The Breakdown of Hierarchy

Eugene Marlow, Patricia O' Connor Wilson, Helen Marlow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136012495
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The Breakdown of Hierarchy explores the changes that have taken place in the second half of the 20th century and how organizations of all sizes can harness electronic media to open the lines of dialogue and corporate conversation. Never before published case studies of Honeywell, Motorola and Raychem are discussed. Eugene Marlow has been involved with the strategic application of print and electronic media for over 25 years. He has consulted to dozens of organizations in the media, technology, healthcare, consumer products, and non-profit sectors. Dr. Marlow teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in electronic journalism and business communications at Bernard M. Baruch College (City University of New York).
Patricia O'Connor Wilson works for the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), an international non-profit educational institution devoted to behavioral science research, executive development, and leadership education. Based in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Center also has educational facilities and network associates throughout the world. Ms. Wilson has also conducted research in the areas of managerial effectiveness, self-efficacy and entrepreneurialism.

Chapter 1

Communications, Corporations, and Change

The Breakdown of Hierarchy: Communicating in the Evolving Workplace considers the impact of electronic media on the structure of American corporations in the second half of the 20th century and the resultant evolving relationship between managers and employees in the electrovisual environment. In effect, The Breakdown of Hierarchy explores the changes that have taken place, particularly since World War II, in the world of work because of electronic media and how organizations of all sizes can harness electronic media to meet the challenges of the evolving economic order.

In the last quarter century, explicit in any discussion of electronic media is the subject of change, a topic that has been at the center of much popular debate ever since the publication of Alvin Toftier's Future Shock in 1970. Yet should change concern us here? Is there a need for organizations to adapt their approach to communications—both interpersonal and mediated—in the years ahead?

In an address presented at Cornell University in 1973, the late Dr. Peter Goldmark (who developed, among other things, the long-playing record and color television) noted some of the changes that have marked human progress in the last 10,000 years:

Ten thousand years ago the world population was no greater than New York City's today [in 1973 ten million people]. Too few people for the world, far too many for New York City. Yet, the human brain had the same size and capacity as it has today, namely, one-and-a-half liters. Human behavior, attitude, and man's general physical characteristics were no different 10,000 years ago than they are today. During the succeeding 9,800 years to the 19th century, all changes were extremely gradual.

Goldmark further points out that at the time America was discovered, the entire world population was only 50 million more people than there are in the United States today. Now, the world population is more than five billion people. During 9,000 of the past 10,000 years, the world population doubled every 2,000 years, whereas at today's rate it doubles every 35 years. The fastest a human could travel until the 19th century was roughly 25 miles per hour on or behind horses, while today humans travel at 25,000 miles per hour on the way to the moon. And the only explosives available throughout this period have no comparison to what has been unleashed since Hiroshima.

While noting the exponential rate of these curves during the last 150 years, however, Goldmark pinpointed “... an all important date still buried in relative tranquillity. This was the year 1455, when Gutenberg developed an important invention in communications, the movable type printing press. This event,” stated Goldmark, “probably more than any other, contributed to the sudden increase in the rate of change in practically all aspects of our lives.”

It was not until the 18th century that printing and book publishing came into general use. During the ensuing two centuries, the cumulative number of books published burgeoned from two million to fifty million titles, followed by an unprecedented upsurge in both scientific and technological development. It was of course extremely difficult for the many individuals dedicated to science before modern history to communicate their ideas to others. With the advent of the printing press, however, the new scientists were able to learn through books how to carry on from where their predecessors left off. The need to spend a lifetime creating something others may have already created was eliminated, and new discoveries, inventions, and theories burst forth at an unprecedented rate. The results were modern science, technology, and to a certain degree unplanned growth.

Combining the brief span of accomplishments by modern civilization into a single graph and plotting them on the scale of the past 10,000 years of human history, Goldmark obtained a curve, “which, within an incredibly short time, shoots up almost vertically and points to infinity.” He went on to relate how “... this sudden and frightening increase in the rate at which changes occur is the measure of how rapidly we exhaust our natural resources and spoil our environment, and of how poorly we are planning ahead.” Goldmark's perspective was directed at environmental issues. But his address can be equally applied to the impact of technology on society, on the one hand, and the need for planning, on the other.

Another perspective on technology's impact, particularly in this century, is offered by Grant Venn. In Man, Education, and Manpower, Venn points out how technology has changed the face of our society, with:

most work once done by muscle now being done by machines; food, fiber, and basic production now accounting for only a small part of the total labor force; the majority of the work force now being engaged in distribution and services; pollution of air, water, and cities creating social and economic problems; people who yesterday were economic assets today considered economic liabilities their sense of self-worth gone; fear of ‘other kinds’ of people on the rise; opportunity gaps between the uneducated and educated widening; the clash between 19th century technological thought and societal institutions escalating; and most institutions seeming to be strongly resistant to change.

The rapid progression of development and the increasing application of technology and automation are illustrated by the accelerating rate of change in several common areas. This nation and Western civilization in general (including Japan) have changed so much so fast in the last decade or two that the result cannot properly be looked at as a change of degree, but as an entirely new factor, a change of kind. The application of science and technology to the agricultural, industrial, and commercial institutions of our society has been so great as to create a revolution in the social, economic, and cultural activities of the country.

