blau, dynamics of bureaucracy, ch 4

48 I The Dynamics of Bureaucracy

relationships resulting from the introduction of performance

records had given rise to an organizational need, and a further

, change in social relationships met this need. In the process,

,,: several operating practices had been changed. None of these

developments constituted a return to an earlier state of equi

librium. and neither did the transformations within groups that

are the topic of the next chapter.

IV I COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

"The statistics, which show how many interviews and how

many placements each person in the section did, are passed around

to all interviewers. Of course, you look at them and see how you

compare with others. This creates a competitive spirit," explained

an interviewer in Department X. The form that this competition

took was determined by the specific work situation. It differed in

the federal and in the state agency, and variations existed even be

tween the sections of Department X.

In the federal agency, as we shall learn in Part II, each offi

cial was assigned specific cases; his work on them was independent

of anything his co-workers did. Extensive performance records

provided the major basis for ratings, and superiors made invidious

comparisons freely, criticizing the record of one agent by contrast

ing it with those of others. As a result. federal agents competed

with one another, in the manner in which trackmen compete, each

trying to outdistance the others. This type of competition differs

basically from that between salesmen trying to sell the same product

in the same territory. The success of anyone salesman may inter

fere with the chances for success of the others, since all depend

for their sales on the same market. Competing in this situation in

volves reaching a potential customer and selling him the product

before anybody else does. The competition between interviewers in

the state agency assumed this form. since the ability of each to

find jobs for his clients depended on the common, sectional pool of

available job openings. Inherent in this competition was a tendency

to monopolize job openings. just as competition for sales leads to

attempts to monopolize customers. Such a tendency could not have

arisen in the competition between federal officials. since their

performance was not dependent on common and limited resources.

In contrast to those in the federal agency. superiors in the state

agency emphasized that statistical records were not used to "com

pare interviewers with each other, but only with standards." How

ever, fluctuations in the conditions of the labor market made it

impossible to establish absolute standards of performance. As one

49

50 / The Dynamics of Bureaucracy

superior explained, "In each month, we look at the production, and

the average becomes the standard." Consequently, interviewers

were indirectly compared, and direct comparisons were, in fact,

also made. The fiction that records were not used for comparative

purposes was designed to discourage competitive efforts to monopo

lize job openings by hiding them from others, since this type of

competition, as distinguished from that which prevailed in the feder

al agency, interfered with operations. An examination of the extent

of such competition and its effects is the subject of this chapter.

Competitive Monopolization of Job Openings

There were seven interviewers in Section A and five in Section

B. 1 Within each section, every interviewer had the same duties.

The operating procedures of the two sections were similar, but

not identical. Requests for workers were received over the tele

phone throughout the day. Employers previously served by a cer

tain interviewer sometimes asked for him by name. In all other

cases telephone operators distributed requests for workers in a

given occupation among all interviewers in the appropriate section.

The order forms on which job openings were described were

arbitrarily (alphabetically) classified and deposited in five boxes

in Section A and in two boxes in Section B. The file boxes of Sec

tion A were located on the desks of five interviewers, who were

responsible for keeping them in order. An interviewer in this

section found some orders more conveniently accessible than others,

but he had the right to use, and did use, the orders in any of the

boxes in his section. The two boxes in Section B were moved from

desk to desk as needed.

The cards of clients waiting to be interviewed in each section

were arranged in order of their arrival. Whenever a member of a

section completed an interview, he called the next client in line

to his desk. After ascertaining the applicant's qualifications, he

searched the files for a suitable job. The scarcity bf job openings

was the major obstacle to making many placements.

