UNPACKING THE IDEOLOGY OF POSTINDUSTRIAL TEAM-BASED ...

--Please cite this work as:-Truex, Duane and Ojelanki Ngwenyama. (1998). “ Unpacking the Ideology of Postindustrial management: Self-governing teams as structures of social control in IT workers.” Pp. 300-313 in Baldoz, Rick; Godfrey, Phoebe; Jansen, Carol; Koeber, Charles, and Kraft, Philip (eds.). Work, Difference and Social Change: Two Decades after Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital (conference proceedings). Binghamton: NY, May 8-10 1998.

UNPACKING THE IDEOLOGY OF POSTINDUSTRIAL TEAM-BASED MANAGEMENT: Self-governing Teams as Structures of Social Control of IT Workers Duane P. Truex Georgia State University Ojelanki K. Ngwenyama Virginia Commonwealth University and Aalborg University, Denmark Abstract In this paper we report on some on the contradictions in the rhetoric of team-based empowerment in high performance postindustrial organizations. This research started as an exploratory multi-site case study of seven highperformance IT organizations to investigate their organizational culture and management practices. However, in conducting the study we stumbled across interesting evidence about teamwork structures in the firms. In 3 of the seven firms studied we observed a three-pronged effort to reorder work place relations in thoroughly modernist ways, that were quite different from the rhetoric of employee empowerment. The first prong involves shifting traditional production operations through a process of subcontracting (e.g., outsourcing). The second prong, involves downsizing and reengineering, and the reorganization of work processes based on team-based structures. And the third, thoroughly Taylorist, is to wring "slack time" out of the labor of the workers who remain in the newly lean-and-mean firms.

1. INTRODUCTION Management writers like Hammer, (1990), Toffler (1985, 1990), Peters (1992), Peters and Waterman (1990), Singe (1994), all argue that high performance postindustrial business organizations must move beyond old functionalist management structures to embrace self-governing, participative decision making, collaborative and participative workgroup structures and employee empowerment. They argue that postindustrial organizations have no need of ‘time-and-motion’ management and adversarial work place social relations. Old economic theories, models and measurement methods, designed for the 'smoke stack,' industrial era are seen as obsolete, and needs to be reengineered out of the postindustrial organization (Hammer and Champy 1993; Peters 1988). Global competition they say is forcing a change in the management paradigm (Peters 1987; Davenport and Short 1990). The postindustrial organization, they say must be fluid, flexible, adaptive, open and attuned to its surroundings, which are always changing. Managers are encouraged to adopt new concepts of employee empowerment and team-based collaboration, such as liberation management (Peters, 1992), the fifth discipline (Senge, 1990), and the learning organization. These writings have been influential in shaping the thinking and practices of contemporary management. Managers of high performance companies have been adopting the rhetoric of the new postindustrial management paradigm. They have implemented various types of ‘postindustrial organizational forms’ such as selfmanaged career development, collaborative teams, and autonomous workgroups. But just what has this meant for the employees who work in these high performance organizations? In this paper we report on some on the contradictions in the rhetoric and practices of team-based empowerment in high performance postindustrial organizations. This research started as an exploratory multi-site case study of seven high-performance IT organizations to investigate their organizational culture and management practices. However, in conducting the study we stumbled across interesting evidence about teamwork structures in the firms. In three of the seven firms that we studied we observed a three-pronged effort to reorder work place relations in thoroughly modernist ways, that were quite different from the rhetoric of employee empowerment. The first prong involves shifting traditional production operations through a process of subcontracting (e.g., outsourcing). The second prong involves downsizing and reengineering, and the reorganization of work processes based on team-based structures. And the third, thoroughly Taylorist, is to wring "slack time" out of the labor of the workers who remain in the newly lean-and-mean firms. One ‘slack-filled problem’ that has garnered the attention of reengineers is intellectual and administrative "non value-adding" activities. While the calculus of reengineering can account for the value of workers, who directly contribute to the process of turning partial or complete products or services, it does not value highly those who administer or oversee work processes. Thus, a primary goal of reengineering is to reduce the "slack time" in design and administration as well as in production. A primary focus is on more quickly operationalizing intellectual production or eliminating altogether those who merely administer or bookkeep. One face of this work reorganization was realized as a wholesale embracing of multifunctional teams, employee empowerment and compressed management structures.

Evidence of the contradictions in the rhetoric and practice of management in the high performance postindustrial organizations we studied is the subject of this paper. The paper is a direct outgrowth of work begun in 1995 and funded by the Society for Information Management and IBM Error! Bookmark not defined.. In this paper we examine transcriptions of interviews with senior IT managers for insights into the apparent depersonalization of IT workers in settings where companies are, at the same time, promoting the benefits of self-managed teams and employee ownership of their own career trajectory. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we outline some of the basic assumptions of postindustrial management and contrast these with modern functionalist management assumptions. In Section 3 we outline our research method and data collection strategies. In Section 4 we present a short description of the three case organizations and present our findings on each of the organizations. Finally, in Section 5 we present conclusions and suggestions for further research on this topic. 2.0 POSTINDUSTRIAL TEAM-BASED ORGANIZATION In the academic and in the pop-management literature these postindustrial organizational forms are called by many names: flex-firm, network organization, imaginary organization, adaptive organization, learning organization, teambased organization and, inevitably, virtual organization (Baker 1992; Miles and Snow 1986; Powell 1990; Mills 1991). Theories of postindustrial/ postmodern organizations assume the availability of cheap, reliable and tightly managed information technologies (Davenport and Short 1990; Witaker 1992). They also depend on the creation, maintenance and transfer of individual and organizational knowledge. They seek to decentralize and demand innovation. They are governed less by rules and complex contractual relationships than by trust, forbearance and continuous learning Error! Bookmark not defined.. The employees of the postindustrial enterprise are, appropriately enough, often called "knowledge workers" and "team members" rather than simply workers (Drucker, 1989). The postindustrial organization eliminates rigid boundaries, devolves power and authority down the ranks, liberates employees from mindless work and empowers them to take risks (Peters and Waterman, 1990). It encourages them to be creative and achieve their potential thus self-actualizing into happier employees (Peters, 1992).

