FUNDAMENTALS OF MANAGEMENT

THOUGHT. WEEK 10

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RECAP@johnnyryan

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Week 2

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How I measure the perfect job

PRESTIGE PURPOSEx xPAYMENT

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Week 3

MANAGEMENT

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Week 4

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MANAGEMENTLABOUR

Executes simple tasks

Plans work to be done by labourer

Measures performance

Trains labourer

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MANAGEMENTLABOUR

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Week 6

AUTHORITY OF EXPERTISE

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THE SELF IS IRRATIONAL

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MANAGERLABOUR

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Week 7

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Paul Baran

On Distributed Networking (1962)

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Paul Baran

On Distributed Networking (1962)

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Week 9

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MINDMUSCLEMechanical force Cognitive thought

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Steam or electricity Data & computers Industrial revolution Computer revolution

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Culture, tech-utopians, and “casual Fridays”

Week 10

“Families and organisations share the

same values.”

Agree or disagree with this week’s claim:

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MOVING TO FINAL LECTURE

https://hbr.org/1990/03/the-managers-job-folklore-and-fact

Henry Mintzberg, "The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact", Harvard Business Review, March - April 1990 (reprint)

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Robert Owen - see old slides in week 4 folder. 

8 HOURS LABOUR 8 HOURS RECREATION

8 HOURS REST

And add George F Johnson, Marching along together to culture slides. Pre DepressionEndecot Johnston boot WW2. Declines from global trade. Changing character of the corporation.  Square deal meets pro sports. 

To the new EJ worker: You have now joined the happy family in the square deal. If you are faithful, loyal, and reliable, you will earn a good living under fair conditions. You are indeed a part of the company. Remember that you are cared for when sick, medical and hospital services are yours, privileges of many kinds are yours. Your friend, George F. Johnson.

-An EJ Worker's First Lesson in the Square Deal.

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MODERN LIFE IS BEREFT OF

MEANING

WHAT IF WORK GAVE MEANING?

SHARED VALUES

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VIDEO

DO YOU FIT IN?

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VIDEO

SELF- MANAGEMENT

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Ifyouwanttobuildaship,don'tdrumupthepeopletogatherwood,dividethework,andgiveorders.

Instead,teachthemtoyearnforthevastandendlesssea.

-AntoineDeSaint-Exupery,AuthorofTheLi7lePrince

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VIDEO

“Schmidt”He was a little Pennsylvania Dutchman who had been observed to trot back home for a mile or so after his work in the evening, about as fresh as he was when he came trotting down to work in the morning.

“

”

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SCHMIDT’S@johnnyryan

WORK LIFEPERSONAL LIFE

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SCHMIDT’SWORK LIFE

PERSONAL LIFE

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VIDEO

In Foucault’s words “…the major effect of the Panopticon; to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary” In short, under the possibility of total surveillance the inmate becomes self regulating.

“…the major effect of the Panopticon; to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary”

-Michel Foucault, ‘Discipline and Punish’

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MANAGEMENTLABOUR’S SELF-

HACKER CULTURE

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VIDEO

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IDEA JOURNAL 2011 Interior Economies

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IDEA JOURNAL 2011 Interior Economies

Opposite

Figure 2:: Eberhard and Wolfgang Schnell: Office landscape Buch und Ton (1959-1961). Interior view of the accounting division of the Bürolandschaft.

Source: Archive Quickborner Team.

It seems that the Rolex Learning Centre is an architectonic icon that has given a new identity to the

university. Twenty-first century, contemporary, modern, achieving the impossible: these appear to be the keywords attached to the architecture when reading the promotional literature published

by the EPFL. It is certainly a masterpiece of structural engineering, acoustics and building logistics.

The horizontal architecture needs to be heralded as the true contemporary spatial typology

for learning and education. Reading interviews with the architects or architectural criticism in

newspapers and magazines about the RLC, one gets the impression that it is an overwhelming

experience wandering through the building’s topography and its different atmospheric zones.5 Yet

a reading of this space in relation to a contemporary Post-Fordist knowledge economy with its

imperative of life-long learning, continuous communication and dynamic sampling of all working

subjects involved is missing.

By relating the Rolex Learning Centre to the World’s first Bürolandschaft [office landscape] I discuss the EPFL’s new architectural icon in relation to (1) how the architecture of RLC and Bürolandschaft spatially optimises and refines knowledge production by providing informal space and, (2) how RLC’s interior economy and thus its organisation differs from the political and organisational

aspiration of its typologic predecessor despite its visual similarity.

The office landscape was an invention of the German management consultants Eberhard and Wolfgang Schnelle and their team in the late 1950s and became the spatial blueprint for a new,

non-hierarchic knowledge economy after the Second World War. Yet, contrary to its contemporary

counterpart in Lausanne, its design was based in a European post-war economy determined by

the theory of John Maynard Keynes, the rise of the welfare state, and its utopia of the end of labour.

