Command-and-control systems

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In his book Images of Organisation, [15] Gareth Morgan explores eight metaphors for understanding organisations.  The first of these metaphors is ‘organisations as machines’.  Our tendency to think of organisations (as well as many other aspects of modern life) in mechanistic terms is so ingrained that is taken for granted.  A successful business is often described as a ‘well-oiled machine’ or ‘running like clockwork’ or an ‘efficient assembly line’; a less fortunate organisation might ‘break down’ or be ‘stalled’ and need ‘fixing’.  Consultants arrive with ‘tool kits’; managers look for ‘levers for change’.  The idea is that an organisation resembles a piece of machinery that can be precisely designed and assembled so that all the parts fit together perfectly and interoperate in an efficient way under perfect regulation.

The practice of organising people and equipment along mechanistic lines is ancient - at least as old as the pyramids, but the increased use of machinery in the Industrial Revolution accelerated this trend.  During this period, people adapted to meet the requirements of technology rather than the other way round, and when industrial practices were extended to administration, the bureaucratic organisation emerged.  All forms of organisation require some degree of bureaucracy, but in its classic form the bureaucratic organisation is characterised by the separation of specialist roles and tasks, precise rules and regulations, and hierarchical control. 

Typically, bureaucratic managers reduce the complexity of the organisation’s environment by either shutting it out (a provocative definition of a bureaucrat is ‘one who has the power to say No but not to say Yes’) or by taking it over (vertical integration), as Henry Ford did when he bought overseas rubber plantations to supply his assembly lines.  Within a machine organisation, managers deal with internal complexity using ‘command and control’ methods: imposing a rigid, top-down system of interlocking policies, strategies, objectives and targets, underpinned by management information and budgetary systems to provide close supervision and control.

The need for predictable, efficient management systems is greatest for activities involving significant health and safety risks or responsibility for large amounts of money or valuable assets, so that command and control systems are often found within regulated utilities, military and civilian forces, banks, institutions and government departments.  This model also works in situations where people can be treated like machines - replaceable, standardised, ‘cogs in a wheel’, who are ‘paid to do not to think’, performing routine tasks within environments such as fast food outlets, call centres and administrative offices.

Morgan explains that although metaphors can provide useful insights into organisations, they only provide partial ways of seeing which can obscure other perspectives.  Classical management theory and ‘scientific management’ theory both claimed to be ‘the one best way to organise’.  Stressing the need for rational, efficient management systems, these theories institutionalised the idea of organisations as machines but overlooked the fact that they actually consist of people.  Many of the dysfunctional products of command and control systems, such as organisational silos, information and operational bottlenecks, lack of flexibility, low performance and poor morale exist because of this oversight - see inset and opposite page.

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