An organisation can be defined as a group of individuals working together to achieve one or more goals (The Open University, 2019). Therefore, we must engage people to work on the goals that the organisation considers essential. Unit 2.1 of this MBA (The Open University, 2014a) introduced Knights and Willmott’s findings, which identified four types of control mechanisms: direct supervision, rules and procedures, culture and performance.

The author’s experience relies on a software firm in the aerospace sector, doing contractual work for governmental-type organisations. In the author’s knowledge, two control types overlap: “rules and procedures” and “performance”.

The rules and procedures are presented as guidelines provided by the main contractors introduced above. It is not a form of control submitted by the author organisation’s managers but instead imposed by a supra-organisation.

On the other hand, the control through performance is encouraged by the organisation’s current management, measuring the results obtained and giving some degree of freedom for the employees to self-arrange their responsibilities if it does not contradict any rule supra-organisation.

The frameworks related to rules and procedures and performance were selected because of the author’s professional practice’s relevance.

Control through rules and procedures

Weber introduced the concept of bureaucracy as a legal-rational form of organisation, as cited on page 22 (The Open University, 2012). The two components of the system, legal and rational, derives from:

  1. Legal because authority is exercised using a system of rules and procedures rather than the direct order of a supervisor. Informally, we could say that the “person calling the shots is a book”.
  2. Rational, as the system is expressively designed to achieve the precise goals of the organisation.

Even though Weber described bureaucracy as the ultimate efficient organisation model, he also recognised some risks in the system. He was concerned with the model lack of questioning of the value of the task carried out. Discussion and debates would disappear as people became imprisoned in a metaphorical iron cage.

Even with the disadvantages mentioned above, control through rules and procedures can be successfully applied in organisations that subcontract most of their work, providing an environment for the subcontractors to work together and achieve the supra-organisation goal as the professional practice of the author demonstrates.

The author’s case is currently working, developing contractual work for governmental institutions, as explained in the introduction. The author is subjected to the bureaucracy of ESA, ECMWF or EUMETSAT[1], depending on the project assigned, even though the rules and procedures were not created by any member of the corporation’s management in which the author is working. Thus, the bureaucracy system’s motivation influence cannot be fully noted analysed in the author’s organisation. Still, it can be studied from public statistics and observation of people employed in the three mentioned governmental institutions.

The impact of bureaucracy on motivation can be analysed from several theories. Attending to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and from the author’s views, which resides in The Netherlands[2], the bureaucracy implementations observed in governmental institutes provide the satisfaction of physiological and safety needs due to a steady income job stability. Simultaneously, several social activities and continuous breaks during office hours allow for the fulfilment of social needs. Maslow’s higher needs: Esteem and Self-actualisation are more challenging to meet under a bureaucracy system due to the disadvantages introduced before about the lack of questioning of the value of the tasks performed and the metaphorical iron cage. We should be cautious about mentioning that the individuals’ values also play a role, and we can find successful employees that can meet all the needs in a bureaucracy system.

Even though we have discussed that bureaucracy does not meet all of the needs identified by Maslow, the statistics (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2016) seem to suggest that people are satisfied in their governmental positions, which makes the author inclined to give more credibility to the theory ERG of Alderfer, and his three needs: Existence, Relatedness and Growth, which is very similar to Maslow needs, as illustrated in Figure 1, but Alderfer suggests that extra rewards at lower levels can compensate for lack of satisfaction at higher levels.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Alderfer ERG Theory

Figure 1. An annotated version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (The Open University, 2012) and ERG Theory of Alderfer, 1972

Last, the author opinion is that people who are not satisfied by the lack of the “G” component in its work, and extra rewards in the rest of the components “R” and “E” is not enough for their fulfilment, will probably switch to private companies. This is possible because the job market is healthy in the aerospace industry, and several private companies, with less bureaucracy, develop similar activities in the same sector as the governmental institutions.

Control through performance

In the Knights and Willmott framework, it is proposed that control through performance is perhaps the most effective way of control. The reason behind their proposal is financial: a self-disciplining individual will regulate itself, making unnecessary the monitoring through middle management or surveillance.

The author has observed performance-type of control during all his career, with some elements of direct supervision.

