Magazine: American Behavioral Scientist; September 1997
AMERICAN GOVERNMENTALITY
------------------------
Michel Foucault and Public Administration
The governing that now pervades the developed world is so omnipresent
that it seems virtually natural. Administration--specific forms of
rationality, authority, and participation--was, nonetheless, a
development. French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that this
development could be understood as " governmentality"-- new arrangement
among sovereignty, discipline, and government that made the art of
governing both thinkable and practicable. This article explores the
utility of French philosopher Michel Foucault's approach within the
field of public administration. Reinvestigating the works of Woodrow
Wilson, Frederick Winslow Taylor, and Mary Parker Follett, we
demonstrate that their approaches can be interpreted as establishing the
basic contours of American governmentality.
And if control is the process of the inter-functioning of the parts, if
the most perfect control is where we have inter-functioning of all the
parts, then I think the workers should have a share, not from any vague
idea of democracy, not because of their "rights," but simply because if
you leave out one element in a situation you will have just that much
less control.
Mary Parker Follett (1937, p. 168)
In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be
first.
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911/1934, p. 7)
Management theory, it seems, is in the throes of a revolution. "Rather
than seeking uniformity and control," Denhardt (1993) explains,
Managers are talking about adaptability, creativity, and shared power.
Rather than depending on traditional hierarchical forms of organizations,
managers are experimenting with flatter structures and more
participatory ways of organizing.... For this reason, they are shifting
their focus from giving orders to promoting dialogue and innovation.
(pp. 1-2)
But as is often the case, upon closer examination this new order turns
out to be not as new as it seems.
In the recently published Mary Parker Follett Prophet of Management,
Graham (1995) combines selections from Follett's original work with
commentaries by leading management theorists. Taken together, these
essays make a persuasive argument that many of the latest insights about
organization theory and management were actually anticipated by
Follett's work in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Indeed, a key premise
of Follett's approach was that by recognizing that they were joined in a
mutual situation, managers and workers could develop a relationship that
precluded the need for the "giving of orders."
This connection between the contemporary revolution in management theory
and the earlier works of Follett, it seems to us, offers an opportunity
to explore the utility of French philosopher Michel Foucault's analytic
approach within the field of administration. More specifically, we
believe that Foucault's concept of governmentality provides a lens that
reveals some curious twists in the ongoing discourse about management
theory. We begin by briefly summarizing some aspects of Foucault's work
and then attempt to trace the contours of what might be called American
governmentality in the works of Woodrow Wilson, Frederick Winslow Taylor,
and Mary Parker Follett.
FOUCAULT AND GOVERNMENTALITY
Michel Foucault left an unmistakable mark on the contemporary
intellectual discussion of a wide range of topics. This is certainly as
he intended; his writings and interviews span disciplines, styles, and
approaches with a virtuosity seldom seen in the erudite world of
continental philosophy. A particular mark of his intention was his
practice of writing and speaking in a range of voices, from the most
sophisticated interaction with neo-Kantian issues to open, often
controversial political speeches and interviews.
Surely in part because of that range, Foucault continues to be read
quite widely. His work on power, language, and politics resides within
an analytic perspective that has become known as postmodernism or
poststructuralism. As intense as Foucault's political interests were, it
should not be surprising that government and administration were also of
singular concern to him. Typically, he addressed government in general
terms, in early interviews, then later investigated it in more specific
contexts (prisons, schools, barracks, and so on). Some years after his
death, a group of colleagues and former students assembled a collection
of essays (theirs and his) addressing the issues surrounding government
directly. That book, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality
(Burchell, Gordon, & Miller, 1991), along with earlier essays and
interviews in Power/Knowledge (Foucault, 1980, p. 95), form the basis of
the following discussion.
To understand Foucault on a given topic, one looks for the specific,
energizing questions that motivate his work. In the introduction to The
Foucault Effect, Gordon poses the key Foucauldian question about
government, a question that reveals an approach as well as a focus. The
effort, Gordon writes, is to make visible "the different ways in which
an activity or art called government has been made thinkable and
practicable" (Burcheil et al, 1991, p. ix). This careful phrasing is
intended to make a point. The kind of governing that now pervades the
developed world has made itself so omnipresent that it seems virtually
natural. Administration--specific forms of rationality, authority, and
participation--was, nonetheless, a development. Modern government did
not spring full-blown from the U.S. Constitution or from any other
founding document. Instead, governing had to be invented. That insight
may seem obvious, especially in the context of public administration,
but it is also profound.
