Underrepresented workers

Control can be through rewards and punishments system. The withholding of a reward may be just as effective in terms of people control as giving a reward. Individuals whose performance is efficient and effective get rewards. Those individuals whose performance is not up to scratch do not get rewards. Rewards can take the form of a company car, cheap shares or free meals on the extrinsic side, or on the intrinsic side rewards can be satisfying work and increasedresponsibility. Rewards, their availability and their award can be used to control employee’s behaviour.

Punishments are not such an effective control procedure, Rewards and punishments are known as the carrot and stick situation, and it is not always a good method of control because it can lead to rebellion. Control can be exercised through the rules and regulations of the organisation. Rules and regulations provide norms for employee’s behaviour and norms for employee performance. In this way rules and regulations are establishing standards for the employees to work to in their daily routine.

Control through rules and regulations is a good strategy for management control providing that there are not too many rules and regulations, or ridiculous ones, which again can cause rebellion. Control can be exercised through budgets, or alternatively funding arrangements. Sections of an organisation can be given financial targets for them to achieve throughout a time period. Upon completion (or non-completion) of these targets budgets for the next time period may be set, allocating resources to where management thinks resources are required.

In this way year on year management has the power to expand or alternatively slowly close down sections of the organisation through budget arrangements. Budgets create pressure and there is no reward for being successful in this field even though there is a penalty forfailure. Control can be enforced by machinery. This form of control is used extensively throughout the manufacturing industries where computers control other computers that sequentially control the pace of work for their human counterparts. Control through machinery is an effective management control strategy although it is not always practical in every industry.

Control was initially introduced by machinery as a management control procedure by FW Taylor, once a steel worker, under the guise of scientific management, which was breaking jobs down into their individual parts to enable the division of labour. He pioneered a system that enabled management, rather than the workers to be in full control of the work. He did this by timing each task and setting his workers targets based on the output and introduced a performance related pay system, controlling by rewards. He followed Adam Smiths ideas about the division of labour and created the production line system of work, which was a revolution.

Taylor’s ideas were used extensively throughout the world, especially in Henry Ford’s car factories, where a production line system revolutionised the way and the speed that the work was completed at. There were strict rules on the production line and labour was often exploited. This process however, by which labour was broken down into small tasks led to the deskilling of workers. Once they had manufactured whole cars and now they were reduced to tightening the same two bolts each time the part came past on the production line.

These ideas was introduced by Harry Braverman, in his book The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, 1974, who believed that Taylorism and Fordism led to skilled workers being reduced to less skilled workers, and alongside this, came the rise of management to control the pace and nature of the work, which was in fact management domination over underrepresented workers. Workers had no say in the matter and were being alienated by the harsh days at the factory. Alienation occurred when there was too much control over the worker, and chances are they would rebel against this control if they could whilst getting away with the rebelling.