【观点】管理是专断还是民主，如何选择

导言

我们容易忽略了一门更基础的课程：大型人类组织是层级组织，以及人类层级组织是专制体系，这门课程既简单又重要。也许我们忽略它是因为，就像我们周围的空气一样，这个真理如此自然我们竟然没有注意到它，或者也许我们不想承认它。

一、职权赋予管理者权力也使人孤立

有阅历的管理者明白新上任的管理者通常没有层级的观念：他们的组织就用正式职权敲打他们。他们知道职权附着在管理角色上就像皮肤附着在身体上。

经验丰富的管理者也明了其他事。他们明白尽管职权赋子他们权力，同时也孤立了他们。他们的职权筑起一道无形的墙，通常这堵不透风的墙把他们和上级及下级不公正地隔离开了。在下级面前，而不是在上级面前，他们永远不能示弱。没有人跟经验丰富的管理者说过这些事情。他们非常注意他们与上级之间的层级差距，尽管有些人好像没有意识到他们与下级之间的差距有多大。

新的公司管理者通常没有上过这样的职权课，至少是没有公开上过。但是在一些挫折之后，甚至是当他们没有积极地使用他们的职权时，大部分人知道了他们把职权加于别人之上，以及其他人把职权加于他们之上这个不变的事实。虽然，他们知道职权是固定不变的，但是，看不见的现实通常是通向学习适当地处理层级职权所句含的损失和利益的第一步。 CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

在我们急于教授参与式管理的人性和生产率优点时，我们忽略了一门更基础的课程：大型人类组织是层级组织，以及人类层级组织是专制体系，这门课程既简单又重要。也许我们忽略它是因为，就像我们周围的空气一样，这个真理如此自然我们竟然没有注意到它，或者也许我们不想承认它。

然而，不管是新手还是老手，所有管理者都必须时刻注意他们生活在职权的大环境中这样一个现实。当你走过任何一家大公司的门前时，你就会立刻感受到职权的存在。从公司总部的结构和装饰格调以及办公室的大小,甚至通过地毯都明显地表现出来。如果就这一普遍存在的现实，我们教授了更多的相关的内容，也许新的管理者在参与式方面的经历就不会与整体的职权层级冲突了。

二、职权滑向专断的危险

在我们这个开明的时代，人们非常不喜欢炫耀职权。层级组织的专制主义与我们的社会民主价值观相冲突，所以大部分组织尽量模糊它们的专制本性。一些组织在这方面做得很好，它们打扮得像人人平等的民主组织，并且有少数几个组织做得甚至连它们自已都认为自己是民主组织了。但是它们不是民主组织，它们的管理者明白这一点。如果他们不知道这个，他们也会很快学会。 CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

由于存在这种矛盾，管理者新手容易感到模模糊糊的不安。他们的公司不断地给他们传递相互矛盾的信号，公司把人送去进行人性化和反专制主义的培训研讨会，接受关于“团队建设”“积极倾听”和“指导”的培训以学习各种人性化技能。通过这样或那样的方式，他们模糊了他们组织潜在的专制主义基础，这就像一扇玻璃门，许多新的管理者以为它不存在，直到撞到上面。

不管如何美化它，层级职权一直存在。就像水对鱼样，职权是管理者摆脱不掉的、永恒不变的手段，它巧妙地塑造管理行为的每一个方面。然而,不管是向上还是向下，职权都一直起作用。

管理者对组织中的人进行评估的困境

许多管理者对组织的挤压感到不舒服。像我们大家一样，他们也是在民主的环境中成长起来并且拥有很强的平等主义价值观。他们不把专制主义方法视为对待同类的道德的和有效率的方法，至少在表面上是这样，他们的组织看起来也有同感。 CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

所以一切看起来都很好，直到管理者遭遇到层级双重人格的另一面。这些管理者突然被告知，他们必须解雇团队里的三个人，这些人曾经跟他们一起成长当组织催促时，他们断绝了工作关系以及温暖如亲人般的关系。

接着是令人讨厌的绩效评估，现在他们必须把人们分为二个等级，并告诉第三等的成员他们落后的原因。这就像你被命令告诉别人八岁的双胞胎你更喜欢其中哪一个。

许多年轻人，当他们走上管理岗位，都会经历以上所有这些不协调的模糊感觉。某种不适悄悄逼近他们，他们通常认识不到它的原因。当他们对下属进行绩效评估时他们遭受痛苦，当他们的上级对他们进行定期评价时他们再次感到痛苦。就像人力资源部将去年的360度反馈计划转变为今年新的绩效评估计划一样，这种解决方案也许提供了“绷带”，但是不太可能解决实际问题。

