(This is a guest post by John Fletcher. John is an Englishman now resident in Europe, with a long career in the public sector in several countries. He has spent a good deal of time in working environments outside the Anglo-Saxon world, and has written and lectured on organizational issues.)
Contemporary management is authoritarian, hierarchical and unconcerned as long as the money keeps rolling in. Now times are tough, its weaknesses are becoming apparent
There was a lot of excitement in the blogosphere recently about various reports of the increasing use of Macintosh computers in business. Now this is a management blog, not a technology one, so I’ll simply say that, as a confirmed Mac user, I was delighted to hear it. But the really interesting question is whether the move to Macs is just another purchasing decision — or whether it tells us anything about the way in which organizations themselves are changing.
Some stereotypes are at least partly accurate. PCs are often bought by anally retentive accountants, and Macs are often used by creative types. Bill Gates wears a suit. Steve Jobs doesn’t. But there’s more to the comparison than that.
The PC operating system is authoritarian, hierarchical and completely closed. It does things in ways which are arbitrary and difficult to understand, but must be followed implicitly, or the system will crash. It pesters you with things you don’t want to know, but it gives you no useful help or information when things go wrong. It’s just like the modern Anglo-Saxon organization, in fact. The Mac’s operating system isn’t perfect, but it does at last treat the user like an intelligent human being.
Likewise, the PC’s operating system is proprietary and closed, and battalions of itchy-fingered patent lawyers stand ready to keep it that way. The new Mac operating system, OS X, is built on a foundation of UNIX, a free, open-source, and less hierarchical system that has been added to and modified by teams drawn from academia and government, as well as the private sector, for decades.
The financially-driven corporate model
Most of all, Microsoft (Micro$oft to many) is the epitome of the late-model financially driven company, with its ‘take-what-you’re-given and pay-what-you’re-told’ style of operation. Its aim is to develop the most complete monopoly it can, and then to shake down the customer for every possible last penny. It doesn’t care if it’s liked or if it’s hated as long as the money keeps rolling in.
Criticism of Microsoft therefore amounts to criticism of an entire contemporary economic system; conversely, buying an Apple computer is the closest most Americans ever get to voting for a left-of-center political party. Together, perhaps, these things explain why the American finance and technology establishments hate Apple so much.
Microsoft itself is being nibbled away at from different directions these days, but then so is the whole finance-driven model of which it is an example — a model which treats employees, and even customers, like temporary files on a drive, to be deleted when no longer needed.
The famous ‘Macjob’ system1, so typical of modern business practice, may be highly profitable to a company, just as Windows is; but, like that benighted piece of software, it doesn’t actually perform very well.
Cheap isn’t always best
Companies which live or die by doing things cheaply (Dell is an example) are suffering now, especially in the US. Apple, on the other hand, is not really an American company in the modern sense. Whilst it has its problems, it more closely resembles the Japanese and European companies which destroyed the US and British motor-car and consumer electronics industries. Their products may have been more expensive, but they actually worked, and the companies themselves saw the customer as something more than just a victim to be exploited.
What’s especially interesting is that the demand for Macintosh computers is not the result of some great change program directed from above, but comes directly from employees themselves, fed-up with using an operating system whose only virtue is that it is profitable for its manufacturers.
An organization that used Macs would feel and behave rather differently from one that used PCs, so it would be nice to see all this as another sign that slash-and-burn management is on the way out now — because it’s clear that, like Windows Vista, it simply doesn’t work. That would mean the replacement of Macjobs more and more by Macs and Jobs. And that would be interesting.
Technorati Tags: corporate systems, financially-driven organizations, low-cost approaches, Hamburger Management, management myths, organizational change
- The idea of the MacJob comes from the MacDonald hamburger place, where workers are extensions of a vast, very sophisticated information and food-management system. The system is not an extension of their work, let alone their creativity or judgment; they are extensions of it. [↩]
June 6th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I’ve been a MAC owner less than a year. I’m no technophile; I like my MAC because it just works. I like a computer which will work for me. I don’t enjoy working for a computer.
June 7th, 2008 at 6:19 am
While I’m not a Mac owner, I have liked much of their concepts. I use a PC, but running Linux, a “free” *NIX OS. Many companies and schools have toyed with Linux, but have been pressured to return to MS. In the end, OS desions are left up to the accountants.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Connecting business decisions to anything but ultimate cost is going to be inaccurate 99% of the time and binding it with a Mac vs. PC diatribe is misguided. “The PC operating system is authoritarian, hierarchical and completely closed.” Come on, the Apple cool-aid isn’t that good is it? The Mac OS is infinitely more authoritarian, equally hierarchical, and even more closed than Microsoft’s products. I can run Windows on every piece of hardware on the market, including the mac, for $150 if I buy an OEM version of Windows that forgoes the support contract. I can only run MacOS on a mac, and it costs more long-term ($99 an upgrade every few years. Windows Service Packs are free). How is Mac less authoritarian? I can do anything I want on a Windows box other than give the OS itself away. How is this any different than a mac other than on the mac I can’t do it on as much hardware? The hierarchical argument doesn’t even make sense. All Operating systems are hierarchical. It is the nature of technology. There is a popular quote that says something along the line of, “Those who don’t understand UNIX are doomed to rebuild it… poorly.” I am clearly missing the intended meaning of that statement.
