From Team Ideology to Sustainable Work Systems"

AUTHOR "Manfred F. Moldaschl"

TITLE "From team ideology to sustainable work systems"

SUBJECT "CAT, Volume 6:2"

KEYWORDS "embeddedness, side eﬀects of work design, critique of socio-technical thinking, coercive autonomy, sustainability of work"

SIZE HEIGHT "220"

WIDTH "150"

VOFFSET "4">

From team ideology to sustainable work systems A paradigmatic critique of work design and a new perspective

Manfred F. Moldaschl

When we look at the bulging group work literature, there aren’t many bigger riddles to solve than the question of why the discrepancy between propaga- tion and realization of teams is, at the least, not getting any smaller. In this article I analyze the reasons for the sobering practice and the team-bias in the scientific optic. I describe two theoretical concepts and a method for the study of the dynamics, contradictions and limitations in team-based organizations. They are part of a resource-centered perspective, which is based upon four axioms: (1) In the study of complex social environments the main focus must shift from strategic action to the side effects of inter-action, and to their continuous evaluation. (2) There is no a priori unit for the study and design of work systems like the ‘team’; the focus should lie on the contextual embeddedness of cooperative units. (3) Autonomy has been a fetish of emancipatory work design approaches in a dual sense: an unquestioned goal, and a reified category. The new reality of decentralized work forces us to abandon the dualistic thinking dichotomies like autonomy-heteronomy. Autonomy is not a resource itself; it has to be understood as relation between job requirements and resources, task and context. (4) Challenging traditional ideas of autonomy, the concept of sustainability offers a new perspective for understanding and developing work. It focuses on the balance of consumptive and creative effects in the use of human, social and cultural resources.

Keywords: embeddedness, side eﬀects of work design, critique of socio- technical thinking, coercive autonomy, sustainability of work

174 Manfred F. Moldaschl

1. Why group work fails — and a method to document that

A recent study of the dissemination of group work in Europe presents sobering facts: if decision rights are taken into account, “less than 4% of the workplaces in the survey were categorized as ‘team based’” (Benders et al. 1999:33). Apparently there is an inverse relationship between scientific interest in and publications on group work, and their practical relevance.1 To paraphrase McLuhan one could say ‘The hope is the message’. The question is, why? We shall discuss this later. Having an unbiased look at the history of group or team work in theory and practice, we face another strange and ongoing discrepancy — that between far-reaching promises and disappointing results of group work, beginning with the Hawthorne experiments and going on through the ‘lean production’ fad (Moldaschl and Weber 1998). While group work in practice is more than ever seen as an ideological, all- purpose glue for social integration and the suspension of industrial conflict, or as an all-duty tool for operative rationalization, we have overwhelming evidence of stagnating or failing change processes, conflicting interests, and ambivalent ‘side effects’ experienced by the employees, such as: a self-organized intensification and extensification of working time; the loss of relieving delimitations between work and non-work; high work load; cooperative norms as group pressure; group cohesion as a basis for intergroup-conflicts; the decoupling of qualification from control; the decoupling of performance from pay; growing discontinuity and insecurity in daily work and working life; a instrumentalization of the entire personality for company purposes.

This shadow side of modern work settings is not in general less, but often even more profound in substantially decentralized (‘post-Tayloristic’) work systems. Rather, they can be observed particularly in the context of aggressive decentral- ization and coercive autonomy (Moldaschl 2001). Thus, the question is not: Taylorism or Post-Taylorism,2 heteronomy or autonomy, domination or participation. These dualisms are not the question for the sociological Hamlet today; they cover up more of the new contradictions in the team-based organization as they enlighten. The actual question is: are post-Tayloristic, autonomous or ‘modern’ work systems per se ‘good’ and sustainable for the workers (and for the company) as the mainstream social science assumes? And if not, so From team ideology to sustainable work systems 175 far, why do the new dialectics of control continuously have so little effect on debates about group work and participative work design? We could look now for empirical proofs of the first question and the above thesis; there is a lot of empirical evidence for that, also in our own empirical findings.3 I prefer to continue with the discussion of the problem here on a conceptual level. But in my presentation of a qualitative method for data acquisition in reorganization projects, some of that evidence will be illustrated along the way. The following two figures present the method of lifelines. The ‘lifelines’ represent a combined rating of the quality of working in groups over time by group members, related to a zero level before the implementation of group work. I had previously developed this method as one instrument for the analysis of group dynamics in manufacturing, but it is not specific to that context. The interview partners are asked to draw their lifelines from their individual or group’s perspective and to comment on obvious changes. Figure 2 presents what we identified as the ‘normal’ or a typical dynamic of work group development. Although the levels and proportions vary (see Figure 3), the overall pattern or ‘Gestalt’ of the lifelines is surprisingly invariant: a primary phase of initial interest, or more skepticism about the new work concept is followed by a more or less euphoric phase, where the workers or employees discover the potentials of this concept for themselves. A typical third phase is frustration about the limitations and shortcomings experienced. Only the fourth phase varies more: mostly we find a stagnation, either slightly

“The Old” “The New”

