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An article in SVD today related to the subject of our movie..
If you haven’t seen our film yet, it can be found at: Film
Gave it a shot and threw away a mail to tompeters.com about our movie just to see if we would get a reaction.. Well, here’s the answer!
” Hello Calle,
I’ll send your link to everyone at tompeters.com <http://tompeters.com> . We vote and make democratic decisions on these things, so I can’t predict the outcome. I personally love the idea.[] Regards,
Cathy Mosca”
– tompeters.com <http://tompeters.com>
91 Harvey St
Cambridge, MA 02140
Here’s my second indivual assignment.
The book certainly opens up your eyes towards how different people tackle change and I could not help but analyze the recent uproar against our “market competition” from a perspective of tackling change. Instead of adapting to the new environment and search for alternatives to “get more views” some people try to analyze why others have more hits and have a hard time accepting this fact. This would be charachterized by the Hem charachter in John Spencer’s book who simply refuses to adapt to change. Totally off topic, but anyways, the book has opened up my eyes to some extent and certainly added a new way of looking at how people tackle change.
/Calle
So here it is, our movie about Management through Surveillance!
Management through Surveillance
Optimizing Performance and increasing Security?
To view the video in higher quality, use this link and click “watch in high quality” below the status bar..
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pIdZrA4Fdxg
Promotional text
Introduction
Surveillance and monitoring of individuals is a current topic in today’s society. Governments and private companies use different methods for observing and mapping the lives of each inhabitant; including surveillance cameras installed in public and private areas, computer programs that store various kinds of information, GPS-systems that can follow every move one makes, etcetera. The possibilities for developing further techniques which allow governments and organizations to keep detailed personal records are practically unlimited. This development may be seen from a positive perspective; it enables thorough surveillance and control of suspected terrorists and other criminals, however, it may also cause serious damage on the personal integrity of law-abiding individuals.
The purpose of the film “Management through Surveillance” is to create discussions about this increasingly monitored society and how it affects management concerns. Such concerns involve how managers, employees, and inhabitants in general are affected by the expansion of the so called big brother state. The film explains managerial aspects on a governmental as well as a corporate level. This text discusses the history of surveillance and gives a picture of the situation today. It furthermore goes deeper into the connections to management, which are shown in the film. Positive and negative sides of the surveillance, people management and motivation theories are connected and compared to the trends of today and divided into two groups: governmental and corporate surveillance management.
History of surveillance
The history of management through surveillance is far-reaching, with roots in the 18th century. The film displays some milestones in the history, beginning with the concept of “Panopticon” which was initially mentioned by Jeremy Bentham in 1787. Panopticon is a type of prison building in which all prisoners can be monitored by one single observer and it is seen as the ultimate form of supervision. In 1948 writer George Orwell writes his renowned book “1984”. The book is based on a vision of a totalitarian state run by one single party that constantly monitors everybody. In “1984”, Orwell established the expression “Big Brother State” which has been used in several contexts ever since. The first technical advances mentioned took place during the 1960’s when the first analogue video surveillance cameras were installed at public locations. During the same decade, some companies who faced robberies, such as banks and minimarkets, also started to use surveillance cameras. Further historical technological progresses regarding video cameras are not discussed since it is assumed that the viewer is familiar with digital cameras and other advancements. Instead, the film shows the importance of philosopher Michel Foucault who wrote “Surveillance and Punishment” in 1975, and the ending of the Stasi-era in 1989. Furthermore, the escalation of the information society in which the internet plays an enormous role is displayed, and the film’s historical background ends with a notation on the FRA-law in June 2008.
