Week 3: Dialogue and Management
Choosing to not ask “How are you?” but rather asking a more personal question when you see someone is a good way to become more mindful as an individual. An organization can become more mindful through consciously considering their communication strategies and analyzing their choice of communication medium and wording. For example, if a company tries to increase its sales by reaching out to companies using a form letter, it will likely be unsuccessful. Alternatively, sales will likely increase if the organization researches companies in the market and reach out to them specifically about how they can meet their needs in a particular area.
As technology has advanced, dialogue has become less limited. Regardless of your location, you can have a face to face conversation with anyone in the world where you can communicate verbally and non-verbally as long as you have a webcam and internet access. Thus, communication now entails a much more personal tone than when a telegraph or letter delivered only the words you spoke. As communication technologies allow for more personal interactions, it is important to also care to connect with people on a personal level.
During the industrial revolution, we treated employees as a machine who were dispensable and we learned that while it was profitable, it was not ethical. Classical management in the industrial revolution showed us that division of labor and hierarchical management is successful as a business model. However, the oppressed workers discontentment with the system was apparent through the hidden transcripts in which slaves in the southern U.S. and workers in the northern U.S. wrote about their similarly poor living conditions and being trapped in horrid working and living conditions. Thus, working under classical management is often viewed as hidden slavery.
As scientific management rose, the employees were divided among those best suited for “thinking” work and for “doing” work. This laid the groundwork for today’s white-collar and blue-collar class based distinctions. Under this management system, employees were still responsible for a specific task and personal motivations for working were again ignored. The assembly line was a highly productive innovation, but the pressure placed on employees to perfectly produce their one result at top speed was boring yet stressful. Furthermore, the employee was taught exactly how to do the process and how to minimize the steps of the process so they did not have to use their brains at all. Thus, similarly to classical management, employees were unappreciated and there was a high job turnover rate due to their unhappiness.
Scientific management views people as a machine rather than a person. It ignores the concept that what is happening at home may impact their work life and what happens at work will impact their home life. Overall, scientific management ignores that the employee is a person at all and rather they are viewed as a instrument for success. Struggling to package the chocolates is funny to watch, but Lucy and Ethel, in the Switching Jobs I Love Lucy episode, clearly have not perfected the chocolate packaging steps in the fractions of a second that is expected of them. Working on an assembly line, the employee is expected to maximize production with minimal mistakes. Overall, the employee is expected to work as a well-oiled machine. This metaphor is useful in scientific management when the company is only interested in maximizing the profits. This is not useful for the employee who feels dispensable and their work life is not valued.
