S02b - Glass Cage And Glass Palace

Glass Cages and Glass Palaces Images of Organization in Image Conscious Times

JANN TEO JACQUELINE TAN Company QUN YAO YIN RUIXIAN LOGOZHANG

Weber and Bureaucracy

1. Iron Cage 2. Glass Cage 3. Glass Palace

BUREAUCRACY-IRON CAGE

• • • •

Metaphor of modernity Bureaucratically organized social order Colonized Bodies Highly rational

BUREAUCRACY-IRON CAGE

E.g EDUCATION McDONALDIZATION

GLASS CAGE

•Shifting of Western society from concrete organization to fragile work arrangement/ organization •Mechanism and production driven to spectacle, image and consumption driven

GLASS CAGE

•Transparency =Surveillance •Employee/ Colleagues •Manager •Image-Critical gaze of Consumers •Fragile •Brand easily tainted •Highlights on importance of emotional displays and appearances

GLASS CAGE

•Deeper controls •Cultural •Ideological •Structural •Technological •Spatial

GLASS PALACE

•Container of highlighting its distinctive features •Hide the reality of entrapment •Fantasy •Emphasize on what it has rather than the constraints

Flexibility vs. Rigidity  Flexibility applies to individual, organizations and entire society  Antidote to Weberian Bureaucracy.  Consumption: mass forms vs. niches; technological determinism vs possible technological choice; differentiated, de-skilled jobs vs. de-differentiated, multiskilled jobs; fundamental relation vs. complex and fragmentary relations  Whether Weber’s and Freud’s analyses apply to our time?

Problems with Flexibility Flexibility promotes short-term, opportunistic outlook among employees. Undermines trust and loyalty insecurity and fear Spasmodic and fragmented careers Employees lose and confuse on the goals and direction

STRENGTHS

1.

Efficient

2.

Systematic set of rules, Control

3.

Vertical chain of command, Unity form of direction

4.

Fixed Monetary Salaries Fairness

WEAKNESSES

1.

OligarchyIron Cage

2.

Inflexibility, Internalization

3.

DeHumanizatio n

4.

•Irrationality Weakening of Traditional & Religious Moral Authority – Values Of Efficiency Pre-dominate

Critics on glass cage/palace  Controls operating through language, emotion, space and exposure (Same efficient as iron cage?)  New forms of entrapment and opposition  Intrude into people’s privacy (Enclosure to customer, fellow employee and managers)  Does transparency imply fair and just?  Any cultural conflict?  Bureaucracy still in the glass cage?  Aesthetic labor: value added or dehumanization?  Glass cage: a real transparency and openness?  Fragility of contemporary control system?  Is it applicable to the whole world?