The Organization Man Page 27
Because it is small, the small firm has one potential advantage over the big one. It can’t afford big research teams to administrate or interlocking committees to work up programs, and it doesn’t have a crystallized company “family” to adjust to. Because it hasn’t caught up yet with modern management, to put it another way, it provides an absence of the controls that make the scientist restive. Few small corporations have seized the opportunity, and at this writing there is no sign they ever will. But the opportunity is there.
CHAPTER 17 The Bureaucratization
Let’s turn now from the corporation to academia, for here we can more clearly see the root of the problem. If the academic scientist is seduced, it cannot be explained away as Babbitt versus the intellectual, the pressures of commercialism, or the managers’ misunderstanding of science. Nor can it be blamed on want of talent; there may not be enough quantity, but every man-power survey has shown that so far as quality is concerned, science has been attracting the top slice of our youth.
Yet every one of the trends to be found in corporation research can be found in academic research, and with consequences far greater. There is the same bent to applied rather than fundamental research, the same bent to large team projects, the same bent to highly systematized planning, to committees and programs. Like his brother in management, the scientist is becoming an organization man.
To say that the incubus lies in organization itself would be partially correct, but it would also be somewhat futile. Must the metamorphosis of the scientist be inevitable? The shift from the entrepreneurial to the administrative has been to a large degree a necessary response to the needs of our times, and science cannot remain isolated from it. But it is not the fact of bureaucratization itself that is the central problem. The central problem is the acceptance of it. In no field, except the arts, does the elevation of administrative values hold more dangers, yet in this respect science is not even fighting a holding action. To the contrary, the people in the foundations and the universities are reinforcing these values, and by reinforcing them, further molding the scientists to the organization image. Not purposely, no, but this makes it only the worse.
Fundamental versus applied research? It is a truism among American scientists that we have lacked a strong tradition in fundamental research, that we have been borrowing our ideas from Europe, that we can no longer count on the flow of scientific immigrants from abroad, that we urgently need, in short, to create a climate in this country that will encourage basic discovery. And every year, much as in the businessman’s plea for the humanities, ideal and practice grow further apart. Of the roughly four billion dollars now being spent on scientific research in this country, approximately 95 per cent is for applied research.
The government has become the major patron, for almost half the research money available in the U.S. is in the form of contracts given out by government agencies, principally the Atomic Energy Commission and the Office of Naval Research. Some very enlightened men have directed these agencies, and considering the pressures under which they must work—secrecy requirements, the need to justify research in terms of national defense—most scientists believe they have fought a very good fight. But they have been able to go only so far; under the watchful eye of Congress, they have spent roughly 93 per cent of the total $5.6 billion distributed in 1953, 1954, and 1955 on applied rather than fundamental research. There has been slight improvement; in 1955 the proportion devoted to fundamental research went up to 7.3 per cent (from 6.6 per cent in 1954).
It can be argued that the proportion is not crucial, because the government sums are now so huge that there is more, in absolute dollars, available for fundamental work. But the proportion is crucial. The government monies have not been simply an addition to regular academic research; they have altered the whole structure of it. The universities once conceived themselves as sanctuaries for fundamental work, but the magnetic attraction of government funds has been irresistible.
As the universities have accepted more research contracts, they have relinquished control over the direction of research. The government sets the tune; committees responsible to it specify the problems, pass on the work, and appoint the personnel. The universities provide the setting and the essential housekeeping services. University scientists still do most of the research, but increasingly the allegiance of many is to the “research center,” a quasi-academic institution which draws its heat and light from the university, its directions from elsewhere.
The wartime demands of patriotism that justified such diversions to the universities are now gone, but the growth has kept feeding on itself, amoebalike. The more such centers there are in a university, the more likely the university is to get additional contracts, and as a result there has been a concentration of research energy more pronounced than in the corporations. Of the 225 colleges and universities receiving research contracts five have received about as much money as the other 220 put together.
Government research directors themselves have been somewhat disturbed by the acquiescence of the universities. A man well qualified to speak on the matter, E. N. Piore, former Director of the Office of Naval Research, has publicly argued that the universities should look far more zealously to their own interests and bargain well over the conditions on which they will accept money from government, and industry too, for that matter. “The universities,” he puts it simply, “have got to stiffen their backbones.”
Individual versus collective work? The marked shift to group work is closely related to the emphasis on the applied, for such research puts a premium on highly directed, co-operative effort. It is also related to the wartime “project” approach, and, hopefully, some observers believe that the impulse may therefore soon be on the wane. But there is, unfortunately, more to it than that. The war undoubtedly was a factor, but it only accentuated a trend to collective research long in the making.