The usual terms of government, Foucault wrote in the Two Lectures,
formed a system. Call it sovereignty. In that system, debates will turn
primarily on terms of legitimacy and rights in an ongoing effort to
define the relationship between rulers and subjects. Stated differently,
the crucial questions in this system are what constitute the "legitimate
right of sovereignty" for the rulers and the subjects' "legal obligation
to obey it" (Foucault, 1980, p. 95). In Foucault's view, however,
sovereignty is a system that masks the "fact of domination and its
consequences" (p. 95).
Yet, the domination that "one person exercises over others, or one group
over another," which typically animates discussions of sovereignty, is
not what concerned Foucault (1980, p. 95). Instead, it is the "manifold
forms of domination" that emerge "among subjects in their mutual
relations" (p. 95). Foucault's project, then, centered on substituting
the "problem of domination and subjugation for that of sovereignty and
obedience." And this project required moving beyond the traditional
conceptualization of politics.
Ever the wordsmith, Foucault (1980) put this vividly in an interview:
What we need ... is a political philosophy that isn't erected around the
problem of sovereignty, nor therefore around the problems of law and
prohibition. We need to cut off the King's head: in political theory
that has still to be done. (p. 121)
Gordon interprets this passage usefully: "Thought about politics is
trapped by the antitheses of despotism and legitimation, repression and
rights.... But government is not just a power needing to be tamed or an
authority needing to be legitimized" (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix).
Rather, returning to Foucault,
Government resides in the things it manages and in the pursuit of the
perfection and intensification of the processes which it directs; and
the instruments of government, instead of being laws, now come to be a
range of multiform tactics. Within the perspective of government, law is
not what is important. (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix)
The somewhat obscure reference to "multiform tactics" is important, in
that Foucault is also known for his studies of contingency and
multiplicity in politics.
Politics necessarily involves multiple perspectives, time frames,
intentions, and levels of abstraction. Foucault argued convincingly that
our conventional ways of reflecting this multiplicity are simply not
multiple enough. And he was convinced that a different analytic approach
would better reflect that openness of politics--and, especially, will
raise the issues of authority more effectively now, toward the end of
modernism's era of hegemony. Again reverting to a dramatic voice,
Foucault announced that "the state can only be understood in its
survival and its limits on the basis of the general tactics of
governmentality" (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix).
Nonetheless, as articulate as Foucault's comments on governmentality are,
readers may well be left to wonder what, precisely, they imply. Typical
of the Foucauldian approach, we must first attempt to track liberalism's
emergence, seeking to make visible a set of arrangements that otherwise
seem impossible to parse from the naturalism that those arrangements
effectively claim for themselves. The powerful and durable liberal
arrangement developed as a subtle matrix of promised freedom, carefully
constrained arenas for debate, and a strong rhetoric of naturalism. As
Gordon summarizes, "Laissez-faire is a way of acting, as well as a way
of not acting" (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix). As Gordon puts it,
Foucault explained that liberalism implies an injunction "not to impede
the course of things, but to ensure the play of natural and necessary
modes of regulation, to make regulations which permit natural regulation
to operate" (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix). Liberalism sets a scene; it
arranges the chairs around the table. And it positions "natural"
regulation very strongly in relationship to its own rhetoric about the
nature of human beings.
Foucault began his archaeological study of liberalism by emphasizing
something in 16th-century French political thought that is not quite
what is often emphasized about the emergence of nation-state theory.
>From the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth,
there develops and flourishes a notable series of political treatises
that are no longer exactly "advice to the prince," and not yet treatises
of political science, but are instead presented as works on the "art of
government." (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix)
Foucault reminds us that "governing" has more than one meaning--more
than one vector or perspective. And he found these various meanings in
the questions theorists started asking in the period of gathering
modernism, questions like "how to govern oneself, how to be governed,
how to govern others, by whom the people will accept being governed, how
to become the best possible governor" (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix).
