules. Instead of assuming that employees simply follow every rule exactly as written, researchers ask how people understand and use those rules in real situations. For example, an employee might normally follow a rule but decide to bend it slightly because a particular situation requires it. This raises questions such as: When do people follow rules? When do they ignore or change them? How do they use their own judgment? And how do they deal with situations where the rules do not fit reality? This perspective can therefore lead to research about things like professional judgment, discretion, rule-bending, resistance, and everyday decision-making. It shows that bureaucracy is not just a fixed system of rules but something that people actively interpret and shape through their everyday work.

1) In Taylor’s major work “Principles of Scientific Management”, he notes in paragraph 17 (p. 418 in the text) that “Scientific management ensures fair interests of both workers and entrepreneurs and benefits the nation as a whole”. Explain in your own words, why Taylor and his so-called ‘followers’ expected principles of scientific management to benefit workers, employers and the national economy as a whole.

Taylor believed that Scientific Management would make work much more efficient. His basic idea was that there was a “best way” to do every job, and that managers should study the work carefully to find this best way. Workers would then be trained to use this method. Taylor believed this would help employers because workers would produce more in less time, which would increase productivity and profits. He also believed it would help workers because higher productivity could lead to higher wages. In his view, workers could earn more because they were producing more, while employers would also make more money. Finally, Taylor believed that if individual companies became more productive, the whole national economy would benefit because more goods could be produced and the country would become more economically successful. Taylor therefore presented Scientific Management as something that could benefit everyone. However, we can also look at this critically because increasing productivity also meant that workers' work was measured more closely and managers gained more control over how workers performed their jobs.

2) Critically reflect upon the following question: How did the introduction of the “task idea” allowed for a new form of organizational control to arise in the work setting?

The “task idea” meant that a worker's job could be broken down into specific tasks that could be measured. Managers could decide exactly what a worker should do, how they should do it, and how long it should take. This created a new form of control because managers no longer had to simply watch workers all the time. Instead, they could create a standard for how much work should be done and how quickly it should be completed. Workers could then be compared against this standard. For example, instead of simply telling a worker to “work efficiently,” management could say that a worker should complete a certain number of tasks in a certain amount of time. This gave managers much more control over the work process. It also separated thinking from doing: managers decided how the work should be done, while workers were mainly expected to carry out the instructions. So, the task idea made work easier to measure, compare, monitor and control.

3) Building on the work of Taylor, what were Henry Fayol’s contributions to the field of management science?

Fayol built on Taylor's ideas but looked at management from a broader perspective. Taylor was mainly interested in how to make individual workers and individual tasks more efficient. Fayol was more interested in how to manage the whole organization. He argued that managers have important functions such as planning, organizing, giving direction, coordinating activities, and controlling the organization. He also developed principles such as having a clear hierarchy, dividing work between different people, having clear authority, and making sure employees know who they report to. In simple terms, Taylor focused on how to make the work itself more efficient, while Fayol focused on how managers should organize and run the whole organization.

4) What was the main critique or concern expressed by the Human Relations School? And what alternative forms of power did that imply?

The Human Relations School criticized Taylor's approach because it treated workers too much like machines and focused heavily on productivity and efficiency. Human Relations scholars argued that workers are also social and emotional human beings. They have needs for things like friendship, recognition, communication, belonging and being valued. They therefore argued that managers should pay attention to relationships between workers and to the social environment at work. This also suggested a different way of using power. Instead of controlling workers mainly through strict rules, direct supervision and instructions, managers could influence workers through relationships, communication, motivation, recognition and group belonging. In other words, control could become less direct. Rather than saying “you must do this because I am your manager,” managers could encourage workers to want to work hard by making them feel valued and connected to the organization.

5) While well intended, critically reflect upon the claim that the propositions of the Human Relations movement were more in the interest of organizations than in the interest of workers?

The Human Relations movement was well intended because it recognized that workers have social and emotional needs and should not simply be treated like machines. However, we can critically argue that these ideas could also benefit organizations more than workers. Making workers feel valued, listened to and part of a team could make them happier, but it could also make them more motivated to work harder and more committed to the organization. This means that organizations could use things like friendly management, teamwork, communication and employee recognition as new ways of controlling workers. The control simply became less obvious. Instead of forcing workers to work harder through strict rules, organizations could make workers want to work harder themselves. Therefore, Human Relations did improve attention to workers' needs, but it did not necessarily remove organizational control. It could simply create a softer and less visible form of control that still served the interests of management and the organization.

1) How do consensual models of power differ from power exercised through coercion?

Power through coercion means getting people to do something by using force, threats, punishment, or the fear of punishment. The person follows the order because they feel they have no real choice. For example, a manager might tell an employee, “Do this or you will lose your job.” The employee may not agree with the manager, but they do what they are told because they are afraid of the consequences.

A consensual model of power works differently. Instead of forcing people to obey, the organization tries to make employees accept its goals and values. Employees may start to believe that what the organization wants is also what they want. They then control their own behaviour because they agree with the organization's way of doing things. For example, a company might create a strong team culture where employees believe that working very hard shows that they are loyal and committed. The manager does not have to constantly tell them to work harder because the employees may push themselves to do so.

The main difference is therefore that coercion works through force, while consent works by getting people to accept and support what the organization wants. With coercion, people think, “I have to do this.” With consent, people may think, “I want to do this because I believe in it.”

2) How do the authors explain “normative control” with reference to “corporate culture” and the study conducted by Gideon Kunda (1992)?

Normative control is a form of control that tries to influence not only what employees do, but also how they think, feel, and see themselves. Instead of controlling workers only through rules or direct orders, the organization creates certain values and ideas that employees are encouraged to accept. This is closely connected to corporate culture, because companies can use their culture to create a certain idea of what a “good employee” should be like.

The authors use Gideon Kunda's (1992) study of a high-tech company to show how this can happen. Kunda studied how the company created a strong corporate culture and encouraged employees to see themselves as creative, committed, enthusiastic and dedicated members of the organization. The company did not simply tell employees what tasks they had to complete. Instead, it encouraged them to identify with the company's values and way of working. As a result, employees could end up putting a lot of effort into their work because they personally believed in the culture and wanted to be seen as good and committed employees.

This is why normative control can be quite difficult to notice. The organization does not necessarily have to say, “You must work harder.” Instead, employees may start to control themselves because they want to fit into the culture and live up to the image of a good employee. For example, if the company values being extremely committed and working long hours, an employee may feel that they should stay late even when nobody directly tells them to.

Kunda's study therefore shows that corporate culture can be more than just creating a nice workplace. It can also be a way for organizations to influence employees' values, behaviour, feelings and identity. The control becomes softer and less direct, but it can still strongly affect how employees behave.