其他任何系统化解决方案也解决不了这个问题，半个世纪以来，这些方案进入管理领域又迅速退出。

回溯到1957年，道格拉斯·麦格雷戈（Douglas McGregor）发表了一篇新的经典文献“对绩效评估的不安”。评价计划引起的许多问题，书中他详细阐述了其中的一部分。大约半个世纪以后，在2000 年《人力资源焦点杂志》（HRFOCUS）指出这种不安仍然没有减弱。这是不是因为我们许多人对评价他人的价值感到深深的不安？还是因为我们不得不面对面地把那些评价告诉他们（或被告知）？尽管我们很明白完全的平等主义是一个白日梦，但是我们仍然尊重我们这个社会的信仰：人人生而平等。 CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

董事会成员和 CEO 也是人。他们分享我们的文化价值观，因此许多人在这方面作了很多努力，而不仅仅是把组织的专制主义扫到地毯下面。他们努力减少职权的影响。他们建立组织把专制主义远远地推到后台，并且把民主行为大大向前推进，因此它们的经理很少被迫面对这种组织的双重人格。他们将组织精力集中在任务上而不是程序上、集中在做正确的事上而不是正确地做事上。但是他们不能始终是这样。

甚至是在最开明的组织中的经理们也不时地会发现他们自己陷入了个人价值观和组织永恒不变的专制主义之间的陷阱。层级职权的反民主特性就像管理者鞋中的沙子它不会引起剧痛，但是让人不舒服，使人不愉快，迟早我们会把它倒出来。

大型组织的少数管理者甚至都没有意识到这个困境，更别说因此而遭受痛苦了。他们不担心“民主地”做事。他们不是感到不安，而是沉醉于他们的职权中，他们喜欢发号施令甚至喜欢接受命令。当这些人在这方面做得太过分时，他们就变成了研究者所说的“职权人格倾向”。大部分这样的人最终激起了很多敌意行为，他们最终会陷入麻烦，这里的“最终”可能需要很长时间。他们无法获得他们需要的甚至是最小的社会支持以渡过难关。在组织中，人们比以前任何时候都更加相互需要。 CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

举一个例子：最近我受邀到一位 CEO 家里吃饭，他是家小的科技公司的 CEO 兼董事长。以下是他们遇到的问题，在这个问题上他认为我能帮助他：他说，他们公司最具创造性、最多产的并且专业方面也是值得尊敬的技术经理的品德非常“差劲”。但是同时与其他人相比，他给公司带来了更多的订单。他脾气不好，爱挖苦人。他经常贬低那些为他工作的人和他的同事。他经常当着许多人的面大声训斥这个员工或那个员工“傻子”或“笨蛋”。CEO说，他激怒了公司里的人，有几个有价值的员工威胁“与那个混蛋一起工作”还不如辞职。但是，亨利（Henry）工作非常出色,要是没有他，这个年轻的、正在成长中的、专制程度非常低的公司可能会陷人大麻烦。

这位CEO兼董事长想知道我如何看待他们的尝试性解决方案，这个方案就像他们公司一样是技术性的，案例中的公司是一家化学公司。他希望我帮助说服享利采用“Prozac（百忧解）养生法”。他们认为这样可能会使他变得温和。我没有答应我没有见过享利，我也不想就那件事跟他谈话。没有我他们还是那样做了。

我不知道他们的解决方案起作用了没有，我敢肯定没有。我觉得迟早，那位 CEO 会在他的组织和那位有价值的但是极端我行我素的人之间行使他的职权。

三、管理是专断还是民主，如何选择

很多组织的领导者坚守道德的“高地”,其中包括许多勇敢的专制的民主主义者、执行者，他们积极自觉地运用他们的职权去建立专制程度低的制度。 CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

从一个最普通的角度看起来是自相矛盾的。由于一些组织专制的领导（通常是他们的创立者）是工业民主的忠实信奉者，所以它们变成了开放的参与式的、有社会责任感的公司。这些领导者利用他们的职权发动了他们信奉的非专制、以人为本的管理。他们建立的不是专制组织而是半民主组织，但却是通过半专制、严密管理的方法建立的。

组织的领导者，如那些专制的民主主义者，由于拥有职权他们会发现他们自己既是负重的又是受祝福的，负重是因为专制主义使他们良心不安。他们把自己当作自主的人，既不是他人的主人也不是他人的奴隶，既不控制别人也不受人控制。然而，他们也都是受祝福的因为他们已经获得了职位，通过职位可以行使更多的权力和职权，也是因为他们可以利用职权限制组织中的专制主义。他们可以利用它来最小化层级的沉闷影响并且增加与工业民主有关的事物的有利影响。但是通过所有这些方式，他们知道并且他们的下属也知道，他们并不能一直用这样的方式来影响组织。

