СНАР. And Is to Adapt 1 vented." Although such waste is avoidable, it is a disease to which only organizations are subject. 5. There is, finally, the relative inflexibility of all machinery composed of numerous correlated parts. No complex organizaConditions tion is prompt to adapt itself to rapidly changing conditions. Individuals who by themselves might quickly change their activities or their methods find themselves locked, as it were, in an iron system. Executives May Work for Them selves Instead of the Organization Executives Load Them selves THE ABUSES OF ORGANIZATION Organization is furthermore liable to be abused in various ways: 1. Executives may misapply for personal ends the power which has been given them for the good of the work. Nepotism may govern appointments and promotions. A post-office department may be made a political machine. High military commands may be used to win publicity and prestige. The railroad president may manage his road to promote his secret stock speculations. The head of a central organization may encroach on the local chapters under pretext of efficiency, but really from craving for power. Superior may misuse his authority over subordinate to gratify his lust of domination, to exact a tribute of flattery, to indulge a personal spite, to keep down a possible rival, or to cover up his own shortcomings. 2. When an executive attempts to keep everything under his hatband, he comes to lean too much upon his immediate helpers. The result is that his chief clerk handles communications to department heads who are his official superiors, and matters of Than They moment may hinge on the decision of a mere office subordinate. with More Responsibilities Can Carry Organizations Become Top-Heavy This tendency of executives to assume responsibility for more matters than one man can cope with amounts, in fact, to an evasion of responsibility. The local mine manager justifies himself by showing that during the labor war he was continually reporting to his distant chief, while this overburdened chief pleads ignorance of the lawless policies pursued by his subordinate. Between the two stools real responsibility comes to the ground. 3. It is pleasanter to be near the apex of the pyramid than the base. There is, therefore, a constant tendency for organizations to become top-heavy too many officers for the privates, too 1 Le Bon, "The Psychology of Socialism," p. 177. many planners and supervisors and too few doers, too many dawdlers about headquarters or the main office and too few at the front, on the road, on the firing-line, at the railhead, behind. the crowbar, or before the mast.2 4. Men in different departments of a large organization may become too specialized to take one another's viewpoint or to work smoothly together. The soldier in the field, the salesman on the road, the engineer on the line, all have their troubles with the man in the office. The staff officer becomes eccentric and overbearing, while the line officer is too busy getting things done to think out the principles underlying his work or to originate better methods. Overspecialization may be prevented by rotating men through related functions. Temporary details from the line are substituted for permanent appointments on the staff. Men in the forestry service spend half the year in the bureau and half in the forests. The hampering of good men by the mistaken vigilance of clerks in an accounting bureau thousands of miles away is obviated by sending out traveling auditors to examine acFriction between engineer officers and regular officers of the navy is removed by amalgamating the two corps. Railroads adopt the " unit system," by which the various specialistsmaster mechanic, train-dispatcher, trainmaster, division engineer, and others serve as assistant superintendents. General managers combat overspecialization by getting the heads of departments to lunch together frequently and "talk things over," or, better yet, group them into committees to examine and report on particular problems. СНАР. Overspeand How cialization It May Be Avoided Men Forget What the Organfor and ization Is 5. The organization becomes an end in itself rather than a means. For instance, the Archduke Constantine of Russia once voiced the naive sentiment, "I do not like war; it spoils the soldiers, dirties their uniforms, and destroys discipline." Army. officers oppose a cutting down of the military establishment when Rather "In my university the corps of instructors is five times as large as the administrative force; but in a Chinese school of modern languages with twenty-seven teachers, I found ten administrators, to say nothing of the servants. Half of them twiddle their thumbs and draw their pay. In a higher commercial school with twenty teachers there are ten officers, of whom three are mere sinecurists. In a law school with 800 students there are twenty-five non-teaching officials, most of them sinecurists." Ross, "The Changing Chinese," p. 324. Make It Than a Means СНАР. Work to Ordi nary Human Nature the nation comes into a safer position. Partisans continue to work for the success of their party long after it has bartered away its principles and forgotten its ideals. The educational system cannot be induced to consider the child and ask itself what real good it is doing. Pious clergymen will labor to advance the ends of their church after it has become a soulless ecclesiastical machine, the foe of true spirituality. Railroad officials who have risen from the ranks develop a loyalty to the company which leads them to commit for it crimes they would not commit for themselves. In general, it is outside forces rather than inside forces which keep an organization in proper relation to its work and to other interests of society. THE SACRIFICES ORGANIZATION REQUIRES Human nature shaped by a primitive life in the woods does not easily lend itself to the demands of technical efficiency. Night Abhorrent duty, monotonous toil, and sedentary work are to most of us made tolerable only by habit. Still greater is the strain of being a cog in some intricate machine. Unquestioning obedience, for instance how revolting it is at first to any