Psychomanagement. Robert Spillane
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success, achievement and leadership. Overall, the Australians revealed a strong degree of humanistic idealism and, therefore, a relatively low degree of pragmatism in their decision-making. England asks whether it is possible to combine (Australian) humanism, with its emphasis on tolerance, security and getting on with each other, with (American) values based on high achievement, competence, profit maximisation and organisational efficiency. We might conclude that it is difficult. American managers valued organisational efficiency whereas Australians valued employee welfare and humane bureaucracy. England argues that Australians’ attitudes towards tolerance, compassion, trust, loyalty, honour, employee and social welfare suggest that they are more embracing of organisational egalitarianism than American managers who vehemently reject the idea.
George Renwick wrote a report for Esso Eastern Inc. on differences between Australians and Americans.6 He begins by pointing to the similarities: the two countries are frontier societies founded by immigrants from the British Isles whose origins are Anglo-Celtic and whose social values are individualistic and democratic. Both peoples are sociable, informal, forthright, practical, inventive, and non, or even anti-intellectual. Relationships between them should, therefore, be mutually satisfying. But they are not. Confusion and conflict often arise. After trying to work together, Americans often feel that Australians are cynical and undisciplined. Australians, for their part, feel that Americans are superficial and pretentious. Where Americans have friends, Australians have mates. Australians respect and share loyalty to friends and expect deeper commitments than do Americans who place a high value on merely being friendly. Australians believe strongly that one supports one’s mate no matter what. Americans are more conscious of sticking to their job and getting through their work. Americans need to be liked but laconic Australians do not tell them that they are liked. Wanting to be respected, Americans do things that they think will impress others and expect a favourable response. But it is very difficult to impress Australians, who are impatient with attempts to gain their favour. In conversation, Australians are cynical, especially when they correct American enthusiasm. Australians, especially men, believe that words should be used sparingly, or not at all. If they have to speak, they speak without expression to indicate that the subject is hardly worth talking about, except to ‘get a rise’ out of others. And so Australians use hundreds of colourful terms to convey a tone of amiable contempt. Critical of excessive ambition, boastfulness and pretentiousness, they resent any attempt to ‘pull rank’. Accordingly, Americans see them as crude and critical. When asked about a person’s performance or the quality of a product, Australians say, ‘she’ll be right’. When given orders from an American, their response is passive resistance. Americans believe that Australians consider work to be a nuisance and do as little of it as slowly as they can. Australians believe that work is a national joke and people who work hard are likely to attract suspicion. Americans believe that they can do anything if they work hard enough; Australians believe they can do anything but, unless it is an emergency, it isn’t worth the effort.
In 1980 I published the results of a study comparing Australian managers’ views on industrial relations over a period of twenty-three years.7 In the mid-1950s, Kenneth Walker investigated managers’ and trade unionists’ attitudes to the sources of industrial conflict in Australia. Both groups tended to emphasise legal and economic factors. The later research showed that although economic issues remained important, the emphasis had shifted to psychological factors. Managers were inclined to attribute industrial conflict to greed, lack of cooperation and poor team spirit among their employees; union officials blamed the autocratic, selfish and uncooperative behaviour of managers. These findings points to the increasing ‘psychologising’ of workplace behaviour and the tendency to include personality as explanations of work performance. In this way conflict at work is attributed to particular personalities, or personality disorders, rather than to the relationships in which behaviour is embedded. The tendency to psychologise industrial conflict was strongest among senior managers and reflected a prevailing view that anyone with ability who is willing to work hard can get into senior management and that the difference between the highest and lowest incomes in Australia is neither excessive nor unfair. This view implies that those at the top fought a hard battle to get there and are qualified to tell those below what to do, and the system is fair because everyone has an equal chance to engage in the battle. Historically, Australian managers have used this argument to justify resistance to any dilution of their rights or prerogatives. Implicit in this ideology is approval of and support for the existing pattern of power relationships. In Walker’s study the main factors making for industrial conflict were legal, economic and, in principle, changeable. However, as industrial problems are attributed to the personalities of managers, it becomes more difficult to take constructive steps toward solution. This produces two possible reactions. On the one hand, it gives weight to the radical argument that only extensive social change can reduce the level of conflict between managers and others. On the other hand, it encourages those with a more conservative bent to accept the status quo and emphasise the personalities involved in management relationships.
In The Seven Cultures of Capitalism, Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars studied managerial values from more than fifty countries. They found that Americans are the most strongly committed to Protestant Ethic values – universalism, analysis, individualism, inner-directedness and achievement. Managers from the historically Protestant countries – U.K., U.S., (British) Canada, (Northern) Germany, Holland, New Zealand and Australia – endorsed these values to a much greater degree than did managers from the Catholic countries of Western Europe and Asia. Like Americans, Australian managers are strongly committed to universalism, analysis, individualism, inner-directedness; but unlike Americans, Australians suffer certain doubts about the relative importance of achieved status. Americans are more likely than managers from other countries to believe that winning is what counts. But if winning is everything, nothing else matters. In Australia, however, other things do matter: how one copes with success matters.
I had the pleasure of working in Germany with Fons Trompenaars on a course for senior Western European managers. We asked them to nominate the dominant management model (or metaphor) for several countries. There was almost unanimous agreement that the dominant management models were: U.S. – the football team; England – the class system; Germany – the machine; Asia – the family; and Australia – the barbecue.
It is clear that studies of Australian management values over a period of nearly fifty years reveal a surprising consistency in their conclusions. Australian managers endorse a form of home-grown humanism which tries to harmonise work performance with quality of life generally. England’s study is important since it is the first to emphasise Australian managers’ commitment to an ideology of humanism. The study from Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars is important because it suggests that, while Australian managers are similar to Americans in their support for broadly-based Protestant values, their humanism acts as a brake on their commitment to performance.
The 1990s were not good years for the reputation of Australian managers. The OECD in its 1992 World Competitiveness Report rated Australian managers as ‘ineffectual’, ranking them nineteenth out of twenty-two member countries. The Leadership Report undertaken by Monash University found Australian managers to be egalitarian, responsive, forthright, but indecisive and risk averse. Then along came the Karpin Report, which was three years in the making and a waste of $6 million of taxpayers’ money. Formally known as the Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management Skills, it was established in 1992 and advertised as the most comprehensive study of Australian managers ever undertaken. That it was, but it was also dominated by management consultants, confused definitions, inadequate methodologies and management jargon. And it offered no new ideas.
In February 1995 the report of the Task Force appeared under the politically correct title of Enterprising Nation: Renewing Australia’s Managers to Meet the Challenges of the Asia-Pacific Century – and was predictably critical of Australian managers and management education. The main conclusion was that Australian managers are hard-working, flexible, technically sound, egalitarian, open, genuine, honest and ethical. But they are also poor at team work and empowerment, unable to cope with change and lacking in people skills. The egalitarian nature of Australian managers was considered a weakness because it had an adverse effect on decision-making and resulted in managers’ reluctance to confront subordinates with issues