The workplace design paradigm model developed by Ron Purser in his book The Self Managing Organization is a useful tool for understanding the fundamental differences among organization design choices. The design paradigms are dominant hierarchy, co-optive participation, totalitarian democracy, and self management. Understanding the basic differences among these four paradigms is critical for guiding you towards a truly self managing workplace structure. The paradigm you choose influences the way you design a workplace.
As the diagram shows, the two dividing lines are structure and process. Every organization has a structure that is either bureaucratic or democratic. Likewise, every organization has management processes that are either autocratic or participative. It is important to remember that, while each line—structure and process—looks like a continuum, each is a completely different type. By plotting the structure and process lines that describe your organization’s design, you can put your workplace in one of the four quadrants.
Participative Process
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Co-optive | Self-
Participation | Management
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Bureaucratic_________________________|__________________________Democratic
Structure | Structure
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Dominant | Totalitarian
Hierarchy | Democracy
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Autocratic Process
The first two paradigms are dominant hierarchy and self management. The dominant hierarchy paradigm is the bureaucratic workplace, an organization in which responsibility for control and coordination is located one level above the work. This paradigm is a bureaucratic structure with autocratic management processes. The self management paradigm is the self managing workplace, where people who do the work are responsible for its control and coordination. This is a democratic structure with participative management processes.
The last two can be considered halfway paradigms. They are organization designs halfway between dominant hierarchy and self management. Co-optive participation is a combination of participative management processes within a bureaucratic structure. It’s the human relations model with participative management. Totalitarian democracy is an organization design that appears democratic in structure with autocratic management processes.
Self Management
The self management paradigm is the self managing workplace—democratic structure and participative processes. The structure of this workplace is self managing groups at all levels up, down, and across the organization. Team design is not limited to the shop floor or point of service delivery. Middle and top-level management are also organized into self managing teams that are responsible for their own work of providing strategy, goal setting, and overall coordination across the organization. Work groups that provide the product or service of the organization are responsible for the control and coordination of their own work. These teams manage their own production goals, make decisions about who does what work, and coordinate relationships with other teams and customers. This is a hierarchy of functions with work groups responsible for production functions and management teams responsible for managerial functions. The relationship among the various levels is one of negotiation, not dominance. This kind of workplace structure is loaded with participative processes such as collaborative decision making, conflict resolution, communication meetings, and mechanisms for mutual support and respect. In a structure that is genuinely democratic, participative processes happen in a natural way and need little, if any, special training in human relations.
The self management design paradigm has been around for a long time. It was first formally described by social scientists Fred Emery, Eric Trist, and others who discovered semi-autonomous groups at work in the British coalmines in the late 1940s. Self management spread to Australia, Norway, and other parts of Scandinavia in the 1960s, then to North America, where it has grown slowly but surely over the years. It is important to note, however, that most of the organizations that have implemented self-directed work teams are not examples of self management. They are mostly variations of the co-optive participation or totalitarian democracy paradigms. When you take a closer look, the usual self-directed work team is neither responsible nor accountable for its work; accountability lies with managers and team facilitators. Instead of being self-directed, these teams are part of an overall bureaucratic structure, the same as before. Or, they may have a structure that looks democratic on paper, but decisions are made through autocratic management processes.
An example of a self managing workplace is a manufacturing plant that produces computer storage units. The plant’s design has small self managing assembly groups that make the product, an engineering group that maintains the technical manufacturing process, a middle management team that coordinates operational planning, and a senior management team that strategically stays focused on the external environment—the business. A deep slice steering group governs the daily operations of the plant. This group is composed of managers, engineers, and assembly workers who collaboratively make decisions about production schedules and handle workplace problems. The organization has participative processes for regularly communicating technical issues and changes. There are also participative processes for handling team and inter-team conflicts and managing wide-wide communications. After changing to self management, this manufacturing plant consistently won corporate quality awards.
Dominant Hierarchy
The dominant hierarchy paradigm is a combination of bureaucratic structure and autocratic processes. It’s the traditional bureaucratic organization where responsibility for control and coordination of work resides one level above where the work occurs. It’s the bureaucratic workplace—command and control. This paradigm is well known to all of us and has been the dominant organization design since the introduction of the industrial revolution. The structure has many layers of hierarchy, each one required to make sure workers at the next lower level do reliable work. Autocratic management processes are put in place to monitor and control behavior at every lower level. As our global social environment becomes more turbulent and fast changing, this design paradigm has become unable to deliver results. The dominant hierarchical structure fails because it is rigid, has multiple layers of misunderstanding, and keeps the workforce de-skilled and de-valued. Most organizations we know are somewhere in the process of moving away from this paradigm. The question is not whether this paradigm works or not, but which new paradigm promises the best future for any workplace.