Discrepancies Dissemination on Ambivalent the slow lane Results

Reasons Contradictions Contradictions of Neo-Taylorism of Post-Taylorism

The Team Promise — and the Sobering Results

Figure 1.Four topics for debate. 176 Manfred F. Moldaschl

above or below zero, connected with some relapses in cooperation and the division of labor, and a partial reestablishment of hierarchical relations. In a few cases, the curve moves up again, based on the joint eﬀorts of the actors. In the rest of our cases the curve goes further down, indicating more or less the failure of the experiment, even if group work is not formally terminated in the company and survives as a living corpse with some marginal elements of the initial idea. This illustrates the normality of stagnation, and the employee’s comments reﬂect some of the reasons behind this. I developed this method as a supple- mentary diagnostic, particularly suited to grasping the dynamic character of cooperative relations. In addition to quantitative and qualitative longitudinal studies, which usually have two points of data generation (and which we also used), this instrument is mainly meant to capture the real turbulence in cooperation and reorganization over time, in the subject’s perception. The lines are drawn and commented on by the employees in an interview.4 Behind concepts of rational work design in science and management practice there is often the static idea of a new form or structure, which is to be implemented, and which is viewed as dynamic process only in the implementation phase. The

High motivation Mood for partizipation Barometer and learning ++

Interest + Skepticism Anxiety Stagnation Mistrust Frustration o

-- phase 1 phase 2 phase 3phase 4

Figure 2.Typical pattern of the organizational climate in group-based reorganization projects. From team ideology to sustainable work systems 177

Personnel policy 1 "The more cooperative and effective we are, the more colleagues are withdrawn" Worse order situation More "Working time account orders deep in debit"

"Doing more with "We expected that, but not less and less people" in this dimension" "Problems with temporary workers" "One retreats, but the group holds together" - 1 "Bad morale" 1/95 1/96 1/97

(a) Worker (Group 2, Segment 1, Company A)

1 Group speaker Group member "We progress"

"We succeeded" Conflicts with Reduction of time other groups buffers, splits within the group "We must set a goal" -1 start 1/2 year 1 year (b) Different valuations depending on the functional position in the group (Group 1, Segment 4, Company A)

1 "What happens, if they don't Flat hierarchy elect me again?" "No more promotion" "Stagnation" "Colleagues at their Reduction of staff limits"

"Better than before" Insight: "Group work is good"

Valuation of group work by the group speaker -1 Group motivation from the perspective of the speaker 12/93 12/94 12/95 12/96 (c) Lifeline of a group speaker (Group 1, Company C)

Figure 3.Lifelines as a reconstruction method. 178 Manfred F. Moldaschl

concept of lifelines is based on a different idea. It sees group work as a living and transitory process of cooperation, in which the individuals as well as the character of the group and their embedded context are permanently changed by action. What is often supposed to be the normal case turns into a special or sometimes worst case in this perspective: an established or frozen structure. Similar ideas have been formulated by the Center for Developmental Work Research in Helsinki, headed by Yrjö Engeström (e.g. 1992). To resume this brief excursion: the method of lifelines is an ‘image-generat- ing’ diagnostic method, an aggregated measure for subjective valuations. It is context-sensitive, i.e. it allows the direct allocation of critical events in the drawed lifeline. And it can be used in various forms for different purposes; it allows, for instance: individual or collective application (see lifeline b in Figure 3); to capture opinions on third party attitudes (‘how do you think your colleagues experienced…’ see lifeline c in Figure 3); visual representation of expectations and experiences; a combined or more differentiated use (e.g. drawing separate lifelines for different and perhaps conflicting subjective criteria in one figure); integration in qualitative research designs as well as in mainly quantitative ones; and use as an evaluation tool in work design and change processes.

Now we come back to our two main questions: why is semi-autonomous group work still so rare, and why do implementations so often stagnate? And why is the debate on the group-based organization not aﬀected more seriously by these facts? Let us continue with the second question, concerning the relation between theory and empirics.

2. The instrumental rationality of (well-meaning) normative science

If the ambivalences, stagnations and relapses, mentioned above, are addressed in social science, they are usually interpreted as results of mistakes made by the management, such as too hesitant a dismissal of Taylorism, or an inconsistent application of good (scientific) design principles, such as autonomy, participation, human relations, etc. Briefly, the explanation says: Neo-Taylorism (see field 3 in Figure 1). Researchers committed to this interpretation have no doubt that the application of the well-meaning principles of post- or anti-Taylorism

From team ideology to sustainable work systems 179

would have the intended positive eﬀects for both workers and company. Popular equations look like:

multifunctionality = interesting work = higher job satisfaction = higher eﬃciency.5 An example that has already been mentioned: Clive Purkiss and Eric Verborgh write in the foreword to the EPOC report on group work in Europe (Benders et al. 1999):