According to Venn, “In a technological society, especially in today's labor market, unemployment is more often the result of a lack of education and skill than of a shortage of job opportunities.” However, with respect to education and job training, there is evidence of the dwindling ability of those who will become the employment targets for many corporations in the next five to fifteen years to write a simple sentence! Quite obviously, these social and economic factors have had, and will continue to have, a profound effect on our corporate institutions and will, in turn, affect the content, style, and manner of organizational communications.

Not surprisingly, many technological innovations in the last 158 years have been devices that are electronic in nature and have communications applications, devices that have enabled more and more people on a local level and international scale to share information—the telegraph, the phonograph, the telephone, the electric light, broadcast radio, broadcast television, cable television, high definition television, satellites, computers, lasers, electrostatic copiers, data voice linkage, coaxial cable, automation, miniaturization, holography, solid state electronics, mobile telephony, integrated circuits, media interfaces, microwave, feedback mechanisms, and translating machines.

Electronic communications technology has literally changed the way we do things, and how we respond to change, and has changed the way in which we look at the world and ourselves. We witness events as they happen—the Robert Kennedy assassination, the first moon walk, the Watergate hearings, the war in Vietnam, the Space Shuttle explosion, the Gulf War, and the O.J. Simpson car chase. Information and events are available to us all at the flip of a switch.

There is another message. We are becoming increasingly graphic and interactive in our communication of events, ideas, and information; there is a shift from print to pictures and electrovisual imagery. Moreover, while our demand for electronic communications resources is burgeoning, the cost of certain modes of communication is also increasing. Paper, quite obviously, has been the mainstay of our communications system for the last several hundred years. Yet there is evidence that using paper as a means of transporting information from one place to another is becoming too costly, as reflected by this and other countries’ postal systems. Even 20 years ago, in 1976, for instance, it was reported that in the United States mail volume was decreasing, delivery points were increasing, and expenses were going up steadily. The United States was not the only country with postal problems. Lawrence Van Gelder, writing in The New York Times, noted that businessmen in many countries have complained about their respective postal services. Van Gelder informally rated the Chinese and Japanese systems as best, followed by the United States, Canada, France, West Germany, and India. Italy was considered to have one of the worst postal systems in the world, with insufficient delivery points, low pay for its workers, and mounting postal rates. One result, in Italy, as in the United States and elsewhere, was that members of the business community turned to private couriers for service.

While paper communication costs have risen, our ability to use information has transformed how we use our other resources. According to Myron Tribus and Edward C. Mclrvine, “Today we know that it takes energy to obtain knowledge and that it takes information to harness energy.” Tribus and Mclrvine discuss the impact of information on humans, “A human operator, working with a fixed set of questions, can use a modern digital computer to amplify his abilities by a factor well in excess of 10 [to the sixth power], perhaps by a factor of 10 [to the 12th power].” On the other hand, they point out:

It is worth observing that this great gap between the achieved and the achievable gives information technology a character different from that of materials technology or energy technology. In materials technology and energy technology scientists are accustomed to studying fundamental limitations and natural structures and engineers are accustomed to designing within a few orders of magnitude of these limitations.

In information technology scientists find fundamental theorems not at all restrictive, and entrepreneurs discover that the freedom from constraints makes possible the construction of an almost totally new environment of information. Hence the advent of television programming, automatic telephone solicitation, computer-generated junk and mail and other artifacts of an information overload culture. In the case of material and energy nature often cries ‘Halt!’ to the changes wrought by technology. In the case of information man himself must issue the directives to ensure that technology is used for human betterment.

Jumping forward a couple of decades, Peter F. Drucker in Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995) brings the relationship between energy and information into a practical context when he observes, “Since 1900, the unit of labor needed for an additional unit of manufacturing output has been going down steadily at a compound rate of about 1 percent a year. Since the end of World War II, the unit of raw materials needed for an additional unit of manufacturing output has been decreasing at the same rate” (p. 41). Drucker goes on, “Since around 1950, the unit of energy needed for an additional unit of manufacturing output has also been going down steadily at that rate. But from the 1880s, since the telephone and Frederick Wilson Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management, the amounts of information and knowledge needed for each additional unit of output have been going up steadily at a compound rate of 1 percent a year—the rate at which businesses have added educated people to their payrolls” (p. 14).

T.C. Helvey, in The Age of Information, underscores Drucker's observation when he states, “Man will rely more and more on transmitted and decoded information, and his survival will not depend on his physical fitness, but on the quality of his communications system.” Thus we posit: the survival of the organization in the marketplace of the future will depend increasingly on the quality of communications professionals, technology, and systems. Formal communications, managed by communications professionals, drawing on high technology and “systems” approaches, will make corporations more flexible and more responsive to internal and external needs.

