Work at the World Bank

 

American Anthropological Association Dec 6.1980

PARTICIPATORY STUDY OF WORK AT THE WORLD BANK (note 1)

Dr. Doug1ass Carmichael

 

The main reason to study and help the bank is that it makes large c1aims about its role and capacity in development. This limits the human imagination of others outside the World Bank about how the large economies might help the weaker. McNamara's policies have become more progressive and have helped educate both the leaders of the more prosperous countries and the weaker countries understand the place and problems and lights of the poor. However the bank’s projects are open to criticism on a number of counts. The general thrust of the Bank in strengthening oligarchic and careerist trends at the cost of undermining the traditional cultures of the countries brings into question the whole idea of the bank.

 

 

Here is a quick sketch of what the Bank is. Its staff of four thousand here in Washington 18 divided into six geographic regions; West Africa. East Africa Latin America. East As1a. South Asia. and Middle East. There are also a number of support departments. The main work of the Bank is to help the less developed countries design projects for which the Bank can make loans to the country . The richer member countries guarantee the loans. but the operating expenses - the salaries - are paid from interest on the loans.

 

In 1975 I was invited to help a small committee in the Bank develop a system for managers to evaluate the work of their staffs. As I listened to these discussions over a period of two months I was struck by the absence of discussion of the work being evaluated. I was able to point out that it is hard to evaluate world if they do not discuss what the work is.

 

A representative of one of the departments at the meetings asked me if I wanted to try writing a report based on some consulting time. We started a d1a1og at that point, with my doing a extended series of open ended interviews over six months.

 

I began the project with what I had come to understand where some good ideas about work. participatory study, and human development. I wanted to see how far they could be taken in an admittedly difficult political, bureaucratic and professional context without getting thrown out for silly mistakes. These ideas were

 

1. Organizations and individuals live in historical time and can be understood better whan seen in the framework of history.

 

2. Erich Fromm's idea that social character means that people will be adapted to the requirements of work. By looking both at the character of the people and the work they do one is really looking at one system from two angles. this makes for a better chance of getting hold of the system's structure.

 

3. Michael Maccoby's work, following Fromm, showed that organizations are complex structures layered with different roles and filled by correspondingly different character types. Also. Maccoby has followed Fromm's lead in putting this in humane rather than technical language and the character types are now descried in their own terms, for example "Gamesman. and Craftsman" rather than hoarding and receptive.

 

4. Piaget, the Norwegian industrial Democracy project, the work of Eric Trist and Paulo Freire show that participation in the design and study of work is necessary for the development of mature people capable of decentering from their own egoistic point of view. This kind of study could help bring out the reality of the situation and prepare the way for work change based on values more congruent with western humanitarian thinking, as it has affected all of us, with better results than can be gained from technocratic planning imposed on alienated, passive, and unconscious staff .

 

The congruence between social development and individual development theories with their emphasis on participation, and the methods of participant observation in anthropology and psychoanalysis tie the approaches together. It is common sense that has been differentiated into diverse professions; in this case economics, management, anthropology and psychoanalysis. It is common sense applied to thinking through how to humanly organize the work to achieve the socially desirable goals.

 

I would like to give four vignettes showing some of the problems of the kind we came to discuss in the committee.

 

1. I interviewed a young economist. I asked him what he did. He said he worked on the economy of country x. -what will happen there? ," I asked. He said Such and such, but maybe so and so". I said it sounded like you are more interested in the second possibility." "Yes, probably true", he said. I asked him if he ever had conversations like this about outcomes with his co-workers.? “Oh, no, they would think it was silly." And yet its rea11y Important to you, "Yes, in fact I must tell you that eight years ago my wife and I had a discussion; I had been very successful in a small technical business and had made allot of money . We talked about the meaning of life and decided to look for a way to do something for development, so we came here, essentially for religious reasons. You know", he said, MI haven1 thought about this for about three years."

 

 

2. Another young economist. Same questions. “Do you talk about this with your colleagues?" Oh no, they would find it inexcusably maudlin. I have a clear sense of my career here, exactly what are the next steps. It would be out of place here to show that you were concerned at this level. No I never talk about the real situation as I see it."

 

I could add that their offices were side by side.

 

 

3. I went to a meeting called to present the results of the largest project ever undertaken by the bank. It was posted as a bank-wide seminar . Many people came, perhaps seventy-five. There were four panelists who each presented an aspect of the project. Of the four, one was critical and also was the only one to discuss the facts at a concrete level of observation, rather than in macroeconomics terms. Instead of talking of gross dollars loaned, he discussed what had happened to the local trained staff of the project, and how the project had increased the income of some of the richer farmers but hurt the situation of the poorer. After the meeting he was called by his boss and severely criticized; "You were supposed to be an advocate for this kind of project, not a critic." Yet it had been announced as a staff seminar on analysis of the project.

 

 

4. I was invited to attend the meeting of one vice president and his top staff. They discussed how they could be more helpful to the rest of the bank. Let’s ask them, said one. Great idea, so they formed a committee to go meet with the . regional vice presidential staffs. I was then able to attend the meeting of one regional vice president and his staff while they considered how to handle the upcoming meeting. “Let’s give them a list of topics that will keep them out of our main projects," said one. They made up the list and I was able to attend the meeting of the two groups. With great fom1al1ty and apparent friendl1ness they went through it. “What would be helpful?” “These would." “Oh excellent." "thank you." "thank you." I then went to the meeting where the group reported back. -We met and had an excellent discussion, frank and open, and here are the topics that interest them for us to work on with them."

 

 

Now, how to account for these demoralizing yet fam1l1ar kinds of behavior?

 

 

I wrote a paper1 based on the experiences with the committee and my own interviews and observation of meetings, and from discussions we had of those observations in a seminar I had started on the Quality of Work Life.

 

The paper suggested carrying out an experiment of in depth analysis of Bank work by a department or other group of people who normally worked together. One of the regionalv1ce-presidents responded. We began cautiously. Through informal but extensive participant observation it became clear that there was a1most no planning or development oriented discussions in this work force of about two hundred. After many discussions, we decided to try to open up the regional management to doing projects in a more planful way. We created, with a fair amount of thought, the ways to do that. It was based on my work with the staff which brought out the criticisms that the work was too random, with too much time devoted to crises, and that it was not as interesting as it could be. We concurred that meaningful discussions would help all around.

 

It worked well for about three months, then middle level managers began to balk. the VP got scared and stopped the experiment. What had happened? . Here we entered into the most structured participatory part of the study . Following the method used by the Norwegian Industrial Democracy project, we created a slice of the organization, a sample of staff from top to bottom. made the group into a committee with the participation open to anyone else in the department who wanted to come. We ran a reasonably democratic process of inquiry, beginning with what people thought were problems in the work.

 

After three months of weekly meetings we found that the failed participatory planning discussions were not adapted to the work because the work was organized like a factory around only the number of dollars loaned and the number of projects. In this situation managers felt like foremen on an assembly line with the responsibility of keeping people paced to the quantified projections. People actually experienced that their raising questions about development. the meaning of the projects, the result of the last ones, or expected outcomes, only slowed down the work of their colleagues, so they held back. This meant that the work was continually being stripped of its human s~n1ficance, both for the staff, and for development.

 

We found that what appears to go on and what really goes on are not the same.

 

From the staff economist’s point of view the planning process appears to be a struggle at higher levels in the bureaucracy over priorities, politics and personal favors. I often saw discussions about how a particular project must have been decided for or against. but in my observations of higher level meetings I could never find these imputed discussions. Slowly I began to see how the real p1ann1n process worked.

 

 

Imagine a matrix of --x" countries by --Y" project types (transportation, education, agriculture...) If we add a working assumption of balance; that each country should have an equitable number of projects and that each Bank work group should have about the same amount Or work. we arrive at the simple result of one project in each cell of the matrix. Since the time for a project to move through the paperwork and fieldwork takes about three years, the matrix represents the work of the next three years.

 

This model is not written down anywhere. It is not in a planning guide, nor is it even spoken about as such. But it is a description of upper management's intuition as to how the Bank’s working resources are most manageably distributed.

 

 

The country economists wrote papers to justify as plans projects already decided on. At first, we thought they were rationalizing a political process, whereas most often it was a technocratic one. This realization might allow the country economists to be more wi1l1ng to enter into a struggle for what they understand to be a better course of action.

 

This picture is a bit of a caricature, but it describes the underlying reality . The deviations that occur do so because a strong person, or a compel11ng series of factors, demand a project, or push hard against one, in a way that violates the implicit matrix:.. If a project is pushed into the matrix, or lifted out of it, it is felt to violate the smoothness and fairness of the project flow and is resisted by middle level managers because of the stress they feel it will put on their staff. It is also resisted by the vice-president because he feels that the anxiety of the middle level managers implies that it will weaken the chances that his staff will bring in the required number of loans to add up to the number of dollars the three year plan says they will lend for the year.

 

 

Take another aspect of how this plan takes on authority. in the Annual Report there is a graph showing how many dollars each vice-president loaned last year in his region, and how many he loaned the year before. So each is compared to the other. both in how many, and how many more than the year before.

 

Who decided that this graph should be there? Was it a decision by the President and his staff discussing seriously how they wanted to affect the atmosphere in which the vice president’s worked, and what consequences might flow culturally from setting up such totems? No, it simply was designed in the publications office, and was accepted as a natural thing to have in a report.

 

So the result of my participation in the region led to the discovery of the factory system. It was not so obvious. What with the marble halls, and wood paneled rooms there were not the usual material clues of factoryness.

