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| Friday, 9 January 2004 |
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Book Review : organisational tyranny by Afreeha Jawad If you are out of the ordinary - with a kind of inquiring spirit, try and lay your hands on Devi Akella's 'Unlearning the fifth discipline' - one in a series of Sage Publications - New Delhi. Equipped with a hard to come by sensitivity, she very successfully perceives what power, politics and control in organisations is all about. That humans could be deposited and acclimatised in one track moulds and this kind of herd-driven exercise at day's end would accrue colossal benefit to the political economy is most revealing. The whole idea of hegemony - of control, of power retention, monopoly, shaping people's perceptions and preferences to promote singular group interest, class or alliance of class leadership continuously working on common social outlook make excellent nourishment for an emaciated intellect. Tool abuse in the form of information control, mass media and the socialisation processes remain implementing mechanisms for a common global pattern and could even be applied at micro level organisational functioning towards system operation as seen in the corporate world, schools, homes, churches, mass media and the like. In the course of reading, conspicuous is the realisation of power group control over individual wishes. Akella thus provides ample material to make reader thinking and analysis more vibrant. As did strike this writer - the kind of hegemonic control we see in superpower domination over world affairs. The noncompromising, creative, innovative personality is seen as a terrorist, fundamentalist and insurgent. In the family such non-conformists are labelled black sheep at school they are drop outs and in church or mosque - non-believer or atheist. Akella quite cleverly pursues and exposes the hypocrisy in the modern concept of family and team in organisations - understandably, a facade for competition, political manuring and favouritism. She sees this familial corporate attire as overtly official egalitarianism, beneath which exists interpersonal suspicion, sibling - like rivalry and nepotism. Thus Akella certainly triggers off intellectual stimulation compelling this writer to associate the familial culture even with international and regional organisations. That organisations are in full despotic control of employees' lives - physical, mental and emotional with no discretion left for him or her but to fit in or leave is also an Akella observation. This then is an attempt on the part of the international organisational gamut to keep itself alive across the global spread. What to wear, what make up to use, even when and whom to marry, with whom to be friendly, the time and quantity to be spent with family and at office, what to learn for future career advancement - these and many more keep the employee chained to the organisation and it's value beliefs. Interestingly, her analysis of contemporary professionalism is noteworthy for it 'transcends' the 'definition' of it's accepted connotation. Akella makes regretful observation of knowledge and intellectual absence as determinants of modern professionalism. Dress, make-up, aggressiveness and competitiveness and all other seemingly vulgar conditions have come into play not to forget the social structural divisions that are reproduced within professions and cites the example of not being on friendly terms with a porter but acknowledging his presence only with a nod. Akella, with her penetrative mind has not missed out on two other significant modern day organisational characteristics. Firstly, the socialisation process itself where individual reflexes and actions are modified through instructions to fit into organisational environs. Training programs and official social events are also part of program. Secondly, she points out the important role of the grapevine where managements use talking and listening via grapevine channel to create subjective interpretations of employees. 'Thus she facilitates the reader into thinking what chaos follows, for if the grapevine is dumbo and averse to intellectuality, the management itself is misled into wrong interpretation of the employee concerned. This again is parallel to the gift culture where an employee is quick to smell such grapevine as having contact with higher management personnel and resorts to winning him over with numerous gifts coupled with a servile mentality. Akella deserves accolades for her bold and precise revelations in her research and why modern organisations remain hollow should not surprise us any more. |
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