Political thought was at "the crossroads of two processes": one process
shattered feudalism, leading to the creation of the nation-states. The
other, "totally different movement, with the Reformation and Counter-
Reformation, raise[d] the issue of how one must be spiritually ruled"
(Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix). This was a "double movement ... state
centralization [at tension with and connected to] dispersion and
religious dissidence" (p. ix). Between these two, "the problem comes to
pose itself with this peculiar intensity, of how to be ruled.... There
is a problematic of government in general" (p. ix).
Although the intellectual moves toward the tactical perspective occurred
early in Europe, they did not quickly spread. Foucault noted that they
were blocked by issues of resources, military force, and the omnipotence,
for a while, of the sovereignty perspective. "So long as ... the
exercise of power was conceived as an exercise of sovereignty, the art
of government could not be developed in a specific and autonomous
manner" (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix). If Foucault's argument, to this
point, seems arcane, the next step may surprise. The central moves of
modern liberal theory are, in his story, a subset of this tension
between sovereignty and government. The "art of government tried... to
reconcile itself with the theory of sovereignty by attempting to derive
the ruling principles of an art of government from a renewed version of
the theory of sovereignty," a formal, ritualized theory of contract
(Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix). Social contract theory was a way of
recuperating, for a few centuries perhaps, the two realms of sovereignty
and government.
Sovereignty did not wither away; "on the contrary, the problem of
sovereignty was never posed with greater force" (Burchell et al., 1991,
p. ix). Rousseau was a crucial figure in the remapping of political
knowledge, showing how it is possible, using concepts like nature,
contract, and general will, to provide a general principle of government
that allows room both for a juridical principle of sovereignty and for
the elements through which an art of government can be defined and
characterized (Burchell et al., 1991). This is the backdrop for
Foucault's injunction, quoted above, "to cut off the King's head."
In an interview where that passage appeared, Foucault (1980) explained,
"I don't want to say that the State isn't important; what I want to say
is that relations of power ... necessarily extend beyond the limits of
the State" (p. 95). What is at stake is how students of public
administration understand the problematic they are studying, and hence,
how administration comes to understand itself. A Foucauldian approach
knows to look for strategic and tactical moves, micro-power techniques,
and the various movements of power that fly below the radar of
sovereignty and law. Although it certainly remains possible to ask about
the juridical basis for law and right, Foucauldians pay attention to the
other direction of modem government, in which governments, corporations,
and organizations generate various kinds of compliance in persons
themselves.
As an example of how this works, consider the question of security, in
both its domestic and international meanings. Rather than confronting
the sovereignty issues implicit in "freedom," government learns to
address issues of security. This move has long been articulated with
some specificity. Even Jeremy Bentham advised that intellectual clarity
requires that "we must mean by liberty a branch of security" (Burchell
et al., 1991, p. ix). As this connection is elaborated, the connections
between liberty and security become both subtle and gross, both
pervasive and almost invisible. Now every citizen understands that
liberty is possible because of the security achieved through government
initiative. As Foucault explained, liberty became firmly attached to the
rhetoric of security. "Liberty is registered not only as the right of
individuals legitimately to oppose the power ... of the sovereign, but
also now as an indispensable element of governmental rationality itself"
(Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix). Citizens possess rights, but these
rights also form the most basic justification for government (which may,
on occasion, act in their name against some citizens).
A second example brings us even closer to the question of
administration. As individualism flourished, a corresponding move
simultaneously transformed what individualism would mean. Rather than a
collective national body or somehow genuinely independent monads, the
citizenry comes to be seen as a population, a mass that can be measured,
statistically represented, and therefore the object of administrative
contemplation and action. As Gordon explains, "The perspective of civil
society induces a new governmental analysis of the collective human
substance of population." This "economic" approach makes possible "a
greater effort of [governmental] technique aimed at accomplishing more
through a lesser exertion of force and authority" (Burchell et al., 1991,
p. ix). The idea of a population puts management into the equation, even
after so much rhetorical force has been put on unregulated individuals.