Dimensions

Modernist Functionalist

Postindustrial Team-based

Assumptions about employees

Employees need external motivation Employees need to be managed Employees are lazy and reactive

Organizational Relationships

Hierarchical authority and power structures Hierarchical communication structures Centralized control structures Competitive work environment Managers responsible for setting goals and assigning work Managers responsible for outcomes Managers identify problems and give solutions to employees Exclusionary decision making processes Managers make decisions Decisions are given down The company trains employees and help them develop their skills Company provides a career path for employee Manager and employees are rewarded for individual performance

Employees can be self motivated Employees can take responsibility and manage themselves Employees can be proactive Distributed authority and power structures Open communication structures Decentralized control structures Collaborative work environment Employees responsible for managing work process Goals and work assignments are negotiated Employees are proactive problem solvers Open participative decision making processes Employees contribute to decision making Employee responsible for own skill development Employee responsible for own career progression

Work Process management and problem solving Decision making processes Competence and career development Reward System

Rewards are based on team performance

Figure 1. Basic Assumptions of Functionalist and Postindustrial Management These new organizational forms are considered responses to dynamic social and technological changes that are taking place in an increasingly integrated global economy. Theorists have argued that they are different from modern functionalist organizational forms in several important ways. Whereas modern functionalist management espoused a theory ‘X’ approach to workers, the new postindustrial/postmodernist management espouses a theory ‘Y’ approach to workers. The postindustrial organization is a self-organizing process in which communication is open and, authority and control are shared. Workers are liberated, empowered and encouraged to take responsibly for the work they do and their own development and career progression (Peters 1992; Peters and Waterman 1990). In contrast, in the modern functionalist organization, goals, role responsibility, hierarchy of authority and control, and channels of

Work, Difference and Social Change, May 8-10, 1998 2

communication are predefined and persistent. The manager in a postindustrial organization is a facilitator and coordinator, while power and authority structures are devolved down the ranks, and hierarchical authority is diminished. Role responsibilities are negotiated and work activity is achieved via collaboration and cooperation among the organizational actors. Work organizing is achieved through professional influence, facilitation and expert team leadership. The social contract between management and workers in the new postindustrial team-based organization differs significantly from that of the modern functionalist organization. In the new contract, workers are expected to control the work process. They are expected to be proactive in identifying and solving problems that are dysfunctional to the economic success of the company. They are responsible for customer satisfaction as well as profitability of the firm (Peters 1988, 1992; Peters and Waterman 1990; Singe 1994). Rewards in postindustrial team-based organizations are not based on individual performance as in the modern functionalist organization. Rather they are based on the performance of the team. This practice, it is argued, encourages collaboration and removes individual competition. Although "teams" were always part of U.S. organizational structure (along with "teamwork" and "team players"), in traditionally functionalist organizations such teams were almost always committees made up of representatives of functional units who were given marching orders to take back to the troops. In practice, individual managers and technical specialists, not teams, were rewarded and promoted on the basis of meeting narrowly defined objectives (e.g., coming in on time and under budget, Stalk 1990). Workers in the postindustrial organization are also expected to take responsibility for their own career progression, and skill and competence development. No longer is the firm responsible for training and developing employees, and offering them a career path. The employee must manage his/her own career progression, acquire competence and skills that the firm values, and compete for positions within the firm with other competitors from within and outside of the firm. Traditionally, modern functionalist scientific management theory and practice have stressed functional specialization and competence for both managers and technical workers. This meant that individuals were rewarded and promoted for their ability to master relatively narrow areas. In the postindustrial team-based organization, the workers are expected to be multi-skilled, flexible and available to work in many teams at the same time, wherever his/her skills are needed. The good worker is one who continually improves his/her skills and competence, and value to the firm (Peters 1992; Peters and Waterman 1990; Singe 1994). 3.0 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY As stated earlier, this research started out as a set of exploratory case studies to investigate organizational culture and management practices in high performance IT organizations. The organizations were selected from lists of topperformers mentioned in thirteen sources 1. The selection was base of three criteria: 1) top performance; 2) level of maturity; and, 3) size of the IS unit. These criteria were important because we wanted to conduct cross-case analysis. In identifying organizations in such a way, the chances to gain some similitude in respect to the three first criteria were increased, that is, “high performance” organizations would be identified, all with a relatively comparable level of maturity and size of their IS unit. Each of these sources used different criteria for determining top organizational performance. Hence, it was determined that those organizations most frequently mentioned in these multiple sources would provide a good surrogate for the “best performing” organizations. A side-by-side comparison of the lists was prepared. Each ranking was organized such that the first item on the list appeared at the top and was numbered sequentially 1-n. The companies were then selected according to the number of repeat rankings and the relative ranking overall. Of the total group of 373 companies initially identified, 54 companies were cited by three or more of the studies. Of these 16 were selected for further contact of which seven organizations agreed to be studied. This paper reports on specific findings from three of those organizations. In short then, the three organizations chosen were similar in that each of them was known as being among the top-performing in the USA, and each had an intact IS unit (that is one which had not been outsourced). 3.2 Data collection Before doing any data gathering, each study site was told that the generalized results of the study would be published, (initially as a SIM Working Group and perhaps later in other academic and professional publications) and that participating organizations would be identified as having been investigated. However, organization specific responses and information would not be identified or indexed such that it could be traced back to the source organization or to the original source if an individual. The agreement, standard in sociological and similar field studies, served to increase accessibility to documents, and to assure greater candor of interview responses. Moreover it was a practical necessity to and a condition of participation for the organizations. Participant firms had also been

1

These sources were : Information Week 500 (1992, 1993 and 1994), Computerworld 100 (1992, 1993 and 1994), CIO 100 (1994), SIM Partners in Leadership Award winners (1992, 1993 and 1994) and the list of companies studied in the SIM Juried Papers awards (1992, 1993 and 1994).