Evaluation on the basis of statistical criteria of performance

induced interviewers to compete with one another for outstanding

placement records. This competition took the form of trying to uti-

Competition and Productivity / 51

lize job openings before anybody else could. An interviewer could

maximize his placements by sending a marginally qualified client

to a job, lest the opening beused by another interviewer before he

could find a fully qualified client, or by keeping job orders on his

desk, thus preventing others from discovering them in the file. These

and less legitimate devices were used, because performance rec

ords made interviewers so anxious to make many placements that

they were willing to employ illicit means to do so. One interviewer

gave the following account of illegitimate competitive practices: 2

When you take an order, instead of putting it in the box, you leave it on your desk. There was so much hiding of orders under the blotter that we used to ask, "Do you have anything under your rug?" when we looked for an order. You might leave an order you took on the desk, or you might leave it on the desk after you made no referral. ... Or you might take an order only partially; you write the firm's name, and a few things; the others you remember. And you leave it on the pad lof order blanksl. You keep on doing this, and all these orders are not in ffle box. You can do some wrong fillingout. For instance, for a rather low-salary job, you fill out "experience required." Nobody can make a placement on that except you, because you know that experience isn't required. Or, if there are several o~enings [on one orderl, you put the order into "referrals ([file category for filted job openings] after you made one placement. You're supposed to put it into "referrals," but stand it up, so that the others can see it. If you don't, you have a better chance of making the next placement than somebody else. And time and again you see four, five openings on one order filled by the same person. [Examination of files revealed one case where eight out of nine openings on one order had been filled by the same interviewer.]

The tendency to monopolize job openings forced interviewers

to watch one another's movements, not only if they wanted to hide

orders, but also in order to prevent others from doing so. Incidents

like the follOwing were frequent: Mrs. Adams had an order in her

hand, while another one was lying on her desk. Miss Akers, who

had gone through the file box, looked at the order on the desk over

Mrs. Adams' shoulder. When Mrs. Adams started to explain defen

sively, "I'm just trying-," Miss Akers interrupted her, "I'm just looking at it."

A former member of Section A described the atmosphere there in these words:

They are so competitive, an order never stays in the box. Most of the time, they leave the order on their desk. and fill it


right away. Or what happens is that you write an order, and before youlve finished writing it. somebody else will tear it out of your hand. That's terrible. I don't like to work that way. I want to have confidence in the others, and don't want to feel they watch me all the time. If I feel that I have to watch every move of the others, 'I feel I'm licked from the start.

This type of tension and strain in interpersonal relations re

sulted specifically from competing for job openings as a means

of improving onel s record. It did not occur in other departments.

where interviewers also competed for making the best record, but

not for job openings, since each handled a different occupational

category, and there were no common pools of job orders.

Of course, not all interviewers were equally competitive. To

determine the differences between them, an index was devised.

The major opportunity for competitive monopolization of job orders

presented itself when they were received over the telephone. The

extent to which an interviewer used the orders he had received from

employers for his own clients in excess of chance expectations.

which shows that he did not make them available to his colleagues,

provides an index of competitiveness. Obviously. this index does

not reflect all forms of competition in Department X. but it does

measure the most prevalent one and has the further crucial ad

vantage that it is not affected by the concealment of illicit prac

tices, since it is based on the records of official transactions.

This index of competitiveness was based on the analysis of all

job openings filled during the first half of April. The first two

columns in Table 2 show the number of these job openings each

interviewer had received over the telephone, and the number of

referrals he had made to the openings he himself had received (not

all the referrals he had made). The proportion of openings used by

the recipient for referring his own clients is indicated in column

3. One-seventh of the job openings in Section A with seven members

and one-fifth of those in Section B with five would have been filled

by the recipient if no tendency to usurp orders had existed. The inci

dence of much larger proportions reveals monopolistic practices. To

standardize the index, these values were multiplied by the number of

members in each section, that is by 7 and 5, respectively (col. 4).


TABLE 2

COMPETITIVENESS AND PRODUCTIVITY

IN SECTIONS A AND B

Ratio of Openingsa ~eferrals/ReferralSlcompetibFroduc~o. of Received Iade by _to Open- tiveness tivityC lace

ecipient ings ments(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Adams 34 19 0.56Ahman 3.9 0.7062 27 100.44Ajax 3.140 .4928 70.70Akers 4.971 .9732 139.45Ambros 3.269 18 .71 101.26 1.8Atzenbergi .45106 43 65.41 2.9Auble 10 .613 87.30 2.1 .39 56d Babcock 16 7 .44Beers 2.258 .5319 46.33Bing 1.651 .7115 62.29Borden 1.517 .757 65.41Bush 2.143 .55 48d19 .42 2.1 .97 84Section A 392 170 .43Section B 3.0185 67 .59 5900.36 1.8 0.67 289