Today’s situation
The debates regarding surveillance in Sweden reached a peak in June 2008 when the so called FRA-law, which allows signals intelligence of private communications, was passed. People fear that this law will impose on personal freedom, and that it is one step closer to obtaining a fully monitored society. Installing surveillance cameras at public locations have always been assessed critically for the same reason. These discussions tend to efface eventually, as arguments about increased national and personal security win in the end. A topic which often is forgotten about however, and which holds a number of quasi managerial connections, is the monitoring that occurs at workplaces and at the internet. For example, many corporations have started to use computer programs which monitor the employees’ internet use and enable the managers to read all e-mails sent and received by their subordinates. Furthermore, web pages such as Google, Facebook and MySpace store large amounts of more or less private information, and modern cell phones have the capability of capturing pictures and videos of virtually anything that happens at all times. Even if it is optional for an individual to work for a particular corporation, or to visit certain web pages and sign up for membership at web communities, the increasing intrusion on the personal integrity is obvious and need to be emphasized and questioned to a greater extent.
Managerial views on surveillance
The film connects surveillance with management issues in several ways. Camera surveillance does enhance safety since it helps identifying and catching culprits in case of a crime. However, the film is produced from a managerial point of view and effects of surveillance that are unrelated to management will therefore not be further discussed. The basic assumption is that surveillance does manage everyone involved; on a governmental level it affects all inhabitants, and on a corporate level surveillance has an effect on both managers and employees. On the governmental level, the primary function of management through surveillance is that it motivates people to remain law-abiding. Camera surveillance, tapping devices and computer monitoring are intended to scare people off from committing crimes. On the corporate level, managers may use camera and/or computer monitoring of subordinates to keep track of their actions and to make sure that they follow rules. Moreover, the employees receive an incentive to work harder by knowing that their managers are watching them. Productivity and time efficiency may thus rise due to surveillance.
Management through surveillance has a number of negative effects, though; mainly since it focuses on hard values and the underlying outlook on people implies that everybody is lazy and dishonest. On the national level, inhabitants may feel followed by the government or feel that their personal integrity is at stake. If citizens feel that politicians try to manage and interfere with private lives too intensely, the worst case scenario would involve people leaving the country. Within an organization, similar explanations apply for employees, and they might resign if they experience that the manager’s lack of trust is too severe. Additionally, management through surveillance might cause doubts regarding the ethics within an organization, especially if the knowledge about the monitoring is limited among the employees. It may cause ethical difficulties for middle managers who are not in the position to make decisions concerning a surveillance system. They might feel that they are intruding on the personal life of his/her subordinates, and they might not desire detailed information about the employees’ actions.
The paradox
During the research and making of the film, several connections to previous knowledge about management and motivational theories have been made. First, it has become clear that management through surveillance is primarily associated with a strongly hierarchical organization in which the employees are steered by money and obligations, and not by personal desires and development. It is difficult for a manager to apply a participative leadership approach while monitoring the employees at the same time. From the employees’ point of view, it would be contradictory to feel the lack of trust that surveillance is causing, and still be in close contact with the manager and to take large responsibilities.
Here an important issue and paradox needs to be thrown light on. Surveillance techniques are developing rapidly and more and more corporations use them. Management through surveillance can at the same time be seen as a step backwards in the development within the management topic; the movement towards liberate organizations with soft management values is clearly held back by monitoring. Taylorism, at its peak, implies that workers need strong control, which commonly is supported through a hierarchical structure. This line of thinking diverges strongly from today’s decentralized trend of the knowledge society. Foucault’s theory on power and knowledge, saying that power comes from knowledge, as described by David Sköld (2008) are surely applicable in the surveillance question. Power can of course be exercised on the subjects, represented by the citizens on the governmental level and the employees on the corporate level, through collection of knowledge about them. But this non-trusting view on the mankind does not fit into the modern knowledge society. Loosing the trust of corporations’ biggest asset, the employee, will cause severe damages for a firm. At the very end, this risk can be derived to motivation among the employees.
Mainly the motivation theory X and theory Y, established by Douglas McGregor in the 1960’s are looked at. According to theory X, employees are lazy and would not work if they did not have to. In this theory, subordinates need close supervision and control, which is precisely what management through surveillance is all about. The involvement of Taylor’s thinking is obvious. In theory Y, employees work because they want to. Workers are motivated by ambition, freedom and creativity, and strict control may even harm the accomplishments. According to theory Y, management through surveillance would impede a corporation from developing successfully. It can be assumed that we are moving in the Y-direction, which is supported by the reasoning about soft values and knowledge society, as presented above. Further on the new Generation Y, as described in the film, have characteristics reminding of the theory Y personality. These facts exemplify the paradox. Is employee surveillance really applicable on the new type of people management and on the next coming generations? And is Management through Surveillance really management??