As the next chapter will discuss, we have already seen how personal values stressing the importance of the individual and fulfillment conflict with a technologically oriented society that has been dominated by the pyramid, bureaucratic style of too many of today's institutions. As a result, even more than today, the person-organization interface will be a mass of contradictions. These contradictions will create stress for the organization in its treatment of employees. Changing employee attitudes toward work, loyalty to the corporation, and their rights and obligations will also force changes in internal communications systems. To function effectively, organizations will have to listen to the aspirations and needs of the individuals within the organization. And this listening and understanding will be a continuous process because of the continuing and accelerating rate of change. Top management will particularly discover that lower management and other employees find inadequate jobs and motivational systems designed for a stereotype imprinted out of memories of a fading past.

Organizational survival will depend on effective communications to achieve consonance of employee and organization goals. New communications tools will impact heavily on consumer purchasing methods and, therefore, on marketing methods. The home communication data center, with its roots in personal computers, multichannel cable TV systems, and response mechanisms, will permit examination, analysis, and ordering of goods from home. Such services will, presumably, be appreciated by the physically handicapped, the elderly, the frenetically busy, and those who just hate to shop! But before we close down traditional retailing, however, let us remember that many consumers prefer to make their purchases in stores after seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting the goods; sampling the service; or having a real, live salesperson convince them. Futurists frequently forget that people enjoy going shopping, that is, they enjoy the temporary socializing gained from shopping in the flesh. Marketing efforts will be forced to reflect the greater diversity in buying sites; point-of-purchase will still exist, but in a multitude of forms.

Time will also be a crucial factor in communications’ impact on organizational management of marketing activities. Better access to central data banks, demographic data, information on changing values and tastes, and marketing performance reports will enable organizations using management sciences to adapt quickly to changing markets. Speaking at a meeting of the American College Public Relations Association, Scott M. Cutlip, former Dean of the University of Georgia, pointed out some of the problems for public relations practitioners resulting from this technological and information access explosion: the necessity to interact with (1) a public having more power in terms of information availability; (2) to face a public backed by publicly funded consumer institutes; (3) to face a disbelieving public that is becoming increasingly segmented into smaller, more selective audiences; and (4) to face a public influenced and disturbed by a major energy and environmental crisis.

Cutlip also stated that these portents of the future will require that public relations people (1) reorient to the electronic media; (2) develop tools to better identify problems and publics, pretest message and media, and post test to identify and measure attitude change; (3) be able to more accurately measure the impact of communications on individuals, groups, or societies; (4) develop a more adequate “early warning” radar system providing indicators of social behavior; and (5) serve as full-range communications consultants and advisors to all divisions of their organization, that is, technology will continue to have an impact on the management and organization of the corporation.

Warren G. Bennis and Phillip E. Slater, in The Temporary Society, proposed that the organization of the future will be “project oriented” rather than function oriented. That is, because the marketing environment will be in a constant state of change, vested functional interests (production, finance, sales, personnel) might hamper organizational adjustments to the visibly evolving environment. The free-form, diversified companies of the 1960s, such as LTV and the Rexall Drug and Chemical Company, were forerunners of the project-oriented company. Following Rexall's organizational example, financial planning was centralized and marketing decentralized. Divisions were allowed greater autonomy and flexibility with respect to any aspect of the profitability of the product without having to wait for a decision from top management. The implications of technological change and product obsolescence present a situation in which the various functions of a corporation must work closer together if the firm is to survive, and they must be provided with accurate, succinct, and timely information. Communications effectiveness throughout the corporation will thus become imperative for survival. Top management must devise ways of training and retraining management staff as markets shift, products die, new products develop, and employee and customer attitudes change. But will conventional approaches and techniques solve the information gap? Or, to put it another way, how will managerial obsolescence be averted?

It follows there is a need for systems-oriented managers who must have the ability to conceptualize the organization as a system and see that system within the external marketing system. As Anne P. Carter has pointed out, “... a principal consequence of technological change [is that] the diverse major industries in the United States economy tend to become interlocked in increasing interdependence. In the job market there is declining demand for people in the ‘productive⁷ functions, as traditionally defined, and increasing demand for people who can contribute to the coordinating and integrating functions required by the larger and more complex system.” Peter Drucker, in The Age of Discontinuity, stated that management performance will be a criterion for success and reward. Drucker also proposed that the ability to perform a job will be based less on skills acquired in school or through experience than on acquired knowledge, that is, information acquired through an effective and efficient communication system. Yet how will the constantly evolving knowledge be presented and acquired?

Communication technology will affect all activities of the corporation—advertising, marketing, public relations, and internal organizational communications. The cost-effective use of communications within and without the corporation to (1)...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Related business titles for Transforming Business
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Communications, Corporations, and Change
• Chapter 2 Electronic Media: Sudden Impact or Business as Usual?
• Chapter 3 Electrovisual Media and the American Corporation
• Chapter 4 The Emerging Corporate Landscape
• Chapter 5 The New Diversity Benchmark
• Chapter 6 Reshaping the Boundaries Around Business
• Chapter 7 Harnessing the Power of Electronic Communication Technology ...
• Chapter 8 Lessons from the Leaders
• Chapter 9 The Seven New Rules of Corporate Communication
• Appendix I: The Emerging Employment Landscape
• Appendix II: Communication Studies and Commentaries
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors