Decisions Without Hierarchy

Feminist Interventions in Organization Theory and Practice

Kathleen Iannello

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136640445
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Decisions Without Hierarchy is based on a two-year examination of three feminist organizations: a peace group, health collective, and business women's group. From these case studies, Iannello constructs a model of organizations that, while structured, is nevertheless non-hierarchical. She terms this organization from the "modified consensus model." Her case studies show that modified consensus does not give way to pressures toward formal hierarchy and that, therefore, the model merits the attention of feminists and organization theorists alike.

PART ONE

ONE

The Starting Point of Organization Theory

Whether public or private, government or family, school or church, organizations have a significant influence on everything we do. “The development of organizations is the principle mechanism by which, in a highly differentiated society, it is possible to ‘get things done,’ to achieve goals beyond the reach of the individual.”¹ Because of this, the study of organizations in society has received much attention. From the philosophers of ancient Greece to the corporate heads of the twentieth century, the question of how to organize in order to achieve specific goals and purposes has provoked interest.

Within the body of modern literature that has come to be known as organization theory, many studies have had great impact on our views of the organizations around us. Theorists such as Frederick Taylor, Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, and Robert Merton, to name a few, conducted the early studies, which tended to focus on the structure and function of organizations. Perhaps none had so great an impact as the German sociologist Robert Michels, who was among the first to focus on the growth of public bureaucracy.

Michels in particular dealt specifically with the problems of democratic theory, in 1911 publishing Political Parties, an intensive study of the German Social Democratic Party. That seminal work altered the landscape of organization theory in a way that today’s political scientists and sociologists often fail to recognize. Michels’s now famous “iron law of oligarchy”—that oligarchy is inherent in or synonymous with organization—is seen as a statement not just about the nature of a political party in pre-World War I Germany, but about the nature of all organizations, whether party, trade union, or church. His formulation excludes, in no uncertain terms, possibilities for egalitarian organization, even among the most ideologically committed:

Democracy leads to oligarchy, and necessarily contains an oligarchical nucleus. In making this assertation it is far from the author’s intention to pass moral judgment upon any political party or any system of government, to level an accusation of hypocrisy. The law that it is an essential characteristic of all human aggregates to constitute cliques and sub-classes is like every other sociological law, beyond good and evil.²

For Michels, oligarchy seemed simply to be a result of human nature. He was not alone in this conclusion; the work of his contemporaries, Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto, provided evidence to support his claims.³

Through empirical research Michels observed that while egalitarian organizations were often a goal, that goal became displaced by other organizational concerns. According to Michels, the German Socialist party had every reason to succeed in its attempts toward a more participatory form of organization. It was a party that fought for adult suffrage, free speech, and popular participation. Yet it could not avoid the internal development of a self-interested ruling class. Michels calls it “a universally applicable social law” that every organization has a need for division of labor, and that as soon as these divisions are created, so too are special interests.⁴ These interests develop conflicts with the interests of the collectivity and “undergo transformation” into distinct classes. A “ruling class” then emerges, holding the advantages of superior knowledge and information. It can secure its position by controlling the formal means of communication, as in organizing group activities.⁵

In addition, Michels explains that the other classes frequently display incompetence by not participating, attending meetings, or voting as much as they might, thus reinforcing the position of the elite. As the organization develops, the elite becomes more interested in maintaining its own position than in achieving the original goals of the organization. External challenges from other organizations help to solidify this position, causing the original goals of the organization to become displaced and making survival into an end in itself. Maintaining the organization, and one’s elite position within it, becomes a goal of great personal importance. “The party is created as a means to secure an end. Having, however, become an end in itself, endowed with aims and interests of its own, it undergoes detachment, from the teleological point of view, from the class it represents.”⁶

Citing historical evidence for his claims, Michels developed a pessimistic attitude toward the possibilities for success of any democratic experiment.⁷ He began to consider the role of charismatic leadership in organizing the masses behind a political cause. This is what eventually led to his fascination with the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

While Michels’s work has not gone uncriticized, little evidence has been provided to challenge his theory. Seymour Lipset, Martin Trow, and James Coleman’s work, Union Democracy, provides the one notable exception to the “iron law” in the example of the democratically run International Typographical Union (ITU). However, even these authors hold a dim view of the chances for democracy in other organizations.

