organizations that serve multiple interests
For many of us, it’s that time of year – updating syllabi in preparation for fall semester. Often, this involves deciding whether to add or replace readings. This semester, I am reconsidering readings for an undergrad course on workplace management and its effect on workers and society. Like Indiana Jones, I’ve been on a decades-long hunt for what I consider my Holy Grail: finding counter-examples of how to organize in ways that serve multiple interests – not just management/owners and not just workers at the expense of customers, clients, or larger society.
Contemporary organizational sociologists excel at identifying problems, such as inequality, and the unintended consequences of organizing practices for workers, such as discrimination and instability. Mainstream bschool researchers study organizing practices that benefit management/owners but usually ignore the impact on workers and other parties. Neither group of researchers is particularly focused on helping students and readers to imagine other possibilities and the challenges these organizations encounter; thus, we may inadvertently reinforce the status quo by limiting exploration of the organizing “toolkit” to conventional practices and outputs.
Lately, I’ve turned to the media to locate examples of possible alternative ways of organizing, both conventional and unconventional. In a previous post, I described game developer Valve’s preference for teams over hierarchy. When teaching about organizations that function as sweatshops, I pair that reading with a NYT article on Alta Gracia, which pays a living wage and hires unionized labor. This week’s New Yorker offers an article that might spark a great class discussion. Comparing the operations of the Cheesecake Factory restaurant chain and efforts to standardize care on hospital units to improve patient outcomes and decrease waste, Atul Gawande explores a topic I’ve posed as an exam question – to what extent can a complex output like medical care be routinized and standardized?
In a few weeks, from beneath a silver cowboy hat, I should be continuing my search for the Holy Grail of organizing in a Nevada desert. But in the meantime, please put your suggestions for articles/links of interest in the comments!
i don’t have a sociology reading for this, but what about looking at codetermination (mittbestimmung) in germany? workers serve on the boards of directors of big german companies (every germany company with more than 2000 employees must give half of the seats on its supervisory board of directors to workers’ representatives), ensuring that workers’ voices are heard at the highest level and conflicts between workers and management apparently are resolved with compromises that help prevent escalation and prevent strikes or massive redundancies, etc (plus i think employers pay some or all of the costs for retraining of workers made redundant?). apparently this system has worked well for german car manufacturers but i don’t know about other industries. the guiding idea, i think, is that the codetermination system is not just about balancing worker and management interests but that the result is also beneficial for all of society because companies are managed in ways that make them more stable and less likely to see massive redundancies or bankruptcies or whatnot, so society benefits by having employment levels kept higher and more stable, requiring less government spending on the welfare state/social safety net (and companies share some of the burden of the costs of welfare state provisions when they lay off workers, i think).
though of course i’m sure others will argue that codetermination doesn’t help “customers, clients, or larger society” since codetermination probably is responsible for part, or most, of germany’s export-driven economic model, which, as all non-german europeans complain, is a parasite on the rest of europe…
sociologygraduatestudent
August 7, 2012 at 8:19 pm
I guess cooperatives are too pedestrian to consider as an alternative method of organizing, as organizational sociologists ignore them. But they are used worldwide as a structure for aligning interests of owners with customers or workers.
Might I suggest for an undergraduate class two case studies that I use with undergraduates to highlight how economic entities (firms) organize for social missions? Both organizations call themselves cooperatives, though they are not typical of the organizational form. One is La Fageda, a Catalonian yoghurt dairy with a labor force drawn from the community’s mentally challenged members. The other is Just Us! Coffee Roasters of Halifax, NS. They have a complex structure that holds a workers’ cooperative inside a structure that is primarily funded by equity raised in the local community and which is dedicated to sourcing fair trade coffee. Both can be found in the HBSP catalog.
Randy
August 8, 2012 at 1:12 am
Maverick (Semco Brazil’s story ) …
Santosh Sali (@SaliSantosh)
August 8, 2012 at 10:16 am
@Katherine: agree completely–we in b-schools are fixated on public corporations oriented toward shareholder value as the only viable form to teach our students, even though some scholars (OK, me: http://www.realutopias.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Davis-Real-Utopia-Essay-reimagining-the-corporation-updated-4-24-12.pdf) believe that the public corporation is reaching its twilight in the US. If you’re in Denver at the ASA this year, there are a surprising number of sessions suggesting worker ownership, co-ops, communities, and anarchist alternatives (by Gar Alperowitz, Yochai Benkler, Joseph Blasi, Uri Leviatan, and others).
Meanwhile, in the US, some possibilities are consumer co-ops (REI), non-profit finance (credit unions are non-profits by law), mutuals (State Farm Insurance, #57 in the Fortune 500 list, is “owned” by its policyholders), Vanguard (the giant mutual fund is also owned mutually), producer co-ops (Land o’ Lakes, Ocean Spray, and–surprisingly–Ace Hardware), municipally-owned companies (like many water, electric, and telephone systems), and more. It’s always worth reading things by Marc Schneiberg on this!
More recent innovations are the well-known (Linux and Wikipedia, of course), but some under-researched connections would be collaborative consumption enabled via technology (Zipcar, Airbnb, etc.)–it seems everyone under 30 has decided that rather than all buying their own lawnmowers, it makes sense to buy one for the whole block and write an app to share it. My dream here is the iPhone “workplace democracy app” that will turn GM into a kibbutz.
And then there are the B corporations, L3Cs, CICs, and more. A fruitful area!
jerrydavisumich
August 8, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Breaking down organizational binaries is always a good idea, but the topic also has potential for a negative connotation,as in “organizations with a stated mission that is a mask for another mission hidden from view.”
Example? Legit business owned as a front covering for organized criminal activity. There is a of of that kind of thing going around, parading under the banner of “synergy.”
Mark Van Proyen
August 8, 2012 at 9:05 pm
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ownership-Enterprise-Henry-Hansmann/dp/0674649702
Still the best on the subject!
dr
August 9, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Sociologygraduatestudent, thanks for reminding me about the German practice of mittbestimmung, which I learned about recently from an Organization Studies conference. We really could use more of that cross-fertilization of possibilities.
Randy, yes, cooperatives once were widely studied by sociologists of many stripes, including Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Robert Jackall, and others. Cooperatives are still around, but don’t quite attract the same level of scholarly attention as they did in the past. Perhaps interest in OWS and similar groups may re-ignite attention. Thanks so much for the case study recommendations for the social enterprise cases.
Jerry, thanks for the suggestions and ASA session tips, as well as collaborative consumption. The latter also includes communal workspace for independent entrepreneurs/small organizations looking for a wifi connection and other shared amenities.
MVP, are you possibly also referring to the 501c4s and non-transparent corporate political contributions? :)
dr, thanks for the Hansmann reading rec! Much appreciated.
katherinechen
August 10, 2012 at 5:34 pm