Knowledge what?! Just carry out your job and don’t ask why...

Are your main jobs to work with data analysis, to research and contrast information, to elaborate models, concepts and methods, to manage the public or the customer service, but you are working as if you were part of a machine, a piece of a production chain, where everything you do must be carefully measured and designed within time and resources’ parameters to increase the output per worker? Welcome to the real world of the knowledge economy.

I realize that more and more of my colleagues and good friend from university were trained and are still specializing in developing creativity, knowledge and information. I’ve studied mass media and journalism and of course, from that old and traditional school, you only “learn” (or get notions) about the fancy face of the information, ignoring how industry determines the real meaning of working with information. In many cases there’s no much differences between a big journal production and the automotive assembly factory.

However this writing is not about how mass media industry is burning itself out, but about contradictions among expectations of knowledge workers (with new skills and intellectual capabilities), and the so called “scientific management” still prevailing in a lot of large (and not so large) enterprises.

When we talk about scientific management, we are alluding to a classical way of managing operations within organizations, which reduce every job to a defined set of tasks, with very little discussion about how their performance impact on people’s needs and interests. You are just a part of a machine assembly factory. I think between this approach and “the slavery” mentality there is just a short step in practice.

Thus, the main goal of organizations managed in this way, is improve efficiency, and to get the most profit from the smallest cost of production. Measurement tools of every task are very well arranged. This approach has its origins at the beginning of the last century (1910), when researchers like F.W Taylor were concerned about describing (and prescribing) an objective method in which the works should be done to achieve the optimal efficiency. This management model was justified (in some sense) in a historic period of industrial development and flourishing of social sciences.

Nevertheless, since this scientific approach to management is quite objective, controllable and practical for managers being accountable with numbers, it became deeply embedded in management thinking still nowadays.

The rupture begins when the objects of production changes and, with them, the features of the workforce for carrying out the new services in the new economy (intellectual assets very well based in managing information).

Of course you can say not all companies implement this reductionist way of management. There are several new more humane approaches which consider the talent’s development of workers, stimulate autonomy of teams in monitoring results and takes care about the permanent training and coaching of people’s competences. And it’s ok. But I think all this stuff is minimized by the imperialism of the rational need of having quantitative control. The need of very well bounded decisions about the overall performance of the company. Much more where (and when) managers and directors comes mainly from technological or scientific careers such as Engineers or Informatics. “For God sake! don’t ask why, just look at the numbers. And if you are not happy, review yourself!”.

Corporate Social Responsibility: What is there behind it?

For many people the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is becoming the new face of capitalism, as it claims for more social involvement from businesses, mainly in those countries where big multinational corporations make important profits.

A colleague told me recently, in a quite apologist way that: “CSR is the new commitment of business with society. Nowadays the big companies must seriously to consider and dedicate a key part of its staff in attending this issue. How to deal with the public opinion about the way the business is impacting socially and how it is doing good things for communities”.

Behind these words, I had an intuition: is CSR just a question of managing public opinion? I mean: it is a new management area created to “make up” the face of companies accountability? A term ‘made up’ to provide ‘make up’ for a companies public face? (It’s funny English language sometimes because it has tricky words: “make up” has a double meaning, to turn faces beautiful by using cosmetics and also, to invent a solution for a problem. A face invented. Could be?).

So, I tried to find out more about CSR and the real meaning it is having for businesses and for people. And I found that, for the most businesses, CSR is just a strategy, not about how to change and improve their behaviour through stakeholders (workers, consumers, society in which companies operate). It is more about showing a more acceptable public face, an attempt at ‘image management’ while keeping the same model of behaviour. For people and society, CSR is quite disappointing as it stimulates expectations of a real change of business methods (at a multinational level) that is not happening yet.

It was interesting that, some big companies such as Coca Cola, Shell or British American Tobacco are very concerned about being seen to be interested in CSR .They are dedicating a lot of resources to demonstrate, show, and persuade the public that they’ve become good neighbours in the countries where they are operating. Some of their campaigns related to the environment’s preservation, some of their charitable gifts to the communities or a new workers relationship management are mentioned. Good job, for their CSR staff. But what does it means in reality? What do workers and their families in the local countries have to say?

An NGO, Christian Aid, has an interesting report on it, with detailed information about the contradictions between what CSR says and what it actually does in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil and India. I’d like to quote a short excerpt of these reports here:

"Shell in Nigeria claims that it has turned over a new leaf there and strives to be a 'good neighbour'. Yet it still fails to quickly clean up oil spills that ruin villages and runs 'community development' projects that are frequently ineffective and which sometimes even widen the divide in communities living around the oilfields".

"British American Tobacco stresses the importance of upholding high standards of health and safety among those working for them and claims to provide local farmers with the necessary training and protective clothing. But contract farmers in Kenya and Brazil claim this does not happen and report chronic ill-heath related to tobacco cultivation".

"Coca-Cola emphasises 'using natural resources responsibly'. Yet a wholly owned subsidiary in India is accused of depleting village wells in an area where water is notoriously scarce and has been told by an Indian court to stop drawing ground water".

Capitalism is not a beautiful thing, nor inherently, it is a bad thing. For so many business managers, the ethical considerations are not a concern. Of course, when you put into balance profits and social responsibility in the annual business result of a company, the main weight should be in the revenues. It is expected by the shareholders but also by workers. This means more jobs guaranteed and better future expectations for them.

However, it is interesting to know whether the companies could stay still profitable under new demands and new constraints, for instance, new international and local legal frameworks that prevents and punishes some actions (not necessarily capitalist actions) such as the bribery of public officials by business people. Has CSR considered it?