promised the findings of the study; this could enable them to compare their IS culture with that of other leadingedge firms and also to learn about “best practices” that they could introduce into their own organization. Data collection techniques were selected to capture the multiple dimensions of organizational culture and management practices as viewed by organizational actors from the IT as well as from the business side of the organization. At each site, data were collected in three different ways: 1) document reviews, 2) in-depth/open-ended interviews, and; 3) unstructured observation. By using more than one technique for collecting data, some “withinmethod” triangulation was achieved (Jick, 1979), which essentially involves cross checking of information for internal consistency or reliability. Indeed, these various means were complementary and mutually supportive. The first technique used was document reviews. As mentioned by Ott (1989), “an organization’s historical records contain all sorts of invaluable information about its organizational culture” (p. 109). Indeed, information from diverse documents such as maps and charts of the organization and its structures, mission statements, job description, working procedures, memoranda and other communiqués were gathered, when available. Besides providing details for corroborating other sources, the information provided by these documents was sometimes used as a valuable input for the in-depth interviews and better understanding the wider organizational context when examining the interview data. The second technique used to gather data was in-depth, open-ended semi-structured interviews. This data gathering technique was chosen over questionnaires because, as Schein (1990) noted, “open-ended interviews can be very useful in getting how people feel and think; questionnaires and survey instruments are generally less useful because they prejudge the dimensions to be studied” (p. 112). The interviews, were conducted on-site over a one and one-half or two day period at each organization. The interviews lasted one to two hours, and were always conducted by two persons from the project study team. This generally included one academic and one pratictioner from the parent SIM working Group. Those interviewed included members from both the IS unit and the business units in two-on-one and two on many settings. More specifically, the interviews were conducted with the most senior information systems executive (the CIO), two or three middle-level IS executives, two to three business-unit executives, and one human-relations executive in the IS area. Two focus group discussion luncheons, one with mid-level IS personnel and the second with mid-level business unit personnel were also held. In addition, 15-21 persons from each organization were interviewed. Using Marshall and Rossman (1995) terminology, these in-depth interviews could be qualified as “elite interviews”; indeed, those interviewed were considered to be “the influential, prominent, and well-informed people in an organization” (p. 83). Besides, since “elites respond well to inquiries about broad areas of content and to…openended questions that allow them the freedom to use their knowledge and imagination” (p. 83), it appears that these in-depth interviews were a very appropriate means to collect information from them. Even so, two weaknesses do exist in the selection process for the subject interviewed. First, while the researchers made a request of the types of positions and responsibilities preferred of those being interviewed, the final choice of those interviewed was made by the subject organizations. Second, the interviews were limited to management and not to lower-echelon personnel. Thus one may be correctly skeptical of generalized statements about the impact IT changes on plat-level and other typical lower-level managerial and non-managerial personnel as their thoughts were excluded from the research design. Each interviewing team was composed of one academic and one IS practitioner. In order to help them in their role, and also to insure some homogeneity in the conduct of each interview, all interviewers were provided with two “Interview Guides”; one for the business managers’ interviews, the other for the IS managers’ interviews. These guides had been developed for the dual purposes of insuring that: 1) the topics initiated by the interviewers were reasonably consistent from site to site, and; 2) to encourage discussion should it falter. When possible interviews were tape recorded (with the participants’ consent), and then transcribed. The field notes from both researchers were transcribed and used as a primary source of interview data in later analysis. The last technique used to collect information was unstructured observation. On that matter, Ott (1989) observed that “quite a bit can be surmised quickly about an organization’s culture simply by looking around at its material artifacts” (p. 107). In the present study, unstructured observation was mainly done throughout field visits of the sites. Observation of buildings, work spaces, furnishings, people and their artifacts resulted in valuable indicators of organizational culture. Also, while doing observation, it was sometimes possible to compare the espoused attitude of the natives (the information gathered in the interviews) and their attitude in their everyday life, i.e., to discover discrepancies between these two states and to investigate more about them. Approximately two days per site were needed to cover the document reviews, interviews, and observation activities. But this is not an ethnographic process in which the researchers had the opportunity to live within and become part of the groups under study. This period of time provided a richer and more complex picture of the culture at both the IS and the corporate level than would have been possible with more traditional survey research. Moreover, the nature of the semi-structured interviews allowed the researchers a wide range of latitude to follow up


on interesting points as they were being developed in the interviews and to ask for explanation of various cultural artifacts as they were being observed. 3.3 Data analysis The data analysis was performed in both a top-down and inside-out fashion. The process began with a complete review of all materials gathered at each site and with an initial review of interview tapes field notes, tape transcripts and interview summaries. Then through iterative readings repetitive themes as introduced and reiterated by the interviewees were identified. Those themes were grouped and counted and summarized for cross checking with the larger set of researchers who actually conducted the interviews. After the meta-analysis, described in the following session the researchers conducted a more traditional content analysis of the tape transcripts and summaries to further refine the issues as identified. Each stage of the analysis is described in the following sections. Meta analysis: The process of data reduction was a multi-stage process involving both those persons collecting the data and secondary analysts. Each member of the two-member interview teams transcribed interview notes and, where extant, tape recordings and from these and other materials prepared extended and detailed interview reports as well as executive summaries of the interviews. That material was shared between members of each interview team to check for internal consistency of the observations. This process also helped ensured timely review and reflection on the experience by the researchers on site. This proved essential in the first review phase of the data analysis. All materials were sent to Georgia State University for further analysis and the preparation of the initial draft report. The researchers conducted iterative readings of the detailed summaries, tape and field note transcripts and other materials to identify broad inter-organizational themes from the various field sites. Summary statistics on the frequency of recurrence of the themes were prepared for the SIM working group. The working group then met for a one and a half-day session for the express purpose of examining and refining these findings. Interview team members were able to clarify points raised in the transcribed data and to debate apparent similarities and differences between organizational settings and context. This groupwise analysis and further review of the data was viewed by the researchers as extensions of a hermeneutic analysis of these interview and observational data. The, stage two cross validation of commonalties and themes by the on-site researchers added to our confidence in the stage one analysis. And the extended post-interview discussions among interviewers added greatly to the phenomena under study. Micro analysis: In the third stage of analysis the Field notes and tape recordings transcripts were subjected to a rigorous content analysis2. What was actually done is sometimes referred to as a semantic content analysis (see Janis, 1965), which is a classification based on meanings rather than on the words themselves3. As suggested by Erdener and Dunn (1990), to guard against overly subjective interpretation and to enhance reliability, the texts had to be interpreted and coded by multiple “coders” (two, in this case). In order to help in the coding process, the HyperRESEARCH content analysis software has been used. After individual site data was coded and tagged, the next stage required the detection of similarities and differences between sites in order to develop more sophisticated descriptions and to deepen our understanding of the studied phenomenon. What has been done is what Miles and Huberman (1994) call a case-oriented analysis (as opposed to a variable-oriented analysis), which is “good at finding specific, concrete, historically-grounded patterns common to small sets of cases” (p. 174). More precisely, a case-ordered meta-matrix4 has been used to display data case by case; these data has been ordered according to some variables of interest, so as to allow a fine-grained comparative analysis among cases. It should be noted that the approach used in this study was not a grounded theory approach. That is, the analysts entered into the examination of the texts with an initial set of predetermined content variables extracted from our framework. We did not expect the categories to emerge wholly from iterative readings of the text. Based one of the author’s previous experience with content analysis (Truex and Klein ‘96; Truex ‘93) it was expected that the pool content variables would be

