Reading 2: Robert Michaels “Organisation and Oligarch”

Cause of Leadership

Need of organization:
o Political necessary
o Mechanically and technically impossible for direct government by mass
o Need for delegation, which represent the mass and carry out its will

Originally the chief is merely the servant of the mass. The organisation is based upon the absolute equality of its entire member, the delegates needs have:
o Individual ability
o Oratorical gift
o Considerable objective knowledge

Heinrich Herkner foresees that …all the labour organizations will be forced to abandon proletarian exclusiveness, and in the choices of their officials to give the preference to persons of an education that is superior alike in economic, legal, technical and commercial aspects. These schools create “elite” of the working class into leadership.

Organization- tendency of oligarchy
Aristocratic exists in all organizations

The principle of division of labour coming more and more into operation, executive authority undergoes division and sub-division.
It is indisputable that oligarchic and bureaucratic tendency of party organization is a matter of technical and practical necessity. It is a product of the very principle of organization.

Leader, professional leaders- Autocratic tendency of leaders

Mass feel the need for leadership, majority forgo their right to public affairs.
With the appearance of professional leadership, the party mechanism, through paid, honorary post as its disposal, offers career to the workers, which is constant attractive force, transform a number of proletarian into bourgeois. This change of condition at once creates the need of acquisition at expense of mass.

While the need of daily life and their occupations render it impossible for the mass to attain to a profound knowledge of social mechanism, and above all the working of the political machine. The leader of working class origin is enabled to make himself intimately familiar with all the technical details of public life, and thus to increase his superiority over the rank and file.

Gulf between the leaders and the mass becomes so wide, until the moment arrives in which the leaders lose all true sense of solidarity with the class from which they have sprung, and there ensures a new-class division between ex-proletarian captions and proletarian common soldiers.

Therefore, when workers choose their leaders, they create new masters with their own hands, whose principal means of dominion is found in their better instructed minds.
Division of labour creates specialism, however, implies authority. The history of production cooperation shows that there is need to submit to the will of one of a few persons, thus lose the character of cooperative.

Does really democracy exist?

Reading on HS205 week 1

Reading 1:
Marilyn Frampton “Organisation at work” HM 131R68

Industrialization and the Provision of labour

The specialization of labour developed as industrialization advanced and bigger organisations became more and more common in both the manufacturing and service sectors. Serving bigger markets, these organisations employ a larger labour force and utilise the division of labour.

Production process is broken down into a large number of separate tasks and each worker in required to specialise in only one small aspect of the total process.

The benefits for manufactures:
- Employ highly specific equipment
- Employ semi-skilled labour, saving money in training and hiring
- Great expertise in each level and increase productivities
So overall, products more with less costs.

While specialisation and division of labour are essential to the well-beings of all organizations, if they are fulfil their needs more efficiently, it is important to note that an excessive use of these techniques means that each worker may be restricted to a boring and repetitive job which provides very little satisfaction, further more, people need to feel that they are more than just one of the factors of production. Too much specialization can lead to de-skilling.

Social Organization

August 06, 2007 Lecture 1

Social Organization- central to society
E.g. family, school, work place, religious institution etc.

Pre industry era, the main forms of social organization were family, church, with far relationship with the states, or kings, depends on location.

Singapore, for example, had gone through a few stages:
- Temasek, a fishing village, in which social organization were mainly formed with family, friends, or church
- British colony Singapore, social organization increased, the states power was more present, more locals worked for civil services.
- Early immigration, importance of clan association; and extended family
- Modern organization, proliferation in modern society; individual has to be constantly dealt with modern organization.

Formal Organisation:large, secondary groups that are organised to achieve their goal efficiently.


Characteristics of Modern Organization:
- Specialization – special people do specific tasks
- Authorization- give order and obey order
- Hierachization (hierarchy) different level authority
- Credentializaiton (credential) qualification to relate
- Stratification- different people being rewarded differently, more according to position rather than to person
- Centralization- control, allocation and logistics
- Impersonalization- task, authority lines with position rather than person,

Weber’s Iron cage of Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is an organisational model rationally designed to perform complex tasks efficiently.

Despite our reliance on bureaucracy on managing our daily lives, the problem of bureaucracy, ranging from its tendency to dehumanise and alienate individuals to the threats it poses to personal privacy and political democracy.

1. Bureaucratic alienation, impersonalisation is the very purpose for bureaucratic organisation to foster efficiency simultaneously denies officials and clients the ability to respond to each other's unique, personal needs. That causes alienation


2. Inefficiency and ritualism, the tedious rules and regulations and procedures to the point of thwarting an organisation's goals.


3. Inertia, refers to the tendency of bureaucratic organisations to perpetuate themselves. Occasionally, a formal organisation that meets its goals will simply disband, more commonly, an organisation stays in business by redefining its goals so it can continue to provide a livelihood for its members.


4. Abuse of power: oligarchy, the rule of the many by few. Robert Michel's (1876-1936) reveals that this hierarchical structure concentrates power and endangers democracy.

An institute created for rationality and freed society, now becomes constrains to society.