Lets start with an area I know very well, public education. The education of children is one of those duties not mentioned in the constitution and lies, therefore, in the domain of the states. Along comes the federal government sticking a foot in the door with programs providing money for free lunches and subsidized milk. Money is good. Food is good. Desegregation and Public Law 94-142 Education for the disabled are wonderful, they just didn't get fully funded.
Here we are in the 21st century and we have the Federal government dictating "adequate yearly progress," mandatory standardized testing, and all children at grade level by 2014. The micro management is insidious. Soon there will be national standards for public education, which, did I mention, is a function of the states.
Perhaps we can agree on some general competencies every child should have. I think high school graduates should be able to paint a realistic portrait in acrylics. They should be able to express a variety of emotions through multi media art. Graduates should be able to describe the color wheel and it's uses.
Some may think that this is not essential knowledge, but to a child with an artistic bent it is like food and water. The competencies that state standards require in the area of mathematics are unreasonable to me. Why can't I have expectations of competence in the arts? High schools in rural area teach animal husbandry. Should all high school students study agriculture? It is a pretty useful skill. Certainly more useful than calculus has ever been to me.
I truly fear national standards. Schools are already a trial for children with learning disabilities. Imagine if you couldn't graduate high school because you couldn't run the mile in under 10 minutes, or bake the perfect pastry? Does it make any sense?
So that is how I see the federal government heading toward micro managing education. Here is what I see in the workplace in general.
The people at the top are dictating every aspect of the jobs of underlings without any training or experience doing the underling's job. There is little trust in the worker. The worker has little to no input in the process. A big business is no longer a good place to work for anyone but the upper eschelon.
Again the government is also having it's say in how the worker does the job. Government regulations micro manage, executives micro manage, and quality systems measure, measure, measure. Does any of this impact the outcome?
I would argue that the best indicator of the health of a company is the morale of it's workers. When workers feel needed, trusted, and valued, they will make a good product and provide excellent service. Angry, fearful, undervalued workers have other things on their minds. quality and service come second or even third.
The belief that you can control the work you do is essential to job satisfaction. When workers are micro managed they lose that sense of control over their work.
In Beyond money: toward an economy of well-being (2004) Martin E. P. Seligman argues that job satisfaction is decreasing.
Domestic policy currently focuses heavily on economic outcomes, although economic indicators omit, and even mislead about, much of what society values. We show that economic indicators have many shortcomings, and that measures of well-being point to important conclusions that are not apparent from economic indicators alone. For example, although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust.Will the current economic situation caused by incompetent management at the top serve to further the oppressive micro management of the American worker? Will the failure of top management serve to strengthen indusry's reliance on the worker as expert on his/her job? Will workers quit working as employees and become self-employed consultants?
Stay Tuned.
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