2

Content analysis is a technique used for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context. The reader who would like to know more about this technique may refer to Krippendorff (1980). 3

Erdener and Dunn (1990) also refer to this as latent content analysis, as opposed to manifest content analysis.

4

The reader who would like to know more about case-ordered meta-matrix may refer to Miles & Huberman (1994), pp.187-193.


amended during the analysis, but that the initial set would provide a reasonable starting point for our own metaanalysis. Initial Content Analysis: Preliminary Findings and Surprises leading to further study The initial content categories were: 1) management practices; 2) human resource systems; 3) people; 4) change management; 5) technology; 6) internal and external organizational relationships; and, 7) organizational structure. As we analyzed the data some startling insights regarding management practices emerged which in turn led to other questions and the collection of additional data. The second (micro) analysis of the data started with a set of 69 content categories expressed as by polar statement yielding 138 content variables extracted from McKenzie’s (1990) efforts to construct and validate an instrument to measure organizational culture. Her constructs originated from the notion that: “Corporate culture is operationalized though underlying assumptions associated with four critical system variables. ...Each variable is presented as a dichotomous scale reflecting opposing set of underlying assumptions.” (Mckenzie, 1990, p. 16) The scales used and verified in her research are: I. Environment: perceptions of the business environment as being stable and certain versus one of uncertainty and dynamism. II. Decision-making: Is decision-making perceived to be a participative process versus one that is non-participative or delegatory. III. Organizational relationships: Are these formal and hierarchical versus being informal and flexible. IV. Innovation process: Are they creative, spontaneous and supportive of risk-taking versus being incremental and traditional. The possible combinations of alternatives formimg each scale makes for a theoretical universe of eight different cultural styles. While McKenzie’s research assumes and tests for four of those (which she defines as 1) hierarchical, 2) adaptive, 3) entrepreneurial or 4) team cultures, there are four unnamed other alternatives. McKenzie’s own research found considerable instances of organizational responses that fell into the unnamed categories. Our research had similar findings and we proceeded to name those categories. Those details are unimportant for the current study except to say that some understanding of the unexpected findings of cultural misalignment may be explained by the analysis undertaken in this current study. One of the initial findings was that traditional terms of the employment relationship between technology workers and IT organizations had been dramatically altered. Thus further examination of this insight led to this research. This research follows that insight by exploring details of the thinking and management practices of senior IT managers. To develop an understanding of the apparent changes in management employee relations and the thinking behind it, we subjected the interview data to a type of textual analysis referred to as Discourse Analysis Error! Bookmark not defined.. The theoretical framework guiding this analysis is that of Critical Social Theory (CST), which has already gained acceptance in the IS literature Error! Bookmark not defined.. One focus of CST is the examination of power relationships, such as those between management and employees, for insights as to future actions. The technique for this analysis is outlined in detail in Ngwenyama and Lee (1997). 4. RESEARCH FINDINGS In this section we present text taken from the various interviews in three high-performance organizations. The statements are presented as coded during the content analysis of interview data. We provide minimal, but we hope sufficient, context to make them understandable, but not so much context as to obscure that which we judge to be kernel indications of inherent contradictions between the way organizations speak about new work practices versus what they mean to accomplish. In each of the sections we let the text speak then offer a critical reading of the text. Our reading is based on a more intimate knowledge of the organizational context, and an analysis of the larger discourse from which the citation was derived. In the final subsection we consider what may be interrelating themes suggested by the analysis of these cases. 4.1 Company A Company A is a dominant member of the home services and building products industry. It is one of America’s 20 largest retailers having more than 350 full-service facilities in 28 states. It has been listed in various compendia of “Best Places to Work” as an IS professional for each of the past three years (1997-1995). An analysis of the total set of coded statements applied against the McKenzie (1996) scale the organizations would be classified as being ‘Entrepreneurial’ both at the business and IS unit levels. Thus the IS and Business units would be characterized as culturally aligned. The dominant characteristics of entrepreneurial organizations are beliefs and organizational responses such as: (1) Operates in a dynamic environment where change is rapid and the organization and its people need to be proactive to change. (2) Creative and risk-taking, and frequently adopts new ideas and problem-solving


approaches. (3) Employs highly participative decision-making processes that encourage consensus and individual insight and expertise. (4) Informal and supports non-hierarchically communications and reporting relationships. (5) Is highly decentralized. One would therefore predict an environment wherein people are expected and encouraged to participate, be self-starters and contributors to areas in which they have expertise. One might expect a slight irreverence for ‘established procedure’ in favor of improvisation and innovation and where people are encouraged and coached to be risk takers. However, we were surprised by contradicting ideas and practices exhibited in this organization, especially by its senior management. 4.1.1. Statements indicating Consonance with the notions of empowerment and team behavior: 1. “Our culture is: One of empowerment. One person can make a difference. Speak up - without retaliation. The importance of team playing. Ability to take ‘constructive criticism’. We don't want ‘Lone Rangers’; you have to work with others”. (Source: Business People, page 1 of Company A Business Interviews). 2. “Our culture is: One of empowerment. One person can make a difference”. (Source: Business People, page 1 of Company A Business Interviews). 3. “The Finance Dept. went on an Outward Bound exercise [to build teams and foster interdependence]”. (Source: Business People, page 1 of Company A Business Interviews). 4. “People take ownership of a problem and not just pass it onto someone else”. (Source: IS People, page 3 of Company A IS Interviews). 5. “The company cares about its employees”. (Source: Business People, page 2 of Company A Business Interviews). 6. “People here want to help you”. (Source: IS People, page 4 of Company A IS Interviews).

