Freedom and Co-ordination (RLE: Organizations)

Lectures in Business Organization

Mary Parker Follett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138993112
• eBook ISBN: 9781135937775
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Business allgemein

A pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and behaviour Mary Parker Follett authored a number of books and numerous essays, articles and speeches on human relations, political philosophy, psychology and management. The first woman invited to address the London School of Economics, this book includes five lectures delivered to the newly-formed Department of Business Administration at the LSE in 1933, as well as six given by Parker Follett a the Taylor Society in New York in 1926.

CHAPTER II

THE GIVING OF ORDERS

I HAVE taken for these five talks¹ the subject of Control. It is a word on everyone's lips today, for conscious as we are of muddle and failure, we ask, how shall we pass from chaos to control? Some tell us that the State should take control of banking, the railways, the mines. Others tell us that we should have a National Planning Board to take control of industry. The Soviets have taken control of Russia. Mussolini has taken control of Italy. Yet do we always quite know what we mean by the word control? I propose in these five talks to consider the conception of control in business organisation and business management. I hope we shall be able to get behind both academic abstractions and traditional conceptions and try for a thoroughly realistic treatment of authority, power, leadership, control. We can do this only by looking at the actual practice in business plants—factories, banks, shops, stores. Here we find these words acquiring new meaning. Certain changes have been going on in business practice which are destined, I believe, to alter all our thinking fundamentally. I think this is a contribution which business is going to make to the world, and not only to the business world but eventually to government and international relations.

I want therefore to consider in these talks what conception of control, of authority, is emerging from present business practice. I shall speak first of one way in which authority is exercised, the giving of orders. I think we shall find underlying our present practice in order-giving certain principles which may help us to understand authority. Next we shall consider more carefully that subject. We shall ask, What is the basis of authority? Why have some authority over others? Why have they and what is the thing they have, what is authority really? My third lecture will be leadership, on what is essential to leadership. And I do not mean leadership in the highest places only, but what is essential to the leadership of the under executive or of the foreman. My fourth lecture will be on co-ordination, on how to join all the diffused authority, the scattered leadership, we find in the complex organisation of modern industry. And then on my fifth and last evening, I shall speak of control more particularly, shall consider the process by which we gain control of a situation. On that evening, I shall give what I consider the four fundamental principles of organisation, for the object of organisation is control.

I said that tonight I wanted to talk about the giving of orders: There is a very marked and an extraordinarily interesting change taking place in our thinking on this subject. Arbitrary orders are beginning to go out of fashion. One man told me that the word order had not been used in his factory for twenty years. I was much interested last October in the report of an interview with Herr Emil Ludwig when he was here for the production of his play Versailles. He had high praise for his London producer and said, “We work ten hours a day…. I have never seen anything like it. And yet he rules without giving orders. He exercises authority without claiming authority.”

Mr. Filene tells us: “My brother and I do not issue orders. My father never ordered things done, he thought no one got anywhere with such power unless he had his organisation with him.” Another business man writes of “those superintendents and foremen who think of their job as consisting solely in that simple but archaic practice of ordering.” This man, you see, calls ordering an archaic practice.

We find the same thing in the army. A general in the American army tells us that there is a very different idea in regard to orders appearing in military training. He says that when he was at West Point all that he was taught was to look stern when he gave orders, and if he was not obeyed to send the delinquent to the guardhouse. Not a minute of the four years of military training was given to the management of men although that was going to be the principal job of everyone there. He took his first command and not only he wasn't popular, but he wasn't accomplishing what he wanted to do. Then he was sent to teach in the military department of a college. There he found he was really up against the problem of how to handle men, fcr there was no guardhouse there to which to send refractory students. He tells us that that experience taught him how to handle men without forcing them, and he went back to the regular army knowing that he had learned how to control without giving orders. There are many in the army now, he says, who have learned this lesson.

But of course this word is still used in the army and also in industry. In the more progressively managed businesses, however, it does not today mean an arbitrary command. If anyone doubts this, I should say to him, look at business as it is being conducted today in many plants and watch where the orders come from. What is their origin? Heaven does not privately convey them to the top executive; they arise out of the work itself and many subordinates may have contributed to them. Consider the analysis of executive jobs which is being made in some plants. This can be done in two ways. You can have an expert do it or you can do it as they did in a certain large bank. There they had each man make an analysis of his own work. Out of that analysis rules for his job were formulated. But whether the analysis is made by the man on the job or by an expert, in both cases the rules of the job come from a careful, analytical study of the work itself.

In some factories the same method is used for operating jobs. The job is studied, a conclusion is reached as to the most effective way of performing it, and then that way is standardised until a better way is found. Hence the expression used in many factories today is not orders but standard practice. Men do not “obey orders” but “follow standard practice”. In such plants the worker sometimes takes part in the preliminary studies made to determine standard practice. Or if new methods are devised by the research and planning departments, still in many instances they are not finally adopted without a shop try-out, and the workers usually have a chance in this shop try-out to make objections. If they do not make objections, they have practically assented to the new methods. In plants where there are shop-committees, explicit approval is obtained from the shop-committees.