Co-optive Participation
The paradigm of co-optive participation introduces participative management processes into the workplace, but without changing the bureaucratic control structure. The watchword of co-optive participation is “empowerment,” but little empowerment happens because nothing about the power structure changes in this paradigm. Co-optive participation has its roots in the human relations movement that began earlier in the twentieth century. Human relations started during a period of labor unrest and it was thought that humanizing the workplace would reduce stress and lower the real danger of a labor revolution. The purpose of improving human relations is to produce happy, less stressed out workers without threatening the location of power and authority.
Many organizations that have tried to move from dominant hierarchy to self management have stalled in this paradigm. Organizations often think they are moving to self management when they are actually taking a detour to co-optive participation. Organizations do not naturally evolve from dominant hierarchy to self management via co-optive participation. The opposite is more likely. The organization may introduce participative processes to humanize the workplace and get stuck there. Getting stuck in co-optive participation means the bureaucratic workplace is maintained. The immediate results of moving to a more human relations oriented design may produce some short term gains that satisfy management for the time being. This has been the experience of organizations that have used teambuilding processes to address organization problems. We would be rich if someone paid us for every story of how a teambuilding exercise helped reduce tensions, relieve stress, or produce better working relationships, but within weeks they were back to the same old problems. It’s because the structure didn’t change.
We use the word co-optive because participation within a dominant hierarchy often means influencing people to arrive at a decision that is consistent with management’s goals. This is often done with the best of intentions. Management uses group dynamics to get workers to accept what management wants and to make them feel they were part of the decision. Increasing employee involvement by promoting better human relations—more openness, two way communications, facilitation, conflict resolution—in a structure with unequal power can result in cynicism among workers because of the mixed message they perceive about empowerment.
An example of co-optive participation comes from a leading manufacturing company known for its commitment to human relations training. The company is firmly entrenched as a bureaucratic workplace, but has strong values of participative management—lots of teamwork, group problem solving, and facilitation and conflict resolution training. The human resources division of the company had become too complex and inefficient. Clients were complaining of poor service delivery. Human resources decided to use a participative process for redesigning its function to be more flexible and service oriented. When introduced to the notion of the self managing workplace, the managers balked, saying it did not need relocation of responsibility, just a more efficient structure. But they did value involvement of staff in the redesign process.
During the redesign process, it became clear that the source of the problem of inefficient service delivery was a crisis of accountability. The division was structured like this. Each business division had a local human resources manager assigned to it. These managers were responsible and accountable for human resource services. Services were delivered by centrally located departments such as compensation, diversity training, and recruiting. These departments were staffed by skilled people who were not allowed to set their own service goals, get direct feedback, or have a sense of ownership of their work products. The human resources department was perfectly structured to get low efficiency and poor productivity. Nevertheless, managers steered the design away from self management and towards a design in which the division would become more team-like with coaches. The human resources managers remained attached to the business units, keeping accountability for human resource services. Team training was provided to the staff in place of shifting responsibility for the work. Things improved for a few months, then morale dipped again. The response this time? More team building.
It’s easy to determine if an organization is in the co-optive participation paradigm. The telltale sign is a structure with teams, sometimes called self-directed, with one-time supervisors now in the new role of team facilitator, coach, or leader. Workers are organized into teams with lots of participative processes such as input to production goals, involvement in peer reviews, facilitation of their own meetings, and involvement in resolving interpersonal disputes among team members. The structure of the organization is still bureaucratic. Responsibility for control and coordination of work remains with the supervisor, now called a coach, team facilitator, or leader. The dynamics of this structure look like this. Instead of focusing on goals and production targets, the team is sidetracked on its own relationships. Human relations becomes the paramount concern of the team. In addition, the team is confused about where their responsibilities start and end in relation to the facilitator.
Turning supervisors into team trainers, leaders, coaches, or facilitators is the epitome of co-optive participation. In the co-optive participation paradigm, supervisors encourage limited involvement of the team, but keep responsibility for the human relations of the team. They facilitate so that individual members are able to understand one another, so that conflict is minimized and controlled. They coach individual members so that each team member has a personal development plan and is reviewed regularly. Supervisors are often told to change their titles, but are still in the chain of command.
Every participative process is not co-optive. Sometimes organizations really do move purposely into the human relations paradigm as a transition step towards self management. Do It All Stores (a chain of do-it-yourself retail outlets) in the UK, is an example. Do It All management decided that moving to a democratic structure with participative processes would make them more competitive in the ‘do-it-yourself’ marketplace. They began by humanizing their store culture. They introduced a series of coaching training sessions for store managers and staff. Do It All’s business strategy was to provide do-it-yourself products alongside professional consulting services for customers. The rationale was this. If managers and store workers learned how to be effective coaches, a coaching culture would permeate the organization, leading to good customer coaching. It took two years to complete the training. Then management led participative design workshops in every store to change to a democratic structure. Now self managing teams are responsible for customer service. This purposeful use of participative processes—coaching—to move a workplace closer to a democratic structure is a good example of how participation does not always have to be ‘co-optive.’
