Dr Jamal Khan :
(From previous issue)
When and where people grow up feeling that they should do exactly what they are directed to do, an organisation that has explicit job descriptions and one that utilises a directive leadership style will be more appropriate than one where positions are open-ended and there is a permissive and participative leadership style. Then again, in a society where individuals grow up thinking that they should accept a directive only when they are convinced it is legitimate, when they know the purpose of the direction and when they see themselves contributing to a goal and making sense out of nonsense, rather than submitting to another individual, then an open-ended participative organisation will be more appropriate.
CULTURE moulds people and people are the basic building blocks or organisations. Culture does more than give people codes of behaviour, knowledge of useful facts, frames of reference, and so on. It also influences his personality, cognition, perception, intellect, affect, social and relational skills and sociality. Significantly, culture gives people identity and an abiding sense of being and becoming.
Operating culture is the outgrowth of a long and multifarious historical process – the process which unfolds shifts from particularism to universalism, ascription to achievement, passivity to activity, spoils to merit, diffuseness to specificity and differentiation, authoritarianism to participativeness, monism to pluralism, self-orientation to collectivity-orientation, effectivity-orientation to effective neutrality-orientation, mechanistic to organismic, deterministic to probabilistic, hierarchy to polyarchy, centralisation to decentralisation, technique to purpose, unilateralism to multilateralism, traditionality to modernity, exclusivity to equifinality, verticality to horizontality, closed system to open system, isolation to connectiveness, autarky to interdependence, uniqueness to generality, and individuality to synergy. With the change in time and need, operating culture has been making room for output-consciousness and task-oriented culture.
The management of the human factor and human relations is yet another aspect of the sociology of public management. People are not complex but also interactive, variable and somewhat unpredictable.
Unlike natural resources which seek and expect pristine synthesis, symmetry and elegance everywhere they look, sociology, public management and other social sciences deal with the living world, the living humans and scarce resources the outcome of which is often neither elegant nor symmetrical. The human being is a total person interested in himself and conscious of the inputs received from external facts, such as family, neighbours, schools, prayer centres, labour organisations, political parties, interest groups, civil society and advocacy groups. People or personnel cannot run away from the impact of these forces when they respond to work.
An employee brings to the workplace a whole person who is only partially motivated by the need to work. What he cannot do is to leave behind the influence, the aspiration and the drive to satisfy natural demands that no organisation can fulfil. Employees may be intent on, for instance, family well-being, child education, home ownership, religious quest, community/social work or comparative art-forms.
None of these concerns or pursuits can be shaken off as they pass through the workplace door, even though they come to work because they need money income and self-actualisation and have contracted to exchange work for that income.
Sociologically, one needs to cautiously approach standardisation when it comes to individual employees. Contrary to popular notion, there is no average person. Attempts to take the average of humans, based on the assumption that people are all alike, are risky.
Yet, certain realities and compulsions of organised workplaces require order, discipline, consistency and predictability, rules and procedures are developed, work hours are fixed, safety becomes focal, attendance is monitored, division of work linked to achievable outputs, and so on. Despite these standardised techniques, there are opportunities for marginal differential treatment. Work can be re-arranged, job enlargement and enrichment achieved, work hours modified, shift choice provided, merit performance and professionalism recognised, raises and promotions recommended and so forth. The tendency of management/superiors to treat individual employees in a standard and routine way is strong because such a practice simplifies their jobs. Caution and restraint need to be exercised because individual employees want individualised and fair treatment. Though it has its place, standard is not always compatible with the nature of humans, and it must be appreciated discreetly within an organisation. The two correlates are in need of sociological research: curbing where possible and desirable mindless derivative culture and metropolitan bias and indigenising where feasible public management – being fully cognisant of management universals and methodologies – in terms of idea, value, structure, function, process, practice and technique.
Since independence in 1971, sociological impetus – under accelerating social demands, needs, aspirations and expectations – has driven Bangladesh’s public management in enhancing society’s systemic capacity to widen and deepen its range of choice, gradually modify the general and task environment and achieve some preserved goals. But, so far, research funding, collaboration, publication, dissemination, impact, interaction, alliance-building, and consulting have been limited.
(Dr Jamal Khan was professor of public sector management at the University of the West Indies. [email protected].)
(To be continued)
One, simultaneously, comes across a perceptible insufficiency of appreciation for and undertaking of the sociological aspects of management, change, growth, development and empowerment. Sociologically-induced organisational behaviour and managerial leadership are, in part, generalisable and, in another part, particularistic. Social attitudes, beliefs and values vary in courts around the world and operate at different levels in diverse ways. Socio-cultural variables conditioning public management in, for example, Bangladesh point to attitudes regarding organisational use of information and patterns of organisational confidentiality; social distance that is created and sustained over time between managers and personnel and personnel and customers; pervasive and persistent hierarchy tend to produce false social distinction, status consciousness and social inequality; offering and receiving bribery to obtain outputs and rationalising such transactions as fair service charge; and it has long been traditional for people to spend their lives working for some organisations or sectors, although there appears to have been some shift in this belief and practice in recent years. These are few examples, but there are many more. Bringing our discourse to an end, each national culture has a unique – but some generic – effect on institutions/organisations operating in that culture and this effect, ultimately, tends to constitute the primary pathology of the organisations.
(Dr Jamal Khan was professor of public sector management at the University of the West Indies. [email protected].)
(Concluded)