.J I

a. The great differences between interviewers in this column show that some were much more successful than others in inducing employers, or telephone operators, to channel requests for workers to them personally. This was a form of competing for an outstanding record which did not involve competitive interaCtion. (See footnote 6.)

b. Competitiveness index (col. 4): The proportion of job openingsreceived to which the recipient made a referral (col. 3), times the number of members of the section. (This represents the observed divided by the expected frequency of referrals made by the recipient of a job opening.) Base period: First half of April, 1949.

c. Productivity index (col. 5): The number of placements made (col. 6), divided by the number of job openings available, that is, the number of openings in the section per interviewer. Base period:April, 1949.

d. The number of placements made was adjusted for the two interviewers who had been absent for more than five days during April. Since the sectional numbers of placements were not revised, the values in col. 6 add up to more than the two totals shown.


Competitiveness is indicated by the extent to which this index ex

ceeds 1.0. The members of Section A were more competitive than those

of Section B. Column 4 also reveals that the variation between

individuals in the first group was greater. Since placement pro

cedures in the two sections differed only in respect to the arrange

ment of file boxes, this factor may have been responsible for these

differences. The permanent location of the boxes with job orders on the

desks of most interviewers in Section A indeed provided occasions

for hoarding orders which did not exist in Section B, where boxes

were constantly moved around. On the average, an interviewer in

Section A used nearly twice as many job openings from his "own"

box than each of his co-workers did. However, the orders in his

box were not necessarily the ones he had received over the tele

phone. The monopolization of job orders in the interviewer I s box,

most of which had been received by other interviewers. is not

reflected in the competitiveness index, which takes into account

only monopolization by the recipient. The different arrangement

of boxes did not affect the measure of competitiveness used. and

therefore cannot explain the observed difference between the two

3sections. As a matter of fact. an interviewer in Section B who had former

ly worked in Section A thought that the stationary boxes in his old

section made monopolization of job 9rders by the recipient techni

cally more difficult:

1 think that it would be even easier to hide an order here. The boxes move around so much. you can have an order on your desk because you didn't get around to putting it in thel box. But there, when an order belongs to another box. it s much more difficult to explain why you didnlt carry it therel immediately. Why does it happen more there. since it s easier here? I'd say that different personalities are the main factor.

Most officials attributed the great competitiveness of Section

A to the personality characteristics of some of its members. their

ambition, eagerness to please superiors. or competitive spirit.

"There is usually one individual who starts it. who becomes a pace

setter. Once it has started. it is too late." The others. so interview

ers claimed. have to follow suit. However. the account the most

Competition and Productivity I 55

competitive member of Section A gave of her first reactions to

statistical records indicates that these explanations are inadequate:

When they introduced statistics. I realized how fast I worked. I even wanted to drop lower. I didn't mind working fast as long as it didn't show. but when it showed up like that on the record, I wanted to work less. But you know what happened? Some of the others started to compete with each other. and produced more than I did. Then I thought to m1self. "Since I can do it. itls silly to let them get ahead of me.' 11m only human. So. I worked as fast as before.

When statistical records made the superior performance of

this interviewer public knowledge, she decided to work less. quite

possibly in response to pressures the others had brought to bear

upon her. At the same time, the other members of Section A. while

complaining about the unfair production standards she set. improved

their own performance. Consequently, this interviewer. just like the

others. felt constrained by colleagues to work fast and compete for

an outstanding performance record. One or two individuals in Sec

tion B. on the other hand. were also accused of having competitive

tendencies, but their colleagues successfully discouraged the ex

pression of such tendencies in monopolistic practices. It is in

this sense that the competition of one group and the co-operation

of the other were social factors. calling for expianation in socio

logical rather than psychological terms, as Durkheim has long . h . d 4 smce emp aSlze •

Structural Differences between Sections

Competitive monopolization of jobs had the purpose -of maxi

mizing placements. How well did it accomplish this purpose? The

last column in Table 2 shows how many placements each interview

er had made during April; this is divided by a constant for each

section. controlling for the different number of job openings avail

able. to provide a comparable index of productivity. Comparison

between columns 4 and 5 shows that competitiveness was related

to productivity in Section A, but not in Section B. The Pearsonian

correlation coefficient between these two factors is +.92 for

Section A, but -.20 for Section B. 5 The more competitive inter

viewer in Section A made more placements; the more competitive

interviewer in Section B did not.