The learned journals furnish a yardstick. Look at the issues of thirty or forty years ago and it is difficult to find a paper worked up by more than one man—or, at least, signed by more than one. This is true no longer, and a check of the way group authorship has increased demonstrates that it has not been a sudden, wartime phenomenon but a generational shift.
As a rough index, I have checked all of the papers published in six social-science journals for three periods: The years 1920-22, 1936-38, and 1953-55. With the exception of the American Economic Review, in all of the journals there was a notable increase in the number of papers written by two people, and there was an even sharper increase in the number written by teams of three, four, five, or more. No one, of course, can specify any “right” proportion, which in any event would vary from discipline to discipline—applied psychologists, for example, must of necessity do more group work than political scientists. The basic trend, however, transcends disciplinary lines; a considerable increase has been common to all, and though the rate of increase jumped after the mid-thirties, the change in fashion had already started in each of the disciplines.
The chart on the facing page indicates the increase the journals show in papers done by two or more authors. (Chart is based on regular papers; I have excluded short notes, book reviews, and annual proceedings.)
In the physical sciences, the increases have been even sharper. Dr. George P. Bush of American University checked the technical articles appearing in Science for the years 1921, 1936, and 1951 to find what trend there had been away from individual authorship. In 1921, he found, 85 per cent of the papers were written by one man, all by himself, and none of the others was written by more than two men. By 1936 only 41 per cent were by one man; 46 per cent were by two men, and there were now beginning to be more multi-man papers: 9 per cent by three; 3 per cent by four men; 1 per cent by five. By 1951 the proportion of papers done by one man was down to 36 per cent, 38 per cent were by two and a good 26 per cent were by three or more men.
Some argue that these curves don’t show an increase in group work so much as an increase
in frankness about it; where senior men used to hog the whole show, this argument goes, they are now more disposed to give due credit to associates who work with them. Whether this is true—or whether, as others would argue, it is now a case of the senior man riding his subordinates’ backs—the increases still reflect a significant shift in the climate. Group work is fashionable, and if people are franker, it is because the climate almost compels them to be.
It is not that there has been an increase in the kind of people by nature suited to group work. The change has been in the environment of research, and its molding effect is felt by all. In degree, of course, there are great differences. The outstanding genius would not prostrate himself before the group; the mediocre would do it whether anyone asked him to or not. But in between these extremes lies the great bulk of our scientists, and they, just as much as the junior executives, have had to acclimate themselves to the organization way. And just like the junior executives, they have over-compensated. The principal features of organized research—emphasis on methodology, research design, and planning by committee —are not of themselves wrong, but they have now become so venerated as to be destructive.
Planning by committee, for example, increasingly, scientists are using committees not just to carry on or supervise research but to decide what it is that should be researched. In social science, for example. it is now customary to bring “inter-disciplinary” groups together for a two- or three-day conference, the fruit of which is a paper indicating a rough priority for the problems that should be looked into and the areas where discoveries could best be made. The scientists, of course, have no intention of blocking off other lines of inquiry, but the effect of such committees can often be in this direction. Congressman Reece and the American Legion notwithstanding, these committees do not form a tight, interlocking directorate; they are, by and large, nothing more than a reflection of the concentrations of influence normal in the academic world. But for that very reason, the ambitious younger man—and scientists are just as ambitious as anybody else—takes his cues from these guides, and those who prefer to look into questions unasked by others need a good bit of intellectual fortitude to do so.
In stating the problems to be attacked, fund-givers overlook the fact that the first-rate man has a prior intellectual commitment. Occasionally this intellectual commitment will mesh accidentally with the project, but more often the project will divert him from his real interest. Recently, twenty top men in a particular field were brought together to hear the chairman of a great fund describe its plans for the future. One of the scientists recalls the feeling of unease that spread among them. “I knew most of them and I knew that about eight of them were on the verge of some really important work. But the chairman gave no indication that he was at all interested in what they had done before. He talked about starting fresh; all his plans were for new projects, new questions. He meant very well, but we couldn’t help but feel that the work he was going to finance would be in the long run a net subtraction.”
