CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

2. CONFLICT AT WORK THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF ORGANIZATIONS 59
strategy was utilized not only because it retained the familial relationships
between workers and, in this case, the subcontractor or middleman
(Bendix, 1956), but also because owners continued to lack sufficient
knowledge about production techniques and the labor process (Clawson,
1980). Thus, the subcontractor, who often hired friends and relatives,
assumed the managerial tasks of organization and motivation. Among
the other, less paternalistic methods designed to overcome problems of
factory discipline were physical beating of children, the firing of workers
or the threat of dismissal, and monetary fines for lateness, absenteeism,
and insubordination (Pollard, 1965). Payment by results and piecework
was also used as a means to entice labor to maximize work effort.
Conflict stemmed not just from the reorganization of work life, and
the human reaction to it, but the hierarchical managerial command structure
inherent in most organizational forms. This new system—in which
some command and others obey—had to be bolstered with a legitimizing
rationale. Here we find the initial development of “managerial ideology”
(Bendix, 1956), which remains a powerful analytic tool for conceptualizing
managerial efforts to the present day. As defined by Bendix, managerial
ideologies
interpret the facts of authority and obedience so as to neutralize or eliminate
the conflict between the few and many in the interest of a more effective
exercise of authority. To do this, the exercise of authority is either denied
altogether on the grounds that the few merely order what the many want;
or it is justified with the assertion that the few have qualities of excellence
which enable them to realize the interests of the many. (p. 13)
The increasingly important ideological strategy of control was a recognition
that compliance could not be assured by either the wage labor
relationship or the formal authority system, exclusively. There remained
the human capacity for subjective and behavioral resistance. As Bendix
(1956) put it, “Beyond what commands can effect and supervision control,
beyond what incentives can induce and penalties prevent, there exists
an exercise of discretion important even in relatively menial jobs, which
managers of economic enterprises seek to enlist for the achievement of
managerial ends” (p. 251). This residual discretion always allows workers
to retain some control over the exertion of mental and physical energy.
In these early stages of developing a factory system of production, we
discover the historical legacy of the dialectical interplay involving efforts
at organizational control, reactions of human resistance, and modified
systems of organizational control to accommodate and contain the resistance
(Braverman, 1972; Clawson, 1980; Edwards, 1979; Marglin, 1974). No
single method or strategy ensures perpetual organizational harmony. This
is clearly illustrated by Edwards’ identification of organizations as “contested
terrain” yielding a proliferation of managerial control strategies. He
analyzed three major forms of control: direct, technical, and bureaucratic.