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Created: January 21, 2003
Latest Update: January 21, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Competition and Its Concomitants in the Corporate World

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, January 2003..
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on Hans Geser's Market Competition and the Organizational Demand for Skills Empirical evidence from Swiss Industrial and Service Enterprises. July 2001. Hans Geser is professor at the Soziologisches Institut der Universität Zürich.

I would like us to interpret this using Gordon Fellman's concepts of adversarialism and mutuality.

Discussion Questions

1. "Thus, societal pressures to conform to ecological standards, nondiscriminatory practices and many other legal regulations have increased, customers and other stakeholders are better organized and more inclined to articulate grievances or even file suits, and outsourcing and “just-in-time” strategies have created a more densely-knit web of interdependencies among different firms. And most importantly: creating values for customers and clients has become the major goal around which all business activities are organized, and the implementation of such customer-oriented strategies demands that these ideas are understood and practiced on all organizational levels and by every single subunit and individual employee (Adler/Docherty 1998; Horte et. al 1996).

   "Given the increasing salience of all these environmental factors, firms may institutionalize a general “market-oriented” philosophy which gives priority to external adaptation at the cost of internal organizational concerns (e. g. job stability or work satisfaction) (Gordon 1986; Budros 1997).

   "Since the early sixties, organizational sociology has reacted to these developments (or in some way even anticipated them) by developing “open systems” models of formal organizations: seeing them as reactive and adaptive (and less frequently even as proactive) entities within a challenging environmental field.

   "These approaches contrasted with earlier stages of organization sociology which were characterized by a neglect of such environmental relations. For instance, classical socio-technical systems theory was focusing almost exclusively on intraorganizational aspects, especially on the role situation of the shop floor worker, (Adler/Docherty 1998). Doing this, it followed the classical Marxist approach which defined the worker as the major “stakeholder” of business organizations. Extraorganizational relationships were regarded solely as the prerogative or interest of management, which was supposed to have a perspective completely different than that of ordinary workers (Adler/Docherty 1998).

   Geser concludes from the above that the worker must have greater intelligence, be better educated, and be allowed to make decisions based on his/her own experience with the environment. This complexity, of course, leads to ambiguity, and we are aware from our many discussions that a right/wrong answer is often more comfortable, relieving us of the necessity of tolerating ambiguity. But as the environment grows more complex, the added ambiguity and decentralization is essential to the flexibility needed for success in today's market. Now think about what is happening with the New York City schools. The mayor is doing away with decentralization and seeking uniformity across the city. How does that fit with what Geser is saying?

2. How does Geser introduce the concept of social darwinism, and what does he mean by it?

   Recall that Darwin himself disowned the concept. He did not think it applicable to social relations. Consider the first sentence of section 3: "The theoretical paradigm of “contingent organization” presupposes that organizations are forced (or at least: positively induced) to adapt rationally to their environment because if they don’t, they would be punished by being eliminated or at least by reduced profits and weaker chances of further growth." In evolution if an organism doesn't adapt it eventually fails to reproduce and is overtaken by other better evolved species. Since Darwin didn't believe that you could apply that to social relations, how do you feel about it? Is there an underlying assumption that survival means wealth and profit? If so, what other more complex factors of success does that ignore?

3. . . . .