Dynamics of Participation

Socio-emotional States

The structural hierarchy just developed is about participation within an organization. This is because every member of staff naturally participates in every Grouping: sometimes in just one Group and sometimes in two or three.

i.e. every staff member has duties (G1), is involved in oversight (G2), plays a part in improvement (G3), holds a role in a function (G4); each is affected by goals (G5), is expected to be motivated (G6), and considers commitment (G7).

The demand for achievement activates tensions in employment, and organising management to ensure performance reveals a further variety of tensions. How these tensions are handled activates feelings and affects the quality of work-life. The end result is an atmosphere at work that I refer to as the «socio-emotional state» of the organization.

Staff within an organization judge the quality of management more in socio-emotional terms than in relation to bottom-line results. The former can be influenced by everyone, the latter much less so. In considering the socio-emotional atmosphere, three main dimensions are evident:

1. Role enjoyment. How much is a person enjoying the specific post for which they are employed.
2. Hierarchical comfort. How comfortable are the managerial relationships, both as a subordinate and as a superior.
3. Ambient atmosphere. How is work-life experienced generally within the organization—apart from (a) the specific role, & (b) specific oversight situations.

Related Frameworks

The Participatory Order

The requisite concern of all staff is: how managing can best ensure that personal energies and abilities can be developed and converted into organizational outputs and outcomes. This is a function of the quality and intensity of participation.

Explanation of the Diagram  

We see a holistic hierarchy if we zoom out from the Structural Hierarchy to ignore the Groups and just focus on the 7 Groupings. This hierarchy should provide a picture of how energies and outcomes occur in an organization. The Tree for Dynamics of Accountability is visible (horizontally) within G1.

Take the Structural Hierarchy for organising management and turn it on its side. The result, shown at right, is a seven-level holistic hierarchy based on the successive Groupings. In this hierarchy, as noted above, every staff member is involved at every level.

It is evident that this is a holistic hierarchy because each Grouping affects others and either assumes their existence or depends on their presence.

In developing the mutual influences and interactions:

Positive elements to be fostered are:

• establishing each person as a valued member of the organization;
• dealing with genuine disagreement or discontent through a constructive response.

Negative elements to be prevented are:

• loss of trust;
• loss of good will.

The biggest danger is the abuse of power as a substitute for rational discussion and response: which corresponds to the Level for communication and cooperation: G2.

Analytic Steps

In developing this framework, the first stage involves clarifying the Centres:

• Clarification of participation
• Emergence of a polarizing tension
• Determination of polarities of the Levels.

The second stage is to develop the Channels, and there are several ways to do this. After some experimentation, the method found most satisfactory here is as follows:

• Horizontal Channels bridging the personal-organizational divide to Mobilize Enthusiasm.
• All Channels that link to G2_B—and determine Hierarchical Comfort.
• All Channels that link to G4_B—and determine Role Enjoyment.
• Channels in the outer ring that bypass both G4_B and G2_B—and determine the Ambience.

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• Start by examining the tension that shapes participation.
  OR

• Jump to the end and review the complete picture.

Originally posted: 23-May-2014