From Command and Control to Self-Confidence in Government: Meeting the Challenge in Doncaster
| Author | Clare Batty,John Hilton |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852303069002003 |
| Date | 01 June 2003 |
| Published date | 01 June 2003 |
| Subject Matter | Journal Article |
From command and control to self-confidence in
government: meeting the challenge in Doncaster
Clare Batty and John Hilton
Abstract
This article compares some themes of change management theory against the practical
experience of a large UK local authority as it attempts to move from ‘command and
control’ leadership to a more assertive, self-confident style of local government. This
move is a response both to changing national legislation and local demand arising
from a significant corruption scandal. The concept of ‘command and control’
management is compared with that of self-confidence within the context of organizing
for government, both central and local. The nature of self-confident government is
then examined more closely in an attempt to answer some central questions — what is
self-confidence, what sustains it and what benefits does it offer? These questions are
then considered against the practical experience of a large metropolitan authority in
England. The local pressures for organizational and cultural change, including those
arising out of recent municipal corruption, are discussed along with the developing
local responses. The article then considers the change issues that are arising for local
service managers and the role of developing self-confidence in adapting and
expanding their capabilities into the future. Some key learning points are identified.
For centuries, and across the world, people have sought better ways to organize
together in order to achieve more efficiently, effectively and economically aims
and objectives that they have identified as being for their common good. This has
been particularly true when groups of people have faced changes over which they
felt little, or no, control. In this context, ‘the organization’ has existed in many
respects essentially to seek and to provide mutual protection and advantage. Early
in the 20th century, perhaps as a result of the often-bewildering changes arising
out of the growth of western society based upon mass production and industrial-
ization, the study of this phenomenon assumed the status of an academic disci-
pline in its own right. No longer seen simply as interesting elements of history or
politics, ‘management and organization studies’ had arrived.
Clare Batty and John Hilton work in the Community Development Unit, within The
Directorate of Borough Strategy and Development, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough
Council, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Clare Batty is Senior Policy Development
Officer and John Hilton is Head of Community Development. The views expressed
throughout this article are those of the authors and not Doncaster Metropolitan Borough
Council. CDU: 35.06.
International Review of Administrative Sciences [0020–8523(200306)69:2]
Copyright © 2003 IIAS. SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New
Delhi), Vol. 69 (2003), 161–172; 033510
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 69(2)
The early work of Taylor (1911) and Fayol (1916) was subsequently built upon
by such penetrating observations as those provided by McGregor (1960), Handy
(1981), Peters and Waterman (1982) and Drucker (1992), with each breaking new
ground and re-working the old to produce successively complex insights into the
behaviour of people and organizations, particularly those trying to cope with
changing commercial and industrial environments. Reflecting the economic roots
from which it had sprung, the great majority of the work focused upon the
commercial need to derive greater efficiency and economy from organizations.
With the passage of time and the development of the literature, there has been
an increasing trend to condemn as repressive and counter-productive the ‘us
and them’ models of authoritarian manager versus reluctant workers. At the
same time, there has been rising praise for more collaborative, team-focused
approaches. As Margaret Wheatley (1997) asserts, ‘we have known for nearly
half a century that self-managed teams are far more productive than any other
form of organizing’.
Yet, for all these years of in-depth theoretical study and practical casework,
many of the more recent contributors to the debate have pointed to evidence that
suggests that the theory is a long way from matching what is claimed to be the
norm in terms of actual day-to-day organizational practice. Despite being almost
universally condemned in the literature of business studies, it appears that in the
workplace old managerial habits continue to prevail. This is particularly worrying
when, in recent decades, it has become obvious that much of the substance of
management is about adapting to continuous and accelerating change. Surely, it is
now universally recognized that organizational change, deriving from whatever
cause, cannot be seen as a finite inconvenience to be endured until it is over.
On this specific point, Christensen (2001) has described as ‘scary’ the fact that
the pace of change is accelerating dramatically, while the track records of most
managers suggest that they could not even cope with it before. Even in her largely
optimistic article ‘Goodbye, Command and Control’, Wheatley (1997) opens
with the observation that, despite the overwhelming evidence of a radically
changing world, ‘we cling to what has worked in the past’, still thinking of organi-
zations in mechanistic terms, capable of being re-engineered — a scientific
approach that looks back to Taylor’s Scientific Management theories of the early
20th century.
Senge (1998) goes still further, asserting that McGregor’s Theory X, one of
the classic models of control and command and one which Senge paraphrases as
seeing ‘employees as unreliable and uncommitted, chasing a paycheck’, ‘is still
the prevailing philosophy in most large institutions — certainly in the American
corporate world’. He goes on to observe: ‘if we look honestly at how organiza-
tions manage people, most appear to operate with the belief that people cannot
work without careful supervision’. Consequently, he writes, we still view people
simply as human resources (perhaps significantly, this is a term currently finding
renewed favour in UK management vocabulary) to be employed or ‘released’ at
the will of the organization. Many organizations within developing countries will
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recognize this as an attitude still prevalent in the approaches adopted by many of
the major donor institutions, whether commercial or governmental. The stance
of MacGregor et al. (1998) is perhaps typical of this identification of employees
simply as an element for ‘downsizing’ if economic pressures demand. Even while
proposing enthusiastically the attractions of the self-confident organization as the
model of the future, the very recent work of Pringle and Gordon (2001: 291) also
begins from an acknowledgement that ‘management by fear is still the norm in
most organizations as it is the easiest and often the most comfortable way to
manage’.
In the face of this stubbornly enduring, fear-based organizational environment,
what realistic chance is there for the sustainable development of the relative
newcomer to the scene, the so-called self-confident organization? Most English-
language dictionary definitions of ‘confidence’ include a mention of concepts
around certainty, reliability and trust. For Pringle and Gordon, it is this latter
ingredient, trust, that is the key to building the self-confident organization, which
is one that has moved away from repressive authoritarianism, but stops short of
total laissez faire.
Structures, rules and lines of authority continue essentially to exist but are
clearly articulated, reasoned and prioritized, thereby enabling the...
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