CONTROVERSIAL COURSES
I came across all this at first hand a couple of years ago. Returning
from a holiday in Tenerife, one of the first places I headed for
was my answer-phone machine, curious to know who had been trying
to contact me in my absence. As always, much of the tape was taken
up with people who called but chose not to leave a message. And
the rest of the messages were mostly ones I could have done without.
But there was one caller whose enigmatic communication was as
intriguing as it was unexpected. It was from someone I'd never
heard of before, who simply said he had been fired from his job
as a result of a New Age management course, and he would like
to meet me to talk about it. At the time, I wondered what kind
of joker he might be, but I was sufficiently curious to follow
it up. And the story behind it was a real shocker.
The person in question was a Scottish electronics worker named
Paul Mansbacher. Born in Zimbabwe, he was a committed Christian,
and had carved out a highly successful career for himself as a
computer systems manager. In late February 1989, he had been sent
along with his colleagues to the French city of Nice for a regular
training course called 'Improving Organization Effectiveness'.
Nothing particularly unusual or threatening about that, you may
think. Many British executives would just love to spend a week
in a warmer climate at that time of year - and who doesn't want
to be more effective? But within two months, and as a direct result
of that course, Mansbacher had lost his job. His employer, a multinational
computer corporation, later described it as a 'performance-related
dismissal'- and offered to pay for a course of psychiatric treatment
to modify his behaviour! But Mansbacher believed this was nothing
but a smoke-screen for religious persecution, because the view
which had been put across in the course had conflicted seriously
with his own Christian convictions.
When I met him, it was immediately obvious that he held some very
strong beliefs, and was not afraid to use strident language to
express them. He had no hesitation in using words like 'blasphemous',
'satanic, and 'demonic' to describe his former employer's training
materials, and he was equally forthright in his opinion of those
who had taught the course that had led to his dismissal. I don't
mind admitting that his attitude seemed so intemperate and, at
times, almost fanatical that my natural instinct was to adopt
a somewhat cynical attitude to some of his claims. But I was still
interested, and when his story was picked up by the secular Scottish
press, I decided it was worth a second look. I was absolutely
staggered by what I discovered.
The course in question was largely based on materials emanating
from the Seattle-based Pacific Institute, a business training
organization headed up by self-made millionaire Lou Tice. I knew
there had been a number of legal battles in the US courts over
the methodology used in these courses, and though this group now
claims it has nothing to do with the New Age Movement, it is a
matter of simple fact that one of its most popular courses 'Investment
in Excellence' - was originally titled 'New Age Thinking'. Many
of the techniques being promoted are designed to encourage participants
to search for precisely the kind of personal paradigm shifts that
are so characteristic of the mainstream New Age Movement. A 1989
news report quotes Tice himself as claiming: "You have the
power to become the Wizard of Oz. My affirmations are continually
that I am a very powerful wizard ... I bestow upon you the brains
and habits to make yourself a better human being." This message
is reinforced, one way or another, in the twenty-four videos watched
over four days that are an integral part of the courses.
Though he had questions about some of this, Tice was not the main
problem for Mansbacher. That accolade was reserved for a book
which had been used in the course - actually, a widely used and
highly respected book by consultant Russell Ackoff, called Creating
the Corporate Future. It was this academic text that
was to prove the toughest challenge to Mansbacher's own personal
religious beliefs. To see just exactly what all the fuss was about,
I decided I would have to read it for myself. Once you get past
the first three chapters, there is a wealth of invaluable expertise
relating to the creation of interactive management systems. But
the introductory section, which sets out the ideological and philosophical
background to it all, is heavily laced with mystical and spiritual
concepts - and is undoubtedly controversial. To put it simply,
the author surveys western culture over the last two or three
centuries, and concludes that Christian values are largely to
blame for the mess in which industry often finds itself. Confrontation
between workers and managers, the alienation of the workforce,
the dehumanizing attitudes which regard people as expendable cogs
in a machine - all these and many other negative features are,
he claims, simply the natural outcome of the Christian view of
God.
This argument is based on a social and historical analysis that
no one could reasonably quarrel with. Ackoff points out that since
the Second World War the West has been in a period of profound
change - change of such speed and significance that we today are
at a great crossroads in history. One age is coming to an end,
and a 'new age' (no capital letters) is beginning. The intermediate
stage, where we are now, is an unsettling time of upheaval, and
this disturbance will continue until the new age has finally arrived.
In this interim period 'both our methods of understanding the
world and our actual understanding of it are undergoing fundamental
and profound transformations'. Today's generation therefore stands
at a unique point in history, as heirs to the past but masters
of the future: '... the problems it confronts are inherited, but
those of us who intend to have a hand in shaping the new age are
trying to face them in a new way' (Russell Ackoff, Creating
the Corporate Future, p13.).