Individualism had long been situated in the concept of the family, but
that did not provide enough of a basis for the things government wanted
to do. But sovereignty and the nation-state did not solve the riddle of
effective governance, either. Foucault described the problem:
On the one hand, there was this framework of sovereignty which was too
large, too abstract and too rigid; and on the other, the theory of
government suffered from its reliance on a model which was too thin, too
weak and too insubstantial, that of the family: an economy of enrichment
still based on a model of the family was unlikely to be able to respond
adequately to the importance of territorial possessions and royal
finance. (Burchell et al., 1991, p. 98)
Speaking about the tension as if it were a tactical puzzle, Foucault
asks, "How then was the art of government able to outflank these
obstacles?" (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix). His answer, not surprisingly,
involves "a number of general processes," including demographic and
economic change as well as theoretical developments related to
"populations" (p. ix).
Ultimately, the split happened: "The problem of government finally came
to be thought, reflected and calculated outside of the juridical
framework of sovereignty" (Burchell et al., 1991, p. ix). The model of
the family, earlier so important, now diminishes as a model, "except for
... residual themes of a religious or moral nature" (p. ix). Instead of
family, we have population. Methods of elaborating, defending, and
inculcating discipline became more important "when it became important
to manage a population" (p. ix). The result is "a triangle, sovereignty-
discipline-government, which has as its primary target the population
and as its essential mechanism the apparatus of security" (p. ix). That
is governmentality.
Or, as Foucault summarized, "the state can only be understood ... on the
basis of the general tactics of governmentality" (Burchell et al., 1991,
p. ix). The purpose of the state is to govern, albeit sometimes in the
name of sovereign rights. Securing those sovereign rights for a
population makes necessary the acts of discipline and governance that
also (as if by happy coincidence) keep government in power. Of special
interest to public administration studies is the shift from law to
regulation, a shift tracked by Hunt and Wickham (1994) in their Foucault
and Law: Towards a Sociology of Law as Governance. Those authors note
that although Foucault did not write a systematic treatment of
regulation, the term is still important in his work.
If law is the stipulation of general rules then regulation is more task
oriented and less prohibitive, in that it is employed to define detailed
goals and targets for training and other forms of intervention directed
at the behavior of individuals. Regulation characteristically involves
techniques of detail. (Hunt & Wickham, 1994, p. 22)
Although Foucault's focus was primarily European until late in his life,
many scholars have elaborated the development of similar "techniques of
detail" in the United States. To trace the emergence of American
governmentality, we turn to two influential voices in the traditional
narrative of administration in this country--Woodrow Wilson and
Frederick Winslow Taylor.
AMERICAN GOVERNMENTALITY
Searching for early traces of American governmentality, we need not look
very far. As it turns out, Wilson's (1887) classic article, "The Study
of Administration," exhibits rather striking connections with Foucault's
analysis. For example, in seeking to explain why the study of politics
had largely ignored the study of administration, Wilson (1887) argues
that "political history has been a history, not of administrative
development, but of legislative oversight not of progress in
governmental organization, but of advancement in law-making and
political criticism" (p. 206). Preoccupation with these issues created,
in turn, a political discourse interested "much more in controlling than
in energizing government" (p. 206). Foucault, it seems to us, would be
quite comfortable with a characterization of governmentality as an
attempt to energize government.
Wilson's formulation of the problems associated with popular sovereignty
reveals an even more remarkable parallel with Foucault's analysis. The
advantage of a reformer working within an autocratic form of government,
Wilson (1887) notes, is that the "sovereign's mind [has] a specific
locality ... contained in one man's head" (p. 206). But in the United
States, the "reformer is bewildered by the fact that the sovereign's
mind has no specific locality" (p. 206). And like Foucault, Wilson
realized that dealing with a beheaded king required specialized tactics:
"Whoever would effect change in a modern constitutional government ...
must first make public opinion willing to listen and then see to it that
it listens to the right things" (p. 206).
In a subsequent essay on democracy, Wilson (1969) offers a somewhat more
precise phrasing of this point.
In a democratic nation we may help to make up the general mind, to form
it to the right ideals and purposes; and when it is made up, the
governing power ought to respond, ... [f]or what you want to produce is
not administrative acts, but happy and prosperous populations [his
emphasis]. (p. 366)
What begins to take shape here is the possibility that Wilson's work can
be viewed as the basic blueprint for American governmentality.
