What is work good for?

So, what is work good for? A snide response to Professor Mumby’s query would be, “So, why do you work?” A more basic answer might be, “Without work, nothing would be done and we would all die” (but until then, we would have a lot of free time!).

Because I-O psychologists and management scholars fully understand that jobs provide many critical intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, I will not dwell on such benefits here. Briefly, intrinsic rewards, including a sense of accomplishment, the opportunity to develop and use valued skills, pride in task completion, and garnering of respect and status, are increasingly important (Aldag & Brief, Reference Aldag and Brief1979; Hackman & Oldham, Reference Hackman and Oldham1976). These lead, for instance, to increased work and life satisfaction, reduced life stress, and enhanced organizational citizenship behaviors. Extrinsic rewards do more than just satisfy “lower order” needs. They may, in fact, provide the means for pursuit of valued extra-work activities, foster social relationships, and facilitate and promote subjective well-being (Brief & Aldag, Reference Brief, Aldag, Rowland and Ferris1989).

We can observe the value of work in its absence. For example, Zhou, Zou, Woods, and Wu (Reference Zhou, Zou, Woods and Wu2019) tracked unemployed workers after reemployment and found that “recovery of subjective well-being following reemployment is fast, complete and enduring, even when individuals take less favorable employment options to return to work” (p. 1195). They add that, “possessing a job provides unique manifest and psychological benefits that may not be easily obtained from non-work related activities.”

Metaphors and assumptions

Gareth Morgan in Images of Organization (Reference Morgan1986) presented eight metaphors for organizations (machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, flux and transformation, and instruments of domination), encouraging their exploration. Critical theorists tend to adopt the darker of those metaphors, including political systems, psychic prisons, and instruments of domination.

It is valuable to triangulate, challenge, and seek understanding of work and life by pursuing multiple, sometimes complementary, sometimes clashing, metaphors. It is, though, tempting to pursue just a narrow set of metaphors and view life through that constrained lens. Metaphors and associated assumptions are powerful but dangerous. They cause us to act without proper vigilance, and we should challenge them. In the case of CMS, when all one has is a dark hammer, everything looks like a noir nail.

“Fordism”

Mumby (Reference Mumby2019) casts Henry Ford as a seminal villain in his imagined epic, ongoing struggle, and he refers to the last 100-plus years as post-Fordism. He cites Ford’s turnover rate in 1913 is as a reflection of “the level of alienation experienced by workers on Ford’s assembly line.” In fact, those figures were from October 1912 to October 1913. Although 400% is clearly a remarkably high turnover rate, it had many potential causes. Most important, 1913 was the year of Ford’s introduction of the moveable assembly line, a dramatic, disruptive technological change.

Although Ford’s subsequent moves may now appear paternalistic, they were nevertheless impressive. The year 1914 saw Ford’s introduction of $5 daily pay (including wages and bonus). Inflation adjusted to 2019, that $5 daily wage is $125.62 a day or $15.70 an hour—above the current popular pay goal of $15 an hour. Daily work hours were cut from nine to eight, disabled workers were hired, arbitrary firings were proscribed, and profit sharing was implemented. Henry Ford’s moves resulted in remarkable declines in turnover—from the cited 400% in 1913 to 23% over the following 12 months, coupled with an increase in worker efficiency of 44%. With the wage increase, a worker could buy a Model T with 4 month’s pay (Fisher, Reference Fisher1916). Wall Street decried such largesse; The Wall Street Journal admonished Ford for its “blatant immorality” in introducing “biblical or spiritual principles into a field where they do not belong.”

The mind of a capitalist

Mumby (Reference Mumby2019) tells us that, “In other words, capitalists do not care about what they produce as long as it realizes exchange value and hence profit” (p. 432). As executive director of our Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship—a breeding ground for capitalists—for a dozen years, I saw dedicated young women and men pouring their passions into new ventures such as kite-driven wind energy for off-the-grid African locations; a wearable, disposable insulin drug pump/patch that operates independent of a battery; and the nation’s largest alternative fuel station and car-share database. These were all about the products and services and the missions they promote.

It is true that organizations have historically sought profit maximization; that was their legal responsibility. Such a perspective echoed Milton Friedman’s (Reference Friedman1970) view that “The business of business is business.” Consistent with that view, since 1997 the mission statement of the Business Roundtable (2019), a nonprofit association based in Washington, DC whose members are chief executive officers of major U.S. companies, declared that “the paramount duty of management and of boards of directors is to the corporation’s stockholders. The interests of other stakeholders are relevant as a derivative of the duty to stockholders.”

However, on August 19, 2019, the Business Roundtable published a new, two-page “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” (MacLellan, Reference MacLellan2019; Murray, Reference Murray2019). Signed by almost 200 CEOs, it said, “We share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders” and expressed duty to “delivering value to customers, investing in employees, dealing fairly and ethically with suppliers, supporting local communities, and generating long-term shareholder value.” Whether such a proclamation translates into action awaits evidence, but at least the language is changing and such proclamations are no longer viewed as heretical.

