In the Modern Workplace, Management Is in Control and Employees Have No Autonomy - Assignment Example

UMPD7E-15-2 Employment Relations Name Subject Date Essay Question 1 “In the modern workplace, management is in control and employees have no autonomy.” Discuss the statement critically, with reference to Marx’s theory of alienation and informal resistance strategies. According to experts, workers who believe that they are free to make choices in their workplace and also be accountable for their own decisions have a happier working time and more productivity. This essay is aimed at demystifying the issues that are resultant of the control being in the hands of the management which as a result leaves the employees with no autonomy in the modern workplace (Dworkin, 1988). The discussion will be in reference to the Marx’s theory of alienation and informal resistance strategies What is management? Management is referred as the coordination and organization of the activities in order to achieve defined objectives. It is often included as a factor of production along with money, machines and materials. Management is involved of activities such as marketing and innovation. The entire practice of management originated in the 16th century study of low efficiency and the failures of certain enterprises. It is from then that management is found to consist of the functions that are interlocking in the sense that they create corporate policy, organizing, controlling, planning, and directing the resources of a given organization in order to achieve set out goals or objectives of their underlined policy. In the business world, management is a term that can be used to describe the directors and managers who have the power and the responsibility to make the decisions as well as oversee the operations of an organization. What is Autonomy? According to Schwartz, people are autonomous to the degree that they can rationally form and act on some overall conception of what they want in life. Achieving autonomy for individuals leads to them being able to live lives of initiative and intelligence. When we get to employment world, the autonomy pursuit is a subject to the limitations inherent in employment relationship. Despite the fact that work that lacks autonomy may be within and part of autonomously chosen goals, a deal should prevail that aims at enhancing autonomy to refer to arrangements which advance the capability to frame, adjust and pursue plans during the work time (Schwarz,1982). Given the developments that have taken place in the recent decades, it would obviously appear more likely to cultivate creativity by employees and this means that we should anticipate rising autonomy to be made part of the development of a more skilled workforce. Autonomy of employees includes such things as discretion, control over work, judgement and initiative. According to Karl Marx in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, he stated that the worker sinks to the level of the commodity. He continues to say that the worker indeed becomes the most wretched of commodities. This is exactly what the lack of autonomy has reduced the employee to being. The employee according to Marx is in in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his/her production. From Marx’s perspective, the worker will only feel himself when he is not working because work does not make him neither happy nor content. This according to Marx means that working is not a satisfaction of a need. He proposes that there is the need for the work life balance to be achieved for the worker. This will enable the worker develop freely and have practical human activities. The lack of autonomy to the employee leads to a situation of an organization level tension. This is tension based on the division of work and authority. This will follow aspects of differentiation, division of labour, specialization, and hierarchy which are all fundamental organization principles. Take for instance the way workers are divided and assigned to particular jobs, departments, levels and units, this kind of differentiation and specialised division of labour can by a large extent have the organizational unity undermined and as a result stimulate conflict in the organisation. The whole idea of division of labour is what is found by various researches to be contributing to the state of alienation. Where people are group according to specialization by the management and are assigned to specific job functions. Alienation was defined by Marx as a situation where individuals are dominated by forces of their own creation (Marx, 1844) which he calls alien powers. The theory of alienation by Marx explains clearly that the management being the alien power embarks on the practice of subordinating his products which in this case are the employees, then his own activity to the domination of the alien entity/management. According to Marx, alienation in the work domain has diverse aspects with one being that man is alienated from the product, from the production process, then from the community and also from himself. This alienation as stated by Marx where the employee is alienated from himself results to him not being in a position where he can develop the many sides of his personality. Management in reference to Marx’s estranged labour hails from the fact that each man sees the other in accordance with the standard as well as the relationship in which he finds himself. This is why for instance, the management appears to stand alone cutting itself away from the low cadre workers who contribute greatly to the growth, production and the success of the business. The modern workplace is characterised by a management that attempts to deal systematically with the problem of labour control. This leads to the perception by owners as well as the managers that the considerable residual discretion afforded to the workers happened to produce inefficiency and also low rates of productivity. This led to the placing to a serious disadvantage the worker control over production knowledge and know-how. This is a clear indication that the employee autonomy is lost and management takes total control thereby resulting to conflict (Marx, 1844). The modern workplace management has brought in a shift in the balance of power considerably from the employees in favour of the owners/managers thereby eliminating the residual dependence on the employee’s knowledge. A situation whereby the managers are seen to conceive while the workers execute is born. Management needs not to forget that work is external