The objective … is to increase workplace flexibility, fully utilize the skills and abilities of employees, and consequently improve the quality of working life (emphasis M.M.). If any empirical irritation about such equations comes up, the very essence of the explanations can be characterized by the idea: The model’s good, it’s just reality that’s bad. In this way biased debates on group work and the team-based organization display the central characteristics of a self-reproducing paradigm in the sense of Thomas Kuhn (1962). What is a paradigm? We can understand it as a background practice of acting, perceiving and thinking in a field of social praxis. Scientists are not privileged in their epistemological access to the world — just like any other person, they are situated. One basic characteristic of a paradigm is that it is more or less immune to challenging experiences and results — a ceteris paribus explanation for falsifying findings will always be found. Another characteristic is that a paradigm is insensitive to internal contradictions; a paradigm is not logically constituted. And a third crucial one is that paradigmatic premises are not accessible to self-application. Another question is whether or not paradigms are accessible to reflection and consciousness in general. The debates on the history of science show that this is not necessarily the case — enlightenment over paradigms and paradigmatic self-reflection is possible. But experience shows how difficult it is for persons to be aware of their basic background assumptions. What are such implicit premises of scientists in our field? For instance, group work, participation and autonomy are introduced on the basis of an anthropological or philosophical humanism, which assumes that people want autonomy, and autonomy is good for the people. I shall return this in Section 3. Another premise is the critique of instrumental rationality and short-term utilitarian thinking in the management staff. But at the same time a type of research that is prevalent in journals and handbooks of social science (e.g. of "mol-r16">"mol-r14">"mol-r9">"mol-r4">"mol-r8">

180 Manfred F. Moldaschl

Social and Organizational Psychology) shows a striking homology with this paradigm. This research investigates relationships, or better, correlations between ‘variables’ like social support and efficiency (or mediated: social support and health, health and efficiency); group cohesion and efficiency; friendly supervision (or participation) and efficacy, and so on. The objective is to find if-then relations and ‘best practices’ for different conditions. Although a lot of this if-then research is unconditionally committed to practical purposes, and the knowledge is produced obviously for utilization in entrepreneurial contexts, it is called ‘basic research’, as opposed to ‘applied research’. Perhaps this is so because it is often done under laboratory conditions (i.e. it is ‘acad- emic’) and not embedded in real worlds; or because it is not paid for by the customers. And even if some of these studies argue against the illusion of control and planned change, they still adhere to the demand for principles and ‘models’ for the successful change process and offer best practice studies. Apart from the fact that most of the abovementioned correlations cannot yet be demonstrated consistently (e.g. Goodman et al. 1987; Udris 1987; Mudrack 1989; Lantz 1994; Cotton 1996; Guzzo and Dickson 1996),6 and apart from the question of how ‘efficiency’ is defined, these contradictions between criticism and own practice indicate that there is no paradigmatic difference between the rationalistic thinking of practitioners criticized by many social scientists, and their implicit understanding of their own role in interaction with social practice. If thinking in terms of context-free ‘models’ and neglecting the ‘side effects’ of strategic action are genuine characteristics of instrumental rationality, a competing paradigm should offer alternatives, particularly in these aspects. I shall return to this in Section 4.

3. Resource-context: Against the reiﬁcation of criteria for work analysis and design

Let’s come back to the first question concerning the reasons for stagnation and failure. I have to say, first, that I do not question the common explanations: managers do not really want to share power, or they are not able to realize the discrepancy between their idealized support for empowerment and their actual behavior; workers are socialized under restrictive conditions and are not accustomed to deciding on their own, consequently they refuse more responsibility. All these reasons exist and were also found in our own empirical studies. But they are not exhaustive. Not only the unintentional and ambivalent effects From team ideology to sustainable work systems 181 are underestimated on the basis of rationalism; it is also true of the importance of resources. I want to focus now on this aspect, while freely acknowledging that all other foci in the analysis of group-oriented reorganization processes are also justifiable (formal group parameters, cooperative or prosocial values, management styles, etc.), even if one can argue about their general and contextual relevance.

3.1 Autonomy: From a rationalistic to a relational understanding As a first example to demonstrate the difference between a rationalistic, context-free definition of criteria for the analysis of work, and a relational or dialectical understanding, I want to start with the concept of autonomy. Many contemporary and historical approaches, like Socio-Technical Systems Design (STS),7 conceptualize autonomy as the degree of functional variety and deci- sional latitude, more or less a variation of Gulowsen’s well-known criteria of autonomy. And they take it as being the most important dimension of good and effective work. One general and more or less implicit thesis is that qualification and workload are determined positively by autonomy:

high autonomy = high qualiﬁcation = low work load. Thus, autonomy is taken as a general indicator of the quality of work. Accord- ing to that meta-assumption, it is expected that a reduction in the horizontal and vertical division of labor increases the quality of work automatically (‘consequently’).

