Management Control by Soft Domination PDF

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Management Control by Soft Domination...

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Management Control by Soft Domination • •

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“Strong organisational culture” as a means of power and control – alters how you think. Power is effectively subsumed through legitimation within an integrated system of cultural and normative assumptions (e.g. “the boss knows best”) • Soft domination is Based on the appearance of organizational equality (e.g., through reduced hierarchy), but the reality of a pervasive system of controls Chief among these are instrumentally legitimate techniques used by the entire management community

Management control by soft domination • •

Avoids the need for coercion and force (since these can result in resistance) • Surveillance (information panopticon) Teamwork and “empowerment” as concertive control

The panopticon (Jeremy Bentham, 1798) Electronic surveillance • Information panopticon (Zuboff 1988) • Modern electronic forms of surveillance (CCTV, security cameras, phone calls, and, perhaps especially, social media) • Can be used by organizational elites to monitor and record (e.g. call centres) Team Surveillance: Concertive control • • • • • • • • • •

Teams operate within two dimensions of surveillance: vertical and horizontal Vertical surveillance focuses on the aberrant (waste, quality control, etc.) Establish performance norms on a statistical basis – immediately transparent (normalization) How do you implement these norms? “Empower” teams (trust and enhanced discretion) Reverse highly individualistic approach to management (e.g. Taylorism) – do not measure individuals, but measure the team Rely on peer pressure and the ‘discipline of teams’ (a sense of responsibility to your immediate colleagues) Horizontal surveillance Concertize control The team is a stricter supervisor...