It is refreshing to run
across and article that is intriguing. There are constantly published
interesting and informative articles in academic and business
publications. We use that information to learn and improve. But
this article is truly intriguing. And I make that assertion even
though I disagree with its premise and, as a consequence, its
significance to our organizational lives.
The article begins by reminding the reader
that the knowledge economy has presented organizations
with many knowledge workers. How can an organization truly
harness the knowledge and energy of such staff to its mission?
At present, the authors argue, such workers have,
...(L)ittle or no voice in decisions about
the direction of the overall company. They remain essentially
disenfranchised. It should be no surprise, therefore, that many
knowledge workers feel estranged from their organizations --
their outlook distrustful, their attitude cynical, their loyalty
tenuous.
As a solution, the authors suggest that
the democratic model which ancient Athens presents to us can
help create a "working template" of a "democratic
system of management." In addition to looking back at that
structure through the historical prisim of Battle of Salamis
(480 BC), Manville and Ober spend considerable time identifying
the underlying characteristics of Athenian citizenship, or as
they describe it, "the architecture of citizenship."
That architecture represented a set of commonly accepted values
about how the various parts of society would relate to each other.
People accepted their roles. For those who were citizens, participation
in decision making and the subsequent responsibilities of administration
were widespread and democratic. Individuals were often chosen
by lot. There was little opportunity for bureaucratic elites
to form. Decision making involved many people working in flat
structures that sought to resolve most questions by consensus.
The authors do a masterful job in distilling
Athenian democracy to a few readable pages. The problem is that
they then suggest that it can be a model to help organizations
address the problem they raise at the outset: how to develop
citizenship among employees of modern day organizations. Their
analysis fails to consider two important issues that would suggest
the model is inadequate from the get-go.
First, the authors never identify what
they mean by the term "knowledge worker." Do they mean
all workers? Are they suggesting that we have crossed a rubicon,
that we are at the point where all employees must continually
absorb more and more information? Or are they suggesting that
there is a more elite strata of employees who are more educated
for whom older organizational structures are no longer sufficient.
This is an important consideration. Even in ancient Athens, a
majority of the population were not citizens. Although citizenship
was more widespread than that of other city states, the movers
and shakers of Athens still relied on an infrastructure of non-citizens
and slaves to perform most of the menial chores. It seems unlikely
that the American business community is ready to accept a new
iteration of the industrial democracy notions of the 1960's which
would include all workers as "citizens," from a Ph.D.
scientist to a member of the maintenance staff. Nor is it possible
to imagine business expanding participation in its governance
to an elite group of staff, creating an even greater sense of
"class" than already exists in some industries.
But the more important problem the authors
fail to confront is the difficulty in comparing the culture of
Athens to the environment in which American business exists in
2003. The example of Athens -- as a city, a large organization
numbering in the thousands of people -- is hardly comparable
to the locations in which modern corporations of all sort presently
exist. In Athens, most citizens shared the same religion, were
for the most part of the same race, and were constantly involved
with each other socially outside of the of political arena. Their
relationships were quite diffuse: those who argued together in
political realms socialized together in the non-political venues.
There was every reason to believe that they developed shared
values governing many parts of their lives.
Modern organizations are hardly so homogenous.
Not only is there much greater diversity, but relationships are
primarily contractual. People interact at work based on explicit
rules identified in contracts and manuals. People who work together
in Manhattan disperse every evening to as many as four states
and thousands of small communities, socializing with entirely
different sets of people until they return to work. It hardly
seems likely that any set of process activities can -- in a large
organization -- connect so many discrete dots.
Nonetheless, the article is intriguing.
It caused me to think about issues that I have not confronted
for several decades. Perhaps it dates me. But it is about time
that we began to reconsider the concept of "democracy"
and "business" in the same conversation. Even if the
author's suggestion is by itself inadequate, I commend HBR for
giving them an opportunity to begin an important dialogue.