The way in which windows does things is no more arbitrary and difficult to understand than a mac, it’s just different. Linux is the same way. It’s all opinion. They are not even different enough to where someone that has a fundamental understanding of what they are trying to accomplish can’t sort it out reasonably quickly. Windows XP has not crashed on me in years where it was the fault of the operating system. The only reason stability becomes an issues is if you’re running poorly written software (which there is more of on Windows because Microsoft makes their system easy for amateur software developers to write code on) or if you have a tendency to open email attachments or click on windows spawned by web browsers on versions of the OS that should have been updated (which it does automatically if you let it). I can crash MacOS as easily as I can crash Windows if I have the right software. Vista is a disaster but they’ll get it sorted out. A lot of the Vista problems are problems because Vista is less tolerant of poor coding choices made by the people writing software for Windows. The question is how much of their user-base they will lose to Linux and MacOS. The answer has nothing to do with business ethics though or a change in collective thought, it is because they built a poor product and no one wants it. Apple has done the same thing throughout the years and managed to survive. I imagine Microsoft will as well. You mention the Mac treating it’s users like intelligent human beings; however, the MacOS hides the UNIX that makes it work. This isn’t treating the user like an intelligent human being. It is dumbing down the OS for its users. You can get to the guts of both operating systems equally when you need to and it is a matter of opinion which one is easier to mess with.
Mac OS X is just as proprietary and closed as Windows is; they just have a better marketing department and build sexy hardware. The new Mac Operating system uses parts of BSD UNIX; however, to say it is open source is naive. The micro kernel, the UI code, and everything else that actually makes a Mac a Mac is as closed as anything Microsoft releases. The day organizations really start to change is when they start to modify the infrastructure that supports their desktop users to allow them the choice of what to use. That day is coming, but not because of ethics, it is coming because of cost. The technology that is allowing that to happen and the cost of that technology is what this article should focus on, not a perceived change in people’s politics in the workplace and whether they use Macs because they’re artistic and progressive or PCs because they’re stodgy accountants. Instead this article pimps macs as if they are the device causing the change instead of just pointing out that they are a pleasant side effect of the choice that open technologies allow due primarily to their ultimate cost. Technology is driving the movement you’re seeing, not people. If you’re not running an Open Source Operating System (Linux, UNIX, whatever) then you are running in some kind of “authoritarian, hierarchical, and completely closed” environment. Just because you like it doesn’t mean it isn’t as closed as the alternative. The underpinnings of the corporate world are starting to run on truly open platforms though and that technology is what is allowing people the choice of what closed or open environment they run on their desk.
My point is this: Buying a mac isn’t the closest thing to voting left that you can get. It’s the same thing as running Windows in a prettier package. Apple is just as in it for the money and wants the monopoly just as bad as Microsoft does. It has the same element of ‘take-what-you’re-given and pay-what-you’re-told’ if not more so. Don’t believe me? Try using your ipod with software other than itunes. Try playing some of your DRM ridden songs from itunes on something other than an ipod. If you are able to do that it will be because of the “illegal” hacking of someone trying to make it so they can use the product they payed for the way they want to, not because the functionality exists. And it isn’t an accident that said functionality doesn’t exist. It’s vendor lock in, just like Microsoft, and it exists to create a monopoly and to make money. Mac OS and Windows are equally evil, Macs are just sexier; consequently, people are more willing to put up with their crap. The American finance and technology establishments don’t hate Apple, they just don’t like things that cause unnecessary complication. Time is money and it takes time to integrate competing platforms into an infrastructure. Anytime you have two vendors in place that require complication to achieve the same things you will get pressure to go with one or the other and historically Microsoft has been the easier and consequently cheaper choice. Open Source software has come a long way though and now companies are being offered competitive products for cheaper that accomplish the same thing and work reasonably well regardless of what infrastructure is in place. That means managing that infrastructure will be cheaper. Consequently you see Apple getting a little more traction in the business world because the underpinnings of the company don’t really care about what platform is accessing them anymore.
If I was a pessimist I would say that ‘macjobs’ could actually become more pervasive because of this. Companies are making decisions that make it so that not only are the employees irrelevant to the technical functionality of the industry, but so are their platform choices. I’m not that pessimistic; however, I really don’t think this has anything to do with organizational changes. It has nothing to do with macs being easier or more open or the people that choose to use macs getting more power in the world. It doesn’t have anything to do with management styles or some kind of consumer driven work environment. Certain technologies are becoming popular that are operating system agnostic and free. If you work in an industry that is fortunate enough to be affected by that technology then integrating different operating systems into it is easier and cheaper than it has been before. If that is your work environment, you’ll see people allowed to use what they prefer in some cases and what is cheaper in others. I would love for it to be an organization sea change that is causing the change we are experiencing; however, in reality it is still a purchasing decision. The cheapest solution for the underpinnings of the business world are Open Source technologies which just happen to work with Apple’s products and for the most part, that is what is driving the change you’re seeing, not Apple or the people that choose to use them.