We have shown that there is much more variation in the internal organization of associations than the notion of an iron law of oligarchy would imply, but nevertheless, the implications of our analysis for democratic organizational politics are almost as pessimistic as those postulated by Robert Michels.⁸

Many of the conditions that enable the ITU to be democratic in nature are difficult to duplicate. Certain factors were present when the international union was organized: for example, strong local union organizations already existed, which were able to resist the efforts toward a highly centralized structure. The organization was created from the bottom up, not from the top down. In addition, the printers had a strong identification and pride in their craft, which made them more likely to want to participate in the organization. These patterns persisted after the ITU developed, safeguarding against the oligarchic tendencies of bureaucratic structure.⁹

Perhaps the greatest criticism of Michels’s work has come from socialists and Marxists. They argue that Michels’s theory is based on a society in which economic class divisions already exist; the organization Michels studied simply mirrored the rest of society. The Marxist argument suggests that in a society where economic status is held constant, egalitarian organization has a much greater chance for success. This viewpoint will be discussed below within the context of critical perspectives in organization theory.

Another criticism of Michels’s work focuses on his argument regarding the divergence in interests between the ruling classes and the ruled. The evidence suggests that Michels may have misread the Social Democratic party’s shift to the right prior to World War I as an initiative of the ruling class. In fact, this shift appears to have come from the party members first, implying that the ruling class had not “deflected” the organization from the “goals and the beliefs of the members.”¹⁰ This information offers at least some reason to believe that the link between the rulers and the ruled was not as weak as Michels believed.

Despite suggestions that Michels’s study may be overly pessimistic with respect to possibilities for democracy, the “iron law” has become what can be called the “dominant” perspective of organizational theory.¹¹ Other “critical” perspectives have not been as widely recognized. For both the rational or scientific management model of organization theory and the natural or human relations model, hierarchy is an unquestioned structural characteristic of organizations.

Frederick Taylor was one of the earliest proponents of rational theory, publishing The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911, which emphasized routine methods, logic in planning, and suppression of the “irrational” tendencies of workers. Rational planning was viewed as the task of a managerial class, which would establish the direction of the organization and design and operate the administrative machinery necessary to accomplish the job. Later theorists such as Chester Barnard and Herbert Simon began to stress information and communication within the administrative structure, but still supported the basic view of rational planning.

The natural or human relations model of organization theory, led by Elton Mayo, began to explore the more “human” side of organizations, focusing on what had been considered irrational elements of human behavior. Through this kind of exploration a theory of “informal” as well as “formal” organization developed. The informal organization was the social network formed among workers or organization members—the unwritten rules, attitudes, or behaviors that influenced the productivity and environment of workers.

This distinction led to attempts to mediate hierarchy by developing more participatory types of management or by eliminating levels of management, in order to get more worker/member input. This style of management is associated with the work of Chris Argyris, Rensis Likert, and Douglas McGregor, to name a few.¹² However, the discovery of the informal aspects of organizations did not alter the distinction between the managerial/rational class and the worker/irrational class. It did not alter the view that hierarchy was needed to accomplish organization goals.

Despite this dominant view, others continue to study hierarchy as a less desirable structure, one that fosters conflict among organization members and promotes domination and control of members by organization leaders. Supporters of this view argue that hierarchy often impedes the attainment of organization goals, because it promotes competition to the extent that competition becomes a goal in itself. This “critical” perspective does not view hierarchy as inevitable. Instead, it argues that alternatives to hierarchy are possible if we study it as the outcome of the values, norms, and ideologies of the host society.

This critical view is the product of yet another strain of organization theory, known as the open systems model. This model focuses on the relationship between organizations and their environment.

That a system is open means not simply that it engages in interchanges with the environment, but that this interchange is an essential factor underlying the system’s viability.¹³

Theorists such as Victor Thompson and Charles Perrow, Paul R. Lawrence, and Gay W. Lorsch developed the structural contingency model, which “treated organizations as open systems subject to uncertainty arising from both environment and technology.”¹⁴ Working from this view of organizations, others such as Graeme Salaman, J. Kenneth Benson, and John W. Myer and Brian Rowan have been able to consider the impact of societal values on the structure and operation of organizations, focusing particularly on power relationships.

One significant aspect of the critical perspective has been the attention given to economic systems and their effect on organization structure. In the case of capitalism, it is ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Part One
• Part Two
• Bibliography
• Index