Liberalism and organisations

With traditionalist critics of liberalism such as Mark Richardson persistently pointing out that the myth of the autonomous, self-authoring individual is one of keys to understanding liberal individualism, it's worth considering whether the principles of liberalism apply to organisations and societies as well.

In the same way that liberal theory argues that individuals should be free to re-create themselves, according to their own whims and logic, liberal elites see themselves as being justified in continually changing organisations such as businesses, government departments and NGOs, according to rational criteria and liberal principles such as personal autonomy and egalitarianism.

In the 19th Century, radical-liberal theorist Karl Marx noted the "bourgeois obsession with reform," which he attributed to the logical workings of capitalism. More recently, enlightenment critics such as John Ralston Saul have pointed to the obsession western elites have with rational methodology, which they believe gives them the mandate to continually change and disrupt organisations, according to rational criteria, regardless of established customs, experience and common sense.

In Voltaire's Bastards, Saul argued that one result of the hubristic belief in rational methodology, is that managers tend to be rewarded according to adherence to methodology rather than actual results, both in the public and private sectors. Similarly, the word managerialism has entered the English language to identify arrogant psuedo-technocrats, who value generic qualifications and skills over specific expertise and practical experience.

Anti-managerialism has a growing intellectual following in Britain, thanks to the micro-management excesses of Nu Labour. One British blogger who writes quite frequently on managerialism is Chris Dillow, author of the blog Stumbling and Mumbling.

The liberal nature of organisational reform in western countries is clearly apparent when western organisations are compared with those in other developed nations, such as Japan and Korea, which do not share the West's cultural history. Despite the unprecedented economic and technological change which Japan has experienced since 1945, the structure and habits of Japanese corporations have undergone relatively little change in the last 6o odd years.

Highly successful firms such as Toyota and Sony continue to pay their senior managers modest salaries by western standards, and Japanese businesses still make many inexpensive, labour intensive products. By contrast, most western companies have long since shifted such manufacturing to the third world.

Japanese firms are also cautious of egalitarian reforms such as opening-up management positions to women graduates and fast-tracing intelligent and ambitious graduates at the expense of experienced workers. Indeed, whole sectors of the Japanese economy, such as distribution and farming, are still largely run along traditional lines.

Despite placing a high value on education, senior Japanese managers seem to put more emphasis on the importance of practical experience than their western counterparts.

In contrast to the way organisations are conservatively managed in Japan, western organisations are subject to a whirlwind of change, to which many workers are increasingly numb.

Diversity training, down-sizing, team-building exercises, political correctness, counseling, office-layout fads and incessantly changing business jargon are just some of the many questionable changes which today's western workforce is expected to put up with.

Even organisations which are thought of as bastions of tradition, such as long-established churches, are subject to a level of change which would be unheard of in most cultures. The Church of England, for example, has been under considerable pressure to accept gay and female clergy as well as significant changes to its traditional religious services.

The last 150 years have seen an enormous amount of change within western organisations, but the pace of change has intensified dramatically in the last 30-40 years, and an increasingly amount of that change has been of questionable practical benefit - which ties in with the intense degree of ideological social reform which has occurred in western society during this period.

Given that most other cultures are very weary of such intense and rapid organisation change, the western managerial class may well be setting unrealistic expectations about how much anti-traditional change is possible or disirable.