This startling difference helps to explain why the members of

Section A were more competitive. Since monopolizing jobs was an

effective way to improve one's placement record only in this group.

its members had more incentive than those of Section B to engage

in such competitive practices. 6 Of course. this does not yet answer

the question why the two factors were related in one section and

not in the other. Co-operative norms had developed in Section B which discouraged

competitive practices by making them ineffective. as many comments

illustrate: The advantage of [Section B over Section A] is that we

never cover up orders. We always work together. That proves one point-the only people who can make the job hard for you are those who work with you. I can tell right away when somebody tries to cover up.... If the supervisor doesn't catch it. I do. And I won't go to the supervisor to tell on the guy. but talk to him directly.

They might use co-operation. telling each other about all the jobs they have and so forth. to counteract the use of statisticS. I mean. through co-operation you might equalize the placements various interviewers make. and counteract the statistics. which tend to make people egocentric. making everyone work for himself. trying to make as many placements as he can by himself.

We did many things~ We co-operated in making notations of applicants who were deadheads. who would not take jobs when sent out. Second. we checked each other's placements. so that statistics were nearly evenly divided. Also. if one got a job. everyone else knew about it. If I saw an applicant at another desk, and had an order for which he might qualify, I would bring the order over the;re. Every applicant became your applicant.

Although these co-operative practices did not equalize productivity,

they did make competitive monopolization of jobs ineffective as an

instrument for improving it. When a new interviewer manifested com

petitive tendencies, he was penalized by being excluded from the net

work of reciprocal information. For example. he was not told about the

job orders received by others. Any advantage of hoarding jobs was at

least neutralized by the lack of co-operation it provoked. Competitive

practices in this situation made an interviewer unpopular and failed to

improve his productivity and therefore were infrequent.

Different historical experiences that had influenced the development

of these two group structures were responsible for the emergence of

co-operative norms in one. but not in the other. Three contrasting con

ditions could be discovered. First, the rating practices of the two super-


visors had differed. second, only one group had had an opportunity

to develop a professional code of employment interviewing. Third,

great differences in job security had existed between the two sec

tions when statistical records had been introduced.

Supervisor Astor relied heavily on performance records in

evaluating the interviewers in Section A: "And here. in the pro

duction figures. is the answer to the question: How good are you?

Here you see exactly how good the work you did was." Interviewers

often mentioned the pressure this created: "[Especially] around

rating time. you get this competition. You don't care whether the

best per.son gets the job. but you try to make the placement your

self. Of course. there are some who are strong. who don't do it. I

admire them. But it's difficult to be that strong."

Supervisor Bohman. who had been transferred to this depart

ment less than a year before these observations were made, sur

prised his subordinates when he rated them for the first time:

When the rating period came around, and we saw that [Supervisor BOhman] doesn't use statistics too much, and lD spite of statistics gave pretty good ratings-judging the entire person and giving good ratings-we became less anxious about the statistics. Another experience like that, and we might forget all about placement credit.

(Did the other section have a different experience?) Yes; there they were told that placement is important. Before, the two units were pretty much alike. Maybe, this one was a little less competitive, but not much.

Since their ratings were not primarily based on performance

records, members of Section B were less anxious about productivity,

and this encouraged the development and persistence of co-operative

norms.

Utlimately. therefore. the extent to which production records

served as the basis for ratings were a crucial factor in determining

whether the members of a section worked competitively or co-oper

atively. but it was not the only factor. The methods of supervision and

evaluation employed7 were not independent of the social situation

in which .the supervisor operated. To be sure. Mr. Bohman's person

alityand past experience were partly responsible for his more lenient

and less productivity-oriented rating practice. But it was also influ

enced by his position as a new supervisor of this groupS and by the

professional code that prevailed among its members.


