Ordinary Work

Growth in Work Sophistication

Organizations are a relatively recent development in human existence. So investigating their management for practical benefit is also rather recent.
Some history ►

For much of historic time, the main large organized entities were the military, the church, and the civil service. All were organs of social control and intrinsic to government. Commerce and charity were left to individuals, families and small bands of partners. Only special circumstances like crewing a ship or running a university forced some formal organization.

The social invention of the limited liability company and increasing work specialization occurred in the middle ages. However, it was not till the middle of the 19^th century that incorporation and shareholding became easy and secure. Large organizations then became common.

As the desire for prosperity through commerce developed, the power of organising people for large-scale projects became increasingly appreciated. By the latter half of the 20^th century, organisation and management became a major focus for study, argument and advice by academics and consultants of all sorts.

Most firms are about manufacturing or retailing tangible goodsor services. In the past, such QH2-organizations depended largely on academia and inventors in wider society for new ideas. However, scientific inquiry has now been given far more commercial value in its own right, and innovation has become a competitive factor. As a result, work in the QH3-domain is being integrated within R&D divisions of organizations.

With the growth of the internet and social media, public and market communications and community relationships are being given far more attention. So work in the QH4-domain, that engages with wider society, is also being integrated within organizations. Perhaps even higher domains might become increasingly relevant.

Ordinary Work is Unavoidable

As part of a growth in sophistication, it is becoming possible to commercialise pure scientific work (intellectual product businesses), artistic forms and even spirituality. These efforts demand new thinking about organization and management. Problems often arise due to the unavoidability of ordinary work in such bodies.

People have to do ordinary work when they need to take physical actions, deal with something tangible, recognize economic factors, and adhere to legal requirements in such activities.

Work in all domains, even the most abstract or experiential, touches on physical reality. For example:

There is a need to handle actual staff, to deal with premises, to manage money. Depending on the mission, there may be a need to get the message out, to put bums on seats, to prepare materials for distribution. Even an ashram has to organize feeding of members, and provide shelter, and this does not happen through meditation.

Such work, if substantial, needs its own independent organisation and management in line with the principles identified for the organizational domain-QH2. This QH2-work is purely supportive in that it is not itself the mission being pursued.

Typical Infrastructure

Once an organization forms for a social product (like a musical or publication) or an intellectual product (like new software or an investment system), many people are needed in supportive activities for the principal mission. Typical unavoidable practicalities requiring staff and infrastructure include:

• accounting and tax compliance
• personnel administration
• legal compliance e.g. in communications, in premises
• maintenance of physical facilities
• disseminating information
• handling interactions with outsiders
• provision of computing services.

Small outfits cope by out-sourcing to gain efficiencies of scale and professionalism. But with success and growth, this cannot be the sole solution.

The founders and others committed to the mission know (or soon realize) that the infrastructure work, however distracting and irritating, cannot be avoided. Society demands responsibility in these matters. So everyone needs to appreciate what is involved.

The organization then becomes more complex and typically shows a split down the middle: the activity mechanics and commercial infrastructure are run by a chief executive (labelled as such or with a special title like «producer»), working in parallel with a specialist team providing the substance and led by a second supremo called, as appropriate, «editor-in-chief» or «artistic director» or «chief technical officer» or «chief investment officer».

The resulting problems, popularly epitomized in Dilbert cartoons, will be investigated.

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• The natural place to start clarification is with organizing ordinary work (QH2).

Originally posted: 25-Oct-2013