In his book Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line, Ben Hamper gives an account of one man's life on the factory floor. Having worked in the factory environment for eleven years, Ben's experiences are quite extensive. He went through being fired during the depressions, drinking alcohol day and night, playing childish games to pass time, and worst of all, having developed severe panic disorder.
Ben Hamper's job was to work at an assembly line. This job, though well-paying, is probably the most monotonous job anyone could find. As Ben explains in the first chapter of the book, the job is simply like "Car, windshield. Car, windshield, Car, windshield." This kind of repetition is extremely frustrating and can easily drive a person up the wall. Though not all jobs are so monotonous, most of them can get quite boring after a while. One can learn some of the methods Ben tried to employ to help him survive in such a workplace.
Surviving in an environment like the one that Ben was forced to work in requires special talent. Though one can overcome most obstacles in such a job such as handling the machinery, getting used to the noise and the environment, the toughest job by far is racing against the clock. Time simply refuses to pass.
In the book, we find many strategies for coping in such a workplace. The primary method the workers of the assembly line employed for passing time was drinking and taking drugs. Ben describes his father as always having been a drunkard. The rest of his family also drank to help forget about their jobs. After a day's work at the factory, they wanted to do nothing but hang out at bars, drink their asses off, and chase barmaids. A lot of the workers tried to sneak drinks into the factory and drank on the job in order to make it easier to pass time. Hamper did the same.
Hamper also enjoyed the distractions created by people like Dan-O, "the resident prankster." Hamper says "Most importantly, he [Dan-O] had a terrific knack for keepin' our minds off that wretched clock." The pranks played by Dan-O kept all the factory workers distracted, made them laugh once in a while, and helped pass the time.
Fun and games! That was the only way to pass time. Games such as Rivet Hockey and Dumpster Ball were invented. Time was spent working on strategies and practice. Anything to keep the time rolling. Breaking rules! Another way to pass time. Going off of factory grounds, smuggling alcohol in, drinking on the job. All these activities helped a worker feel happier and helped spend time. Ben also tried to turn his work into a game. He would pretend that riveting was a sport and he was competing against the world records. He would give a commentary about himself as he would rivet and his imagination would help him pass time.
Time isn't the only problem an assembly worker has to face. There is the constant fear of being laid off. For most people with families, this was a major problem. They wanted job security, so they were always able to provide for their family. However, being laid off was a nice break from work for some people. Hamper was one of them. He would enjoy the unemployment benefits and with GM, it was almost known for sure that you would be rehired once the economic situation improved. However, workers always knew that their jobs were never secure and they could be laid off at any point in time.
Another problem the workers had to deal with was being placed in jobs they didn't like. This is a problem we still see very often in all workplaces. Often the foremen were sadistic people who got pleasure out of bugging the workers. Hamper was lucky enough to have made friends with some of the foremen. This allowed him to return to the area of his choice, the rivet line. This strategy of making friends with the foremen was very important. For example, Bud got his foreman Brown large amount of alcohol as a bribe in order to get transferred to a job of his choice.
Though Hamper used a lot of these techniques to function better in the factory environment, these same tricks didn't work for some of his co-workers. A lot of them ended up quitting the job just because they couldn't handle the stress. Hamper was one of few who actually liked his job at the rivet line. He insisted on working there and got a strange sort of pleasure out of it. This is why he was able to survive so long. He was able to fit into the social context and create friends and be happy in his environment. But even Hamper, unfortunately, ended up suffering from severe panic disorder. He couldn't survive in such an environment either. Some people just can't do it, no matter how hard they try.
The factory workplace is a very depressing environment. Survival is hard. Most people give up early, but some do survive. Those who survive still lead a terrible life. They are sick of their jobs, getting drunk most of the time to keep their minds off reality. They hate life, and do anything to take their minds off their jobs and have some fun. The way to survive in such an environment is to distract one's self. You must make friends of your co-workers, work with them, work together, and try to work together towards a common goal. Communication with people working under you, and those who you work under, is also vital so that all the members of the institution know about all the problems that need to be resolved.