The film is awaiting final approval and will soon be published here on our blog…
/Calle
If any of you guys find a way to pull clips from SVT Play, that would be great.. Some useful clips for our movie there!
/Calle
Recently I decided to watch the movie ”Enron; The smartest guys in the Room” as I missed the lecture where it was presented.
I did not have that much knowledge in particular about the case of Enron beforehand, more than it was a big corporate scandal in the beginning of the 21st century. I found the movie to be both interesting and entertaining and it shone light on the Enron scandal from a perspective of how management handled the company. There were many different factors that led to the bankruptcy of Enron:
- Moving away from the core business
- Hiding behind “the corporation”
- To a certain degree, the creation of a flawed corporate culture
I found an audio-clip with professor Malcolm Salter from Harvard Business School where he shares his insights into the Enron scandal. One important aspect of the decline of the company has to do with failure in strategic management. During the lecture with Philip Sköld about strategic management, one key point was that companies should focus their strategic management towards areas that show similarities and synergies with the core business. Think cost-sharing and customer-sharing. Enron were very successful in their natural gas business and they tried to expand into other businesses using the same formula. The problem was that both the broadband business and the electricity business showed remarkable differences with the natural gas one, something that made Enron’s efforts into those areas unprofitable. I believe the managers of Enron got so caught up in the quest to become bigger that they believed their “smart” strategies were applicable in far more areas than they really were.
During the film, I came to think of our screening of “The Corporation”. Top management in Enron certainly partook in some questionable operations, and I believe that this is an occurrence that happens easier when you can hide behind the face of a big corporation. Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay were not particularly risk averse, had it been their own money and not the money of the corporation, they probably would not have taken such big risks. Another interesting factor is that Skilling and Lay were extremely focused on creating shareholder value, but they did so by trying to talk up the value of the stock. Further on, through their business model, they were able to create instant profits through advanced financial solutions, leading to a loss of focus on long-term value-creation.
They way that Skilling and Lay managed Enron and it’s employees is certainly interesting. The “rock-star status” they were given by media must have made it a lot easier for them to gain acceptance for their methods. As I interpreted it, the corporate culture of Enron became very elitist and the incentives for the employees were to create value, fast. This, as I see it, created a moral and ethical decline among the staff and a lack of critical thinking. They looked up to the “idols” of Skilling and Lay without questioning their decisions. Professor Salter also notes that this fact led to a lack of oversight from the board of directors. Warning bells must have been there, but nothing was done.
I think the movie was very interesting and it goes to show that the search for success can lead management of companies to make grave mistakes. Similarities between today’s financial crisis, to a degree caused by advanced financial instruments, and Enron’s manipulative way to book future profits through innovative methods, can certainly be seen. Maybe the key connector is a lack of risk awareness…
Here’s a link to the webcast with Malcolm Salter:
http://c4.libsyn.com/media/981/HBR_IdeaCast_9__New_Insights2.mp3?nvb=20081018135017&nva=20081019135017&t=04a118b604dd1d23984a3
See you tomorrow everyone!
/Calle
Hey again,
The last few days we’ve been scheming on our movie and we have a pretty good idea of what it’s gonna contain and focus on…
Here is a teaser, miles away from the finished product though!
After a rather hectic period in school, time to get this show on the road!
I have chosen to analyze the TV-series Entourage, and specifically the character of Ari Gold. Ari Gold is one of the series front figures and he plays lead-star Vincent Chase’s agent. The role of an agent is somewhat different than that of a regular ”business-manager”. As an agent, Ari Gold is forced to obey the requests of his clients but at the same time try to manage their career in the best way possible. As a manager, Ari demands a great deal of effort from his employees and he always expects to get what he wants. One of Ari’s major flaws is communication and a lot of the mistakes and failures that occur in the series stem from bad communication. After reading “The Management Bible” it becomes clear that good communication is absolutely vital to any manager who expects to get good results from his or her employees and that Ari Gold frequently fails to perform these tasks:
“Involve all of your employees in the decision-making process”
The majority of decisions that take place in Ari’s world are based on his own opinion and he seldom consult his employees before making decisions. One of his typical character flaws is that he holds no grudges against running over people.