The least competitive interviewers in any of the sections in

Department X were persons identified with reference groups that

supplied them with professional standards of correct interviewing.

such as a former social worker and a prospective clinical psychol

ogist. Their orientation induced these officials to strive in their

operations for other goals besides maximum productivity. Since

competitive practices did not aid in the attainment of these goals,

interviewers with such professional standards had little incentive

for engaging in them. A similar orientation had emerged in the formative period of

Section B. Three of its present members had joined the section

upon being discharged from the Army after the last war, when

large numbers of returning veterans needed occupational advice.

Counseling and intensive interviewing had therefore been stressed

at the time when they, together, received their training under a

supervisor who was especially interested in these phases of oper

ations. One of them described this period in the following words:

When I first came here, in May, 1946, we had a very nice bunch. It was like an all-day consultation; we discussed placements with each other all day long. At that time, the veterans came back, and there was a lot of emphasis on counseling. Nobody asked "you how many placements you made, then. The emphasis was on quality, and we consulted with each other

all day.

In this situation, the group devel.oped a professional code of

own. It was considered most important to help each client find

job that interested him and to give him all the occupational advice

he needed; quick interviews were unacceptable, since they could not

meet these objectives. This code condemned the goal"of maximizing

! productivity as interfering with proper service to clients. In effect,

\ this transformed competitive practices from the state of being

~ illegitimate means for desirable ends into illegitimate means for

! worthless ends. If such practices did occur, they were more vigorously

opposed, because the code provided moral justification for co-opera

tive norms. Competitive practices were disapproved not merely be

cause they made the work of other interviewers more difficult but

because they led to defective service to clients. Nevertheless, co

operation was contingent on the absence of acute anxiety over ratings

and thus on the evaluation practice of the supervisor, as will be


shown. However, the existence of this group code would have made

it difficult for the supervisor to judge perfomance mainly on the

basis of production figures. To have done so would have stamped

him as ignorant of the most important requirments of correct em

ployment service.

No opportunity for the development of a common professional

code had existed in Section A. Its members had not received their

induction training together, nor had they been trained at the time

when intensive interviewing of returning veterans had been empha

sized. Since competition prevailed in this group, the individual

whose professional standards made him reluctant to compete either

became a deviant whose productivity suffered or mOdified his stand

ards and started to compete in order to produce more.

Finally, most members of Section A had been appointed to tempo

rary civil service positions during the last war. They were on

probation pending permanent appointments when production records

were originally introduced and even afterward remained subject

to layoffs due to reductions in staff. Their insecurity led them to

strive to impress superiors with outstanding performance. In con

trast, all but one of the members of Section B were veterans, whose

employment could not be terminated except for cause. They could

more easily afford to co-operate with one another in disregard of

official production records, since, as one envious colleague put it,

"they felt that nothing could happen to them, because they were

veterans and had superseniority."

Differences in these three conditions-employment security,

opportunity for the development of a common professional orienta

tion, and evaluation practice of the supervisor-gave rise to two

dissimilar social structures. Opposite criteria determined the net

work of relationships in the two groups. While productivity was nega

tively valued in Section B, it became a central value for the mem

bers of Section A, as this statement by one of them illustrates:

Right now, since we have statistics, the emphasis is on production and results. Before, people took pride in the placements they made. They went to the supervisor and told her what an employer had said, how satisfied he was with the placement, and so forth. Now, they don't feel so strongly about that any more. I know it myself. I don't feel elated any more when employers tell me they like a worker especially, but I feel elated when I make a placement.

