Coneflict and co - operation in industry
- Bombay Directorate of Government Printing and Stationery 1976
- 169 p.
Under the auspices of the Joint Management Council, Government Central Press, Bombay, we recently published a set of papers by eminent experts on Labour Participation in Management. Participation is admittedly a complex and controversial subject on which expert opinion is sharply divided. The purpose of the present booklet is a very modest one, namely to unravel some of the basic issues related to the theme of participation. It can be regarded as complimentary to the set of papers mentioned above.
In the social sciences it is very difficult even to ascertain the facts and their interpretation can never be conclusive. Donald A. Schon has discussed this question with refreshing insight in his Beyond the Stable State. He points out that in social matters the perspectives of the key actors and observers are widely different and the situation is also constantly changing. He quotes the following passage fom Tolstoy's War and Peace in order to illustrate the dilemma inherent in the problems of management:
From the battle-field adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from his marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the progress of the action, but all these reports were false, both because it was impossible to establish what was happening at any given mom. it, and because many of the adjutants did not go U the actual place of conflict, but reported what they had heard from others; and also because while an adjutant was riding the couple of versts to Napoleon circumstances changed and the news he brought was already becoming false.