Foucault's Discipline and Punish is a book mainly about the history and development of the modern judicial and prosecution system. Foucault helps us realize that to fully understand the environment that surrounds us we must first understand the history behind it. Once we understand the history, we are better able to understand the institution itself, its workings, and how we can better function in such an environment.
The members of an institution can be divided into three distinct categories. The first category holding those that don't question their position in the institution, simply do what they are told, and are completely unaware of what role they are serving in the institution as a whole. Then second and third categories contain people who are aware of what role they play or should be playing in the institution. The second category consists of people who, if they are not satisfied with any problems or anomalies in the institution, just ignore the situation and don't do anything about it. The third category consists of people who are likely to survive in the workplace and these are the people who are fully aware of the institution's mission, the history behind it, what role they play in the institution, and how they should go about trying to reform the institution so any problems they have can be resolved.
Foucault also brings up the idea of normality in an institution. People in institutions are taught to be "normal". Students get gold stars for doing good work and are punished when they don't do well. In prisons, good behavior lets you off early, whereas bad behavior puts you in the worst cell, all by yourself. In a madhouse, acting "sane" might get you released. Conforming to this "normal" behavior results in rewards of all kinds. However, deviate from the norm, and you will be punished. Break a law, and you will go to jail. Act insane, and they will put you in a madhouse. These are the punishments you receive by not conforming to the institution's rules of normal conduct.
Each institution has its own unique set of codes that must be followed. Whether these are written or unwritten rules, if you can't get a grasp of them, you will suffer in the long run.
The book discusses how torture and especially torture with public display was used to punish the criminals in the past. Flesh was torn off criminals' bodies, their limbs removed one by one, and their flesh burned in public. This shows how primitive our culture used to be merely a couple of centuries ago. Criminals were punished even before they were ever proven guilty. The system, however, went through a change. The development of the prison system, with enhancements in the judicial system brought an end to this public display, use of torture, and separated the crime from the punishment.
Foucault questions whether our modern judicial system is more humane then the one used back in the late 1700s. Yes, obviously, instead of taking people's limbs apart, the aim is now to reform a person by using prisons, psychologists, and of course, by monitoring their behavior. So how does the judge decide whether a person should go to a prison or a madhouse? Can a man be called guilty if he is sick? The modern system is obviously very complex. The judge has to decide whether the person committed the crime, whether they should be held liable for it, if they are "normal", what punishment they deserve, and how they should get that punishment. The idea behind all this is to reform the person so they conform to normal behavior in society.
In order to reform a person, they need to be monitored. Foucault introduces the idea of a panopticon. As described in Foucault for Beginners:
The idea is that every person is isolated in a small room, where they all may be observed at all times by a single person in the center tower. The building would be lit around the perimeter, so that each person could be clearly seen by the central observer, but each inmate would see neither the observer nor any other inmate.
This panopticon, initially described by Foucault as a basic concept that can be used for construction of prisons, he further describes it as being useful for factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, and madhouses. In all of these institutions (and maybe any other institution that exists), this environment could let the person in charge (whether it be a security guard, a professor or simply the boss of an employee) to easily monitor the behavior of people under them and make sure everything is running smoothly. Any irrational behavior could be instantly recognized and "punishment" could be used to correct the said behavior.
The panopticon seems to have become somewhat of a reality. Cameras, infra red detectors, and other monitoring devices can be found everywhere. Whether it is at a bank, on the highway, or merely in an office, these devices are watching us constantly and we are not even aware of them. We encounter these things on a daily basis and yet they go ignored. Technology has advanced to the extent where any person walking on the face of the earth can be monitored by a military satellite. This concept of the panopticon has been extended to cover the whole world. Anyone can be monitored at any time. Even such simple things as computer use are monitored. A system administrator could constantly monitor all incoming and outgoing information going through a computer network and would know what any person sitting at any terminal of the network is doing at any time.
Foucault, in explaining the history behind the modern disciplinary system, brings up a variety of points which apply to any institution in the modern day and age. If one can better understand these points, they are better able to function and survive in any institution that they are a part of, whether it is a school, office, factory, prison, or hospital. It is important to realize what role one plays in the institution, and how that role is a part of the larger role of the institution. Having an understanding of the institution, its history, and its goals will certainly help a person.
