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By Root 1637 0

ethos. Village markets, desert traders, and local artisans operated in these conditions long ago, independent operators unbound by formal organizational principles. Needless to say, the turnover rate at this factory is quite high (as is the incidence of missing limbs and major concussions), but no one seems to care because they have no health plan anyway and there are lots more workers waiting to take the place of the injured when they can no longer perform their jobs. These cultures, by their very nature, build little of the predictability and certainty that capital-based enterprise requires to thrive (you can’t get people on a TRIP if they are all going their own way). Few of these cultures survive today in any significant way, though, as we will see, remnants of their habits and behaviors do.

Factory Two’s culture treats safety as a matter of blind obedience. Blind obedience characterizes many of the traits we associate with early, industrial age capitalistic enterprises, the culture of the manufacturing facilities of nineteenth-century Europe and the old assembly-line factories of early twentieth-century America, as well as the culture of the feudal societies that preceded them. Labor was plentiful back then, largely unskilled or manual in nature, and jobs were few. Robber barons, industrialists, and monopolists fought to gain dominance over their spheres of influence, and ruled with an iron hand. In Factory Two, no one questions the boss and everyone does what they are told or faces the consequences. They do not necessarily understand why they wear those hard hats and blue pants, nor do they necessarily care. It is enough for each to achieve their individual goals, so they wear the blue pants and ask few questions.

Factory Three, as clean and efficient as it is, is infused with a culture of informed acquiescence. Informed acquiescence cultures are rules-based; those wishing to participate in the culture learn the rules and agree to abide by them. The rules are clearly spelled out for everyone, and workers either embrace the rules without qualm or spend time dancing with the rules as they try to make things work. Informed acquiescence cultures dominated twentieth-century capitalism, and for good reason. Rules-based cultures are efficient and scalable. In a top-down organizational model, management can issue directives and have them sift down through the organizational chart in predictable and controllable ways. As operations scale up, larger numbers of people can be trained and governed easily. The variables of individual behaviors are minimized. With organizational boxes clearly defined, they can be filled with qualified individuals who understand the box they have to fill, the rules of the game in which they fill it, and the road up the ladder to success. As such, informed acquiescence cultures tend to be management-oriented, with an established managing class and a well-entrenched bureaucracy.

Informed acquiescence represented a brilliant and innovative step forward from blind obedience. The majority of companies, until recently, ran fairly successful operations governed by these principles. People could share more information (albeit in controlled ways), had a much higher degree of certainty and predictability, could collaborate better, and for the most part knew just where they stood. Informed acquiescence expresses the highest goals of rationalism. It treats people as rational agents: people who like carrots and hate sticks, people who like to be motivated because motivation leads to concrete results. Rationalism takes an impersonal approach to the vast complexity that is human behavior, in all its complicated glory. It strives for a world that is more black-and-white and contains fewer shades of gray; thus it is easier to manage and simpler to control. Workers are rationally informed about what is expected of them, their reward is clearly articulated, and they, in turn, acquiesce to those rules and expectations. Informed acquiescence lets us set our sights and strive. Trillions of dollars of wealth and value