BOLA: Power - Instrumentalism, Incongruence, Membership

Instrumentalism, Incongruence, Membership

Goldthorpe in his studies of Luton car assembly workers drew attention to how many regarded their job merely as a means to an end.The car plant workers sub-ordinated their interests for steady earnings. They felt little loyalty towards the firm or intrinsic committment to their job. Evenfriendships with fellow workers were superficial. What conclusions may be draw?

organisational power over instrumental oriented workers is limited by the economic exchange between company and worker.
members of firms have lives outside their employment from which they derive significant satisfactions of a higher order than those that work provides.
organisations invest considerable efforts to develop loyalty which transcend the boundary between work life and life outside work

Etzioni too offers a framework to describe and predict how organisational members accommodate to (or otherwise) the power and authority of those controlling an organisation. He points to the correspondences between systems of control that organisations adopt and member responses to these systems. His systems of control are

Coercive	Alienative
Rewards	Calculative/Instrumental
Normative	Moral involvement

Etzioni notes that incongruence can occur between, for example, organisations who urge morally involved contributions from employees whilst the latter remain principally calculative or instrumental in their expectations. Where members have experience of organisational coercion then credibility problems will arise when trying to persuade employees to engage say in "team building".

Gouldner's local and cosmopolitan groups are also significant categories of organisational members in the analysis of power.

This resource was written by Chris Jarvis who maintains and develops BOLA.