This is the third part of the Institutional Survival Manual inspired by the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.
The book is mainly about how man is poisoning his own environment, and it focuses on the example of pesticides. Though it is thirty years old, the book still hasn't lost its importance because man is still mesmerized by the possibility that one can subdue nature by brute force rather than work with her. The only thing that has changed since the book was first released is that now one is not looked upon as some kind of crazy nut when one tries to further the cause of alternative or integrated pest management.
The book discusses the ecological degradation caused by the use of weed killers and sprays in agriculture. This usage causes dangerous chemicals to enter the food source. This causes humans to consume large quantities of "poison" which harms humans, wildlife, and the earth. Carson further discusses how environmental destruction has been caused by industrial and agricultural giants who simply want to move forward and have disregarded the ramifications of the methods they are using to move forward.
The book applies to the workplace at multiple levels. The first, and the most obvious, is the issue of the environment itself. Environmental awareness is something that needs to be created in our society. After reading Carson's book, one experiences an awakening…. our view of the world changes. No longer do we see the world as a "safe" place. We discover that we are constantly being poisoned by the environment that we have created around us. At any moment, this level of toxins in our body could go up to a slightly higher level, one that is potentially fatal, and we would simply cease to exist. A chemical imbalance, that's all it takes to kill us.
Survival, as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary, is "the continuation of life or existence". We are literally talking about this survival when we talk about the environment. This is the survival of human life as a whole. The environment is simply getting worse and worse. It may get to the level where human life may cease to exist. This would mean an end for all institutions. This manual would be of no use anymore. So it is very important that we protect this environment of ours so we can continue to survive as a species.
The environment needs to be fixed at various levels. The earth, the soil, the air, the seas: that's the environment on the larger scale. But there is also the matter of work environment. Just as the Earth's environment can be devastating for humans, so can the work environment. If a person does not feel comfortable in their workplace, they won't survive. Just as there is a physical imbalance that could potentially kill a person, there is also a similar concept of mental imbalance. If this balance is tilted, it could harm a person as well. There is only so much humans are capable of handling, and anything beyond that could be very harmful.
The work environment incorporates a variety of factors. Firstly, it is the place you work in. Is it clean? Is it quiet? Are there constant annoyances or disturbances? Even such factors as how much you like your boss are a part of this environment as they contribute to the stress factor. Maybe your anger towards your boss could cause you to suffer harm psychologically. Since it is the brain that controls the body, if the brain doesn't function well, neither does the body. This was why Ben Hamper, in Rivethead suffered from severe panic disorder. His brain was overloaded, and he just could not handle it.
Environmental awareness needs to be created at multiple levels. The ecological system of the earth and the institution both need work, but how does one person alone contribute? Here we get into the idea of collective effort. If one slight chemical change can cause the death of a human, maybe another small change can cure another human. Just as a small incident can harm the environment, maybe another small incident can help save it. If even one person recycles, it is some contribution towards the collective effort. So all that can be done is: do what you can and try to create more awareness so others follow you. If everyone does their best, the collective effort would surely make a difference.
The movie "Roger and Me" is a satirical documentary about the economic situation of Flint, Michigan in the late 1980's. Though the movie is satirical, it obviously has a very sad message behind it. Though Michael Moore emphasizes the whole movie on making GM seem bad, I think the whole capitalistic system is being attacked.
Michael Moore, the producer and main actor of the movie, sets out to try to find Roger Smith, the chairman of General Motors Corporation, to try and interview him and to bring him to Flint to show him the adverse economic situation which was caused as a result of GM shutting down its plants there.
The movie raises some important questions. It asks whether a company that has its roots, and developed in a particular community has any obligation to that community. According to the present judicial system in the United States, the answer would be no. The company owes nothing to the people because it is free by law to do as it pleases.
United States of America is based on a democratic, free society, and its people are proud of this system. The government doesn't place many restrictions on corporations other than ones that prevent them from becoming monopolies. There is free competition. The societies based in this country seem happy with the system, and freely boast about their "free country". The system that the society is happy with allows for what happened in Flint to take place. That is perfectly legal. So then how can General Motors be blamed for the situation? It was perfectly within its rights to shut down factories and to lay off workers.