60 I The Dyna mic s of Bureaucracy

In accordance with these values. outstanding productivity be

came a sign of high status in Section A, but one of low status in

Section B. When a member of Section B explained why she con

sidered a certain colleague the best interviewer in her section, she

actually inverted official performance standards: "Herbert has

more patience; also, he made fewer placements G.i£] , which I

thought was to his credit. The person who does the better job very

often has fewer placements. It usually works out that way." The

most productive interviewer in this section was least respected

and least popular. In Section A, on the other hand. competitive ex

celling did not make an interviewer unpopular, as one of its mem

bers explained: "Eve told me that in [another department] the

person who is highest on production records is very unpopular;

they don't like it. That's not true here.1I

On the contrary. the

most competitive and most productive member of Section A was

considered the best interviewer by her colleagues and was most 9

popular with them. The interviewers in both sections disliked to work in a com

petitive atmosphere. However, the different values and especially

the related differences in relative positions made it possible in

one group. but impossible in the other. effectively to curb com

petitive practices. Occasionally. a member of Section A tried to

discourage them. One said: "If I see that an interviewer keeps

orders on her desk, I take them and put them in the box.... Of

course. you don't make friends that way. II Since most members of

this section, including the most popular ones, were competitive.

antagonizing them would have threatened an interviewer's own

standing in the group. This deterred interviewers from discourag

ing competitive practices. even though they disliked them, with the

result that such practices prevailed. Antagonizing a deviant, on the other hand, does not endanger

the status of an individual. Since a competitive striver was an un

popular deviant in Section B, its members could use sanctions

freely to combat competitive practices. This enforced the co-opera

tive norms of the group and made monopolization of jobs an ineffec

tive method of operation. In this section. therefore, competitiveness

was not related to productivity, and it was considerably less preva

lent than in Section A.


Social Cohesion and Productivity

The group much concerned with productivity was less produc

tive than the group unconcerned with it. 10 Table 2 shows that 59

per cent of the job openings received in Section A were filled. in

contrast to 67 per cent of those in Section B. 11 Another paradox

implicit in these data is that the more competitive interviewers in

Section A made more placements, but the group whose members

were more competitive made fewer placements. Why were com

petitiveness and productivity related directly for individuals, but

inversely for groups ?12

Anxious concern with productivity induced interviewers in

Section A to concentrate blindly upon this goal at the expense of

other considerations. In their eagerness to make many placements,

they often disregarded official rules and ignored whether their

actions injured their interpersonal relationships with colleagues.

The prevalence of such competitive behavior, which only the group

index measures, weakened social cohesion. and this in turn reduced

operating efficiency. 13

The extent to which the members of a work group spend their

lunch and rest periods with one another can be considered an index

of social cohesion. Officials who enjoy their contacts in the office

tend to avail themselves of these opportunities for informal get

togethers and thereby strengthen their social ties. Conversely, if

strained relations between colleagues develop at work. officials will

not seek one another's company in their free time, and thus they

fail to cement their interpersonal relationships.

None of the interviewers in Department X joined another mem

ber of the department for lunch. 'This is in sharp contrast to the

custom of lunching together that prevailed in the federal agency to

be discussed in Part II. Although a lunch schedule limited the choice

of partners in the state agency (and not in the federal agency). there

can be little doubt that the strained relations between competing inter

viewers were primarily responsible for their lack of contact at noon.

Most interviewers explained that they preferred to eat alone, since

they had to talk all day in the office. A few in Section A added that

they often joined a friend from the outside for lunch, which shows

that they did not really wish to be alone, but only wanted to escape


from co-workers. Moreover, some interviewers reported that they

used to lunch with colleagues in the past, that is, before the intro

duction of statistical records had engendered competitive relation

ships. Rest-period engagements, however, indicate that one group was

more cohesive than the other. All but one of the five members of

Section B usually spent their rest periods together,14 whereas none

of the seven interviewers of Section A did so regularly, and only

two occasionally. Moreover. the interviewers of Section B spent

more of their free time in the company of members of other de

partments than did those of Section A. The less competitive group

was more cohesive, and its members were better integrated members

of the division. Social cohesion enhanced operating efficiency, first, by facili

tating co-operation and. second, by reducing status anxiety. Although

the interviewers in each section often co-operated with one another

in many ways, those in the less cohesive group did so less readily.