当这种半民主的公司是现实的，当所有相关的人明白这个复合词中的含义时，他们的下属会明白他们必须努力工作、必须长时间工作、他们必须完成他们不喜欢的责任。然而，他们同时也经常地被那些困扰许多管理者的港在不适所折磨，这种不适来自人性化管理和层级的专制主义的同时存在，并且对他们施加了完全相反的压力。

翻译：

Is management arbitrary or democratic? How to choose

Introduction

We tend to overlook a more basic lesson: that large human organizations are hierarchical organizations, and that human hierarchical organizations are authoritarian systems, which is both simple and important. Maybe we ignore it because, like the air around us, this truth is so natural that we don’t even notice it, or maybe we don’t want to acknowledge it.

1. Authority empowers managers and isolates them

Experienced managers understand that new managers often have no sense of hierarchy: their organizations pound them with formal authority. They know that authority attaches to management roles like skin attaches to the body. CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

Experienced managers know other things, too. They understand that while authority empowers them, it also isolates them. Their authority creates an invisible wall, often an impervious wall that unjustly separates them from their superiors and subordinates. They must never show weakness before their subordinates, but not before their superiors. No one talks to experienced managers about these things. They are very aware of the hierarchical gap between them and their superiors, although some seem to be unaware of how big the gap is between them and their subordinates.

New corporate managers often don’t get such authority lessons, at least not publicly. But after some frustration, even when they do not actively use their authority, most people learn the immutable fact that they put authority over others, and that others put authority over them. Although they know that authority is fixed, invisible reality is often the first step toward learning to deal appropriately with the losses and benefits of hierarchical authority.

In our rush to teach the human and productivity benefits of participatory management, we overlook a more fundamental lesson that is as simple as it is important: that large human organisations are hierarchical and that human hierarchical organisations are authoritarian. Maybe we ignore it because, like the air around us, this truth is so natural that we don’t even notice it, or maybe we don’t want to acknowledge it. CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

However, all managers, novice or veteran, must always be mindful of the fact that they live in an environment of authority. When you walk through the door of any big company, you immediately feel authority. This is evident from the structure and decor of the company headquarters and the size of the office, even through the carpet. If we taught more about this universal reality, perhaps the new manager’s experience of engagement would not conflict with the overall hierarchy.

2. The danger of slipping into arbitrary authority

In our enlightened age, people strongly dislike showing off their authority. The absolutism of hierarchical organizations conflicts with our social democratic values, so most organizations try to obscure their authoritarian nature. Some organizations do this very well by dressing up as egalitarian democratic organizations, and a few act in such a way that even they think they are. But they are not democratic organizations, and their administrators know it. If they don’t know this, they will soon learn it. CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

Because of this contradiction, novice managers tend to feel vaguely uneasy. They are constantly being sent conflicting signals by their companies, which send people to humanization and anti-authoritarian training seminars, training in “team building,” “active listening,” and “coaching” to learn all kinds of humanization skills. In one way or another, they blur the underlying absolutism of their organization, which is like a glass door that many new managers thought didn’t exist until they bumped into it.

No matter how it is glamorized, hierarchical authority has always existed. Like water to fish, authority is an inescapable, immutable tool that subtly shapes every aspect of management behavior. However, authority always works, both upward and downward.

The dilemma of managers evaluating people in their organizations

Many managers are uncomfortable with the squeeze on their organizations. Like all of us, they grew up in a democratic environment with strong egalitarian values. They do not regard the absolutist method, at least on the surface, as a moral and efficient way of dealing with their kind, and their organization seems to feel the same way.

So everything seems fine until the manager encounters the other side of the hierarchical dual personality. These managers were suddenly told that they had to let go of three people on their team with whom they had grown up and who, at the urging of the organization, had cut off working relationships and warm, family-like relationships. CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

Then came the pesky performance reviews, where now they had to rank people into two levels and tell members of the third level why they were falling behind. It’s like being ordered to tell someone’s eight-year-old twins which one you like better.

Many young people, when they move into management positions, experience all these vague feelings of incongruity. Some discomfort creeps up on them, and they usually don’t recognize the cause of it. They suffer when they give performance evaluations to subordinates, and they suffer again when their superiors give them regular evaluations. Just as HR turned last year’s 360-degree feedback program into this year’s new performance review program, this solution may provide a “bandage,” but it’s unlikely to solve the actual problem.