to the worker, meaning that it is not part of his nature. Management nevertheless has brought into the modern workplace a situation where the worker does not fulfil himself but instead he ends up denying himself. It is only at his leisure time that this employee feels himself at home whereas when at work, he feels completely homeless. The worker at this juncture belongs to another person and the relationship of the worker to his work activities is that of something alien to; not belonging to him activity as suffering (passivity), strength as powerlessness, creation as emasculation, the personal physical and mental energy of the worker, his personal life (Marx, 1844). Importance of employee autonomy As mentioned earlier in this discussion, employee autonomy s basically the control that the employees have over every aspect of their employment/work situation. According to studies, employee autonomy is an important determinant wherever quality of work and moral goal are desired. As Mulholland (2004) noted, the call centre employees are faced by a significant threats as far as their autonomy is concerned as well as opportunities for the enhancement of the autonomy. Hackman and Oldham (1975) defines employee autonomy as the degree to which the job gives the employees substantial freedom, discretion and independence in the planning and scheduling of the work and also in the determining the procedures that are to be used in carrying out work related activities. A more specific definition is from De Jong (1995) defines autonomy as the self-determination, discretion or freedom, inherent in the job, to determine several task elements. Work elements simply refers to aspects of tasks such as working methods, the working pace, scheduling, procedures, work criteria, the work goals, work evaluation, and lastly the amount of work. In the realization of work autonomy, employees have control over some or all these different task elements (De Jong, 1995). A question that anyone should ask as far as the employee autonomy is concerned is; why is it a desirable goal? To start, it is important to note that the workers themselves find it desirable. This is because the often find it very important to have the control over the elements of their work. According to research, the autonomy is an important determinant of employee’s health and wellbeing. The limitation of the autonomy on the other hand is found to decrease the performance on the job, both quantitatively and qualitatively. This is because these limitations have a negative effect on the employee’s levels of stress, their wellbeing and health not forgetting that because these limitations tend to decrease the motivation for work, reduces the flexibility and creativity they also end up creating resistance and conflict (Kahn and Byosiere, 1994). Another reason why the autonomy is important is that the autonomy itself is desirable as a general goal for individuals. Employees with no job autonomy end up being not autonomous individuals while at the workplace. The autonomy of the individual employee has long been found to be fundamental to human self-development and flourishing. Self-governance is another aspect of autonomy, it is required that the employees get self-governance in the workplace to be able to acquire self-realization. This is therefore a freedom that an employee must have in order to create a life that is not only meaningful to the individual but also fulfilling. It is a requirement for the conception of human beings as equals. When this happens, the individuals involved are able to give equal input into the moral principles that are aimed at giving individual preferences reflection thereby being able to function as equals in the moral life (Dworkin, 1988) As I reach the end of this discussion, it is important to note that the modern workplace has no room for the employees to work towards the realization of their own goals and also be able to promote their own values. This is because the control as well as the autonomy has been taken away by the management who seem to control every aspect of work. This leaves the employee who in the past took control of the production process being the servant who has no voice in the activities he is supposed to carry out every day. This results to dissatisfaction which triggers the need to ask for the autonomy by force and in the process there is conflict in the workplace. Working seeking to be given more and the process strikes become inevitable. Conclusion As seen from the discussion, the employers who are not interested in the enhancing of employee autonomy are surely not getting the best out of their employees. For an employer interested in the good work concept, the evidence that gives support on autonomy is not only particularly stack but also very liable to give considerable pause of thought. The rhetoric of empowered cannot be overlooked for knowledge intensive people runs into the fact that their ability to be able to exercise judgement, discretion, as well as initiative have profoundly suffered in the last decade and the improvement is very minimal over the years. In essence, it would be very difficult to make the employees any more accountable for the work that they have very less control over than the situation was in the past years. Moreover, the evidence on autonomy is more dispiriting because in the wake of employers wishing to empower and also engage their staff, they on the other hand have considerable room for manoeuvre. Work cited Ackroyd, S. (2005) (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Work and Organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter on “Resistance, Misbehaviour and Dissent”. De Jonge, J.: 1995, Job Autonomy, Well-being, and Health: A Study Among Dutch Health Care Workers, Maastricht, Universitaire Pers Maastricht. Dworkin, G.: 1988, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Hackman, J. and G. Oldham: 1975, ‘Development of the Job Diagnostic Survey’, Journal of Applied Psychology 60, 159-170. Marx, K. (1844) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. (Chapter on Estranged Labour). Mulholland, K. 2004. “Workplace Resistance in an Irish Call Centre: Slammin’, Scammin’ Smokin’ an’ Leavin.’”, Work, Employment and Society, 18 (4): 709-772 Schwarz, A. Meaningful Work, Ethics, Vol. 92, No. 4, pages 634-646, 1982 van Den Broek, D., & Dundon, T. (2012) “(Still) Up to No Good: Reconfiguring Worker Resistance and Misbehaviour in an Increasingly Unorganized World”, Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, 67 (1): 97-121. Read More