 

I would like to add that while clearly I do not think that the factory system is an adequate basis on which to manage the Bank, it is better than no basis at all. Since my work brought the factory system to my attention I have spent time observing the management of a number of progressive usually non- profit organizations. and found that they are worse. At least the factory system requires that people get together to discuss something of substance, even if it is low level. In the progressive organizations, management by crisis seems the dominant mode, and does even less to develop the staff than does the Bank.

 

My colleagues and I know, from the work done with Maccoby (THE GAMESMAN), that the better technology corporations do have a more open atmosphere of discussion and criticism. They must in order to respond to their markets.

 

 

This means that we have a kind of hierarchy of management-work requirements systems, from more to less integrated –

 

1. Companies rich in technology and innovation, with open planning and discussion.

 

11. Factory production, with limited communication about production.

 

111. Conceptual-policy oriented organizations without either a market or a production requirement; no discussion at all. . So, the basis in innovation, production, or policy, brings together, or falls to require bringing together. the staffs of the differing kinds of organizations, in a range from frank open and frequent discussions, to formal bureaucratic meetings with no substance.

 

 

Ok. That is the result of the participatory analysis. Does every accept it? No. There have been other attempts to explain the results, and the general bad morale.

 

The first of these is to blame nationality for the problem of communication, using the rationale that obviously people from different cultural backgrounds can't be expected to communicate. It is true that in a situation without a clear purpose people adapt with cultural stereotypes about how to handle job situations. The Americans more than the others, though most Europeans are close, handle the situation by being competitive and outspoken. But for those from other cultures the factory system brings out other possibilities, such as just doing what you are told. But if the situation changes, and there become real reasons to talk and cooperate, these same people will come forth easily with opinions and suggestions. There is no culture without some tradition of cooperation, so if there is a good reason to participate, cultural differences fade in importance. We saw this happen in the committees and in the slice experiment.

 

The second is that people say the reason good things don’t happen at the bank is because there are too many bad managers. In contrast what we suspect is that the situation makes managers behave in the way that they do and that they are responding to the situation; how can a manager be expected to put effort into developing his staff and innovating in development ideas when the work leads him to experience these as subversive? It may be true that there are many bad managers, but the only way to find out is to change the situation into one that requires good ones, provide some support. and see what happens.

 

The next is subtler, and fits the new situation where we have already d1ssem1nated allot of the analysis that you have heard. More progressive high level managers respond by declaring that they support innovation and want it to come from the managers under them, but they give no guidance as to how, no security if there are errors, nor resources in terms of money , time, or consultants to carry it out; they want the fruits of change without realizing that the change will challenge the system, must challenge the system, and can not reap any results without providing support. Their action really is saying that it is not the system that stands in the way of change, its simply lack of effort and 1n1tlative or imagination on the part of the staff. This is the phase the project is in at the Bank now, where a major effort has been under way to support “participative experiments", but without any explicit support from the top. You cant imagine how cautious everyone will be.

 

The Bank hires a number of anthropologists. How do they relate to this structure? They almost always say, “if only I could participate on a project team I could make a real contribution." Probably not. Because the project has been generated rather abstractly by the method of the matrix I described earlier, by the time the team is formed the project is already listed in the loan total for the region. So if an anthropologist joins a team which it is already known must come us with a certain category he would slow down the project because he would help discover some intransigent reality out there.

 

The other team members know this and are trying to contain the anthropologist by l1In1ting their role to “handling the social factor" Which means to keep it from interfering with the speed and simplicity, the do-ability , of the project.

 

Because I wanted to share these f1nd1ngs with them, I joined and helped a seminar for non-economics social scientists at the Bank: the sociologists and anthropologists. I had hoped that they would become colleagues in searching out the structure of the bank. the place where after all they worked, and desired to have an effect as anthropologists. But I was never able to break them loose from their strategy of getting included in the projects.

 

 

The analysis that we had worked out in other parts of the Bank indicated that the strategy for an anthropologist to have an impact on the bank's lending would be to become an advisor to the vice president and join into the planning process, or rather to help create one that could overcome the matrix model I described earlier. The place where the decision can be influenced occurs one or two years before the project gets to the point that a team is funded.

 

I found that it was not possible, given the career context, to interest them in studying the Bank.

 

 

So, the factory structure that we discussed l1m1ts the work and limits the consciousness. The only way to change it would be to sanction a different structure, with different requirements in the work. Only when the official structure of the Bank requires study and exploration of the results of development projects will the system change: people will adapt to the work demands as they experience them (or leave). If part of the bank could be set up to explore how this might occur It would be a really interesting experiment. It has been McNamara.s advance to stress the issues of equity and poverty, but he has not gone the next step. He has created new policies but he has not undertaken the management initiatives that would be necessary for the staff to respond with projects that could live up to them. Thanks very much for your attention.

1 A paper written entitled “Character and Work at the World Bank and possibilities for participation in the changing of work." June, 1976