Nor can any other systematic solution, which has entered the field of management for half a century and quickly exited it. CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

Back in 1957, Douglas McGregor published a new classic, “The Unease with Performance Evaluations.” The evaluation program raises many questions, some of which he elaborates in the book. Almost half a century later, in 2000 HRFOCUS magazine noted that this unease has not abated. Could this be because many of us feel deeply uneasy about judging the worth of others? Or is it because we have to tell them (or be told) those comments face to face? While we know full egalitarianism is a pipe dream, we honor our society’s belief that all men are created equal.

Board members and ceos are people, too. They share our cultural values, so many put a lot of effort into that, not just sweeping the absolutism of the organization under the carpet. They tried to reduce the influence of their authority. They build organizations that push authoritarianism far into the background and democratic behavior far forward, so that their managers are rarely forced to confront the dual personality of the organization. They focus their organization on tasks rather than procedures, on doing the right thing rather than doing the right thing. But they can’t always be like this.

Even managers in the most enlightened organizations occasionally find themselves caught in a trap between their personal values and the immutable absolutism of the organization. The anti-democratic nature of hierarchical authority is like sand in the shoes of managers it is not painful, but it is uncomfortable and unpleasant, and sooner or later we will pour it out.

Few managers in large organizations are even aware of this dilemma, let alone suffer from it. They don’t worry about doing things “democratically.” Rather than feeling insecure, they reveled in their power and enjoyed giving orders and even taking them. When these people take this too far, they become what researchers call “authority personality tendencies.” Most of these people end up provoking a lot of hostile behavior, and they end up in trouble, and the “end” here can take a long time. They don’t have access to even the minimal social support they need to get through it. In organizations, people need each other more than ever before. CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

Here’s an example: I was recently invited to dinner at the home of the CEO and chairman of a small technology company. Here was the problem he thought I could help him with: His company’s most creative, productive, and professionally respectable technology manager, he said, had a “poor” moral record. But at the same time, he brought more orders to the company than anyone else. He has a bad temper and is sarcastic. He often belittles those who work for him and his colleagues. He often shouted at this or that employee, in front of many people, to be “stupid” or “stupid.” The CEO said he had angered people at the company, with several valued employees threatening to quit “working with that asshole.” But Henry did a great job, and without him, this young, growing, very authoritarian company could have been in big trouble. CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

The CEO and chairman wanted to know what I thought of their tentative solution, which was as technical as their company, in this case a chemical company. He wanted me to help persuade Henry to adopt a “Prozac regimen.” They thought it might soften him up. I didn’t promise that I hadn’t met Henry, and I didn’t want to talk to him about it. They did it without me.

I don’t know if their solution worked, I’m sure it didn’t. I think sooner or later, that CEO is going to have to exercise his authority between his organization and that valuable but extremely loose end.

3. Is management arbitrary or democratic, how to choose

The leaders of many organizations hold fast to the moral “high ground,” including many brave authoritarian Democrats and executives who actively and consciously use their authority to establish less authoritarian institutions. CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

It seems paradoxical from the most ordinary point of view. Because some organizations’ authoritarian leaders (usually their founders) are believers in industrial democracy, they become open, participatory, and socially responsible companies. These leaders used their power to unleash the non-authoritarian, people-centered governance they believed in. They set up not authoritarian organizations but semi-democratic organizations, but through semi-authoritarian, tightly managed methods.

The leaders of organizations, such as authoritarian Democrats, find themselves both burdened and blessed by the power they hold, burdened because authoritarianism weighs on their conscience. They regard themselves as autonomous beings, neither masters nor slaves of others, neither controlling nor controlled by others. However, they are also blessed because they have acquired positions through which they can exercise more power and authority, and because they can use their positions to limit authoritarianism in the organization. They can use it to minimize the dreary effects of hierarchy and increase the beneficial effects of things associated with industrial democracy. But in all these ways, they know and their subordinates know that they can’t always influence the organization in this way.

When this kind of semi-democratic company is realistic, when all the people involved understand the meaning of this compound word, their subordinates will understand that they have to work hard, they have to work long hours, and they have to fulfill responsibilities that they do not like. At the same time, however, they are often afflicted by the same discomfort that afflicts many managers, which comes from the simultaneous existence of humanized management and hierarchical absolutism, and exerts diametrically opposite pressures on them. CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）

本文由CXO UNION-CXO联盟（cxounion.cn）转载而成，来源于领教工坊，作者：哈罗德·莱维特；编辑/翻译：CXO UNIONCXO联盟小U。

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