Democracy At Work

There is no doubt that a well-organized structure prevents chaos, ensures 1. __ of operations and an easy flow of communication and ideas within large systems. Nevertheless, introducing too many management layers and especially maintaining too rigid procedures often results in too much time being wasted on an organization dealing with itself rather than doing business. That is why some companies took to 2. ____ : radical change of an organization’s processes to enable them to be truly customer-oriented rather than self-oriented.

One man has tried out most ways of structuring a business mentioned in the previous issue. And in the end he did it his way: Ricardo Semler, the head of a Brazilian company Semco ‘abdicated his throne’ by undertaking changes that took away his power and authority and thus created an 3. __ environment where employees could innovate continuously. The workers set their own wages and productivity targets and select their managers. He put into practice what management theorist call 4. _ : a type of organizational structure which is, among other things, characterised by absence of hierarchy, work through project teams and low standardization of procedures, because they 5. _ innovation. The organization 6. __ by the three 7. _ core values: Employee Participation, Profit Sharing and Free Flow of Information. These three values 8. _ the belief that participation in design and implementation of work procedures will give employees control over their work; profit sharing will bring in a 9. ______ ; and the availability of information as, and when, needed will help the employees understand and improve their work practices.

The other company working along the similar lines does not need a special introduction. Here is an account of a software developer working at Microsoft: ‘Microsoft gives software developers a lot of personal freedom over both the work and the work environment. I order my own supplies, customize my office 10. ______, schedule my own trips and meetings, and select my own training courses. For the most part, I determine what I work on and when I will get it done. Except for semi-annual reviews, there’s almost no paperwork for a software developer at Microsoft. That works if people do not take unfair advantage of the great personal freedoms’.

In both companies employees are aware of the fact that they can earn, save, or cost the company millions of dollars through their work. It could be that that responsibility alone motivates them to achieve more. So we cannot say there is no management but rather the 11. __ is such that it provides employees with the 12. ____ which requires them to be highly self-managed. And by organizational culture we understand ‘the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.’