Greater efforts were required in Section A to elicit the co-opera

tion of colleagues. as a comparison of the interaction patterns of

the two groups shows. All social contacts which any member of Department X had in the

office were observed for 24 hours (the busiest hours in one week).

resulting in 2.625 recorded interactions. They were classified either

as official contacts, those directly concerned with a specific job or

client, or private ones, which included all other interactions. The

frequency of an interviewer's official contacts was related to his

productivity in Section A (rank correlation +.98) but not in Section

B (+.08). This suggests that only the interviewers who kept, as one

of them put it, "hopping around all the time" to retrieve job open

ings that others kept on their desks were able to make many place

ments in the competitive section. In the cohesive group, on the other

hand, the co-operation needed in the placement process occurred

as a matter of course and not only in response to special requests.

This social effort was not required there for high productivity.

The productive interviewer in Section A hoarded jobs and also

prevented others from doing so by asking them for the job orders

they had received over the telephone. Both these practices antago

nized his co-workers, whose co-operation he needed if he was to


perform well. The members of this section. therefore, had to en

deavor to conciliate colleagues whom their competitive practices

had alienated. Often, an interviewer paid another a compliment

about her work or her apparel shortly after having interfered with

her operations. Joking and relaxing for a minute together also re

stored more cordial relationships. The most competitive inter

viewer was in the habit of taking time out "to fool around" with her

co-workers and was proud of making more placements than any

body else "nevertheless." Actually, this compensating friendliness,

which made her popular despite her competitiveness, helped her

to be so productive.

Only those members of Section A who made special efforts to

mend their interpersonal relationships were able to make many place

ments, but this was not necessary in the cohesive Section B. At

least, this seems to be suggested by the finding that the frequency

of private contacts was also related to productivity in Section A

(rank correlation +.84). but not in Section B (+.13). In the cohesive

section, where operating practices did not disadvantage colleagues,

interviewers did not have to devote time and energy to solicit and

encourage co-operation. since it was not extended reluctantly. Their

spontaneous co-operation improved operating efficiency in Section B.

Social cohesion also lessened the status anxiety generated by

evaluation on the basis of production records. Such anxiety is most

acute for the individual who does not feel integrated in his work group

and therefore seeks to derive social recognition through excelling

in his tasks and from approval of superiors. Friendly relations

with co-workers made the standing of the individual in the cohesive

group independent of his productivity, especially since fast work

was disapproved as a sign of superficial service. The consequent

reduction of anxiety in the cohesive group which was antiproductivity

oriented actually raised its productivity.

Fluctuations in productivity illustrate the dysfunctions of status

anxiety. Section B had not always operated more effiCiently than

Section A. Its productivity had been lower during the two months

preceding the last rating. but had abruptly increased then, while

that of Section A had declined, as Table 3 shows.

The two groups found themselves in different situations before

and after they were rated. The members of Section A were familiar


TABLE 3

PRODUCTIVITY BEFORE AND AFTER

THE TIME OF RATING

Section BSection A

(317)0.56(619)a0.64December. 1948. . ..•.• (472).56.70 (941)January. 1949 •.•.•.•• (477).60.56 (1,342)February, 1949 (rating) •• (448).71.59 ( 1.335)March. 1949 ••.•••..• (433)0.670.59 ( 1,001)April, 1949 .•••••••••

a. Numbers in parentheses are the numbers of job openings available on which the productivity index-the proportion of these openings that were filled-is based.

with Supervisor Astor's rating standards and her emphasis on pro

ductivity. since she had rated them in previous years. Their anxious

concern with a good rating induced them to work especially hard

on making many placements just prior to the time of being rated.

The members of Section B. however. had never before been rated

by Supervisor Bohman. They were also concerned about their rat

ing but could not calm their anxiety by concentrating upon certain

tasks, because they did not know which factors the supervisor15

would stress in judging their performance. This diffuse anxiety

was especially detrimental to efficient performance. Since Mr.

Bohman did not base his ratings primarily on statistical records.

anxiety over productivity largely subsided in Section B after Feb

ruary, and productivity increased. The ratings of the members of

Section A. on the other hand, were again strongly influenced by

their production records. This intensified status anxiety. which

was no longer channeled into exceptionally hard work by an impend

ing rating. with the result that the productivity of this section de

clined below that of Section B. Social cohesion is no guaranty against anxiety in a bureaucratic

situation. Their civil service status is too important for officials

to retnain immune and maintain their cohesive bonds when it seems

threatened. But when such immediate threats did not exist. social

cohesion reduced anxiety over productivity by divesting it of its

Competition and Productivity I 65

significance as a status symbol in the work group. Their lesser

anxiety. as well as their greater co-operativeness. enabled the

members of the cohesive group to perform their tasks more effi

ciently than did the members of the other group.