Task(s) Rules "official" objectives formal and implicit expectations informal

Stress conflict conflict

Resources allocative and authoritative finite and generative individual and collective

Figure 4.A resource-centered deﬁnition of stress: Contradictory job requirements. "mol-r13">"mol-r11">

182 Manfred F. Moldaschl

According to the theory of structuration (Giddens 1984), I reject the idea that autonomy could be defined as a resource itself. Autonomy can only be defined by the relation between job requirements, rules and resources (Figure 4).8 This is the basic assumption in the theory of contradictory job requirements (Mol- daschl 1991, 2001, for example). A work system that offers a considerable or high degree of autonomy in the conventional sense of ‘degrees of freedom’, ‘multifunctionality’ or ‘variety’ (formal autonomy), can be the opposite in my perspective: if the resources available in the work system are insufficient to cope with these requirements, practical or substantial autonomy will be low. As a consequence, in this case, workers tend to use their personal and social resources ruthlessly (e.g. saving proper breaks, extending work overtime), and it is likely that existing personal and social resources (e.g. health, readiness for social support) are more exhausted than regenerated.

3.2 Psychological stress: A relational definition If the relation between tasks, rules and resources is conflictual or contradictory, the typical result is stress, overwork, and often social conflict as an amplifying feedback factor. This is the reason why I propose to define psychological workload as contradictory job requirements (CJR). The basic idea is that a person must do something to cope with the task, which he or she can ‘actually’ not do, because resources (time, tools, information, qualifications, etc.) are lacking, or because existing rules impede them. A typical stress situation in our studies was, for instance, that work groups had to neglect their quality control task, because staff were very scarce and productive tasks could not be reduced. So they took — or were forced to take — the risk of failure and penalties.9 Basically, this is a theoretical approach that integrates object and context in one relational definition. From there, the CJR model stands against the deter- ministic idea of deriving work load from a single or aggregated organizational context variable (such as the degree of centralization or formalization), as is common in most stress concepts. Uncertainty, which is often modeled there as a ‘stressor’, has the contrary status in the CJR model. According to micropolitical approaches (such as the transformation theory in the Labor Process Debate, or Giddens’ structuration theory), we see uncertainty as a central source of power for the workforce, because it is the realm controlled by the workers, not by management. The CJR model offers a theoretical alternative to another relational workload theory, the currently popular cognitive stress concept (e.g. Lazarus and "mol-r13">

From team ideology to sustainable work systems 183

Folkman 1984). This defines stress mainly as a dyadic misfit between situational and personal characteristics. Consequently, a theoretical definition of situational stress factors cannot be given: everything can be a stressor, and it would be sufficient to find a person who can bear the given conditions (see Section 4). I cannot go further into the CJR theory. It has been used in a variety of quantitative and quantitative studies (among others, the one cited above and e.g. Büssing and Glaser 1996).

3.3 Understanding group phenomena with a resource-based theory of context I shall now apply the resource-based micropolitical perspective, as demonstrated in the CJR model, to two other group phenomena and group work issues mentioned above: group cohesion and social support. Both issues suffer from a functionalist reduction to the perspective of the enterprise, which focuses primarily on benefits of these interpersonal relations for efficiency and efficacy.10 I don’t have to lay out the abundant literature of this genre, since there is in any case insufficient space here to address all of the other ‘functions’ and meanings that group cohesion and social support can have in real work settings. Just to mention some of the meanings which were the most important in our last study of group work in the chemical industry (Moldaschl 2001): group cohesion turned out to be: a. one of the major sources of resistance to management strategies, after the group members had formed an effective mode of cooperation and division of labor; b. an important factor in the rise of self-coercion within the group, a melange of group pressure and self-commitment to the redefined task, which had to be fulfilled under conditions of restricted resources.

Social support, on the other hand, lost its positive connotations and its function as a resource for the workers in several cases, in as much as c. social support was instrumentalized by the management strategy of mini- mizing staﬀ, according to the increasing ﬂexibility of the workers and to their growing mutual responsibility; d. the imputed stress reducing or moderating character of social support turned into the opposite; it adopted the function of controlling and requir- ing each individual’s contribution to the group’s performance. 184 Manfred F. Moldaschl

Cooperation and autonomy stand in a tense relationship, as we see. Basically we need no empirical results to discover these ‘other’ roles, functions or utilizations of group phenomena. Thousands of studies will not help, if they stick to the rationalistic one-purpose (one-boat) paradigm and its promise to solve all contradictions between humanization and efficiency by the application of scientific knowledge. We need another, political and micropolitical view, asking for the divergent interests and perspectives of the involved individual and collective actors. The resource-perspective is one theoretical option to look at the contextual embeddedness of work units like teams. Consequently, the hypothetical question cannot read, for instance, “How much does social support reduce psychological stress?” or “How much does group cohesion affect performance?” We must ask: “How do the workers or employees regulate their efforts in relation to the given context?” “How do the subjects experience these efforts?” And “How do they react to the strategies of the other players?” This last question leads to my final point.

