Inside the Labyrinth
" A verbal insult is equivalent to a punch ."
Canadian Nuclear Power Plant Management Manual
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| Illustration to: Franz Kafka - The Castle Publishing House for Literature, Library for All, Bucharest1968 |
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| Source: Andrew Lokenauth (LinkedIn) |
Those who lived their youth and adulthood under communism know very well the tense atmosphere in many institutions, organizations, enterprises, factories, schools, hospitals, etc. where, in addition to the aberrations of communist propaganda, people also had to endure authoritarian bosses who terrorized their subordinates.
In reality, arbitrariness, abuse, teasing and harassment were state policy in a prison-type society in which political decisions prevailed over professional decisions.
For understandable reasons, during the communist period there were no psychological or sociological studies that addressed these issues, which were taboo and did not suddenly disappear with the fall of communism.
Worse than that, they continue to this day in other forms.
When, after three decades of freedom and democracy, a teacher yells at her students and insults them in broad daylight, when a university professor insults and traumatizes her students, when a head of the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations treats his subordinates like common law prisoners, or when a doctor mistreats patients and terrorizes his subordinates, and society with its courts is still incapable of resolving these cases *), we have confirmation that all these social pathologies persist even now, if not have been amplified to another scale.
On the other hand, these social pathologies were (or should have been) and are areas of great interest for psychologists, sociologists and doctors, even more so for the employees who suffer from them.
From this point of view, 29 years ago I was put in an unprecedented situation.
Jerry Armitage, a department head from the Canadian partner at the Cernavoda NPP where I was employed as a psychologist, asked me if I could make an assessment of the state of the department he coordinated (through the assistance contract signed between the Romanian and Canadian sides, the heads from the Canadian side were seconded by the heads from the Romanian side).
The request was a no-brainer for me. Such a topic had interested me for a long time, but even though I had been employed for a few years I had not found the opportunity to make this type of assessment officially because I had never received such a request before.
Finally, I was equally interested in the organizational stress that was very present in almost all institutions, enterprises and organizations in communist Romania, including where I worked, and even more so in its causes.
I had been employed for several years at the Cernavoda NPP and was as stressed as all my colleagues in the department to which I was initially assigned (I had a difficult boss), but I could not define very clearly why.
Then I had the idea to apply this type of questionnaire in that department to myself and my colleagues, and I had a revelation.
Beyond the boss's teasing, the main cause of the stress that we and others were experiencing was the fact that the department where I was assigned (like other departments in the headquarters), as a human organization, was in a state of inefficiency or blockage, due to the way it was managed.
In other words, the departments as human organizations simply did not function or, more precisely, were in the state that Canadian management manuals called "crunch mode", a state in which employees worked overtime, tasks were constantly left unfulfilled on time, everyone was tired and the state of tension in the department, employee dissatisfaction and conflicts were part of everyday life **).
On the other hand, this evaluation was a hot potato for the Romanian side and even more so for the psychologist. I asked for details to understand more clearly what he was referring to because I was afraid of the classic evaluation of the employees' potential because this was and still is a dominant concern ***). This
was not the case, the Canadian was not interested in the people as such, but only in the state of the department as a whole.
The first thing I did was to present to him what such an evaluation could mean in that social context (we were in 1993) given that it was about two organizational cultures, two mentalities, two cultures, two systems and two different countries and I asked him directly if he could give me guarantees that this evaluation would not involve risks to the psychologist's status. He had
already thought about this aspect and the form in which the need for this evaluation should be presented, namely an official request from the Canadian partner to identify the best collaboration solutions.
We agreed together that he would request this type of evaluation of the department he led from the Canadian management, and that I would present to the Romanian management a synthesis material related to the bottlenecks in the entire plant identified through the work analysis interviews that I had had since 1987 in the plant's departments.
In the end, two syntheses resulted that refer to situations from 29 years ago that are only of historical interest. The first one that I presented to the Romanian management at the time referred to the areas where malfunctions and blockages were identified in the plant at a global level, at a specific level and in the relationship with the Romanian/foreign partner:
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| ( 1993 ) |
The second synthesis referred to the state of an organization, namely the state of the department headed by Jerry Armitage.
In this case, we used a questionnaire developed based on variables identified at the level of a human organization (Rensis Lickert - Human Organization: Its Management and Value, 1967), which can be in one of the 4 possible states (optimal, functional, inefficient, blocked):
ORGANIZATIONAL VARIABLES
( Rensis Lickert - Human Organization: Its Management and Value, 1967)
1. Degree of trust in subordinate personnel.
2. The degree of freedom in which subordinates discuss their work issues with their immediate superiors.
3. The degree to which superiors consult and take into account the opinions of subordinates in solving problems.
4. Stimulation methods used
5. The degree of responsibility felt by each member for achieving the company's (organization's) objectives.
6. The volume of communications aimed at achieving the company's objectives.
7. The main directions of information flow.
8. The degree to which information (instructions, provisions, orders) is accepted by subordinates.
9. The degree of accuracy of the information transmitted from top to bottom.
10. Contact with subordinates (to what extent the leader is aware of the difficulties faced by subordinates).
11. The intensity and nature of contacts between leaders and subordinates.
12. Number of welded collectives within the organization.
13. The hierarchical level at which formal decisions are made.
14. Orienting the decision-maker according to the existing situation at lower levels.
15. Using the knowledge of specialists in decision-making.
16.Training subordinates in the decision-making process regarding their own work.
