Dominique Besson, IAE of Lille, France. (Dominique.besson@iae.univ-lille1.fr)

Slimnae Haddadj, IAE of Lille, France.

chercher contraire de emancipation <debat empowerent/emancipation debate> imanciper, immanciper? Et differance de Derrida ?

Cf notes sur papier de Grace Ann et David, et hyp sur resituation du Taylorisme.

ABSTRACT :

Currently, many firms as institutions represent themselves as facing what they (story) tell as flexibility. The considerations we develop see flexibility as an enacted differentiation, support for a management "storytold" Grand dessein (Grand Design, Lyotard, 1984). First, we deconstruct the Gramsci opposition of economic-corporate and ethics-political. This lead us to consider that post-modern management, through empowerment, vision, HRM and other methods, introduces Capital in the psychological identity, meaning the structure of personality. We focuse on the question of power in this move, which can be analyzed in term of move from Skill and qualification management toward competence management. Using metaphore, Post-modern management can be the construction of a capitalist self-administration. A Postmodern approach of co-power occurs through empowerment if the question of the finality of the productive activities is taken into account in the formalization of new organizational rules.

INTRODUCTION :

Currently, many firms as institutions represent themselves as facing what they (story) tell as flexibility. The developed discourse is a terribly modern logocentrism (in the meaning of modern opposition in text, from Derrida, 1978, 1982), and self-designed as "post-Fordism". Employees are not requested only to put in use production and organizational rules, but they deeply have to react facing events taking responsibility of the pertinence of the reaction. This change in work organization design contributes to the move from Taylorism and Fordism toward so-called post-Fordism. In fact, this shift defines a new tension in work relationship: the wage contract changes, from obligation of means toward obligation of results, aiming that employees are still not contributors. We can say that flexibility is an enacted differentiation, support for a management "storytold" Grand dessein (Grand Design, Lyotard, 1984). We want to precise some terms of this managerial discourse, and show that by the way post-Fordism can be deconstruct as encapsulated in the Taylorist approach of Work and employees psychology.

Deconstructing management methods

In the management field, the post-fordist flexibility goes through two sets of methods, sometimes combined, which are in fact new organizational concepts : empowerment, and vision. Both of them unspokenly need a new social contract in organizations, because both need deep cooperation between all the stakeholders (employees, medium and top management, shareholders, customers, etc.) (Ababacar, 1999).

This question is deeply linked with the cultural and "mental" dimensions of the life of employees (Ogbor, 1998). That’s why management focuses upon organizational culture, knowledge management and effect of vision in Work Organization. Expectations are vitale to initiate and energize the knowledge development process. Top or middle management activities may produce pictures of the future that makes sense to the participants (Hustad, 1999). The management discovers that discourses and representations are effective in team performances and can be used as a management variable. Organizations become storytellers (Boje, 1995). In this way, the question has been treated very early by Gramsci (1935). Beyond the new management methods, the question is in fact the articulation between "economic-corporate" and "ethics-political" (Besson, 1996).

The postmodern approach of organization (Hassard, 1994, 1996) can be situated in this line, by two important references: Foucault’s concept of Discipline, and Derrida’s Deconstruction of organizations (Differance in work).

We can deconstruct the Gramsci opposition of economic-corporate and ethics-political.

In a Modern reading of Gramsci, it appears that Taylorism takes place in a centuries long oppression of workers by Capital (Braverman, 1972). In the 19° century plants, the oppression is economic, in the aim of exploitation: the value-added created by workers is appropriated by Capital. But in this pre-modern form, workers keep the concrete control of Work, they represented themselves as economically oppressed because they "know" that they are at the origin of the production. They produce, and they have no rights upon the results: the exploitation appears as completely economic. Capital tried to maintain wages at minimum levels, work duration at its maximum, and the social structure is rigid and closed. In this reading of Gramsci term, the Capital is not hegemonic, because the economic oppression is counterbalanced by an ethics-political resistance and struggle. Singularly, workers resist in the Work itself, controlling many of the processes, and avoiding the raise of productivity. It is an extensive way of economic growth. Taylorism should be Modern, by an "exchange" of mass-consumption and Welfare with loss of workers knowledge and organizational control, in favour of managerial power. This permits the raise of productivity, new form of firms and organization of plants. In this intensive form of growth, there is hegemony: workers are integrated in a new style of life, in which they represent themselves as economic winners, and interested to the growth. The hegemony comes from the fact that the Capitalist domination should be ethics-political more than purely economical. In this Modern reading, post-Fordism is a new era, rather than a new approach of the phenomena. Workers are exploited, in pre-Fordism as in Fordism and post-Fordism. They are only avatars of the same Capitalist move. The shift consist in post-Fordism in a deepening of the ethics-political hegemony of Capital.

