Managing Authority

The very idea of the term Management assumes that there is a need to manage things and there arises a need to control a set of people or organization.  A sense of power arises naturally when a scene of a certain set controlling a certain other set comes into action.

The question then is, how far is such a disperse practice of separate managing entities required and in what cases is it productive. Will the workplace of the future be still dependent on hierarchical management systems working on authorative pattern of management? Or will we transcend towards a more self managed and contributive world, where each one of us becomes a manager ourselves?

It cannot be denied that in places of group activities the focal point of management helps organizing of human skills and workflow. How does this change as we move more towards virtual management of human skills? and what quotient of authority is then required to control such social dynamics?

With recent emergence of virtual social spaces, it can be observed that a lack of any authority has not collapsed the communication structures. Take for instance social sites where people collaborate towards sharing information or communicating towards a better towards a closely related task. How would such situations react when an authority is introduced, and to what extent would the same flow of creative juices and actionable tendency exist?
If you compare the traditional authoritative management practice, with a virtual social space environment, differences are evident. The idea here is to identify if the newer method influences the workflow and productivity.Workflow here need not be just office work but the very concept of productivity through action.
For instance one key difference is that the social spaces do not have a fixed goal, and are most of the times a recreational activity, while the authoratively managed spaces have been traditionally focused on fixed results and measured process times to achieve the same, hence not generally considered recreational in one way by the worker. Hence the actions in such a space tend to look less like “ WORK” and more like  “Play”.
So what makes the social spaces interesting/conducive rather than purely functional? Does the lack of authority influence it in any way?
One principle virtual social spaces more or less function on between fellow workers is the “curiosity factor” or ability to peep through other individuals life.
For example in a virtual social space if some individual displays an element of his lifestyle the tendency of another individual who sees it to get influenced by it and respond in action is very high. The action may or may not contribute to the displayed individuals display, however it surely influences the displayers perspective towards the displayed element.
What is interesting to observe here, is that an action is triggered by the act of display in the social space in itself, and this characteristic of capacity to display socially without any authoritative intervention seems to be the critical benefit in non-authoritative management techniques.
If you draw parallels with a authoritative workspace, a similar curiosity factor always existed however is most of the times supressed and results in a gossip grapewine in one way. The only difference between the two is that while the former generates action by reciprocation or action, while suppressed grape-wines in authoritative work-spaces generate in-action ( reduction in productivity). This of-course cannot be decisively concluded, but the action of the former seems to be more positive towards contribution.

The key opportunity that we can see here is the capacity to influence action by display of an element of self. Also the capacity of the influenced action to re-influence the initial displayer.

Workspaces of the future then clearly should tap such behavioral traits by giving employees a non-authorative space to display their work, and providing other employees the capacity to respond to such displays. However such spaces should avoid any authoritative moderation as it clearly would reduce the very action of initial display. Even if need be for authorative measures to avoid miscreants, it should be kept under the hood, to avoid demotivation of initial display triggers.


Authoritative management practices have been effective throughout history in many spaces like armed forces or mass labour work. But when it comes to intellectual and creative work, such practices tend to create a quality leakage if practiced over a substantial level.
The level authority then becomes critical. As in case of intellectual or creative work authority that creates fear can generate redundant, non innovative and repetitive solutions.

Similar to virtual social spaces other practices of self management and making each individual responsible for their own actions makes individuals more contributing towards the net goal.
Defining the degree of freedom and the constants for each workspace, clearly brings in a feeling of ownership towards execution of work. When the amplitude of fear decreases between the manager and the employee the tendency towards more openness comes into work-flow.

However one aspect that authoritative management protects work-flow against is the state of mulitple power silo’s. In situations where multiple pillars of opinion block any action towards productive work, the existence of super powers or authority becomes critical.
In such situations if techniques of agreed upon protocols exist the situations look less tense for the workforce as the number of unknowns are limited.