Part of Wilson's project clearly focused on positing a new arrangement
among sovereignty, discipline, and government that made the art of
governing both thinkable and practicable. The other part of his project
required creating a population that could be made happy and prosperous
through management. Missing from Wilson's formulation, however, is
practical advice ("techniques of detail") as to how the reformer might
go about creating a general mind. As it turns out, Wilson's contemporary,
Frederick Winslow Taylor, supplied this missing piece. Consider the
story of "Schmidt," a pig iron handler at Bethlehem Steel Company.
When Taylor arrived at Bethlehem Steel, Schmidt was loading 12 1/2 tons
of pig iron per day for which he was paid $1.15. After a thorough
investigation of the situation, Taylor concluded that Schmidt should be
able to move 47 tons of pig iron for a wage of $1.85 per day. Taylor's
task, then, "narrowed itself down to getting Schmidt to handle 47 tons
of pig iron per day and making him glad to do it" (Taylor, 1911/1934, p.
7). The tactic adopted by Taylor for accomplishing this task was to
convince Schmidt that he wanted to be "high-priced man," defined as
someone who did "exactly as he's told from morning till night" with "no
back talk" (Taylor, 1911/1934, p. 7).
In the dominant management narrative, this story is frequently used as
evidence of the authoritarian character of Taylor's approach. Yet, if
Taylor were only interested in command and control (sovereignty) to
increase Schmidt's productivity (obedience), then the exchange would
have been considerably less complex. It would have played out in the
language of contract renegotiation. The old contract was 12 1/2 tons for
$1.15 a day, and the new contract was to be 47 tons for $1.85 a day.
Schmidt, in turn, would have an array of available responses: agree to
the new terms, reject the new terms, or make a counteroffer.
>From a Foucauldian perspective, this story lays out, with meticulous
precision, the tactics that underlie governmentality. Taylor's approach
moves beyond the terms of the sovereignty model. The goal is not simply
to increase Schmidt's productivity; rather, it is to make Schmidt want
to increase his own productivity (making him glad to do it). This
project required first positing a new identity (high-priced man) that
Schmidt could (should) assume and then showing him the technique (doing
what he's told from morning to night with no back talk) for adopting
that new identity. In short, the apparent subjects of the exchange--
workload and salary--are displaced with issues that turn on Schmidt's
self-conception. Obviously, Schmidt's range of possible responses in
this situation is considerably reduced.
Although more subtle, another crucially important aspect of this story
is an interrelated set of security concerns. By becoming a high-priced
man, Schmidt is given the security of earning $1.85 "every day right
through the year" (Taylor, 1911/1934, p. 7); managers are given the
security of a worker who does what he is told, and the company is given
the security of increased productivity and profit margins. Stated
differently, security is the mechanism that binds workers, managers, and
owners together as integrated components of a happy and prosperous
population.
The next step is relatively straightforward. By carefully crafting
variations ("multiform tactics") of the script used on Schmidt, Taylor
(1911/1934) assures us that governmentality could be extended "to the
management of our homes; the management of our farms; the management of
the business of our tradesmen, large and small; of our churches, our
philanthropic institutions, our universities, and our governmental
departments" (p. 7). And scientific management did indeed spread
throughout virtually all aspects of society during the first decades of
this century.
In short, a new game emerged. Even the most vehement commanders and
controllers--the managers with the bluntest rhetoric of hierarchy--
started to talk and think in different terms about authority.
Sovereignty, discipline, and governance informed strategies that took
security as a mechanism to create (invent) a population with a palpably
real presence. This is what it means, now, to say that the population is
manageable and that it is managed. There is, however, one more piece to
this story that must be considered--the connection between
governmentality and Mary Parker Follett.
GIVING OF ORDERS
Speaking of his study of management theory at Cornell and Harvard in the
early 1950s, Sir Peter Parker, the chairman of the London School of
Economics, noted,
I found myself dividing it into the New and Old Testament, in which of
course Genesis was the doctrine of Frederick W. Taylor, his Principles
of Scientific Management followed by hot gospels of efficiency from all
over the Western world. ... The New Testament (or New Beginnings, as
they were called) was founded on the work of the human relations school
led by Elton Mayo and his Harvard Team. (Graham, 1995)
Yet this formulation contained "a no man's land to cross between the
schools of Taylorism and Human Relations" (Graham, 1995). And for Parker,
Follett's work filled this gap by providing the "coherence that
integrated the great works of the other early pioneers and the prophets
of Old and New Testaments" (Graham, 1995).