An example of direct supervision is that it is mandatory for activities carried out outside the office to keep a work diary available and deliver it over to management at request. The example shows some parallelism to Jeremy Bentham’s panopticons (The Open University, 2014b). The writing of the journal is a way of direct control, in which the employees will carry out their activities and monitoring them in their work diary. In case a manager requests the document, the consequences of the lack of compliance can be severe. The fear acts as direct supervision, the same as the prisoner observed from the panopticons.

Therefore, the author thinks that Knights and Willmott’s framework should be understood as guidelines for a dominant form of control, rather than a one-to-one assignment of the organization to a control category.

We have seen from the example above, but also in the course material when discussing the form of control of The Open University regarding the students (The Open University, 2014b), that both cases the main form of control is through performance or outputs, but with some elements of the other frameworks – in the example, direct control and the standard of the Open University, rules and procedures.

Employees’ motivation in a structure of control by performance relies heavily on job descriptions, performance appraisal and continuous education management (Dieleman et al., 2006).

It is discussed in chapter 3 (The Open University, 2012) that every employee must have a proper induction period to familiarise herself with the role. This is the time to set goals accordingly to its education, its interest and the business needs. This can be summarised as a clear job description for the new member. A way forward for setting goals is Locke’s findings, which states that motivation and effective goal settings are related. He says that the goals should be challenging but at the same time realistic, the goals should be clearly understood, and complete, timely and acute feedback should be provided.

The author had observed Locke suggestion about realistic and challenging goals before in the literature, and his professional practice, with the phenomena of burn-out and bore-out (Schaufeli and Salanova, 2014), in which unrealistic goals leads to an excessive amount of work and demotivation (burn-out), but also the opposite has been found, the lack of activities or tasks too easy to perform for an individual had conducted to lack of satisfaction at work (bore-out).

It is also discussed in chapter 3 that appraisal meetings are a common way to evaluate performance. A range of theories is also discussed behind conducting an appraisal and assessing the results, with advantages and disadvantages. However, it is essential to note that these meetings should be done for both the line managers and human resource management team, as both roles will complement each other in the evaluation. The course material also warns about seeing the appraisal as a mere form-filling questioner. It is the author opinion that appraisal is an opportunity for active communication. The use of the questioner should be seen as an opportunity to initiate a genuine dialogue and remind the points to be discussed, without overlooking any potential issue identified previously in the meeting, such as updating goals and the need for more education. We should note that this is the moment to provide the complete, timely and acute feedback required by Locke motivation theory and to adapt the goals to avoid the burn-out or bore-out situation.

The appraisal meeting will also provide feedback to the individual as it could satisfy the esteem needs identified by Maslow.

We can note that the discussion above seems to follow McGregor Theory X/Y. According to him in Theory Y, people behave responsibly if we follow two rules: delegation of authority (self-management individuals) and providing people with resources to do a job (continuous education). The opposite Theory X states that satisfying immediate lower-level organizational needs are possible with theories such as Taylorism. Still, an organization managed in this way may not be sustainable over a more extended period in current society.

Conclusion

We have seen several techniques to achieve motivation in the context of control frameworks, but as we discussed, no single model fits every single employee. We have seen that a bureaucracy model, that even not meeting all Maslow proposed needs make some people happy, other people engage in their work with clear goals but without the need for self-actualization, and others, such the author, require that need (Self-Actualization) to be fulfilled (via this MBA) while reducing some achievements in the professional career (Esteem needs of Maslow) as the focus is in a superior need, which completely contradicts Maslow theory of lower needs to be fulfilled before working in the upper-level needs.

Last, we should note that the field of motivation extends further that the topics discussed in this report (and further than the course materials, I am afraid), and issues including salary retribution and feelings of equality between employees were not discussed, even though they are also important motivation factors.

Notes

  • [1] ESA (European Space Agency), ECMWF (The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) and EUMETSAT (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites)

  • [2] The views of the author cannot be applied to countries with governmental bureaucracy systems in which the payment of salaries is linked to yearly approvals of the budget, as for example the Federal Shutdown crisis of United States in beginning of 2019: https://qz.com/1528214/us-government-shutdown-2019-the-average-fbi-salary-is-37000/

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