A Post-Modern reading can be opposed to this reading. The opposition of economics-corporate and ethics-political has to be deconstructed. The two terms are not to be thought in opposition, but by metaphore (Derrida). If we think pre-Taylorism as economics-corporate, and Fordism as hegemony (ethics-political), we only overturning the superordinate term of the opposition (Hassard, 1994). The metaphorization means to take into account the double-dynamic within the opposition. Using metaphore, we can say that the Fordism as discourse is a logocentrism move. That means that Capital as discourse itself operates a deconstruction. Pre-modern Capitalism was the managerial-leaded deconstruction of economics life, but not of life-style. Modern Capitalism reaches life itself, but not psychological integrity. Employees perceived themselves as opposed to Capital and management, having social identity (essence of the Industrial Relations, for exemple, in which Modernity went through collective bargaining or other forms of unionized actions). The post-modern Form deconstruct the social identity and more the individual and social psychology itself. Meanwhile performance discourse becomes reality of the individual as of the social, even in family or friendship. That was the deep meaning of the Gramci’s concepts (for a deeper examination of Gramsci’s approach of the "new man Capitalist project", Besson, 1996). In the same vein, Gramsci himself showed that Taylor was aware of this phenomena, knowing that the individual identity was out of reach of his methods. Knowing the multiple representations and their irreductability, he was in this meaning a "post-modern" (epistemology) modern (era) manager.

In this deconstructed approach of Post-Fordism, management methods change metaphore. The problem is no more to introduce people in the Capital circulation (as production and consumption, like in Fordism), but to introduce Capital in the psychological identity, that means the structure of personality. The most recent managerial discourses are centered upon the indivual as firm himself ("enterprise of self").

This lead to the question of power, through the managerial metaphore of empowerment, which we can now understand that it is more that the modern involvement. The latter represents the employee as an individual, in opposition with the firm and the Capital. Empowerment takes Human capital in its strict meaning: Humankind is the Capital. Post-Fordism is Post-modern management which creates a post-modern Work, i.e. Work as Life and Life as Work. Life has to be profitable.

Power, involvement, competences

We focuse on the question of power in this move, which can be analyzed in term of move from Skill and qualification management toward competence management. Is empowerment in the emerging competencies management really a source of raising power for employees? We see that the question has no meaning. Skill is modern, as is a social construction supported by individual, opposed to the sociality of work (of course, a epistemological post-modern approach will say that in fact, there was non opposition, but double-dialectic). Competence is post-modern management, as it creates the individual himself as Capital resource (Human resource management, HRM, is a terrible metaphore!).

Derrida’s differance allow us to refuse the simple meaning of the concept of Power, and thus to reject the theory of Taylorism as a managerial strategy to monopolize knowledge and production process control (known in France as "dépossession" approach od Taylorism, i.e. loss of workers production control by management’s new forms of control, managers onsidered as methods –process- agents; Linhart, 1976, Coriat, 1981, Braverman, 1972). In Taylorism forms of production, management’s power was inhabited by individual employees and groups strategies, as it was depicted by the Sociology of work. In a symetric way, in empowerment, employees power is inhabited by managerial origin structuration of employees behavior. The effective shift appears in the conscience control. In taylorism, the behavioral heteronomy (Illitch) is formal and basis of the wage contract (in the Industrial Relations meaning and not in the Economics meaning). The attempt of a managerial (modern) post-Taylorism is to unformalize and to autonomize the employees behavioral heteronomy. It’s a new form of Discipline (Foucault, 1974): Post-Fordism is thus encapsulated in the Fordist and productive Discipline, linked with the Capital (Braverman, 1972).