These comments provide an example of the curious interplay between
continuity and discontinuity that both intrigued Foucault and animated
so much of his analysis. On one hand, Parker seems to posit a
discontinuity between old and new management approaches. Yet, on the
other hand, he invokes Follett as the glue that joins old with new into
a seamless whole.
Interesting as these moves are, they become even more so when situated
within the context of American governmentality. If, as we have been
arguing, Parker's "Old Testament" is governmentality, then his
formulation implies that Follett's work is best understood as a
continuation of that project. However, as we noted at the beginning of
this article, Denhardt (and others) have proclaimed a revolution taking
shape in contemporary management theory. And to further exacerbate the
situation, Follett's work has been widely identified as having
anticipated the important contours of the contemporary revolution. In an
attempt to sort through these various claims, let us turn to one of
Follett's more important essays, "The Giving of Orders."
The central problem addressed in this essay was how to eliminate
arbitrary orders, which Follett argued created resentment and hostility
in the workplace. Her answer was "to depersonalize the giving of orders"
(Fox & Urwick, 1973, p. 29). Clarifying her position, Follett continued,
One person should not give orders to another person, but both should
agree to take orders from the situation. If orders are simply part of
the situation, the question of someone giving and someone receiving does
not come up. Both accept the orders given by the situation. (Fox &
Urwick, 1973, p. 30)
This is, of course, one phrasing of the "law of the situation," which is
the hallmark of Follett's approach.
When viewed against the backdrop of the Schmidt story, it is not
difficult to understand why Follett and Taylor are frequently portrayed
as pursuing different approaches. Follett posits a connection that might
catch some readers off guard. "From one point of view," she suggests,
"one might call the essence of scientific management the attempt to find
the law of the situation" (Fox & Urwick, 1973, p. 29). And as it turns
out, advocates of scientific management also understood the connection
with Follett's work. Virtually all of Follett's major concepts were
viewed as confirming and extending Taylor's theory in a 1929 celebration
of scientific management compiled by members of the Taylor Society
(Person, 1929).
What, then, is the connection between Follett's work and scientific
management? At one point during 1912 congressional hearings on
scientific management, Taylor (1947) asserted, "What I want to make
clear is that the old arbitrary way of having a dictator, who was head
of the company, decide everything with his dictum, and having his word
final, has ceased to exist" (p. 189). The premise on which Taylor based
this assertion is contained in the following passage:
The man at the head of the business under scientific management is
governed by rules and laws which have been developed through hundreds of
experiments just as much as the workman is, ... and those questions
which are under other systems subject to arbitrary judgment and are
therefore open to disagreement have under scientific management been the
subject of the most minute and careful study in which both the workman
and the management have taken part, and they have been settled to the
satisfaction of both sides. (p. 213)
Thus, Taylor, like Follett, sought to replace arbitrary, personal
commands in the workplace with depersonalized orders that emerged from a
careful study of the situation.
Follett's (1924) advice in "The Giving of Orders" was one application of
a broader concept she developed in Creative Experience. Drawing from
social psychology, Follett (1924) argued that in the "social situation
two processes always go on together: adjustment of man and man, and the
adjustment of man and the situation" (p. 122). It then followed that
"[h]armony between the individual and the social order must mean changes
in both individual and social order, yet not arbitrary changes, but
changes which will come about by a deeper understanding of that
relation" (p. 122). Here, as before, Follett and Taylor's approaches
seem to converge.
Indeed, Taylor's assessment of the problems in the workplace turned on
the premise that an "ordinary piece work system" created a social order
that encouraged antagonistic relations between employees and employers.
As Taylor (1885) explains, "with a definite price for each job before
him," the worker "contrives a way of doing it in a shorter time" to make
more money. However, the worker's profit leads the employer to think
that "he should also begin to share in the gain and therefore reduces
the price of the job" (p. 863).
And as Taylor (1885) notes, "Even the most stupid man, after receiving
two or three piece work 'cuts' as a reward for his having worked harder,
resents this treatment and seeks a remedy for it in the future" (p. 863)
. The worker's "remedy," in turn, is "soldiering"--the practice of
intentionally working at a slower, less productive pace. As this
dysfunctional situation unfolds, "upright and straight-forward workmen
are compelled to become more or less hypocritical"; the "employer is
soon looked upon as an antagonist, if not as an enemy"; and the "mutual
confidence which should exist, ... the feeling that they are all working
for the same end," is destroyed (Taylor, 1947, p. 213).