In line with the view of management as oppressor, Mumby (Reference Mumby2019) dismisses anything potentially benefiting management as somehow valueless to workers. This takes an unfortunate zero-sum view, assuming purely distributive bargaining. Such a vitriolic, “political sites of contestation” (Mumby, Reference Mumby2019, p. 431) perspective becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It ignores integrative bargaining and its possibilities for joint gains. Whether practices such as job enrichment (Hackman & Oldham, Reference Hackman and Oldham1976), open-book management (Aldag, Reference Aldag and Kolb2019), job crafting (Bindi, Unsworth, Gibson, & Stride, Reference Bindi, Unsworth, Gibson and Stride2019), self-management (Breevaarta, Bakker, & Demerouti, Reference Breevaarta, Bakker and Demeroutic2014), and flexible work arrangements (Root & Young, Reference Root and Young2011) aid management, they clearly also help workers. In presenting his case, Mumby (Reference Mumby2019) paints a dark, merciless scene reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch, even at the cost of accuracy. As an example of his distorted, dystopian image of the callous organization, he claims that “Rarely are questions asked about the politics of emotion management…” (p. 434). In fact, a Google Scholar search on “emotional labor” reveals 43,600 hits. Emotional labor is a key area of concern and research.

CMS scholars appear to be focusing on light from distant stars, viewing a remote past. More recent observations would reveal B corporations (Kim, Karlesky, Myers, & Schifeling, Reference Kim, Karlesky, Myers and Schifeling2016), employee ownership (O’Boyle, Patel, & Gonzalez-Mulé, Reference O’Boyle, Patel and Gonzalez-Mulé2016), flexible scheduling (Beers, Reference Beers2000), the triple bottom line (Alhaddi, Reference Alhaddi2015), and other major, progressive developments.

CMS and low-level workers

Mumby (Reference Mumby2019) asserts that critical theorists, with whom he identifies, take the perspective of the low-level worker rather than the manager. That certainly seems admirable. But how do critical perspectives really benefit the low-level worker? That perspective is apparently concerned with just observation, not assistance. Professor Mumby cites three goals of his focal article, none of them suggestions for how lower-level workers may benefit from CMS perspectives.

My father was certainly a low-level worker. He did not complete grade school and had few work skills. He spent his entire employed life at the Rouge Plant of the Ford Motor Company, primarily carrying fenders on assembly lines; I spent many evenings waiting at the gate of the smoke- and fire-belching factory to drive him home. He sometimes told me about bad days, even horror stories of mistreatment by supervisors. His anger, though, was directed toward that abuse, not capitalists. He was grateful for the support of his union, but he had no ill-will toward the company. My father’s work (and general) identity was strong and clear, and it was tightly and proudly linked to Ford. Asked about himself he would reply, “I am a Ford man.” He was fiercely loyal to Ford and would never consider buying any other car.

Without a Ford Motor Company Fund scholarship (a private Ford scholarship, not from the Ford Foundation), I could not have attended a 4-year university, let alone achieved a chaired position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where I have spent (so far) 47 years. Earlier, before becoming an aeronautical engineer working on Apollo missions, I spent summers on jobs in shipping and receiving, and on production lines as a member of the Teamsters.

My father’s decades on the assembly line, and my own experiences, drove much of the motivation for my research. What can be done to make jobs richer and more satisfying? How can we reduce work-related stress? How can we help workers acquire the skills necessary for proactivity? How can we manage conflict, discourage organizational politics, and promote nurturing organization cultures?

So, what could critical theory have offered my father? Apparently, absolutely nothing. It would seem to grant him no agency and little hope. CMS scholars apparently see workers as passive, impotent victims of management greed but provide no guidance on how they can attain voice or power. In Star Trek, Starfleet personnel dispassionately observed alien civilizations at a distance and followed the Prime Directive of Noninterference: “no identification of self or mission; no interference with the social development of said planet … no references to … advanced civilizations.” CMS scholars appear to accept and pursue this prime directive, looking down from above, smugly observing workers’ struggles while avoiding intervention.

I-O and OB interventions as instruments of oppression

Mumby (Reference Mumby2019) asserts that, “… the workplace under capitalism has evolved to adapt to worker struggles against the demands of capital” (p. 430) and “The goal, then, was not so much to revolutionize work but to short circuit any revolutionary tendencies that an organized workforce might develop…” (p. 434). Is there anything organizations can do that seems to help workers that would not be met by such visceral disdain?

This dystopian view is akin to a conspiracy theory (Douglas, Sutton, & Cichocka, Reference Douglas, Sutton and Cichocka2017), espousing “secret plots by powerful and malevolent groups” (p. 538). How are capitalists coordinating this massive oppression? One conjures images of secret meetings in the basement of a Washington, DC pizza parlor, plotting tactics to crush lowly workers into submission.

In sum, I reject the dark metaphors, the presumptuous claims of insight into capitalists’ minds, the arguments by assertion, the selective presentation of facts, and the lack of guidelines for improvement of workers’ lives. I can find nothing that would have helped my father.