4.1.2 Statements contradicting those values: 7. “Our people, like I/S. are generally taken for granted. They're supposed to do their job well”. (Source: Business People, page 2 of Company A Business Interviews). 8. “People have to be able to accept criticism. I won't have a Lone Ranger working for me; you have to be a team player. I value communication skills. In my performance reviews, I tend to concentrate on what needs improvement, not what my people have done well. People who need praise don't do well here. I want people who know when they need to break the rules”. (Source: Business People, page 1 of Company A Business Interviews). 9. “We've cut out a lot of I/S middle managers, so the senior I/S people are working 60-80/wk, the way we used to [work] ten years ago”. (Source: IS People, page 6 of Company A IS Interviews). 10. “We preach influence not control”. (Source: IS People, page 1 of Company A IS Interviews). 4.1.3 Discussion of Company A This organization illustrates how the notion that an emphasis on team-based management processes does not also equate to a notion of a ‘kinder and gentler’ workplace. Indeed these interviews were often infused with references to the workplace as a ‘bootcamp’ and how, like the Marines, this organization was only looking for a few good people capable of taking the heat and pressure of a dynamic demanding work environment. There is a strong culture of leadership by example as evidenced by the last quote (#10). But the statements of how senior IS personnel themselves work so hard (#9) can be read also as a justification for the earlier statements which indicate a certain lack of sympathy and insensitivity to employees. The text is also unclear as to how this work environment and this brand of empowerment benefits the employee. The employee is expected to take charge, “do his job well”, “break the rules”, “take ownership of a problem”, “accept criticism”, accept being taken for granted, and yet not be a “lone ranger”. It is a rhetoric of rugged individualism, and survival of the fittest softened by a language of empowerment. 4.2 Company B Company B is a worldwide leader in both development and marketing of bio-medical products in its industry. The organization has production facilities in and outside of the U.S. The IT function distributed such that operations, maintenance and certain development activities are performed within and thus ‘owned by’ the functional business unit but are supported by a central computing organization. The design and care of systems architectures and organization-wide applications, and strategic IS initiatives are retained by the central corporate computing organization. The structure may be described as ‘federalist’ in the sense that certain responsibilities are decentralized or controlled by the business units and others are retained by the corporate computing organization. The individual business units are strong and each in its own right powerful. Participants acknowledged significant and vast cultural


differences between the organization’s operating units; especially between the research and development and production units. As the IT function was required to both bridge and simultaneously operate within each of the business units, it needed to be a bit of a cultural chameleon. Predictably our initial analysis uncovered that the IT and business units were not in cultural alignment. An analysis of the total set of coded statements applied against the McKenzie (1996) scale the IT organization could be characterized as either a “Transitional” or a “Team” culture. But the other business units had a mix of other cultures. Thus the IS and Business units would be not characterized as culturally aligned. But what does that help us understand of the question of empowerment? We will let the data speak on this matter. 4.2.1. Statements supporting teams and empowerment: 1. [IS management] “Brought in [a corporate-wide] E-mail system which improved communications. Brings all of IT together 4 times a year to survey the environment [and] established a technical baseline (hardware, software, network). [IS management is a] big believer in empowerment. Gives team time to make decision before "deciding" for them. (Source: IS People, page 2 of Company B Interviews). 2. Created an environment of open communications. [It] established a "happy hour" where anyone could talk to anyone else on any topic (open door policy); [and] Distributes a monthly newsletter. Allows employees to identify barriers to productivity. Ideas are ranked, (teams include a manager/champion) are formed and trained in "work out" sessions. Team develops a plan/ recommendation”. (Source: IS People, page 2 of Company B Interviews). 4.2.2 But, on the other hand: 1. “There is a Company B way of doing things that is defined by the ‘higher ups’, not the ‘workers’”. (Source: IS People, page 3 of Company B Interviews). 2. “Company B employees believe the company is responsible for their career development. Recently (6 months), it was clearly stated that career development is the responsibility of the employee”. (Source: Business People, page 2 of Company B Interviews). 3. “Company B is pushing more responsibilities to employees”. (Source: Business People, page 2 of Company B Interviews). 4. “Teams are talked about, but management is not ‘walking the talk’. (Source: IS People, page 3 of Company B Interviews). 5. “Use of Service Level Agreements has lead to outsourcing. Many reorganizations/ realignments [were] used to solve problems, rather than get to root cause”. (Source: IS People, page 3 of Company B Interviews). 6. “Failures are a change driver at Company B. Expectations for a project are on time and under budget. Current push toward teams, although when the schedule is in jeopardy they fall back into the old method”. (Source: IS People, page 3 of Company B Interviews). 7. “Compensation: Top performers are rewarded. Forced bell curve hurts everyone that falls left of the mean rating. Moving to team contracts. Use of 360 feedback built into process”. (Source: IS People, page 4 of Company B Interviews). 8. “A voluntary retirement program enabled Dr. XX to hire people he knew/was familiar with and shared his vision”. (Source: IS People, page 5 of Company B Interviews). 4.2.3 Discussion of Company B In the case of Company B we find an organization that recognizes that it must function within institutionally diverse cultures. Perhaps as a response to this challenge the IS respondents indicated that decision-making tended to be more top-down and centralized than did the business unit respondents. In our analysis we find an organization that gives voice to a belief in empowerment and individual responsibility but which continues to hold the reigns of an hierarchical decision-making process. Responsibility for certain tasks, and one’s personal skill-set is divested to the individual, but decision-making authority is not. During the interviews a senior-vice president of one of the business units said: “Show me your compensation plan and I’ll show you your values.” To this end the use of a true 360 degrees evaluation process indicates an institutional commitment to the interdependence of project groups. The awarding of performance bonuses to project teams for achieving organizational goals reinforces that message. However the practice of giving the lion’s share of the rewards to those individuals deemed ‘the best’ on each team leaves a bitter taste in persons falling at or below the project team’s evaluated ‘mean’. It would appear that such a practice could lead to individual competition and undermine team cohesion, the very basis of team collaboration.