17. Positioning decisions at the optimal level (in accordance with the motivations of subordinates).
18. How to draw tasks.
19. The attitude of the group (members) towards the objectives of the company (organization).
20. Degree of centralization of control.
21. The degree and directions of influence of the informal organization.
22. How to use the control results.
In the end, a graphic profile resulted, followed by a detailed presentation where the state of each variable was specifically described ( Optimal , Functional , Inefficient , Blockage ). I did not have any feedback from the management of the plant on the evaluation sent in which he presented the bottlenecks identified in the job analysis interviews.
Instead, I had very good feedback from Jerry Armitage, a very open and communicative person with whom I had previously had many discussions about the Canadian organizational culture, which interested me particularly because it was totally different from the local one **** ).
After the Canadian received the presentation, he read it with his head in his hands and did not move from his desk for half an hour. The explanation was simple.
More than 2/3 of the organizational variables were in a state of inefficiency and blockage, a state in which most enterprises and institutions during communism were due to authoritarian leadership.
The main goal in this case was to control the behavior of employees, and the objectives were secondary or even completely absent!
Beyond these unique experiments in the "Romanian laboratory" as inspired by Dr. Peter Gross (cf: Return to the Romanian Laboratory. Mass media after 1989 - Nemira Publishing House, Bucharest, 2015 ), in those years I was left with the regret that I missed (it is true, for objective reasons and independent of my will) the opportunity to apply that questionnaire for human organizations in the Romanian Parliament at that time.
In those years, I had contacted journalists from "Romania Libera" who were interested in this idea and who offered to apply it to the members of Parliament (respectively those whom they could convince to complete it) in order to finally obtain a profile of this organization, but I no longer had the time, the availability, or the opportunity to carry this idea through to the end *****).
In a certain sense, it was no longer necessary . For an attentive observer, the subsequent evolution (or rather involution) of the Romanian political class and society was more than eloquent.
The fall of communism was actually reduced to the invalidation of communist ideology and mentality, and under the slogan and mask of democracy and beyond the superficial changes, a much more toxic mentality was promoted through which Romanian society was subjected to a masked process of decivilization, desensitization and dehumanization.
The mainstream press officially acknowledges only the tip of the iceberg:
"Unlike the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was not reformed (sn) with our entry into NATO, and now it is facing a crisis that is worsening from day to day and we are observing how "institutions are starting to fall like cogs",
"MAI controls the entire territory of Romania (sn), and for a party this is extremely important. You have electoral campaigns to run (sn), you have opponents to intimidate (as used to happen), you can have a whole series of advantages. Secondly, if black money (sn) starts flowing through the various networks and channels (as the press reports), we can think that this is also an advantage, although of a personal nature."
Iulian Fotaformer presidential security advisor
http://www.ziare.com/klaus-johannis/presedinet/iulian-fota-cand-vorbim-de-complicitati-intre-ofiteri-din-mai-clanuri-si-politicieni-ce-poate-sa-faca-raed-arafat-interviu-1572220
Armand Goșu, on the catastrophic quality of the Romanian state administration: "It's the first time in 150 years when you look and get scared"
https://m.ziare.com/armand-gosu/armand-gosu-diplomatie-invazie-ucraina-pozitie-romania-1771297
Notes
*) The few examples below are just a drop in the ocean:
https://www.psychologies.ro/revista-psychologies/editorial-iuliana-alexa/medicii-nu-vorbesc-de-frica-etica-medicala-romania-si-legea-tacerii-care-produce-monstri-precum-burnei-2157883?v=f5b15f58caba
I received the second black ball when I won again in the short term to lose in the long term. The management of the power plant being convinced of the efficiency and usefulness of the psychological examination, through one of the directors who later joined the management of the Cernavoda NPP, he wanted to pull chestnuts out of the fire with the psychologist's hand again and came up with the idea of using the psychological examination not only on the power plant personnel, but also on its guards who had weapons.
- https://www.curentul.info/dezvaluiri/fostul-procuror-dan-voinea-rupe-tacerea-tatal-lui-mircea-geoana-generalul-ioan-geoana-a-lansat-in-1989-diversiunea-cu-teroristii-din-subteran/ ;
- https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/justitie/traian-basescu-verdict-definitiv-de-colaborare-cu-securitatea-iccj-1881425 ;
- https://ziare.com/robert-turcescu/stiri-robert-turcescu/anunt-ciudat-pe-blogul-lui-robert-turcescu-da-am-fost-locotenent-colonel-sub-acoperire-foto-1323227
INTERVIEW Mihai Maci, university professor: "Most of my students want a simple thing: 1) to be employed by the state and 2) if possible, in militarized structures! A student of mine who enters one of these structures today will retire before me! When these institutions will be somewhere around 15-20% of the population, we will be like Pakistan: an army that has a state!"
marți, 23 aprilie 2024
"Crunch mode" sau despre tensiunile si blocajele din organizatiile umane.Update https://aventuridepsiholog.blogspot.com/2024/04/crunch-mode-sau-despre-tensiunile-si.html