Boje and Rosile (1999) emphasize the power-circularity theory of power by Follet, and relate it to Clegg’s theory of circuits of power. The French sociology of organizations (Crozier and Friedberg, 1977, Bernoux, 1981 and 1987) has widely explored the consequences of the fact that power is a strategic capacity of employees. That means that the empowerment method is only an avatar of the Follett’s redefinition of the role of managers: to create employees work environment which makes them free to determine new kind of relationship with other employees in which their own power capacity is the base for deconstructing aims and means of work. That’s the way by which empowerment could be a real contribution to organizational change. When management stays in the duality of delegation and control, empowerment results in mental manipulations: call for employees creativity, flexibility and responsabilization (Zarifian, 1999) becomes a project of post Taylorism (in this way, and only in this way, this is a hard, or deep, Taylorism). Thus, using metaphore, Post-modern management can be the construction of a capitalist self-administration (both of employees, managers and shareholders, who become the same persons). Could we say that this is a modern discourse (as reality) of the Post-modern management? And that the Post-Modern critical alternative would be the invention of Work as deconstruction of itself (of the production as production of means by means)? This gives legitimacy to "non work" preoccupation in production and work, like work for personal development, for gender new relationships, for ecological or north-South new relationships perspectives.

A post-modern approach of empowerment needs to take into account the cultural roots of the Fordist "wage contract" (in the meaning of the French "school of regulation"): fair put in use of skills are requested, but not a work implication in the organizational results, by the fact that employees have no formal voice in organizational strategies and marked-product decisions. If co-power is really aimed, need for co-administration is fundamental. That means that management has to organize the co-administration by employees, not only in bottom but also in top decisions. The challenge goes far beyond the question of autonomy at work and decentralization of the decision process: the multiples aims of the individuals and groups as themselves must be accepted as legitimate sources of power. At this point, the circularity of power is not only a fact, but must be integrated in the organizational formal power structure. This issue needs radical new form of organizations, which try to avoid heteronomy in work as in life styles. To construct a global vision for organizations goes through the conquest of life global coherence (autonomy in the meaning of Illich).

Fordism / post-fordism: deconstructing the sociopsycho-logical hegemony

Gramsci’s approach of Fordism (called by him Americanism) emphasized the capacity of the hegemonic class to maintain the social-cultural domination even by loose in economics-corporate control. This was (still is) the will to construct new forms of organizational work relationships and new merchant life style, even in the relationship to others, and even in non-merchant production (Cf. the example given by Illich of orphans and nurses, as quoted by Boje and Rosile, 1999). Gramsci showed that the modern move is to construct a "new man", the producer-customer integrated in the market black hole (Clegg). Inside the organizations, the competencies management have a deep ethics-moral dimension (Zarifian, 1999). Outside, it was the construction of the modern markets, through new Life styles (Rifkin, 1997). The questions of work duration and employment, of wages dynamic and use of increasing income belong to the definition of a socio-économic development (Marglin, 1973, Perroux, 1956). It’s the question of merchant deconstruction/ reconstruction of desirs, needs and social relationship. The Modern market is not only a reification of work, but also of the life itself. The Foucault concept of Discipline, as the Deleuze and Gattari’s schizophrenic capitalism, are the two sides of the same Modern project of life. Quoting the American science-fiction litterature, we could say that empowerment belongs to the occultation of the "reasons age". "How" (Profitability, Flexibility) replaces "why" (meaning, life destructurations, ecological devastations, heteronom gender inegality, etc.).

XXX Citique de Braverman, approche moderne// (thèse)

So, a Postmodern approach of co-power occurs through empowerment if the question of the finality of the productive activities is taken into account in the formalization of new organizational rules. That means, if there is a deconstruction of the corporate means as themselves: to produce to make free, or to enslave, self and others to the merchant aims.

The success of Fordism was to create a lifestyle (thought life sanity determined by corporate controle, consumption and credit, in a word, Welfare) and a workstyle (Workfare) (Besson, 1996). The organizational side was skill management and Modern Industrial relations. The question socially laid by competencies management is the question of what kind of vision for tomorrow life style? Who is legitimate to define competencies (management through Squad production, employees as individuals or in self-regulated teams), what is the employees - customers or public relationships (to subjugate i.e. to sell, or to serve), what could be postmodern Industrial Relations (end of work movement for work individualization or new social movements with concern for ecological and sex/gender fair relationships) ?

The Illich, but also Foucault and Derrida’s adduce to Follet’s theory of power as capacity, belongs to the social and personal meaning of work and production. So, links have to be made to Personality theory and Personal Development (Besson, 1998). The challenge of the Postmodern analyze is to incriminate the Modern Ideology in the Postmodern period in which we enter.

References as request (Dominique.besson@iae.univ-lille1.fr).