For Taylor, then, scientific management represented a complete
restructuring of the social order within the workplace. As he asserted
during congressional hearings, scientific management "involves a
complete mental revolution on the part of the working man ... [and] on
the part of those on the management's side" (Taylor, 1947, p. 213). In
this regard, Taylor's goal was consistent with Follett's. The key, she
argued, was for managers and workers to get control of the situation by
realizing that "they are on the same job, ...two equally important parts
of the same thing" (Graham, 1995).
The possibility that the distance between Taylor and Follett is not as
great as the contemporary narrative would have us believe creates room
for an unsettling conclusion. The current "revolution" in management
theory begins to look very much like a continuation of the project
initiated by Wilson and Taylor. From the Foucauldian angle, however,
another reading emerges.
Although similar, Taylor and Follett's approaches are different. Follett,
after all, was working in a climate populated by workers and managers
who had already accepted much of Taylor's approach. Or in Wilson's terms,
Taylor had succeeded in making up the general mind, thus freeing Follett
for the task of refining and elaborating the tactics of governmentality.
In a similar fashion, contemporary calls for flatter hierarchies, worker
empowerment, and participatory management can be viewed as both a
continuation of American govern-mentality and innovations on that
project. All of these moves are simply part of a range of tactics and
rhetorical devices (the law of the situation, passive voice,
professionalism, the practices and rhetorics of discipline) that have
displaced sovereign struggles over workplace hegemony.
CONCLUSIONS
When Foucault sought to understand the change that accumulated
throughout the 19th century, he did not primarily consult philosophy,
religion, or economics (although he certainly knew those fields).
Instead, he studied the emergence of psychology, the changing practices
of criminal justice, education, and medicine--in short, the changes in
how authoritative professionals dealt with their clients.
What Foucault found was a field of operations in which authority
accumulated influence and, over time, progressively learned how to
accomplish goals through application of disciplinary relations with
subjects (clients, students, draftees, etc.). These changes seemed minor
and (at worst) innocuous--in part precisely because they did not reflect
the "major debates" heralded by most academics, legislators, and
journalists. Nonetheless, the field was changing. Professionals had new
knowledge--new understandings of how to do their jobs. Individual
subjects had a different sense of themselves (having, for example,
learned to act like a patient).
Given that professionalism is a key concept in 20th-century
administration, it is not really surprising to discover that Foucault's
analysis reveals a similar story about management theory. Foucault shows
us how the moves from Wilson to Taylor to Follett actually change the
game rather than merely modulating an old game's intensity. This new
game is marked by new conceptualizations, built on new terminology, and
producing new techniques. Eventually, new habits are inculcated in
workers and citizens. Wilson laid the groundwork for this shift by
modifying the discourse from sovereignty to more specific questions
about "what government can properly and successfully do." Rather than
theorize the legitimacy of the boss as boss, Taylor turned his gaze to
the minute workday habits and bodily movements of the worker. At these
micro levels, he avoided what Foucault calls the "thou shalt not ..."
moment of power (a grand and negative moment) and began the move to a
minute and positive moment, recreating Schmidt through discipline,
regulation, and incentive.
But Taylor could still be misunderstood, and his time-and-motion studies
were often misread as another episode of authoritarian workplace
domination. Follett clarified Taylor's development by decisively
shifting away from the boss's sovereignty. Once knowledge is transformed,
the situation itself speaks. Authority seems to recede, taking up a
station behind veils of systems of intelligibility so natural it seems
unlikely they were ever actually created. In the law of the situation,
the boss--who had previously insisted on loudly proclaiming his
authority--now disappears from the syntax.
It is not the boss's will that motivates workers; it is an objective
situation commonly perceived. The job gets done, not because the law
insisted but because a norm was created. This is positive, in the sense
that it creates self-regulating workers--and a way to talk with them
that promotes discipline and efficiency. Managers speak in the passive
voice ("that's really what's called for here"), or in the odd rhythms of
necessity without a needful subject ("this needs to be taken care of"),
or they appeal to worker self-image, awkwardly at first (Taylor), then
with ever-increasing sophistication (Follett).