4. The perspective of sustainable work systems

The lifeline figures presented above contained comments on how workers reacted to management strategies (or to what the workers perceive as their negative effects): they withdraw to instrumental motivation, refuse to be flexible, i.e. to rotate jobs and to take broader responsibilities; they participate less in the continuous improvement process; restrict their willingness to cooperate and to give social support; and so on. All of this constitutes part of the observed stagnation and frustration. It shows, first, that the workers are not entirely ‘subsumed’ under the functions followed by the new management strategies of control by autonomy. They react sometimes with autonomy by resistance (which we could call ‘collective loafing’) and, more often, with autonomy by feigning narrowness. Turning round the dominant efficiency perspective, we could analyze this as the efficiency of worker’s control.11 It shows, second, that workers’ resistance to ‘good’, ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ ‘best practice’ models of empowerment cannot be interpreted as ‘irrational’, if their resource interests are taken into account. Looking at the worker’s reactions, though, the whole does not seem very effective and sustainable at all, either for employees or the company. Isn’t this the justification for exactly the view I had criticized before? That ‘good work’ and efficiency go together in the concept of group work? Aren’t the conclusions From team ideology to sustainable work systems 185 obvious: concede sufficient resources, avoid overload, don’t exploit social support, etc.? No, not in general. Heuristic guidelines and recipes like these are as paradoxical as the claim: be spontaneous (at once)! Resources are contested terrain. It is a precarious balance that must be maintained by the different actors. Management wants to exploit the rationalization potential of group work, and must be aware of the willingness of the workers to be flexible and cooperative. Workers want to extend their freedom, but they must face the risk of being loaded with new tasks and responsibilities when they successfully manage the previous ones. They are prepared to perform at a higher level, but in flat hierarchies there is little chance for promotion or more income, etc. Nevertheless, we also know from the ecological debate that one-sided, utilitarian thinking is probably not effective in the long run, i.e. it is not ‘sustainable’ because it consumes the basis of its own subsistence. We have seen that in an exemplary fashion in the utilization of social support. Consequently, it could make sense to formulate some basic thoughts about a resource-oriented perspective on reorganization in terms of the sustainability approach in the ecological context. I want to outline roughly such a concept, which has been developed and applied as an extension of the CJR concept in a recent empirical study (see Section 3). At present, quite a group of social scientists from all over Europe is working to establish a research program on the vision of sustainable work systems (SWS), a category that has been created within this group.

4.1 Finite, regenerative and generative resources The basic idea of the resource-centered perspective and the SWS approach is to analyze the production and reproduction, or better, the consumption and creation of resources in the processes of work and reorganization. The first step, of course, is to define different qualities of resources. In an ecological analogy, it is obvious that one must differentiate between finite and regenerative resources. The latter are means for action, which become consumed in use, but can be regenerated by work. This is the case for the most material resources like, tools, machines, buildings, etc. The fundamental difference from economic thinking is found when we look at generative resources.12 We can understand these as means for action, which are created and amplified by their use. This is true for most subject- bound, individual and collective competencies. One consequence of this distinction is obvious: while strategies of sustainability would tend to replace or to minimize the use of resources in the first two cases, this is not necessarily "mol-r17">

186 Manfred F. Moldaschl

true for the third — if, and to the extent that one observes their own cyclical rhythms and temporality. Even if one might ﬁnd some objections to Albert Schweitzer’s sentence, “love is the only thing that doesn’t diminish, when we use it excessively”: it accentuates these creative, anti-entropic and autopoietic forces of the life which are realized in human bodies. Muscle power gets exhausted in the present cycle of use, but it gets stronger in the next — if alternating periods of rest and maximum stress are correctly considered, along with changes in the life cycle. The same can be assumed for experience, knowledge, motivational and moral dispositions etc.13

4.2 Social and human resources The common understanding of human resources, typical of, for example, HRM approaches, is centered on an individualistic understanding of human capital. As an expression of methodological individualism this understanding is undersocialized, because, for instance, professional qualiﬁcations are socially constructed and shaped, as the culture-historical paradigm (in the sense of Leontjew and Rubinstein) explains. Expertise, for instance, “does not reside under the expert’s skin” (Engestroem 1992). I propose to distinguish between human and social resources because, particularly in modern interactive work systems, the interpersonal resources are the crucial ones. It would be very promising to shift our gaze from the narrow concept of group work to communities of practice (Wenger 1998) and cooperative networks. Because the ‘knowledge’ resource is so overemphasized and decontextualized in present debates, another distinction has to be emphasized: that between internal resources such as are external to the actors and their relations, i.e. ‘objective’,or better, objectiﬁed conditions. Social resources, which reside in relations between individuals, social groups and institutional actors, are, e.g.: trust relations that allow cooperation; collective expertise, residing in ‘communities of practice’; cultures of interaction and dialogue, which foster creativity; relieving routines in the division of labor; network relations within the work system and with its social environment; prosocial (cooperative) values.

The abovementioned cooperative or prosocial values (Weber 2000), for instance, have the status of neither independent nor dependent variables. They are understood as historically generated resources, conditioned results of

From team ideology to sustainable work systems 187

ongoing interaction. Trust, for instance, as an effective alternative to costly control, grows with the acts of use — if it does not get disappointed. For sanctions as an instrument of control the opposite is true. Their function becomes consumed by use. As a means of control, sanctions can only maintain their effectiveness if their application can be avoided or restricted to rare exceptions (Luhmann 1975). Generally, each act of utilization changes the quality of the resource, confirms or questions, consumes or reproduces, destroys or creates. Individual human resources, in the more specific sense, which are relevant for the regeneration of organizational and social entities, can be defined here as the individual account of useful skills, ‘secondary virtues’, personal health and stability, personal relations, etc. The person bases her performance in the task (job control) and her power in bargaining processes (worker’s control) on them, as well as individual and social actors can use social resources for common and peculiar, collective and individual purposes.14