Ackoff often refers to the 'new age' and much of what he says
is so obvious it hardly needs to be reiterated. But all this talk
of a new age dawning is certainly not inconsistent with the populist
and more apocalyptic style of New Age vision, with its expectation
of some kind of messiah figure who will usher in a new world order
especially when Ackoff uses so much mystical imagery to define
the precise form of this coming 'new age':
'The Systems Age is a movement of many wills in which each has
only a small part to play ... It is taking shape before our eyes.
It is still too early, however, to foresee all the difficulties
that it will generate. Nevertheless, I believe the new age can
be trusted to deal with them. Meanwhile there is much work to
be done, much scope for greater vision, and much room for enthusiasm
and optimism.' (Ackoff, op.cit., p13.).
It all sounds very much like a more intellectual version of the
kind of media hype that has surrounded, the Harmonic Convergence
and similar events.
In business-speak, the old age we are leaving is described as
the 'Machine Age', while the new age that is in the process of
coming to birth is the 'Systems Age'. The terminology has a long
and honourable history. It goes back to Ludwig von Bertalanffy,
a Gennan biologist who promoted a science of context called 'perspectivism',
which laid the foundations for what subsequently came to be known
as General Systems Theory. Put simply, this states that nothing
can fully be understood in isolation, but will only make sense
within its total context, or 'system'. Each component in any system
interacts with all the other components in such a way that it
is both impossible and pointless to try to separate them.
Concepts of this sort have shed new light on many areas of modem
understanding. The environmental movement, for example, is based
on the fact that the natural ecological system of which we are
all a part is much bigger and more complex than the various constituent
elements that go to make it up. Another example is modem science.
It is undoubtedly a far cry from the classical rationalist doctrine
popularized during the optimistic days of the European Enlightenment.
Then it was taken for granted that the only way to understand
anything - from literature to anatomy - was to take it apart to
identify its basic ingredients. Only then - if anything was left
- would it be permissible to try to put it all back together again.
Inflexible concepts of cause and effect were used to analyze everything,
and a virtue was made of keeping things separate - even to the
extent of constructing an artificial context for experimentation
(the laboratory), where by definition the influence of the natural
environment was excluded. Little wonder, then, that western culture
for the last two centuries has been largely fragmented and has
lacked a holistic vision.
The evidence of such fragmentation is plain for all to see. Many
of the institutions of western culture - political, religious,
industrial, educational - are bureaucratic and impersonal, operating
within rigid mechanistic frameworks that at best lead to fragmentation
and conformity, and at worst actually deny some of our most cherished
ideals. Though knowledge of it has scarcely begun to trickle through
to the average person, modern science recognized the inadequacy
of all this several decades ago, and has all but abandoned the
old reductionist approach for a new, holistic understanding.
This growing recognition that things can only be fully understood
in their context has marked a major step forward - in the physical
sciences, in medicine, and in the workplace. Could, it possibly
he that the problems of modem industrial structures are related
to the acceptance of artificial boundaries between workers and
managers, and that the relative inefficiency of both is related
to the way their work-life has been isolated from their overall
lifestyle and values? If taking things apart is the cause of our
difficulties, then it follows that putting them together will
bring new insights.
BELIEFS AND SYSTEMS
So far, so good. These are all important and perfectly legitimate
questions. Nor is it anti-religious to ask them. In the last decade
a whole multiplicity of church growth courses based on exactly
the same kind of thinking has been eagerly embraced within mainstream
western Christianity! But when Ackoff begins to explain the reasons
behind all this fragmentation and disharmony, some unexpected
and (for the Christian) unwelcome dimensions begin to creep into
his analysis. The bad old Machine Age, he claims, was characterized
by two basic beliefs: 'that the universe was a machine created
by God to do His work, and that He had created man in his image'.
This in turn produced the conclusion that 'man ought to be creating
machines to do his work' - a belief that led quite naturally and
inevitably to the philosophy of the Industrial Revolution, which
Ackoff describes as
'a consequence of man's efforts to imitate God by creating machines
to do his work. The industrial organizations produced ... were
taken to be related to their creators, their owners, much as the
universe was to God . . . employees were treated as replaceable
machines or machine parts even though they were known to be human
beings. Their personal objectives, however, were considered irrelevant
by employers ... the very simple repetitive tasks they were given
to do were designed as though they were to be performed by machines.'
(Ackoff, op.cit., p25-6.).
In the process, both workers and managers were dehumanized. Their
personal and family lives disintegrated in the face of the corporate
machine and its many demands. And it was all the fault of western
Christianity!
If the Machine Age was just Christianity projected into the corporate
workplace, what kind of religious beliefs inspire and motivate
the Systems Age? Though he gives a nod in the direction of freedom
of choice for the individual worker, Ackoff leaves little room
for doubt as to his own personal answer to that question: 'many
individuals find comfort in assuming the existence of such a unifying
whole' - and they can call it 'God'.
'This God however, is very different from the Machine-Age God
who was conceptualized as an individual who had created the universe.
God-as-the-whole cannot be individualized or personified, and
cannot be thought of as the creator. To do so would make no more
sense than to speak of man as creator of his organs. In this holistic
view of things man is taken as a part of God just as his heart
is taken as a part of man.' (Ackoff, op.cit., p19-20.).