Without fighting labor and class wars to the bitter end, our managerial
century found a way for power to simply win. The consequences of this
massive (if almost invisible) win are still in doubt. Work is efficient,
yes, and the class struggle is quieted, an outcome that may be good or
bad, depending on where you stand. Workers (and citizens) are now adept
at the language of self-discipline, regulation, and subjugation to
professional power. But odd disruptions now emerge, different kinds of
straggles. Citizens phrase their demands in terms of self-respect. Their
opponents may still cite God's name, but their speech is derisive,
hateful, and resentful. The public realm, as so many intellectuals now
remind us, has been depleted and must be reconstructed. But the tools
for that reconstruction are nowhere in sight, perhaps because the
transformations that produced these events are likewise invisible.
This political problem is matched by a theoretical consideration,
perhaps the most important way Foucault's work intersects with the study
of public administration. As is well-known, Foucault argued against
humanism and undermined this era's confidence in its ability to progress
and develop. This is not to say, as Foucault's critics sometimes claim,
that he was misanthropic, excessively negative, or simply a pessimist.
Instead, Foucault sought to expose the ideological baggage that any
commitment to rationalism carries with it. Translated into the terms of
public administration, this means that the reforms and assumptions we
now apply to administrative practice might not represent as clear a
victory for progress, depoliticization, and social solution as we
students of administration often assume.
Foucault is often understood as a negativist because he argues that the
influence of power is persistent and ineradicable. Although the
negativism of this insight is obvious, the point Foucault made actually
serves to bring the unbridled optimism of the modern era into question.
It is a modernist assumption--in Foucault's judgement, an insupportable
one--that the effects of power can be neutralized or ignored if one
focuses rigorously on the goals of efficiency and humanization. Foucault
never argued that we should return to a time when social institutions
were less efficient or less humane. He did not, for example, suggest
that we somehow do without the professions he criticized (doctors,
mental health professionals, educators, prison wardens, and the like).
What he did argue was that the unrealistic hopes of modernism encourage
unexamined extensions of power under the guise of apolitical reforms.
Every development in public administration--no matter how thoroughly
cloaked in the terms of apolitical progress--has power implications.
Accountability, efficiency, explicit standards are generally assumed by
scholars of public administration to represent a way to restore
legitimacy to systems under assault. Foucault's analysis would remind us
to attend to the power component, perhaps considering alternatives that
would alter power relations. In this sense, he is a theorist of power
rather than a harbinger of negativism. In his view, it is modernism that
imposes unrealistic expectations and carries insupportable assumptions,
both in the name of an impossible escape from power. By recognizing this
flaw in modernism, intellectuals could begin to find new ways to act.
His presumed negativity turns out to expand possibilities and improve
understandings of our situation.
Alternatively, public administration intellectuals could explicitly
concern themselves with power, especially with its smaller features and
mechanisms. Foucault's lasting admonition to professionals of every sort
is this: These are inevitably partisan positions, much of whose effort
goes to shoring up a specific kind of authority, which is neither
inevitable nor above political struggle. Assuming that these
"intellectual" considerations are unimportant in professional study and
training is, in fact, more than an assumption; it is a judgment. And
that judgment, Foucault showed us, risks missing the actual role of
administration in contemporary society.
In the end, however, Foucault would likely not have specific advice for
public administration intellectuals, or at least his advice for
administrators would be confounding and unuseful in their own terms. He
would teach them to take the practical moves of authority--its syntax,
architecture, and implements--more seriously and to take its big
modernist themes (rationality, capitalism, rights, and so on) a little
less seriously. He would show them that the important work is a signal
of the new configurations.
This may or may not lead to the production of better administrators--
such was never Foucault's concern. It will surely not lead to great
critiques of the high moral dudgeon favored by every modernist
intellectual. What the Foucauldian approach can do is accord strategic
thought and action the role it deserves in the public world. It could
engage our students in what politics and administration actually have
done, sending them on a hunt for illustrative cases that might change
their lives, and the lives of others.
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~~~~~~~~
By R. McGREGGOR CAWLEY, University of Wyoming and WILLIAM CHALOUPKA,
University of Montana
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Source: American Behavioral Scientist, Sep97, Vol. 41 Issue 1, p28, 15p.
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