4.3 Company C Company C is one of the nation’s largest insurance companies. It is organized as a set of 13 sub-companies. The study was conducted in one of its sub-companies, a unit with over 400 employees in the U.S. and another 100 stationed in Japan, Australia and the U.K. This unit is responsible for managing the investment portfolios of the remaining dozen sub-companies of the group. Total corporate IT personnel includes more than 3000 people. The IT unit that we studied includes 60 people who previously reported to corporate IT. A corporate-wide reorganization during the previous year moved all IT application areas from corporate IT into the Business units. Like Company B the IT organizational structure became ‘federalist’ in form, with certain corporate and strategic level functions remaining with corporate IT and most operational activities, including budgeting, maintenance and general IS development decentralized to the business units. From our analysis of the total set of coded statements we would characterized the IT unit of Company C as “Entrepreneurial” except for a more top-down or delegatory decisionmaking style (McKenzie 1996). Further, the business and the IS unit were culturally aligned except for the style of decision making. Decision-making and communication tended to be slightly more traditional, and top-down within the IS unit than in the business unit. Communication differences may account for the slightly schizophrenic behavior and inconsistent attitude toward employee participation evidenced in the following text. 4.3.1. On Teams 1. “Current Reporting Organization is: the Division Information Systems Officer (DISO) is the head of IS organization. Team leaders report to the DISO. Team members report to team leaders. They are looking at adding an additional layer between the DISO and the Team leaders. They would be unit leaders and their function would be to mentor and coach. This is in the pilot stage. One pilot has been conducted and the feedback was positive”. (Source: IS People, page 1 of Company C IS interviews). 2. “There is an interesting group in the organization structure called the "flying wedge: which cuts across all areas (as do administration and core systems). It appears to be a leading edge, potential SWAT team group in addition to its primary duties of mentoring and senior consultants. IS is considered to be a dynamic, fluid organization. Business needs and requirements drive the need to be flexible. People need to be able to shift between teams and change focus on demand”. (Source: IS People, page 1 of Company C IS interviews). 3. “Teams do not really function as teams. They function more like areas. Very little is done within a group can be contained within one team. Projects are accomplished by dynamic teams whose members are pulled from functional teams. In the future they may be on multiple teams. Right now everyone has different concepts of what a team means and how far empowerment can be taken”. (Source: IS People, page 2 of Company C IS interviews). 4. “Organizationally the group functions in teams. Originally they were the traditional hierarchy but then they moved to a flatter organization. That was about three years ago. The move was from centralized to decentralized. They thought they had swung too far and are now coming back. Some centralized system support was needed. There are some teams that need to cross boundaries”. (Source: IS People, page 5 of Company C IS interviews). 5. “There is a lot of communication within the group. Employees are more aware of what other people are doing and of the priorities. Department goals are posted. These goals are aligned with the business strategy. Team objectives are set from the department goals and individual objectives are set from the team objectives. Employee ratings are tied to their objective. Individuals have worked with almost everyone else in the group at one point in time because of project overlaps”. (Source: IS People, page 4 of Company C IS interviews). 4.3.2. Reengineering and Reorganization: 6. “There was a formal reengineering process. The results were: (1) business partnerships were formed; (2) management layers were eliminated”. (Source: IS People, page 4 of Company C IS interviews). 7. “Originally they were the traditional hierarchy but then they moved to a flatter organization”. (Source: IS People, page 5 of Company C IS interviews). 8. “The reorganization flattened the organization. Now it is hard to develop leaders. No one is making sure that things get done. It is hard for team leaders to focus. Now the team leaders function as Bette's staff and not as team leaders. The supervisor level is missed. People do not know where to go when they have questions. Groups do not function as teams. This structure requires more initiative and informal support structures have been started”. (Source: IS People, page 4 of Company C IS interviews). 9. “Empowerment was promoted as part of the change from the hierarchical organization. The environment was not ready for it. They trained on team leader vs. team manager role and on team concepts. It was too