By relating the Rolex Learning Centre to the administrative office spaces of the early 1960s, I conceive of the RLC as the most advanced and most elaborate contemporary example of an architecture of immaterial labour – an architecture that mirrors post-Fordist labour conditions; in which labour has

become diffuse and penetrates all aspects of life; in which work-time and spare-time have merged,

and the job has become indistinguishable from education and vocational training (Figure 2).

ThE ECONOMY OF IMMATERIAL LABOUR AS INSTRUMENT

OF SUBJECTIFICATION

The concept of immaterial labour was originally used by the Italian Autonomia movement and its

protagonists - Mario Tront, Antioni Negri, Maurizio Lazzarato and Sergio Bologna, amongst others

- to describe post-Fordist changes in the production process in the late 1950s and early 1960s.6

For the activists and philosophers of the cultural, post-Marxist left-wing Autonomia movement7

immaterial labour comprised of alterations in the work processes of big corporations of the

manufacturing and service industry. Since the Second World War, workers in these branches

increasingly needed qualifications, which implied that they were required to use and operate

automats, digital machines and computers. On the other hand, the concept of immaterial labour

entailed artistic, creative and domestic work processes, such as painting, chatting with colleagues,

and running the household, that until recently, had been understood to be privileges of the

bourgeoisie and not registered as work at all. Since the Second World War this extended concept

of labour and the accompanying rise of the knowledge economy (an economy based on the

production of knowledge), has become particularly dominant in Western industrial nations, leading

to a specific division and restructuring of labour processes. These restructuring processes were triggered by the introduction of new digital technology into a formerly analogue work process of

administration, and accompanied by the highly popular utopia of the ‘leisure society’.

In any case, architecture of labour in general efficiently arranges humans and machines in an exclusive interior. The exclusiveness of the production spaces is thereby conceived in a multitude

of modalities, establishing different kinds of interior economies. however, every production space

– whether self-governed by a collective or directed by a capitalist - is always regulated by rules

of conduct and codes. Exemplary models for modern labour spaces are the Royal Salt Works of

Chaux (1771-1779) by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, the social-utopian workers project, New harmony,

(1825-1827) by Robert Owen and his architect Stedman Whitwell, but also Boodle’s (1762) or the

Athenæum Club (1824) in London. They constitute ideal types of the modern production space,

of which Bürolandschaft and SANAA’s Rolex Learning Centre are post-war predecessors mirroring

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Ne#lixCulture:Freedom&Responsibility

1

Unlikemanycompanies,weprac2ce:

adequateperformancegetsagenerousseverancepackage

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We’reateam,notafamily

We’relikeaprosportsteam,notakid’srecrea4onalteam

Ne6lixleaders

hire,developandcutsmartly,sowehavestarsineveryposi4on

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TheKeeperTestManagersUse:Whichofmypeople,

iftheytoldmetheywereleaving,forasimilarjobatapeercompany,wouldIfighthardtokeepatNeBlix?

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Theotherpeopleshouldgetagenerousseverancenow,sowecanopenaslottotrytofindastarforthatrole

HardWork–NotRelevant

•  Wedon’tmeasurepeoplebyhowmanyhourstheyworkorhowmuchtheyareintheoffice

•  Wedocareaboutaccomplishinggreatwork•  SustainedB-levelperformance,despite“Aforeffort”,generatesagenerousseverancepackage,withrespect

•  SustainedA-levelperformance,despiteminimaleffort,isrewardedwithmoreresponsibilityandgreatpay

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PayTopofMarketisCoreto

HighPerformanceCultureOneoutstandingemployeegetsmoredone

andcostslessthantwoadequateemployees

Weendeavortohaveonlyoutstandingemployees

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GoodForEachEmployeetoUnderstandTheirMarketValue

•  It’sahealthyidea,notatraitorousone,tounderstandwhatotherfirmswouldpayyou,byinterviewingandtalkingtopeersatothercompanies– Talkwithyourmanageraboutwhatyoufindintermsofcomp

– StaymindfulofcompanyconfidenDalinformaDon

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MostCompaniesCurtailFreedomastheygetBigger

Bigger

EmployeeFreedom

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WhyDoMostCompaniesCurtailFreedom

andBecomeBureaucra8castheyGrow?

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WiththeRightPeople,

InsteadofaCultureofProcessAdherence,

WehaveaCultureof

Crea9vityandSelf-Discipline,FreedomandResponsibility

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EMPOWERED?

1. Paternalist communities for the welfare of the worker 2. Workers can share company values 3. Internalising company goals 4. Is this empowerment?

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Week 11 @johnnyryan

• ‘Netflix culture: Freedom & Responsibility’ (2001) [slidedeck]. Reed Hastings. URL: http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664. • Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D. (2015) ‘Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace’, The New York Times.URL: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html. • Grey, C. (2013). A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about studying organisations. London: Sage. Read pages 104-129. • Kotter, J. ‘Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail’, Harvard Business Review. 85(1). URL: https://hbr.org/2007/01/leading-change-why-transformation-efforts-fail.