The way to resolve this problem would be to change the system. With a capitalistic economic system, the Flint episode can be repeated again and again, and in fact, is repeated in many places. There is an unequal distribution of wealth. Those that profit, always profit. For example, the managers of GM always profit, no matter where the plant is located. There were others who took advantage of the GM plant shutdown and started new industries and made money off of them. However, there are also those that suffered greatly as a result. The only way to change this would be to employ a more socialistic system.
General Motors can't be blamed for what happened. No corporation can be blamed if they repeat GM's actions. The government can't be blamed because it follows what the people of the country want them to follow. The ones to blame are the members of the society. They are the ones who didn't push for any socialistic laws. They adopted such a system and are happy with it. They still are happy with it.
There is an important lesson to learn from the movie. If a certain system is adopted, and no one opposes the system, everyone is responsible for the consequences. The people profiting as a result of the system aren't the ones to be blamed. Neither are the ones suffering. It is all the members who are working within that system that are to blame. In a workplace, if there is a decision to be made, and no one opposes that decision, and if an employee suffers as a result of that decision, it is not the management's fault.
Put your eye to the kaleidoscope and hold it toward the light. There is a burst of color, tiny fragments in an intricate composition. Imagine a hand nudging the kaleidoscopes' rim until hundreds of angles collapse, merge, and separate to form a new design. A fundamental change in an organizations technological infrastructure wields the power of the hand at the turning rim. New technology creates intrinsically new qualities of experience and the way in which new possibilities are engaged by the often-conflicting demands of social, political, and economic interests in order to produce a "choice". The duality of information technology- its capacity to automate and to informate (i.e. convert to and display as information)- provides a vantage point from which to consider these choices.
The informated organization is a learning institution, and one of its principle purposes is the expansion of knowledge- not knowledge for its own sake (as in academic pursuit), but knowledge that comes to reside at the core of what it means to be productive. To put it simply, learning is the new form of labor. When the textualizing consequences of an informating technology become more comprehensive, the rigid separation of mental and material work characteristic of the industrial division of labor and vital to the preservation of a distinct managerial group becomes outmoded and perilously dysfunctional. Earlier distinctions between white and blue "collar" collapse. Even more significant is the increased intellectual content of work tasks across organizational levels that accentuate the conventional designations of mangers and managed. The total organizational skill base becomes more homogeneous.
As the intellective skill base becomes the organization's most precious resource, managerial roles must function to enhance its quality. Incorporating in them at least four domains of managerial activity: intellective skill development, technology development, strategy formulation, and social system development. Managers have a central role in creating an organizational environment that invites learning and in supporting those in other managerial domains to develop their talents as educators and learners. The managerial domain of technology development includes maintaining the reliability of existing system while improving its breadth and quality, and developing approaches to design that support an informating strategy, and scanning for technical innovations that can lead to new informating opportunities. Learning increases the pace of change. For an organization to pursue an informating strategy, it must maximize its own ability to learn and explore the implications of that learning for its long-range plans with respect to markets, product development, new sources of comparative advantage, etc.. There is considerable interdependence among these four domains of managerial activity. Managerail work would thus be team-oriented and interdisciplinary, and would promote fluid movement of members across these four domains of managerial activity.
The interdependence of the three dilemmas of transformation-knowledge, authority, and technique-indicates the necessary comprehensiveness of an informating strategy. The shifting grounds of knowledge invite managers to recognize the emergent demands for intellective skills and develop a learning environment in which such skills can develop. That very recognition contains a threat to managerial authority, which depends in part upon control over the organization's knowledge base. A commitment to intellective skill development is likely to be hampered when an organization's division of labor continuously replenishes the felt necessity of imperative control. Managers who must prove and defend their own legitimacy do not easily share knowledge or engage in inquiry. Workers who feel the requirements of subordination are not enthusiastic learners. New roles cannot emerge without the structures to support them. If managers are to alter their behavior, then methods of evaluation and reward that encourage them to do so must be in place. If employees are to learn to operate in new ways and to broaden their contribution to the life of the business, then career ladders and reward systems reflecting that change must be designed. In this context, access to information is critically important; the structure of access to information expresses the organizations underlying conception of authority. Employees and managers can hardly be partners in learning if there is a one way mirror between them. Techniques of control that are meant to safeguard authority create suspicion and animosity, which is particularly dysfunctional when an organization needs to apply human energies to inventing an alternative form of work organization better suited to the new technological context.