Totalitarian Democracy
In the totalitarian democracy paradigm, organizations try to move toward self management using autocratic processes to get there. The desired outcomes are less bureaucracy, decentralized structures, more empowered employees, and self-directed work teams, but the process for getting there is anything but democratic. Simply changing from a centralized to decentralized operation may result in a leaner structure, but not necessarily self management. The means of bringing about this change depends on a top down change process. The recent re-engineering fad with its expert design teams and consultants is an example. The classic socio-technical systems design team approach also fits this scenario.
Not only is the change process of totalitarian democracy highly autocratic, so is the result. While the number of levels in the organization is dramatically reduced, the autocratic management hierarchy is left in place. It only looks democratic on paper. While teams are implemented, often called self-directed, these teams do not have responsibility for their own decision-making. The few remaining managers keep the power to direct the work groups. Genuine self managing workplaces cannot be designed by force. People don’t learn democracy and empowerment this way.
An example of totalitarian democracy is a semi-conductor manufacturing organization that wanted to install self-directed work teams to increase productivity. The plant had about one hundred employees—managers, engineers, technicians, and assemblers—and it was structured as a bureaucratic workplace. The plant manager decided that a flatter, team-based structure would get better results. He hired an expert consultant to educate the workers about self-directed teams. The consultant spent several days leading all the workers through a typical organization design simulation, teaching everyone the benefits of team-based design. At the end of the last workshop on Friday afternoon, the plant manager called all the workers and managers together to hear about his decision. The manager told everyone that starting Monday the plant would be organized into six self- directed teams, each team assigned to a different part of the overall manufacturing process. He then publicly announced the names of workers assigned to each team. There was silence in the room; people were in shock.
On Monday, people reported to their new teams. They found immediately that the new design reduced their skill variety. Technicians and assemblers who were skilled across the entire process were now limited to the work of their new team. People also learned that their new teams had no increased level of responsibility for decision-making. They were not self-directed; middle managers took the roles of the old supervisors, keeping the autocratic hierarchy in tact. The new team design never delivered the productivity hoped for by the manager. It was not long before the manager was replaced because of the poor performance of the plant and the teams were disbanded in favor of the traditional bureaucratic design. Shoving a pseudo-democratic design down the throats of workers is dangerous if you care about performance. People react by challenging management to walk its talk, seeing through the facade of democratic structure forcibly put in place.
Another example of totalitarian democracy is a product development organization that designs tests for use in higher education. The staff is mostly composed of people with Ph.D.s in a wide variety of fields. The organization spent one half million dollars on a re-engineering project led by one of the big consulting companies. A team of leading staff experts and managers acted as a design team working with consultants to redesign cross-functional work teams around newly improved work processes. The new design flattened several layers of the old bureaucracy, but kept management firmly in control of important decisions about the work. When the design team rolled out their brilliant team design to the whole workforce, people were up in arms. The design team considered people’s honest reaction to be resistance to change. They didn’t foresee that this highly skilled workforce might not appreciate being pushed into a design that neither made sense to them nor changed anything substantial except putting them all into powerless teams. In the end, management hired human relations consultants to use a participative process to coax people to comply with the new design.
Understanding these four design paradigms helps us appreciate the different choices we have when designing a workplace. The long history of human relations and its co-optive participation paradigm has not resulted in the productivity gains it promised, although it has reduced some oppressive aspects of the bureaucratic workplace. The newer attempts to forcibly install a democratic structure, called totalitarian democracy, have proven just as bankrupt, as people see through its cynical masquerade. The direct pathway from dominant hierarchy to self management is to consciously change from bureaucratic to self management without any stopovers along the way.
Machines Depreciate; Humans Can Appreciate
The technical mind sees machine metaphors. Our highly technical culture has taught us how to fix things, solve problems, and keep machines from breaking down. Machines depreciate. We carry this way of thinking and working into our organizations. And it often serves us well. But when we apply the machine metaphor to all aspects of life, we risk seeing people as machines, too. People become resources that break down, problems to solve, instead of humans who can aspire under the right conditions. Humans have the natural capacity to learn, develop, and change—to appreciate.
Metaphors are powerful. They help us see things from different points of view. People started viewing organizations as machines with the advent of the industrial revolution. You may recall the image of Charlie Chaplin’s little tramp being ground up in the cogs of a giant machine in the classic movie Modern Times. Viewing the organization as a machine has led to making workers into replaceable parts—cogs in the machine of industry. The point is that assumptions about behavior shift according to the model you are using. If you see the world as a machine, everything works in a mechanistic way, and a master-servant hierarchy prevails. Machines are controlled from outside. Someone has to plug them in, push the button, or pull the lever, to make them work. Human systems, on the other hand, can be self managing, with control coming from within.