I think we may say, therefore, that when the right order is found by research, the orders given by the foreman are coming to be considered not as anything arbitrary on his part, but as information in regard to standard practice, as training in method. Moreover, what is called the work-order is given in some factories by the despatch clerk and not by the foreman. This makes it clear to all that it is part of the whole plan of the factory and not anything arbitrary on the part of the foreman. And an important consequence of this is that the foreman is now released for more constructive work. There is a very marked change in this respect from even a few years ago. Executive intelligence is not today expended in issuing commands, but is released for the solving of new problems, the planning of further developments.

But in all this I am talking of the more progressively managed industries. Many are not conducted in this way. The head of a large engineering firm said to me, “I tell my people what to do and they have to do it, and that's all there is to that.” And another general manager told me, “I'm the boss in this place and I stand no interference from subordinates.” As, therefore, we still find arbitrary methods in many places, let us consider their disadvantages. We may say that the first disadvantage is that we lose what we might learn from the man actually on the job it we do not invite his co-operation in deciding what the rules of the task shall be. An upper executive said to me, “I want the criticism of my men; I can learn a lot from the man on the job.”

The second disadvantage is one which anyone who knows anything at all about industry is fully aware of, namely, the friction between workers and foremen. I said to one girl at a big factory, “What do you think would be the best improvement that could be made in a factory?” She replied instantly, “To get rid of foremen”. This was amusing, but it shows, I fear, the usual attitude. Yet it is being found in those plants where orders are part of the general plan, are standard practice, that there is much less friction between workers and foremen.

This is easily understood. The arbitrary command ignores one of the most fundamental facts of human nature, namely, the wish to govern one's own life. “I don't like being bossed,” a man in a factory told me. Another workmen said to me, “I'm willing to obey but I won't be commanded.’ I think that a very interesting remark. Probably more industrial trouble has been caused by the manner in which orders have been given than in any other way. In The Report on Strikes and Lockouts, a British Government publication of a few years ago, the cause of a number of strikes is given as “illegal harassing conduct of the foremen”, “alleged tyrannical conduct of an under-official”, “the alleged overbearing conduct of officials”. Again, the metal and woodworking trades in a British aircraft factory declared that any treatment of men without regard to their feelings of self-respect would be answered by a stoppage of work.

But even if instructions are properly framed, arc not given in an overbearing manner, there are many people who react violently against anything that they feel is a command. It is often the command that is resented, not the thing commanded. I think it is told in the life of some famous man that when he was a boy and his mother said, “Go and get a pail of water, John”, he always replied “I won't” before taking up the pail and fetching the water. This is significant.: he resented the command, but he went and got the water, not I believe because he had to, but because he recognised the demand of the situation. That he knew he had to obey, that he was willing to obey.

I have given two disadvantages of issuing arbitrary directions, namely, that we lose possible contributions from those directed and that such directions are apt to cause friction between workers and foremen. There is a third very serious disadvantage. No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work. If a worker is asked to do something in a way which he thinks is not the best way, he will often lose all interest in the result, he will be sure beforehand that his work is going to turn out badly. I have read that it is characteristic of the British workman to feel “I know my job and won't be told how”. This attitude might be met by a joint study of the particular situation, it being understood that the worker out of his experience has as much to contribute to that study as anyone else, Or if a better way of doing some particular job has been found by the research department, the worker should be persuaded that this really is a better way, not merely told to do it in that way. It is one of the things we should be most careful about—never to interfere with the workers’ pride in his work.

Again and again we disregard the fact that workers are usually as eager to attain a certain standard, as wishful that their performance shall be maintained at a high level, as their employers. We often tend to think that the executive wishes to maintain standard, wishes to reach a certain quality of production, and that the worker has to be goaded in some way to this. Again and again we forget that the worker is often, usually I think, equally interested, that his greatest pleasure in his work comes from the satisfaction of worthwhile accomplishment, of having done the best of which he was capable.

A fourth disadvantage of the arbitrary command is that it decreases the sense of responsibility, and whatever does that just so far lowers the chance of business success. It has been noticed by some heads of departments who have encouraged criticisms and suggestions from their subordinates that instead of getting more kicks and general unpleasantness, they get less, because now the man who kicks is expected to suggest something better.

The arbitrary foreman may indeed get hoist with his own petard. I knew a case where a workman reacting against such a foreman deliberately carried out a wrong direction instead of taking it back to the foreman and asking about it, and thus wasted a large amount of material in order that his foreman should be blamed for the waste. Thus the man who demands a blind obedience may have it react on himself. When the accomplishment of a department is the result of a feeling of joint responsibility on the part of all concerned, that accomplishment is likely to be of a higher grade,

But while people should not be asked to follow directions blindly, at the same time a subordinate should not have the attitude of carping, of finding fault, of thinking things from above wrong. The attitude most desirable for receiving orders is intelligent scrutiny, willingness to suggest changes, courtesy in the manner of suggesting, and at the same time no prejudice in regard to what is prescribed, but the assumption that the way prescribed is probably the best unless one can show some convincing reason to the contrary.