4.3 Sustainability and levels of sustainability On the basis of these distinctions the idea of sustainability can be defined in relation to organizational solutions and strategies: they are sustainable in a social sense, if they maintain and reproduce the given social and human resources, or even extend them. The extent of this contribution is measured as resource productivity. The risk of strategies lies in the unintended (or ap- proved) destruction of genuine bases for action. In the research network mentioned above we relate that idea to the category of work systems. By a work system we understand a cooperative relation that can have different levels: a group, a department, or a higher organizational unit. Components are, for instance, wage systems, technical infrastructure, and training systems. Never- theless, it makes no sense to cover everything with the blanket concept of work systems. Industrial relations, for instance, we analyze as a separate dimension. Finally, we define a contrasting pattern to sustainable work systems (as an ideal type in the sense of Max Weber) and we call it Intensive Work Systems. They develop by consuming (exploiting) resources that are generated and provided in the social environment of the work system or the organization. The negative balance of this exchange can be identified in the exhaustion of work motivation, low trust, long-term sick leave, etc.; the work situation is characterized by serious mismatches between job requirements and available resources (i.e. contradictory job requirements). 188 Manfred F. Moldaschl

It would be amazing and starry-eyed to think, that a sustainable work system implies sustainability for each worker’s situation and all external effects. It is much more likely that we shall have to face severe contradictions between different levels of sustainability, and the overall sustainability represents something like a sound compromise. Thus, the sustainability of work systems must be defined and evaluated on these different levels: From a worker’s perspective a work system is sustainable when it maintains or develops (or allows to develop) one’s marketable qualifications and skills, social relations and personal health. This requires a match between job demands and resources, or institutionalized procedures, which help to identify and change current mismatches. A work system or a reorganization strategy is sustainable on the organizational level (single enterprise perspective) when it maintains or extends the human, social and institutional resources (e.g. flexibility) of the organization. In the perspective of the single enterprise it can also be sustainable, even if specific human resources are exploited in a non-sustainable way, if the costs can be externalized to the social system, for instance. From a societal perspective organizational strategies can only be held for sustainable, if they don’t stress the socially produced resources and the social system as a whole, but contribute to the generation and regeneration of resources, e.g. by qualifying their workforce, extending their subjective autonomy and health, or contributing to their old-age pension. According to the environmental perspective, it may be expected that enterprises pursuing socially sustainable strategies are apt to (re-) internalize their external social costs.

Let us bear in mind that the enterprise is not a spaceship. It is embedded in a broader social and cultural context. Thus, we have to repeat the relational deﬁnition of object and context for diﬀerent levels of aggregation. I shall not do this here, but it is obvious that beyond the organizational level we must at least refer to an institutional, societal level, which comprises industrial relations, a national training system, etc. This we could subsume under the category of regulatory regimes.

4.4 A final example: The destruction of an organizational culture The brief examples given above of the usefulness of such a perspective (group cohesion and support) should be sufficient for our present purpose. A last From team ideology to sustainable work systems 189 example may illustrate how the analysis of the balance between requirements and resources, consumption and creation of resources can be applied to the upper organizational context, too. The case to be described here is a chemical factory in East Germany, established after the fall of the wall by a West German combine. The East German staff is highly qualified, selected after rigid processes of downsizing and personnel selection in several steps. The plant was planned for highly automat- ed production, but the market developed in another direction, so that the efficiency of the plant is below expectations. Therefore, the group headquarters is unsatisfied with the location and reduces resources (investment, staff, autonomy) in order to increase efficiency. In this context, the highly motivated staff fails to increase the productivity of the plant, because they have neither the financial resources to improve the technical layout of the plant, nor the autonomy to decide on the type and sequence of orders produced here. And although they try very hard — in sometimes conspirative coalition with the local management — to make the best of the situation by improvising, the local management has neither the financial resources nor the necessary influence on wages to reward the extraordinary efforts of the staff. Consequently, many of the implied social and human resources decrease continuously: motivation, trust relations, the willingness to try out new organizational solutions, etc. The group work process, for instance, initiated twice, fails twice, although the formal autonomy within the job is relatively high (Figure 5 below). Of course, the mechanisms in this example could also have been analyzed by other perspectives. The resource-based view unfolds its analytical potential particularly in cases where the relations between actors are characterized by complex and dynamic balances of manifold resources.

5. Conclusions

What is the function of such an approach? At any rate it is not intended as a new normative ‘model’ for the perfect workplace and the high-performance company, which is a positive example for sustainability at the same time. I’m very skeptical that a set of rules or design principles or guidelines can be found which, if applied, could guarantee at least one of these goals. The ﬁeld is contradictory, as I tried to indicate. Therefore I propose to understand the vision of SWS, ﬁrst: 190 Manfred F. Moldaschl

Technical layout not adequate

ignores

Low self- evaluates Poor optimization Enterprise efficiency of and employee headquarter the factory motivation

allocates

Scarce resources low autonomy

Figure 5.A vicious circle of resource dependence.