Much of our understanding of culture is influenced by motion pictures. We have all grown up at some point watching John Ford westerns like “Stagecoach.” Our common image of native Americans lined up on horses, charging in an orderly fashion, and taking orders from the chief, are all examples of the power of the mechanistic metaphor, as used in film. The truth is that human experience of dominant hierarchical social structures is short-lived. Most of human history has been different—small, collaborating living and working groups. But let’s not get too nostalgic over the “good old days.” The point is not to go backwards, but forward to workplace designs with small collaborative work groups in charge of modern technology.
The metaphors you choose influence the way you design a workplace. Many popular approaches to organization design are based on the machine metaphor. The most common word used now is reengineering. We are told that the best way to improve organizations is to re-engineer them. The world of engineering is the epitome of the machine. It’s mechanistic, not human. The engineering metaphor is wrong for human systems. When a problem happens with a machine, or any technology, you take it apart, examine the problem, and fix it. Or you scrap the machine and make a new one. In reengineering terms, when the process isn’t working, make up a new one. Then managers form workers into cross-functional teams around the new process. People put into these new teams feel like cogs that have been pushed around once again. It reminds me of the line from the writer Tom Robbins: “When humans were young they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.” Instead of viewing workplaces as machines, look at them as human systems that can appreciate and grow from the continuous, informed participation of people.
Some time ago, an engineering manager approached me with a big problem. He was the leader of a project team charged with designing a new, state-of-the-art manufacturing line. The engineers and technicians had finished the initial design of the technical process and were getting ready to implement in three months time. The big problem was this: how to staff the line. When I met with the project team, the engineers told me they needed a formula for determining how many workers to put at each step of the new process, and how many supervisors and engineers they would need to manage the line. They thought they would need only half a person at some steps and couldn’t see a way through. I could see immediately that the engineers and I were coming out of completely different world views.
I asked the engineers to draw a rough flow chart showing the new process, beginning to end. Then I made the following statement:
“Your beliefs about people determine the kind of organization you create!”
A lively discussion followed in which it became clear to everyone that the project team was in danger of using a machine paradigm to design a human social system. In lightning speed, the engineers decided to design a human system that provided people: some autonomy, freedom to set goals and get instant feedback, task variety, teamwork, a view of the complete work process including customer and supplier contact, and have a job with a worthwhile future. Seeing their new manufacturing workplace as a living human system in which people could appreciate and grow made all the difference in the world to these engineers. With a new paradigm in mind, you can design your workplace to put people in charge of technology.
Destroying Social Systems
Approaches that focus on improving the technology or even restructuring teams around a newly improved technical process miss the boat. They run the risk of destroying intact social systems. The typical example of this is the design team that comes up with a really good organization structure and gets “killed” when they try to implement it. The reason people resist is a healthy one. Nobody wants outsiders to monkey with their social life space. It really isn’t much different than a foreign enemy attacking a culture and destroying it. Reengineering, and its companion, organizational downsizing, are failing because they destroy organizational social systems in the service of improving technical processes. It’s the latest version of time and motion studies—Taylorism and scientific management. And like social Darwinism did over a century ago, reengineering couches itself in the arms of the latest science. During the formative stages of the industrial revolution, bureaucratic organizations flourished by hiring workers at low wages and putting them in impoverished work conditions. They rationalized the value of forcing people off the farms and into the factories by calling it “survival of the fittest.” In today’s information age, it’s the new physics. People just need to get used to chaos, and adjust to rapidly changing times, or so the story goes.
Here is a classic example of how a well-meaning design team destroyed a social system. The scene is a factory that made circuit board cards for computer systems. Viewing the workplace from outside, it looked like a modern version of a Charles Dicken’s sweatshop. Picture row after row of women sitting at benches working with soldering guns. To the outsider, it looked like the epitome of impoverished work set up to isolate and alienate workers. After months of analysis, the design team (mostly male engineers and managers) came up with a new, improved workplace design that moved workers into multi-skilled teams. The design team expected the workers to be thrilled with their newfound variety and opportunity to learn new skills beyond the limits of their bench. Management, by the way, was kept in the hands of supervisors who were renamed “facilitators.” What the design team neglected to notice was the fact that many of the workers had been together in the current work arrangement for fifteen years, and were quite pleased, thank you. They had an active social system with people talking across the tables as they worked. Implementation never happened. To the expert eye, the new design was elegant; to the workers it was the end of their world.
Source:
Purser, R. The Self Managing Organization. Free Press, 1998.
Robert Rehm
People In Charge
E-mail: bob@peopleincharge.org
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