If arbitrary command, the exaction of blind obedience, breaks initiative, discourages self-reliance, lowers self-respect, how shall we avoid these disasters? Chiefly in four ways I think. First, by depersonalising orders. I have already referred to that when I said that in the more progressively managed businesses orders were being changed to “standard practice”, to “rules of the job”, to merely a way of doing the work which is accepted as the best way. But then we were speaking only of routine work, of repetitive work. And a fresh direction may have to be given at any moment. What principle should guide us here? How can we avoid too great bossism in the giving of orders and the inevitable resentment which will follom?

I think the solution is exacdy the same for the special order as for the general order, namely, to depersonalise the matter, to unite those concerned in a study of the situation, to see what the situation demands, to discover the law of the situation and obey that. That is, it should not be a case of one person giving commands to another person. Whenever it is obvious that the order arises from the situation, the question of someone commanding and someone obeying does not come up. Both accept what the situation demands. Our chief problem then is not how to get people to obey orders, but how to devise methods by which we can best discover what the order shall be. When that is found the employee could issue direction to the employer as well as employer to employee. This often happens quite easily and naturally: my stenographer or my cook points out the law of the situation to me, and I, if I recognise it as such, accept it even although it may reverse some previous direction I have given.

An order then should always be given not as a personal matter, not because the man giving it wants the thing done, but because it is the demand of the situation. And an order of this kind carries weight because it is the demand of the situation. I found something in a novel which recognises and expresses this point. The hero of the novel, Richard Hague, was a large-scale farmer in England. And he was a very successful farmer. The author, after telling how Hague got the most out of all his materials down to the very spark with which he lighted a fire, went on to say: “And it was the same with people. He got use out of them, though not throug… being personally exigent in any way. It was always the force of circumstances that seemed to make the demand, not himself. He merely made it clear to them what it was that needed doing…. So little did it seem an affair personal to him that the sheep needed driving off the corn, or a message carried into the hay-field, that he hardly intervened. He might just call somebody's attention to what was needed, but it was the corn, the cattle, the world that required the service, not he.” And later the author tells us: “He evidently considered that the task itself made some claim on anybody who happened to come across it, made itself the most interesting and most necessary thing in the world, so that no one could resist it.”

If orders were depersonalised I am sure we should get rid of much of the complaint by workers of tyrannical treatment, but there is another difficulty at the opposite extreme from this, and that is when not enough orders arc given. The immediate superior is often so close to the worker that he does not like to give orders at all. If you go into any large shop here in London, you usually find the head of a department sitting at a desk among the salesmen or saleswomen. This person is only a little removed in the scale of authority from those under him or her; moreover, they are working together all day and it is not pleasant to get on bad terms with those with whom you are so closely associated. We often therefore find too great leniency here. Instead of an overbearing authority, we find that dangerous laissez-faire which comes from a fear of exercising authority. Of course we should exercise authority, but always the authority of the situation.

I overheard the following conversation in a large shop. The head of the women's cloak department called out, “You're No. 36, Molly, aren't you? There's someone on the telephone complaining about something you promised yesterday. “Well, I like that,” said Molly, “some of these people would complain in Heaven.” I don't know what took place after that, but I think probably, from what I saw, that that was all that happened, except that of course the lady who had not received her cloak had to be appeased. I think probably that head of department did not like to reprimand the saleswoman and so did nothing. And of course she ought not to have reprimanded her. But that was not the only alternative. I think the solution for too little authority being exercised is exactly the same as for too much. I think that situation should have been investigated, not in order to blame anyone but in order to improve store technique. Perhaps the fault was with the saleswoman, perhaps it was in the dressmaking department where the cloak was being altered, perhaps it was in the delivery department, or perhaps, very likely, it was in the organisation of the shop which did not provide for that relation between departments which would ensure the best results. A study of that incident in the cloak department need not have resulted in blame, but such study would certainly have given the people concerned better control of such situations in the future.

And that is always our problem, not how to get control of people, but how all together we can get control of a situation.

To find the law of the situation rather than to issue arbitrary commands, I have called depersonalising orders. I think it is really a matter of re-personalising. We, persons, have relations with each other, but we should find them in and through the whole situation. We cannot have any sound relations with each other as long as we take them out of the setting which gave them their meaning and value. The divorcing of persons and situation does a great deal of harm. While, therefore, I have said that orders should be depersonalised, a deeper philosophy shows us personal relations within the whole setting of that thing of which they are a part. Within that setting we find the so-called order.

And please remember that in all this I am not merely theorising and telling you what I think ought to be done, I am telling you some of the ways which I have found in practice in business of avoiding arbitrary commands. If the most important is the depersonalising of orders (it is convenient to keep to that word), next in importance certainly comes traini...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• I. The Illusion of Final Authority
• II. The giving of Orders
• III. The Basis of Authority
• IV. The Essentials of Leadership
• V. Co-Ordination
• VI. The Process of Control