In stating the problems, the committees are usurping the basic role of the scientist. How do they know that theirs is the problem to be attacked? In applied as well as basic science, many advances have succeeded because they by-passed the problems the majority thought were most pressing. When Frank Whittle first presented his idea for a jet engine, he was met with a massive indifference from the scientific bureaucracy; they were interested in new problems, but the kind of new problems they were interested in were better pistons, improved propellers, and the like. For the very reason that his idea was brilliant, it failed to mesh with the ideas of the fund-givers of the time, and it got support only because a few men, like Launcelot Law Whyte, decided to back the man. “There is a clue here of wide significance,” says Whyte. “The most fertile new ideas are those which transcend established, specialized methods and treat some new problem as a single task…. Co-operative groups, from great industrial concerns to small research teams, inevitably tend to rely on what is already acceptable as common ground, and that means established, specialized techniques.”
Here is one activity where committee “expertise” is an obstacle. In a committee which must “produce” something, the members must feel a strong impulse toward consensus. But if that something is to be a map of the unknown country, there can hardly be consensus on anything except the most obvious. Something really bold and imaginative is by its nature divisive, and the bigger the committee, the more people are likely to be offended.
At this vital moment, the moral responsibility one feels to his colleagues becomes a downright hindrance. A committee member might be inclined to support an idea, but he is also not inclined to put up the fight for it that will be needed. He is constrained by good will. He feels an obligation to his fellow committeemen, who are, after all, only trying to do a good job, like himself. So he compromises, not from mere timidity but from a real desire to show respect for the opinion of others. Even if he has trouble mustering up the respect in some cases, his good will may make him feign it. He has immediate social as well as professional considerations to think of, and throughout any meeting there runs a tacit dialogue that often has very little to do with the ideas being discussed. Who won the last argument? Is this wrangling going to shove us into a night meeting? We voted down Professor So-and-So the last two times; aren’t we being a little hard on him? When the minutes get written up, this groping for consensus is left out, but the thin, gray residue is not.
There are a few other activities where committees are even less desirable, but the use of them has become so reflex that the thought of using individuals is hardly even considered. If you want a candid appraisal of a group’s performance, a committee is about the most ineffective vehicle, much less a committee composed of the members of the club. Presumably, the virtues of participation offset the inhibitions, and the self-study group has now become a fixture. In a recent test of this principle, the Ford Foundation gave $50,000 apiece to each of five universities for a self-study of their work in the behavioral sciences. For a year, committees and subcommittees and visiting committees met and correlated, and at length five massive documents were produced. The result was thoroughly conventional: in most cases, the really tough issues were noted rather than explored, and the strong implication was that few things were wrong that more financial support couldn’t cure. The only trenchant analysis that $250,000 produced was a supplementary report. It was written by one man.
Companion to the team project and planning by committee is the blight of “research design.” Instead of being joined together in a flexible arrangement which allows the scientist to follow his own side roads, project members are bound up in a highly detailed, prefabricated master plan of research. In highly applied or urgent research, like making a radar, this discipline is valuable in keeping people focused on the matter in hand, and in any research some coherence and direction is necessary. Too much, however, and the scientist is kept focused on the outward and, in many respects, secondary matters.
To the academic administrator, these are not secondary. The ad-minstrators are necessary men, sometimes wise ones, but there is nonetheless an antithesis between the virtues dear to the administrator’s heart and the conditions of discovery. Order, clearly outlined direction, precise reporting, tidiness—all these things that are so important in housekeeping and organization are the very things which can make one bridle at the aimless, messy, out-of-program, trivial curiosity that is so wonderfully practical.
As a scientist, the administrator or committeeman knows well the value of unfettered inquiry. But he is now something of a supervisor as well, and one of the most difficult things for a supervisor to do is not to supervise. In fund-giving the opportunities for close supervision are narrow; the only place where the committeeman can have any leeway to pull his oar is in the area of research design. A scientist who has sat on many grant committees, Johns Hopkins’s Curt Richter, put the problem to his colleagues this way:
We pick out the one ta
ngible part of the application—the experimental design—how the man plans to work out his project. We are asking more and more questions. Aware of this, applicants elaborate their designs in more and more detail. A vicious cycle has set in. In making application for a grant before World War II, a few lines or at most a paragraph or two sufficed for the experimental design; now it may extend over six to eight single-spaced typewritten pages. And even then committee members may come back to ask for more details. Under these circumstances, passing the buck has come to be practiced very widely. Projects are passed from committee to committee—to my knowledge, in one instance six committees—largely because at no place along the line did anyone believe that he had adequate information to come to a firm decision.
In part, research design is due to a positive quality in the scientist turned administrator. He wants to be constructive. Many feel uncomfortable playing the passive role of middleman of funds; to fully discharge their responsibility, they feel they themselves should play an active role. They should initiate a new line of inquiry, list the problems that should be investigated, and instead of waiting for people to come to them, go out, find people and bring them together on a specific project.