A few days ago I was talking to my neighbour’s father, who takes care of our garden and all the janitorial duties in our house. We had a generally nice discussion about life and everything, but at some point he was saying how people have become less considerate and in the old days people didn’t need to be told everything. They knew how to do stuff without the constant guidance from somebody else. Is that true though or is the selective memory much better at remembering the good times and forgetting the bad ones, because it is just so much nicer?
The reason I bring this up is, because my research (for my master thesis) points to the opposite. Workplace autonomy is growing. There are different views on what led to this change. Preston and Post describe it in their paper “The third managerial revolution”[1] as a change deriving from the change of managerial structure. With the arrival of management you had the first managerial revolution, with the separation of management and ownership, you had the second one and with the participation of the work force you had the third one. On the other hand, Miles et al.[2] take a more evolution based view, because they see a change of environment and a need to serve new markets as the cause for change in companies.
In the end the effect is the same, there’s a shift from autocratic leadership to participative leadership. There’s a difference between telling somebody to “go to the storage room, get a Slippery Floor sign and put it next to the puddle of water” or to tell somebody to “make sure nobody injures themselves”. After all, mopping it up could be another solution. Most employees are still far from total freedom of how to do their work, just look at the popularity of the Dilbert comics. However, human mind-set changes; just very slowly. And companies are working on it to improve it, hiring consulting firms focusing on exactly this.
Maybe people have become worse at putting their garbage in the bin, but in a work place environment they are becoming more and more autonomous.
[1] Preston, L. E., & Post, J. E. (1974). The third managerial revolution. Academy of Management Journal, 17(3), 476-486.
[2] Miles, R. E., Snow, C. S., Mathews, J. A., Miles, G., & Coleman, H. J. (1997). Organizing in the knowledge age: Anticipating the cellular form. The Academy of Management Executive, 11(4), 7-20.