In the absence of social cohesion, competitive striving for an

outstanding record and for approval from superiors became a sub

stitute means for relieving status anxiety in Section A. This psycho

logical funotion of competitive behavior is illustrated by an inci

dent of psychosomatic illness. A temporary supervisor once repri

manded Mrs. Adams for having engaged in illicit competitive

practices and ordered her to stop them. This interference with her

way of handling her anxiety disturbed Mrs. Adams to the extent

of making her phsycially ill. The supervisor told the observer:

"[Mrs. Adams] is going home now. Every time something comes

up that displeases her, she gets sick. She isn't pretending or trying

to get off. She really gets sick. Now she has a very bad cold. This

happens every time something unpleasant comes up."

Anxiety over productivitydisturbed the equanimity an official

needed for the successful performance of his duties. Even in the

cohesive group, productivity was low when the unknown rating

standards of a new supervisor created acute and diffuse anXiety.

Otherwise. however. this group was more productive, because

social cohesion reduced anxiety by making the individual's standing

in the group independent of his productivity. Competitive striving for

outstanding productivity was an alternative way of relieving this

anxiety. but one that simultaneously undermined the group's co

hesiveness. The hypothesis that the cohesion of the group and the

competitive behavior of the individual in the noncohesive group had

the same effect of lessening status anxiety explains the paradox

that the less competitive group and the more competitive individual

in the competitive group were p~rticularly productive.

Conclusions

The statistical method of evaluating performance had serious

dysfunctions in Department X. It engendered competitive behavior

which interfered with operating efficiency and thereby produced an

organizational need for social mechanisms to combat competition.


If this need had been met in all groups under observation. as it

actually had been in Section B. its existence could not have been

empirically demonstrated. Only the comparison of the productivity

of a competitive and a relatively noncompetitive group indicated

that competitive interaction needed to be changed in the interest

of productivity. 16

The fact that competitive tendencies prevailed in one group.

but were successfully suppressed in the other. calls attention to

the historical conditions that must have differentiated the two social

structures. Three differences in past social experience had contrib

uted to their divergent development. with the result that high

productivity was valued and became associated with an individual's

standing in Section A. whereas concern with productivity as such

was disrepected in Section B. This made it easy to discourage

competitive attempts to maximize productivity in Section B. but

most difficult to do so in Section A. Consequently. co-operative

norms developed in Section B. which effectively curbed competitive

practices and strengthened social cohesion. In contrast, competi

tive behavior persisted in Section A. and this weakened social co

hesion.

In respect to competition, Section B was further advanced in

its development than Section A. In the latter group the need to

control competition was manifest. In the former group this need

had been met by social innovations in the form of new patterns of

co-operation and of penalizing competitive acts. However. social

conditions in Section A did not remain completely unchanged either.

Whereas the prevalence of competitive striving intensified status

anxiety in this group. the individual could escape from such anxiety

by being successful in the competitive struggle. The competitive

situation was self-reinforcing. since it furnished strong incentives

for becoming increasingly more competitive. This poses an interest

ing question. which cannot be answered here: what conditions de

termine whether this process ultimately levels off or reaches a

climax in a revolutionary transformation of the competitive struc

ture into a co-operative one?

The introduction of statistical records had many and diverse

consequences for operations in Department X. Whether functions


outweighed dysfunctions cannot easily be decided. but such a

decision would have little practical significance in any case. The

dysfunctions resulting from this evaluation system did not re

main fixed social costs. They constituted organizational needs

that often. although not always. gave rise to new social patterns

which met them. This process as well as the functions of per

formance records as control mechanism has been discussed in

the last two chapters. The next chapter will deal with one of their

unexpected contribUtions to bureaucratic operations. namely. the elimination of bias from the treatment of clients.

blau, dynamics of bureaucracy, ch 4

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