Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High Tech Corporation (Labor and Social Change Series)

Rating:
Summary: In the Shadow of the Golden Bull
Review: How does one explain the appeal of engineering? How is one to reconcile self-serving interests in working for a hi-tech corporation with the ideological demands of the corporation itself? Are engineers "happy automatons? Brainwashed Yuppies? Self-actualizing human beings? Do they think of their experiences at work as authentic expressions of themselves or as stylized roles?" Is the engineering facility "a prison or a playground"? How does one explain the servile, bootlicking devotion that so sadly characterizes engineers? In this fascinating study, Gideon Kunda, a lecturer in Sociology and Labor Studies at Tel Aviv University, explores the disturbing phenomenon of corporate culture in the hi-tech industry.

Reinhard Bendix once argued that the modern corporation "bosses not only our working hours but invades our homes and dictates our thoughts and dreams". The corporate eye is ever watchful. Managers are not the only "agents of control". Rather, "one is surrounded and constantly observed by members (including oneself) who, in order to further their own interests, act as spokespersons and enforcers of the organizational ideology". The hi-tech industry is no exception. Kunda explores the role of corporate rituals in inculcating the "right beliefs". At first, employees only reluctantly play along with the corporate culture, for fear of revealing what might be perceived as a "bad attitude". Over time, however, with continued participation in ritual life, employees imbibe the corporate ideology and embody the very qualities they might have initially resisted. Kunda notes that "ritual has been used throughout history to symbolize authority, to gain legitimacy for rulers, to reinforce adherence to particular ideologies, and to generate and intensify solidarity with and loyalty to collective ties." In this way, corporate rituals "influence how [employees] are to think and feel - what they want, what they fear, what they should regard as proper and possible, and, ultimately, perhaps, who they are." Corporate rituals are designed, in the words of corporate managers, for employees to "internalize" the corporate ideology and fix them with the right "mindset" so they display the proper "gut reactions". Indeed, "the widespread use of rituals, the importance attached to group testimonials, and the face-to-face control they allow are reminiscent of brainwashing techniques." The goal of successful culture engineering is "an obsession with technical accomplishment, a sense of ownership, a strong commitment to the company, identification with company goals, and, not least, 'fun' ".

Those who might question the author's integrity in putting forth such an analysis should bear in mind that the managerial methods described in his study are taken straight out of the academic literature of organizational behavior and design. According to one management classic, what is required is "a process of deliberate education for the young, and propaganda for the adults" (Chester I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive, p. 152). Having worked in the IT industry, I've personally encountered countless well-disciplined, obedient employees with a gruesome, almost holy love of engineering. Such characters as these charge into work every morning, convinced of their profound, central importance in the world. They equate technical experience with scholarly knowledge and consider themselves "educated" because of their proficiency in programming or their familiarity with organizational charts. They work an ungodly number of hours every week, often working from home in the evenings and coming into work on the weekends. They run around with half-mad, bloodshot eyes, drinking gallons of coffee and chain-smoking throughout the day. They sacrifice their own health for some obscure love of meeting corporate deliverables. In essence, they are products of successful corporate engineering.

Kunda also discusses the shameless attempts by corporations to "expropriate and recycle the language of the 1960's New Left", such as "we're breaking down barriers" and "this is all about grassroots empowerment". We've all heard of "bad... programmers" who can do "mad code", who work with "hot technologies", and are right in the middle of "where all the action is". The power of language (in this case language laced with radical ideology or sentimental energy) to manipulate an employee's perception of a corporation and, by extension, the value of working for one, is astonishing. Corporate culture fosters a great deal more than mere attitudes. Indeed, it almost provides a system of metaphysics for its employees, who require some sense of meaning and purpose to tolerate what is essentially a meaningless existence. One of the most typical characteristics of a hi-tech corporation is the sense of maddening confusion and meaninglessness. These employees are the primary targets of culture doctors. In The Organization Man, W. H. Whyte insists that employees "must fight the Organization... for the demands for his surrender are constant and powerful, and the more he has come to like the life of the organization, the more difficult does he find it to resist these demands or even recognize them." Corporate ideology undermines the right to privacy and the experience of authenticity. Corporations do not "capture the soul", as some belligerents might have it. Rather, it "systematically undermines its foundation... and the ability to establish a life and a self independent of the corporation's influence is diminished."

Engineering Culture is an incredibly frightening book, which could very easily be used to analyze corporate culture in settings other than the hi-tech industry. It is a very solid contribution to a field of literature almost entirely limited to closed, inaccessible, and convoluted scholarship. The reader cannot fail to notice the disturbing correlation between the object of this study and the nightmarish worlds of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. If anything, the greatest value in reading this book lies in the comfort of knowing that there are others who look upon hi-tech culture with alien eyes, at least one set of which has taken institutional criticism to a full-blown sociological analysis. If there is one lesson we can take from this book, it is that that inmates really are running the asylum. In the words of the author himself, "let the reader beware"...

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Summary: Engineering Culture, Control and Commitment in a High-Tech C
Review: Kunda in his book explains that culture could be used as a powerful weapon that the organization uses against the workers to manipulate and finally control them, reaching the organization's goals. The author supports this idea through the study of the High Technologies Corporation (HTC) case, a "state of the art" company that designs, develops, manufactures, sells, and services a number of popular high-tech products. The company has been a high-tech success story through three decades of existence. According with Kunda, culture is a set of rules that support the relationship between the company and the people, specifically it is compound by rules for behaviors, thoughts and emotions. The conformation of this set is carried out by the interaction within workers and between the company, it means that each individual within the company could be affecting the organization culture (interactive effect). Kunda explains that the company sees the culture as a reengineering process, where it have to be redesigns and maintained to get the goals of the company. On another way, control is the effect to internalize and institutionalize the set of rules to get involve and part of the organization. Once obtained this level, the worker will be internally committed, strongly identified with company's goals, and intrinsically satisfied by his or her work; therefore, he or she will not need the company to be coercive with them to play his or her own role in the job. A company uses rituals as the machinery to model the culture. These rituals in HTC are conformed by structural speeches, presentations, meetings, lectures, parties, team and inter-group meetings and training workshops. Other elements used by companies are the myths; the company supports its message through a leader, who serves as model to follow. Finally, the common vocabulary is used to reinforce the identification of workers with organization's culture. An important dilemma that the employee faces is adopt or not adopt the organization's culture. Can they really have this choice? According to Kunda, some employees are alienating completely trough the culture, even losing their autonomy (marginal workers). Another workers are reluctant to adopt and intelligently simulate the internalization of culture or maybe draw a line to separate own culture and corporation culture. Both groups want really want to be part of the organization. In conclusion, culture is a mean to get corporation's goals and workers' convenience. In this sense the worker "choice" is to get involves or not with the trade-off to get high positions or not.

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Summary: ethnography of corporate cultural control
Review: This book provides an excellent portrayal (though an ethnographic study) of a company which utilizes corporate culture as a means of control. The company expends great energy at inculcating an ideology that results in the employees putting the company and their work at it above all else, exhibited not only in discourse, but in failed marriages and overtime. This text illustrates how employees are converted into missionaires who will follow productions schedules and management strategies with religious zeal, oblivious to their personal lives and the cost of these new commitments. It would be interesting to see what these types of companies are doing today to manipulate and extract full faith and commitment from employees. A must read for software engineers and those who study organizations and org. psych.