1. As an analytical perspective on the entrepreneurial practices and how they deal with these contradictions. It offers a framework for the interpretation and reinterpretation of research findings on group work and reorganization. 2. In practical contexts of rationalization, work design and OE, it could furthermore draw the attention of practitioners (and consultants, researchers) to the great variety and the fundamental differences between the used and reproduced resources. Thus, it could generate more interest in handling living resources more carefully over a longer time horizon, to observe unintended effects of strategic action, and to evaluate discrepancies between plan and reality continuously. 3. The distinction between Intensive and Sustainable Work Systems has a paradigmatic function. It lies at right angles to the common clichés of and distinctions between Tayloristic and post-Tayloristic, hierarchical and participative, ‘bad’ Japanese and ‘good’ European model. It makes clear that both patterns of organizational modernization and rationalization, respectively, can always imply a problematic creation of insecurity and intensification of work. This has been demonstrated in the majority of recent empirical studies in various sectors of economy, and it means that the consequences for the human capital and the social environment of the company may probably be non- sustainable — if the reproduction of resources is not taken adequately into account. Thus, it is not enough to criticize Tayloristic or neo-Tayloristic "mol-r13">

From team ideology to sustainable work systems 191

strategies, in order to recommend the traditional humanistic recipes like job enrichment, group work, participation etc. On the other hand it gives us a vision of how we could emphasize the enormous diversity of human and social capital in order to create zones of protected autonomy.

Notes

1. This is also true of temporary group concepts, as reviews state: “The research on quality circles has not been overly optimistic. First, there is considerable evidence that they may have a high rate of failure. For example, some surveys have reported that as many as 65% to 80% fail. … Second, most research on quality circles is methodologically poor” (Cotton, 1996). Some colleagues argue group-oriented change was more successful in Scandinavian countries. 2. The alternatives are Neo- and Post-Taylorism, even if the latter is frequently diagnosed too rapidly and uncritically. But if only a minority, significantly below 10% of the group work achieved, can be definitely categorized as post-Tayloristic, is it worth giving the same attention to the contradictions and failures of post-Tayloristic reorganization? I think so, because we have indications that this pattern is rising in the future; and because they are so challenging to the dominant paradigm of work design. 3. The results of our empirical studies of reorganization processes in different industries and services are mainly published in German (e.g. Moldaschl 1991, 1998, 2001); they will be presented in English elsewhere. 4. Theoretical and practical issues, sources and precedents of this method are discussed in (Moldaschl 2001: Ch. 2.4). 5. Complex models like this are then called a ‘theoretical framework’. The actual trend to take the context into account is, unfortunately, often just a variation of this thinking in terms of simple causalities and contingencies. The authors are looking for context factors, which make e.g. the efficacy of group work bigger or smaller or inapplicable (the latter e.g. in the case of language problems with foreign workers as ‘cultural factors’, or the assembly line as a technological factor). Because this thinking is so paradigmatic, the authors normally do not at all see the necessity of defining the category of context — if they define their object at all (e.g. ‘group work’). 6. My thesis is that this will never be the case, no matter how many studies of this character are ever undertaken. And it’s the reason why some critics of this kind of research shoot wide of the mark when they criticize it (only) as an ideology. In my notion, an ideology is a conscious tool to hide one’s (a social group’s) actual intentions. A paradigm, instead, is something people are not aware of, a common way of perceiving and thinking, situated in a specific social environment and so deeply engrained in the personal experience. Critical sociologists, for instance, who struggled against Taylorism for the whole of a researcher’s lifetime, often seem unable to grasp the severe ‘side effects’ caused by their anti-Tayloristic design models. 7. For a critical discussion of this approach see (Moldaschl and Weber 1998). "mol-r17">"mol-r13">

