Taking elitism apart

The original price of the book was $30 and the local publishers have gone to great lengths to make it affordable to Indian readers at Rs 195. While the hugely interesting book, with its scathing indictment of conventional management practices, is a steal at that price, the cost-saving efforts can strain your eyes. The number of pages has been limited at 146""possibly to justify the "very short" bit in the title ""but readers may have to use magnifying glasses to read what the author has tried to say.

But that seems to be a minor glitch in an otherwise excellent book that raises provocative questions about mainstream organisation theory. This issue can be seen even at the most basic level of defining what an organisation is. For example, where does one draw a boundary? Does the factory end where the physical plant ends? Or does it end where the last molecule of its waste product is dispersed? Does it end when its workers sign off from their shift? Or does it end when the pissed-off worker finishes punching his wife's face?

This, the book says, is what gives the study of organisations its importance, for it is crucially concerned with a contestation about what features of an organisation will be noticed or ignored, seen as important or dismissed as irrelevant. For the bulk of mainstream organisation theory, the dividing line of a factory is an irrelevant issue. As long as operations are efficient, nothing else matters. Chris Grey, a noted management teacher, calls this nothing but managerial hype and places the study of organisations at the center of our understanding of the social, ethical and political dilemmas of the 21st century.

Apart from the lively discussion of classical and contemporary ideas on organisations and their management, the biggest contribution of Grey's book is the fundamental question that he raises: efficiency for whom? Is it for the people who control the organisation or for those meant to be controlled? It would be a mistake to dismiss Grey's questions as a left-wing defence of working class rights. For, he raises some very fundamental issues about the long-term efficacy of managerial elitism being taught in the some of the world's best B schools.

It's no secret that the approach of many B schools towards organisation theory stresses human behaviour as a variable that can be manipulated. For example, create motivational structure A and you will produce organisational performance B. Create knowledge sharing system A and you will produce learning organisation B. Such a "toolkit" , the author argues, betrays a mechanistic worldview. The entire notion of a toolkit requires that the objects to which the tools are applied are just that""objects. But they are not. They are people with emotions, and every organisation must realise that.

The biggest irony, for example, is change management programmes. Most of them assume that organisational settings are homogeneous. Which means doing what another organisation did with a different set of people will yield the same results for other companies too. This template model of management and benchmarking is what the book seeks to rip apart.

In the process, Grey has sometimes overstated things""perhaps deliberately""to drive home a point. But a little bit of restraint on this account was in order. Consider this on conventional management books: "Many of these are palpably false. Others announce the blindingly obvious. Still others specialise in the accidentally or wilfully obscure. And all three of these types conspire to be very very dull." Such blind criticism of conventional management theory can be repetitive and boring.

Which is a pity, considering that Grey has a lot to say about his own theory anyway. The biggest takeaway from the book is that it sets you thinking about how to study organisations. It is all about the lived experiences of people not just working together but joking, despairing, criticising, deciding, hoping, or, in short, organising. Since people do not act in the same way as molecules of water in a test laboratory, there is no one-size-fits-all theory. Despite some shortcomings, Grey's book is worth a quick read. A VERY SHORT, FAIRLY INTERESTING AND REASONABLY CHEAP BOOK ABOUT STUDYING ORGANIzATIONS

Chris Grey
Sage
Price: Rs 195; Pages: 188