“Avoid blaming others when you have to give bad news to your employees”
One good example of failure to comply with this theory is when Vincent Chase gets turned down on a job that he has been applying for. Oftentimes, it is Ari’s harsh negotiating skills and questionable business manners that lead to deals gone missing. And Ari is never too slow to point out the fact that it was not his fault that Vincent did not land the job, but the director, producer or chief of the production studioswho is to blame.
“When dealing with a difficult situation, have a face-to-face discus-
sion instead of sending a memo or e-mail message or leaving a voice
mail message”
This is another example of an area, which Ari does not fully command as a manager. In one of the episodes, when a deal has gone awfully wrong and Ari is to blame for it, he simply will not return any phonecalls until he believes he has a good explanation of the problem. He simply does not want to be put in a situation where he has to admit that his work has not been up to par with expectations.
“Go out of your way to make employees comfortable in approaching
and speaking with you”
Ari Gold’s management style would, according to my opinion, be characterized as management by fear. What this means to me is that the aforementioned quote is far from fulfilled. Ari is fearsome as a manager and he is not afraid of letting his employees feel his anger if he believes that they have done something wrong. Hanging out his employees in public, making remarks about their persona or firing people in an episode of rage all fall under a typical day as Ari Gold. If I would work for Ari Gold, I certainly would not feel comfortable approaching him if I had any problems or wondered something about the business. This leads me to think about an interview I performed with Urban Bäckström, head of Svenskt Näringsliv, in another course here at KTH. Urban discussed the importance of making people aware of that it is OK to make mistakes in the business, just as long as the mistakes are made only once. This to create an organization where the employees are willing to take chances and not be afraid to see new opportunities when they rise to the table. He mentioned that the manager should create a workplace characterized by a “högt i tak” feeling, meaning that people are not afraid of letting their opinions be heard. I certainly do not believe that Ari Gold’s agency is characterized by that feeling!
Now turning to the second part of the assignment I will try to give an idea of the assumptions regarding management that are depicted in the TV-series.
The depiction of management that Entourage shines light on is what I believe to be typical Americanized assumptions of management. The manager acts as the person who has answers to all the problems, he or she leads the troops to perform the required tasks to achieve success and the manager does not hesitate to “step over dead bodies” in order to achieve his/her goals. The role of management in Entourage is very orientated against results, not so much against making the employees feel comfortable or participative in the organization. The conception of the human being or the managed employees is that they need a strong leader to be able to perform well. A lot of Ari’s managing in the series is making sure that the employees are aware of his high performance demands and in times where Ari does not partake all that much in day-to-day operations, the employees tend to slack on their work. The high pace of the industry depicted also tends to credit fast decision-making, something that further on requires a strong manager.
Entourage tries to give a somewhat true picture of how business in the film-industry is performed, although it exaggerates many parts of it to make it enjoyful to watch. The business climate is very competitive and people always look to their own personal best. The manager needs to be ruthless in order to not loose possible business prospects. The makers of the production assume that the viewers are aware of the high competitiveness of the film-industry and that movie-star agents play an important role in managing the stars’ trademarks.
Finally, I give you a “best of” clip featuring Ari Gold, from award-winning TV-series Entourage!
/Calle
Just watched a clip on Youtube with Tom Peters, author of the bestselling “In search of Excellence” that was published in the 80’s and became very popular among business execs. In the clip, Peters emphasizes the importance of DOING things instead of becoming to engaged in theoretical strategic plans for a corporation, something that I can agree with. This also relates to our discussion about “How business schools lost their way” where we basically came to the conclusion that a big part of management education is learning by trying..
Anyways, here’s the clip.
/Calle
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