192 Manfred F. Moldaschl

8. The latter, a psychosocial theory of workload, is based on the psychological action regulation theory (Volpert 1989) and on Glidden’s theory of structuration. It shares Glidden’s elementary conception of power. Power is seen as the ability to act differently, to have alternatives in coping with external requirements and conditions. Power has the status of a meta-conception here, expressing the degree to which actors in the organization can utilize resources in order to maintain their autonomy. Although these theories offer chances for a more precise operationalization of control compared to the Labor Process Debate, we derived from that a useful distinction of worker’s autonomy in two levels: job control (autonomy in production, within the job) and workers’ control (collective control over the conditions of jobs and employment, i.e. the general conditions of reproduction). 9. The theory conceptualizes four categories for negative consequences: the coercion to take risks and threat as the virtual ones; and additional effort and overload as the manifest ones. 10. See e.g. Weber (2000). Or the problem lies in a failing discrimination between workers’ and management’s perspective. This is to be expected, of course, when group work is a priori seen as a win-win game that more or less suspends the divergence of interests. 11. I’m playing here, of course, with the single-sided semantics of social psychological categories. Empirically, a lot of such work was done within the Labor Process Debate, which unfortunately has not yet been very successful in the development of precise concepts and categories for the analysis of work and group work below ‘control’. It would be helpful, if more exchange between the sociological and the psychological ‘claims’ could be established. 12. A good example of how ideas are often misunderstood as being like mineral resources, which have to be exploited efficiently, is the continuous improvement process (CIP). An indication of that is that management drops it just as soon as the economically exploitable flow of ideas decreases (Moldaschl 1998). 13. This resource-centered approach refers to Giddens’ theory of structuration (1984), where power is defined in terms of (allocative and authoritative resources), and to Bourdieu’s theory of social and cultural capital (1977), which cannot be expounded here. Just to give some examples of generative and the regenerable resources. The latter can be seen as mainly objectified or material ones, e.g. time (structure, budget, buffers), personnel capacity, tools, capacities for vocational training, and codified knowledge (‘knowing what’ in the sense of Gilbert Ryle). Empirical knowledge (knowing how), for instance, would stand for generative resources, like trust or interaction styles. 14. Not all, but many models of Human Resource Management (HRM) follow the techno- cratic idea to select or adapt people according to identified needs of the organization. The selection principle reads: ‘The right person at the right time in the right place’. There is no difference from material resource management. The principle implies looking for the specific person who can tolerate specific, stressful conditions. This purpose fits perfectly with person- based stress concepts (see Section 3). "mol-r13">"mol-r1">"mol-r2">"mol-r3">"mol-r4">"mol-r5">"mol-r6">"mol-r7">"mol-r8">"mol-r10">"mol-r11">"mol-r12">"mol-r14">"mol-r15">"mol-r16">"mol-r17">"mol-r18">

From team ideology to sustainable work systems 193

References

Benders, J., Huijgen, F., Pekruhl, U., and O’Kelly, K.P. 1999. Useful but Unused — Group Work in Europe.Findings from the EPOC Survey . Dublin: European Foundation. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Büssing, A. and Glaser, J. 1996. “Widersprüchliche Arbeitsanforderungen in der Arbeitstätig- keit, Zusatzaufwand und Streß. Konzepte zur Überprüfung eines Vermittlungsmodells”. Z.für Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie , 40(2): 87–91. Cotton, J.L. 1996. “Employee Involvement”. In C.L. Cooper and I.T. Robertson (eds), International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 11: 219–242. Engeström, Y. 1992. “Interactive Expertise. Studies in Distributed Working Intelligence”. Research Bulletin 83. Univ. of Helsinki. Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society.Outline of the Theory of Structuration . Cam- bridge: Polity Press. Goodman, P.S., Ravlin, E., and Schminke, M. 1987. “Understanding Groups in Organiza- tions”. In L.L. Cummings and B.M. Staw (eds), Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 9, pp. 121–173. Greenwich: JAI Press. Guzzo, R.A. and Dickson, M.W. 1996. “Teams in Organizations. Recent Research on Performance Effectiveness”. Annual Review of Psychology, 47: 307–338. Lantz, A. 1994. “Swedish Experiences of Working in Groups in Industry”. In P.T. Kidd and W. Karwowski (eds), Advances in Agile Manufacturing. Amsterdam: IOS Press. pp. 665–668. Kuhn, T.S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University Press. Lazarus, R.S. and Folkman, S. 1984. Stress, Appraisal and Coping. New York: Springer. Luhmann, N. 1975. Macht. Stuttgart: Enke. Moldaschl, M. 1991. Frauenarbeit oder Facharbeit? Frankfurt / New York: Campus. Moldaschl, M. 1998. “Rationality, Culture and Politics of Production”. In E. Scherer (ed), Shop Floor Scheduling and Control — A Systems Perspective. London / Berlin: Springer. pp. 67–90. Moldaschl, M. 2001. Die Produktion der Organisation.Reorganisation und Ressourcenkonflikte am Beispiel Gruppenarbeit. München, Mering: Hampp. Moldaschl, M. and Weber, W. 1998. “The ‘Three Waves’ of Industrial Group Work — Historical Reflections on Current Research on Group Work”. Human Relations, Special issue on “Social Science and Workplace Reform”, 51(3): 347–388. Mudrack, E. 1989. “Group Cohesiveness and Productivity — A Closer Look”. Human Relations, 42(9): 771–785. Volpert, W. 1989. “Work and Development from the Viewpoint of the Action Regulation Theory”. In H. Leymann and H. Kornbluh (eds), Socialization and Learning at Work. Aldershot: Avebury. pp. 215–232. Udris, I. 1987. “Soziale Unterstützung, Stress in der Arbeit und Gesundheit”. In H. Keupp and B. Röhrle (Hrsg), Soziale Netzwerke. Frankfurt: Campus. pp. 123–138. Weber, W.G. 2000. “Which Organizational Conditions Foster Prosocial Work Orientations in Teams?” In M. Vartiainen et al. (Eds.): Innovative Theories, Tools, and Practices in work and Organizational Psychology. Seattle: Hogrefe & Huber, pp.75–96. Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meanig and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

194 Manfred F. Moldaschl

About the author Dr Manfred Moldaschl is Professor of Microeconomics at the Technical University of Chemnitz and Director of Innovatop, Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Research, Munich, Germany.