The Equal Dignity Organization – The Workplace with Balanced Relationships.

[Michel Bauwens]

Via Rune Kvist Olsen:

(please request the full text via [e-mail] )

The Equal Dignity Organization – The Workplace with Balanced Relationships.  A vision of shared dynamic assets in structuring the distribution of power in organizational life.

 

 

The working life of today is highly demanding for most of the employees in the working force. A counterbalance of an increasing demanding working life, is that more and more of the workers will be demanding a change in the traditional settings of structuring and organizing the workplace. The individual employee and the workforce as a collective power, will be requesting and expecting a working situation where the individual human being will be entitled to gain personal control over one owns work and working conditions, based on shared equality and mutuality.

 

The “demanding” employee will in a lesser and lesser degree be relating to superior authorities as loyal and subservient subordinates, but in stead be seeking relationships with people that possess complementary and supplementary competencies (despite the position and rank the person might occupy in the organization). These consciousness workers will more and more search for workplaces that can provide 100 % independence (freedom) and responsibility (trust) as core values for themselves, in stead of being forced in turning to superior authorities for the making of necessary decisions concerning their processing of work. The employees need of having personal freedom to make own decisions and being trusted the responsibility in taking care of an individual part of work, will more and more emerge as one of the most valuable assets in modern work life for the individual human person.

 

The claims from the workers towards the working society will embody a transfer of the power (the authority to make decisions) from superior authorities outside the individual person to the personal authority within the individual. This type of organizing of the workplace will be based upon the willpower and abilities embedded inside the individual human being, in taking independent and responsible decisions within ones own area of work in concert with equals.

 

The vision behind this type of organizing the working processes, is that the power will be distributed on basis of the person, and not on the position. This structuring of power will confirm and secure that decisions are made on the basis of competence, and will consequently counteract decisions made on the basis of position and rank. Decisions made primarily on basis of position without sufficient and adequate competence, have in numerous of cases within the private and public sector of working life resulted in serious miscalculations and wrongdoings. Such misjudgements can easily end up dramatically and have fatal discrediting impacts on the legitimacy of the corporation in society. A competence-based organization will ensure the quality of the decision processes and not at least contribute to the keeping of qualified and competent employees.

 

The New Workplace Reality which is based on competence in the performance of leading at work, will by its essence exercise a significant attraction of power towards workers that are looking for individual freedom and mutual trust as the prime source in unfolding and unlashing their personalities together with others. The cooperation and interaction between the individuals on equal footing, will inevitably result in a natural realization of their own and others achievements, efforts and performances at work. Personal ability and capability appears as a manifestation of the interface between the factors “effort” and “performance”, where the arrangement of this interactive collaborative force is quite decisive for the ultimate result of the processing of work. Not at least can this way of structuring the processes of decision making and the work of leading, be preferred by the demanding generation of employees that will be dominating the workforce in the near future. When people will be entitled freedom and trust and that personal responsibility is ruled and governed through individual competence and inner authority, the individual human being will gain a natural disposition for this kind of workplace. The nature of Leadingship implies that the employees must be responsible for their own judgements and decisions. The person must TAKE responsibility for the processing of one owns work and the consequences of the result of the work. There will be will none who are ready to GIVE others responsibility for the work, and in that sense no one can take the credit or the blame for the result of others.

 

The Workplace with Balanced Relationships where everyone are sharing equal value and worth, will have a need for people that are used to take responsibility for themselves and others. It takes time to transform the culture of the organization from the traditional structuring of power (with superiors and subordinates) to a structuring of power where everyone are entitled equal worthiness regarding personal freedom and mutual trust. It takes time to enable people to function, act and perform as equal members of the working community. People can only enable themselves in doing the work as sovereign individuals through a belief system that creates consciousness about the rights to act and behaves as peers, with the profound understanding that the work and art of leading is to lead processes and not persons. When the awareness and understanding about this way of structuring power and organizing the work of leading have matured in the minds of the people, the results of this mind setting will be sustainable in the way we perceive and conceive our sense of honour and responsibility at work.

 

I am hoping that this request can provide some clues in developing a workplace where everyone is their own leader and no one is neither superior nor inferior towards each other.

 

Herby attached is a paper that can give a short introduction to the conceptualization of Leadingship. Should any one desire a more profoundly study of this subject, the following link will give access to the collection of The New Workplace Reality Series. The link is as follows;

http://democratus.yolasite.com/avis.php

 

 

Please make contact if you wish to explore this approach furher.

 

 

Regards

Rune Kvist Olsen

Design and implementation of the Equal Dignity Organization

[e-mail]