intelligent person! Team harness may be cruelly galling to such as are not quick at personal adjustment. Punctuality, schedule, method, regularity of stroke, standardized performance - these surely go against the native grain. Machinery should be built of metal, not of living, plastic beings. It is significant that the orator rarely and the poet never has struck fire on contemplating human organization. Therefore, S litary Hence, there ought always to be reserved a large place for those who in organization feel like squirrels in cages, those to whom freedom and spontaneity are the breath of life. Society should leave a broad footing for the solitary worker who labors when and where and as he pleases. Under excess of routine we tend to become wooden and unresponsive, so that the artist type, that depends on mood and whim, that waits for the moment of inspiration, will be needed to revive and freshen us as the system of group labor extends. PRESERVING FREEDOM UNDER ORGANIZATION Since it is the fate of most of us to work in some kind of organization and since no organization can function without discipline, what is to become of individual freedom? There are various means of saving the member from being swallowed up in the organization: 1. By securing to the individual member of the organization a voice and a share in determining the rules and policies by which he is bound. This is virtually the principle of "government by the consent of the governed." It is exemplified in faculty control of the university as against presidential control, in lay control of the church as against clerical control, in the determination of party nominations and policies by the "rank and file," instead of by delegate conventions and central committees. The inmates of a prison are allowed to form their "mutual welfare league." School children make rules for the use of their playground. The demand of the workers for a voice in the management of industry, in so far as it affects them, leads to collective bargaining or to industrial councils. The Organi zation Must Not Whole Person 2. By the organization confining its control to matters which clearly affect its legitimate work. This implies that officers will not seek to control the political utterances or action of enlisted men, that the school board will not deny its teachers the freedom Up One's enjoyed by the ordinary citizen, that the priest will not from the pulpit tell his flock how to vote, that the employer will not control the life of his employees outside the workshop. In each of these cases the claim is made that the restriction is essential to the success of the organization, but the claim must be resisted if we are not to become slaves. A a 3. By protecting the right of members of an organization to have special unions of their own to look after their interests. century hence posterity will look back with amazement upon time like this, when employers discharge workmen for joining a lawful association, the aims of which are not incompatible with their service. While the impartial now acknowledge the propriety of trade unions, the right of public servants to organize themselves is called in question. But experience shows that often. bureaucrats will not pay attention to the reasonable protests of public employees unless there is behind them an organization. which can make him trouble. Such an organization should exist, not for striking or sustaining strikes against the public, but for formulating, presenting or agitating grievances and aspirations. The bureaucratic horror of unions of civil employees derives from the militarist theory that in the mail service or the ality CHAP. The Individual Must Be Right to A Good Production May Have and Placing Nothing telephone service, " back talk" is as intolerable as it is in the army. 4. By preserving to the individual freedom of withdrawal from the organization. The right to quit is a great safeguard of other rights. The right of workingmen to quit work in concert, i.e., strike, should be upheld. Only lately has the seaman gained the right to quit ship whenever the anchor is down. Enlisted men ought to be allowed to get out of the army in peace time without excessive difficulty. The law will not allow the vowed monk (or nun) to be detained in the convent against his will. Very properly the law sees to it that the terms of withdrawal from the building and loan association, the cooperative society or the mutual life insurance company are not made unreasonably onerous. INTERNAL PROBLEMS OF ORGANIZATION Organization in general has been so little considered philosophically that it abounds in unsettled problems. Only a few of them can be stated here: 1. As regards the selection and placement of men, it is not always best that the man in charge of a work should pick his helpers unaided. The master of a technique may be a poor judge in Picking of men. Not only is it costly to "try out" the unfit man, but often the man who has failed in one post would succeed in some other place in the organization. The difficulty of getting the round peg into the round hole and the square peg into the square hole is so great that some organizations, in adding to their personnel, call in the experimental psychologist or the character expert. 2. A vacancy to be filled raises the question: "New blood or promotion?" The shortsighted executive imports a seasoned outsider "who can do the work." This policy deadens the force and in the long run deters the capable from joining. To the more enterprising in an organization the prospect of rising is the only thing in it which lends interest to the future. Otherwise the years stretch away in full view to retirement, pension, and death. A cut-and-dried future is revolting to the high-spirited, although it may attract the plodder. Chance of advancement introduces that element of adventure, of surprise, which induces the ambitious young man to enter army, navy, public service, or corporate service, instead of carving out a career for himself. the Enter prising and Keeps Up the Like the In a well-built organization there will be no "blind-alley" or "dead-end" jobs, leading to nothing. Normal promotion routes |