The End of Top Down Management?
by Gerald Trites

Management gurus have been predicting the end of top-down management for years. It might have started with some of the early writings of Peter Drucker, but I haven't gone back and checked the references. Certainly, after the beginnings of the information age, the predictions abounded. The workforce is different, the thinking went. It is more educated and (gulp) talented. The power will lie with those who have the skills. The bosses won't even understand what their people are doing and will be relegated to the role of coordinators. The real decisions will be made by the workers.

Somehow, it hasn't worked out quite that way. The bosses still call the shots - the real shots. The masses still have to toe the line, certainly in the big companies. Yes, there are exceptions, Google is often touted as one, but then one could argue that it gets a lot of press on this point because it is an exception.

The move to collaborative or participative management has evolved into something of a charade, where there are periodic meetings and discussion groups when important things are happening, but which often involve explanations of why management has chosen a particular path, under the guise of seeking employee input.

So that's where we are at this time, after some twenty or thirty years (depending on where you start counting) of the information revolution.

Enter social media. A rising tide of commentary has been suggesting that social media will transform the internal workings of organizations, that the people within the organization will all have a voice and that decisions will be made with ongoing and decisive employee input.

A recent book, "Social Nation" by Barry Libert, (reviewed at this site) argues just this point - that social networking is transforming the attitudes of everyone in or connected to an organization, and that management therefore has to change its ways and become much more inclusive and consultative.

The fact is though, in a modern corporation, employees can participate publically in discussion of corporate issues on social media, but they cannot speak their minds. If they speak against the corporate line of thinking, the current culture or, especially, the actions or pronouncements of particular managers, their tenure with the organization is bound to be short. They know that, and many people on Facebook, for example, keep two accounts - one for work related acquaintances and one for family and friends (real friends).

So is social networking transforming management? I'm from Missouri on this point.

The fact is, there are many factors working to transform management that have nothing to do with social networking. One of these is the tremendous increase in the participation of women in the workforce and their growth in numbers in management - a trend that has developed over the past twenty years or so. Women have always been more eager to communicate than men, and more eager to talk things out with others who are affected. Men and women working together, throughout history have always been able to work effectively to the common good. It was only with the advent of large organizations, with their need for men to go away from the home to work that the worklives of men and women became so separated. Before that, they worked together on the farms and in family owned businesses for centuries. Men and women working together avoids the extremities of masculinity and feminity and brings to bear a much more balanced and inclusive approach to management and to worklife generally. It is that which is leading to major changes in the way organizations are managed, not social networking, although hopefully it will improve the way in which social networking is used in corporate cultures.