The openly non-Christian orientation of this view is crystal clear
in what follows:
'this holistic concept of God is precisely the one embraced by
many Eastern religions which conceptualize God as a system, not
as an element ... There is some hope, therefore, that in the creation
of systems sciences the culture of the East and West can be synthesized.
The twain may yet meet in the Systems Age.' (Ackoff, op.cit.,
p19.).
It is not surprising that a man like Paul Mansbacher, with his
strong Christian beliefs, should have found all this hard to swallow.
To him, the whole training course was pushing ideas that ran directly
contrary to his own religious convictions. 'In one discussion
they argued the case for us creating a new personality for God',
he commented. 'They said the God of the old Machine Age was the
Creator, and was an individual you could get to know. They then
said that notion was history. In the Systems Age, they said, God
is seen as an all-containing system of which we are all parts.
He isn't a creator because he can't create ['himself' is missing
from the text here - PFM]. Then they said that concept of God
could be found in some eastern religions.'
Anyone who has read this far will have little difficulty in identifying
here a number of the key concepts that go to make up a typical
New Age world-view. As such, New Agers have as much right as anyone
else to make their views known. But when all this is being presented
by business trainers as if it were objective facts, and managers
are being compelled to attend courses which present it as such,
can anyone really be surprised when religious believers find themselves
compromised and affronted? Can You imagine the uproar there would
be if the boot were on the other foot, and secular managers were
being told by fundamentalist Christians that they need to be 'born
again'? What has happened here to the much-vaunted pluralism of
the modem western world, in which everyone is free to make their
own choices? Could it possibly be that the only belief system
people are not free to choose is mainstream orthodox Christianity?
No doubt the answers to those questions are not exactly simple
and clear-cut. But in the context of the corporate workplace,
only the most naive personnel director would be unable to foresee
that the introduction of such New Age views into compulsory training
courses would be bound to lead to legal action alleging the infringement
of personal religious freedoms.
It is surprising how easily - and how often - textbooks on management
skills blame the problems of western industry on what are perceived
to be the religious attitudes of both workers and managers. But
does it all stand up to critical scrutiny. Is it either true or
fair to castigate the Church as the major cause of our society's
problems? Or is this just another example of that buck-passing
mentality so prevalent throughout industry, that is itself part
of the problem we now face?
As a matter of fact, when we take a closer look, this perspective
on western culture is nothing like as convincing as it might seem
at first glance. No one would dispute that the mindset which we
have inherited from the Industrial Revolution - despite all its
achievements - has many built-in weaknesses, not least the dehumanizing
of work and workers which Ackoff so eloquently identifies. But
it is something else altogether to demonstrate that this is the
logical outcome of the Christian belief in God as Creator.
For a start, is it really true that religion as such has ever
exercised much influence at all in the organization of the typical
industrial workplace? The drawing of easy connections between
religious views of God as a celestial machine-minder and the philosophy
of modem managers is itself a good example of the blinkered sort
of thinking that characterized the so-called Machine Age. Connections
like this can seem to make sense when you are sitting in an academic
study isolated from the broader concerns of real life, but they
hardly ever happen in the larger context of ordinary daily experience.
The fact is that most modern managers are far too busy with other
things to sit around speculating about such esoteric concerns.
And the idea that the barons of the Industrial Revolution scoured
books of theology looking for models of God as a way of improving
efficiency and profits is just ludicrous. Nor did most of them
make a study of Christian theology in their spare time. Nor did
the majority of them even attend church, or actually claim to
be Christian in any committed sense of the word.
Though we should not forget that some did. In Britain, two of
the biggest confectionery empires were built up by people with
strong Christian convictions - the Cadburys and the Rowntrees
- and there can be no doubt that their 'model' factories were
consciously founded on their view of God and of Christian principles.
So if Ackoff's analysis is correct, we would expect them to provide
us with examples of the worst excesses of manipulation and exploitation
of the workers. Why is it then that their company structures -
far from conforming to the stereotypes of the so-called Machine
Age - actually reflected many of the more enlightened concepts
now being advocated by systems theorists? The caring working communities
which they created can readily be criticized for being too paternalistic,
but the very existence of Christian industrialists with any sort
of concern for workers as people puts a serious question mark
against the simplistic assumption that Christianity is the root
cause of the fragmentation and disharmony which now besets western
culture.
In point of fact, the opening pages of the Bible itself speak
of people as being 'in God's image' - a statement which, if taken
seriously, hardly leads to the conclusion that workers can be
indiscriminately exploited. Quite the reverse. Surely it implies
that people are special, and need to be handled with consideration
and care. If we really must find religious roots for everything,
then it is far more likely that the exploitation and alienation
of workers can be traced back to the rationalist and nonsupernatural
forms of religion that undermined the original Christian vision
in the course of the Enlightenment, and which themselves were
a direct product of the larger intellectual and social forces
which also shaped European industrialization.
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