The interdependence among these dilemmas means that technology alone, no matter how well designed or implemented, could not be relied upon to carry the full weight of an informating strategy. Managers must have an awareness of the choices they face, a desire to exploit the informating capacity of the new technology, and the commitment to fundamental change in the landscape of authority if a comprehensive informating strategy is to succeed. Without this strategic commitment, the hierarchy will use technology to reproduce itself. Technological development, in the absence of organizational innovation, will be assimilated into the status quo.
In the advanced stages of informating, jobs at the data interface (or that of the worker) become "metajobs," because the general characteristics of intellective skill become more central to performance. The operator or the worker should be able to understand the conceptual underpinning of a problem well enough to select among potential analytic strategies and to access the expert knowledge that is required. Intellective skill is brought to bear in the definition of the problem for analysis, the determination of the data that is required for analysis, the consideration of the appropriateness of an analytical approach, and the application of the analysis to improved performance.
What is required of managers in such an informated workplace, where learning and integration constitute the two most vital organizational priorities? New sources of manager's personal influence are associated with the ability to learn and to engender learning in others, in contrast to an earlier emphasis upon contractual relationships or the authority derived from function and position. Relationships will need to be fashioned and refashioned as part of the dynamism of the social processes, like inquiry and dialog, that mediate learning. Such relationships are more intricate because their character derives from the specifics of the situation that are always both pragmatic- what it takes to get the work done best- and psychological- what people need to sustain motivation and commitment. In the information panopticon, managers (like those at Metro Tel) frequently tried to simplify the managerial tasks by displacing face-to-face engagements with techniques of surveillance and control. As a consequence, they became isolated from realities of their organizations as they were increasingly insulated by an electronic text that in turn was even more vulnerable to workers' antagonisms. But when work involves a collective effort to create and communicate meaning, the dynamics of human feeling cannot be relegated to the periphery of an organization's concerns. How people feel about themselves, each other, and the organization's purposes is closely linked to their capacity to sustain the high levels of internal commitment and motivation that are demanded by the abstraction of work and the division of learning.
The new division of learning should also organize experience in ways that help perpetuate belief in a synthesis of interests and thus legitimate a learning environment that presupposes relationships among equals. Only under such conditions can knowledge be shared in a way that strengthens the collective effort. While some degree of hierarchy is inevitable in any social group, the values and beliefs that animate these distinctions can operate very differently from the traditional assumptions of imperative control. In an informated organization, there is no reason why these individuals could not elect themselves to align with the jobs best suited to their sensibilities and talents. The freedom of self-selection must be maintained as long as institutional arrangements ensure the full participation of these members in the political life of the learning community. There are several mechanisms by which this could be accomplished. First, these individuals, like other members, would have brought access to the streams of circulating information within the organization. Where they do so chose, they could be rotated into positions they provide a greater opportunity for the development of their intellectual potential. Second, the close coordination and integration of the various aspects of the production process would require these members to keep abreast of critical information from daily operational issues to changes in the business context, or a new direction in the strategic plan. Finally, the rewards available for their work would be commensurate with their value to the production process and not undervalued as a matter of course.
As one worker from Tiger Creek mused:
If you don't let people grow and develop and make more decisions, it's a waste of human life-a waste of human potential. If you don't use your knowledge and skill, it's a waste of life. Using the technology to its full potential means using the man to his full potential.
The informated organization relies on the human capacities for teaching and learning, criticism and insight. It implies an approach to business improvement that rests upon the improvement and innovation made possible by the enhanced comprehensibility of core processes. It reflects a fertile interdependence between the human mind and some of its most sophisticated productions.