10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

risky for people. They had different responsibilities. They were asked to be risk- takers, decision makers and be accountable. That requires discipline. Work and life have to be planned and you have to be able to hold to the plan. Pressures from customer groups are different than internal pressures. Employees must be able to raise the flag and push back. The different between the business and the systems culture was dramatic. Teams and empowerment were not part of the business change. It was difficult to get people to raise flags when demands were in conflict”. (Source: IS People, page 5 of Company C IS interviews). “The Professional Growth and Develop Program was started in response to the need to move the IS organization from order fulfillers to consultants”. (Source: IS People, page 1 of Company C IS interviews). “In the past, employees were responsible for their own development. That did not work. Part of the new employee development strategy incorporates a process, management involvement, and monitoring but the employee is still ultimately responsible. The development plan includes the competencies and skills needed for an individual's job. The manager and the employee rate the individual's skills with feedback from colleagues and business partners. Plans include reviews and due dates. Everyone knows what the skills and competencies are - they are published in a notebook. Plans are now more tangible and more acted upon than they were in the past”. (Source: IS People, page 4 of Company C IS interviews). “An aggressive compensation stand was started in 1994. It recognizes the contributions of key individuals. 20% of employees got 0% increases in the last two years. Key individuals are rewarded. The compensation system is tied to individual objectives which are tied to team objectives which are tied to department goals which are tied to business strategies. The firm has moved away from across the board raises and considers: where the employee is in the salary range, his/her contribution and value to the organization; and internal equity (market skills and how they will be used) and department value. The theory IS HR follows on professional growth and development: 70% of learning takes place on the job, 20% is from reading, and 10% is formal education. Employees 'own' their own development plans and are held accountable for them. Management has some input into their content”. (Source: IS People, page 1 of Company C IS interviews). “During the last eight months they have been aggressively managing performance and making sure that individuals are meeting performance. The change came from business partners concerned with having the right people support them. IS management is doing internal evaluations, and employees are wondering whether they have what it takes to survive the coming changes. Past evaluations focused on technical skills. There is new emphasis on 'raising the bar'. The focus has changed to raise the expectations of employees and raise their standard of performance. This is as a result of business pressure to deliver”. (Source: IS People, page 3 of Company C IS interviews). “Prior to the Professional Growth and Development efforts, they went through reengineering and downsizing efforts. Part of the reengineering called for new skills in technology. Some employees could not make the change and the climate survey indicated that the Systems group did not deal well with poor performance. (In other words, there were no sanctions or improvement). In response, many jobs were changed or eliminated. Some people lost their jobs; other chose to leave; and some people were able to adapt. There are still openings that have yet to be filled as a result”. (Source: IS People, page 1 of Company C IS interviews).

4.3.4 Discussion Company C: Reorganization and Team-based Structures. This organization was struggling with the consequences of an organization-wide reorganization. One goal was to create multi-functional teams that would commit to addressing a part of key business needs. Structures and procedures, e.g., compensation plans were adjusted to reinforce the team membership, but as we see in the text (c.f. # 8, 9) the attempt to enforce a team culture was not shared in the new business units in which the IT personnel were now domiciled. This cultural conflict was recognized by IT personnel, but the organization did not adjust behavior or the rhetoric of the importance of the group membership ideal. The rhetoric of empowerment arises when employees are told that they now must be responsible for managing their own skill-set according to a trajectory of company established skills. The assessment of the skills portfolio and the likely value to the organization figures substantially in the new compensation plan. But the acquisition of new or refined skills was left largely to each employee. A theme that regularly surfaced in all the transcripts pointed to the fact that employees were working longer both at work and, via telecommuting, at home. This meant that the acquisition of new skills had been shifted from company training programs to employee extra-curricular study that competed for family and personal time. Management held vociferously to the notion that, by being less paternalistic toward employees and by ‘publishing’ the likely skill-set requirements, those who so desired to remain employable were “empowered” to do so. Management’s argument was that the basic employment covenant has changed and that continuous employment in any organization undergoing rapid environmental and competitive change requires matching ones skills to the changing environment. Increasingly workers are seen as interchangeable skill-sets, a type of human integrated circuit component.


Multi-functional teams, centers of excellence, “flying wedges” and other similar descriptions define the growing practice in high-performance IT organizations of locating the right skill whether in or out of the current organizational labor pool. Whether or not a given person remains in the organizational labor pool depends in a growing measure on how well s/he is able to keep his own portfolio of skills matched to the organization’s own changing assessment of skill needs. This approach may indeed be more honest than past practices, in that it owns up to the changing employment covenant. However, this new covenant demands that individuals work harder (the result of flattening the organization and reducing the labor pool) and simultaneously learn new skills while on the job. The company now off-loads much of the responsibility for providing a stock of current skill-sets to the employee. In so doing the organization simultaneously while may choose to provide less in-house or during work hours training. It therefore is able to increase productivity. It also moves a step closer to creating a true market of required skills which is less dependent on its historical employment practice. That such an arrangement is mutually beneficial to the organization and its employees, strikes us as an unusual interpretation of the term ‘empowerment’. 4.3.5. “There are No Slackers here” 15. “Employees are considered dedicated and forward thinking. Leadership constantly challenges them to improve and to try new things”. (Source: IS People, Char. page 1 of Company C IS interviews). 16. “Company C is people-oriented. It is a good place for women to work. They are respected. For example: no drug test on hiring, day care on site, and dental cleaning available on site”. (Source: IS People, page 4 of Company C IS interviews). 17. “Employees are at different levels of accepting the change in technology and business. They had felt like things were being done to them. The Professional Growth and Development program has been put in place to help manage the change. New people are being hired to keep the group running and provide new ideas and as models of what the new world looks like. Recruitment is difficult because they can not find the right people. There is some resentment in the group to bringing in new people. Up until the prior year there had been no turnover. It was only during the reengineering and the ending of the major development effort that jobs were eliminated and people were asked to leave. The ending of the big project was positive. But, during that time they had not spent much time on people development”. (Source: IS People, page 2 of Company C IS interviews). 18. “Employees are willing to take responsibility. There are no slackers here”. (Source: IS People, page 4 of Company C IS interviews). 4.3.6 Discussion Company C: “There are No Slackers here” “It was only during the reengineering and the ending of the major development effort that jobs were eliminated and people were asked to leave.” Many such statements disclose an instrumental attitude toward a workforce. Workers were not asked to leave the company during the big development push, but when that was finished, they were discarded. People development was not a priority, it should surprise no one therefore that there is difficulty in “finding the right people.” Employees know that new people are being brought in to offset lost skill-sets or perhaps replace outdated ones. Managing change did not involved empowering people. It was simply a matter of replacing human owners of desired skill-sets. 4.4 Observations from the analysis of the three companies These three organizations are among this country’s most successful and celebrated IT organizations. Employees often described them as being good places to work. To varying degrees each professes a commitment to the concepts of team interaction, team-member interdependency and the notion that such interaction would empower the worker. The managers we interviewed were good, hardworking people who genuinely respected the employees and recognized that a skilled and committed workforce was important to its success. It was apparent that management, all whom recognized the rapidly changing and competitive environment they faced, recognized, and even (in the case of Company A) celebrated, the pressure filled competitive environment. These findings are challenging because none of these managers would think of themselves or their organizations as having an instrumental attitude towards workers. Yet, the work practices and structures seem to point to such underlying beliefs. This only becomes apparent in analyzing the apparent contradictions in the way which work and organization are described. These organizations are a subset of companies that have been judged by management writers and peers to be among the best of the best. In terms of work practice they seek to innovate to remain competitive. They are all proactive and attentive to changing economic and social conditions. In general these organizations are introspective and obsessed with self-improvement. All expressed the notion that the bar was continuously being raised and that to stand still was to lose ground. They are aware of the competition and of how cohort groups are also struggling with management and structural problems. They are also aware of how managers and companies observe them for hints as to how ‘best practice’ may help them improve.


Yet even while these have been judged to be among the best of the best, we see no reason these companies are outliers in terms of the underlying norms and attitudes toward technical work and those who perform it. This leads us to a general indictment of the rhetoric of empowerment that is supposed to inure from embracing a team-based workplace. 5.0 Concluding Discussion So far, the development of a U.S. postmodern/postindustrial organization has meant attacking linearity, over-thewall relationships and reductionist partitioning in the development and marketing of products. It has also meant a more systematic internalization of management norms and expectations. In none of this is the traditional chasm bridged between managers and technologists. On the surface, these changes suggested a revolutionary transformation of U.S. corporations of the kind envisioned by postmodern theorists.Error! Bookmark not defined. Bergquist, 1993; Boje, 1994; Coyne, 1995) But to label these changes either postmodern or postindustrial is to understand them without a history or context. Taken together, these findings suggest what the outcomes are likely to be of the revolution in U.S., indeed, global, business enterprises. It is a revolutionary reform that leaves the basic social relations of the work place unchanged, a way, to borrow a phrase from David Noble, of preserving the old system in the name of transforming it. There has indeed been change. But the change has been to refine and enlarge the techniques used by managers to control the behavior of the organization's workers, not empower them or liberate them from control. In short, it is argued that creating multifunctional teams without a concomitant power sharing at the top as well as the bottom is just another way of flogging middle level managers and technical specialists, i.e., it constitutes a white-collar speed-up rather than genuine cooperation. The three cases illustrated in this paper offer some indication that this is indeed happening. Fewer people are performing more work. The role of middle management is being moved backwards under the normative control structure of the team. This underlies much of the popularity of "empowerment" and "multi" teams among management theorists and consultants. Like all ideological terms they are designed to conceal as well as explain. Here, the terms are an attempt to soften the threat to engineers and middle managers that are forced to work in ways which threaten their traditional individual career and occupational expectations. According to Perrow (1988) an intractable problem of the modern corporation is its inability to be both predictable and creative at the same time. Whereas, in the 1970’ and 1980’s modern U.S. corporations by and large succeeded in their goal of standardizing production work, they failed to gaining control over the more creative activities of designers, engineers and the like. It is argued that empowerment, power sharing, concurrent management, team work and so on, are attempts to extend the scope of management control to those workers whose jobs have up to now resisted the cruder forms of direct control (cf. Error! Bookmark not defined.. The fabricating procedures to manage "flexibility" by appropriating and controlling the intellectual labor of IT workers and managers reflects the very modern attempt by senior managers to anticipate and control everything. Again, Kunda's (1992) description of normative control is relevant. As we see from the cases, the face of such “empowerment” often involves a fundamental change in traditional work practices and in the form of the social contract between the company and its employees Error! Bookmark not defined.. There is an obvious irony here. Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s information technology was used to restructure industrial and clerical work and wring slack out of those work processes. Once again, IT plays a critical role in the redefinition of IT work. The same techniques of control and work reorganization are being applied to the builders of the technology that have enabled changes in global work practices. So it is that, on the one hand, theories of the postmodern/postindustrial firm suggest a particular set of attitudes and behaviors toward the knowledge worker. And, on the other hand, we also have data collected from high-performance and innovative IT organizations, each of which belongs to trend-setting organizations within its own industry. Each of those organizations has given considerable attention to its need to be adaptive, flexible and change rapidly. Each has given credit to the importance of a knowledgeable, multi-skilled, flexible and professional IT workforce. Yet there remain undertones in both management rhetoric and in human resource structures and practices that are inconsistent with the espoused values. In the emerging information economy, the services and products offered by the postmodern/ postindustrial firm are associated with sharing of information or knowledge rather than raw materials, goods or tangible assets. These organizations continually create, bundle and un-bundle various services and products -- and people. Work is no longer associated with predictable "careers" but with "portfolios of skills" which, like the virtual firm itself, constantly cross boundaries, adapt and move from one temporary activity to another. Unions are not welcome. Nor does the virtual enterprise offer an obvious "place" to organize workers who interact via telecommunications channels rather than face to face. In short, postmodern/postindustrial business firms represent a fundamental challenge not just to traditional notions of the market, but to traditional divisions of labor, command-and-control


systems and the very nature of employment relations. They abandon both analytically and prescriptively the essential assumptions of Weberian sociology and neoclassical economics. Bibliography 1. Baker, W. “The Network Organization in Theory and Practice.” In N. Nohria and R. Eccles (Eds.), Networks and Organizations. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1992. 2. Bergquist, W. (1993). The Postmodern Organization: Mastering the Art of Irreversible Change. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers. 3. Bjorn-Anderson, N., and Pedersen, P. “Computer Facilitated Changes in the Management Power Structure.” Accounting, Organization and Society, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1980, pp. 203-216. 4. Boje, D. M. and R. F. Dennehy (1994). Managing in the Postmodern World: America's Revolution Against Exploitation. Debuke, Iowa, Kendall /Hunt Publishing Co. 5. Error! Bookmark not defined. 6. Watterman, R.; Peters, T.; and Philips J. “The Seven Elements of Strategic Fit.” The Journal of Business Strategy, Winter, 1982, pp. 60-73. 36. Whitaker, A. “The Transformation in Work: Post-Fordism Revisited.” In M. Reed and M. Hughes (Eds.), Rethinking Organization: New Directions in Organization Theory and Analysis. London: Sage, 1992, pp. 184-206.
