The Giving of Orders

(1926)
Mary Parker Follett
Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett (1942)

THE chief thing I have to say to you in this paper is that I wish we could all take a
responsible attitude toward our experiencea conscious and responsible attitude.2 Let us
take one of the many activities of the business man, and see what it would mean to take
a responsible attitude toward our experience in regard to that one thing. I am going to
take the question of giving orders: what are the principles underlying the different ways
of giving orders, which of these principles have you decided to follow? Most people
have not decided, have not even thought out what the different principles are. Yet we all
give orders every day. Surely this is a pity. To know what principles may underlie any
given activity of ours is to take a conscious attitude toward our experience.

The second step is to take a responsible attitude, by deciding, after we have recognized
the different principles, which ones we will follow. In the matter of giving orders, I wish
we might all of us decide now, if we have not already done so, on the way we think
orders should be given. We shall not arrive at the same conclusions, there may be a good
deal of difference of opinion among us. What I urge is not that you adopt my principles,
but that you stop to think what principles you are acting on or what principles you
intend to act on in this matter, and then try giving orders in accordance with those
principles as far as the methods of your firm permit.

And next I urge you to note results; for our first decision should be tentative. We should
try experiments and note whether they succeed or fail and, most important of all, why
they succeed or fail. This is taking an experimental attitude toward experience.

We have then three steps: (I) a conscious attituderealize the principles which it is
possible to act on in this matter; (z) a responsible attitudedecide which we will act on; (3)
an experimental attitudetry experiments and watch results. We might add a fourth step:
pool our results.

1 See note, p.; this paper was presented in January, 1925.

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2 Cf. Creative Experience, p. xi: "But we wish to do far more than observe our experience, we wish to make it yield up for us its
riches."

In doing all this we should observe carefully what opportunities the methods of our
particular firm afford for giving orders in the way we have decided provisionally is best,
and come to some conclusion as to how far and in what way those methods would have
to be changed if our principles were adopted. This will increase our consciousness in the
matter.

Behaviour Patterns and Obedience to Orders

To some men the matter of giving orders seems a very simple affair; they expect to issue
their orders and have them obeyed without question. Yet, on the other hand, the shrewd
common sense of many a business executive has shown him that the issuing of orders is
surrounded by many difficulties; that to demand an unquestioning obedience to orders
not approved, not perhaps even understood, is bad business policy. Moreover,
psychology, as well as our own observation, shows us not only that you cannot get
people to do things most satisfactorily by ordering them or exhorting them; but also that
even reasoning with them, even convincing them intellectually, may not be enough. Even
the "consent of the governed" will not do all the work it is supposed to do, an important
consideration for those who are advocating employee representation. For all our past
life, our early training, our later experience, all our emotions, beliefs, prejudices, every
desire that we have, have formed certain habits of mind, what the psychologists call
habit patterns, actionpatterns, motorsets.

Therefore it will do little good merely to get intellectual agreement; unless you change
the habitpatterns of people,

you have not really changed your people. Business administration, industrial
organization, should build up certain habitpatterns, that is, certain mental attitudes. For
instance, the farmer has a general disposition to "go it alone," and this is being changed
by the activities of the cooperatives, that is, note, by the farmer's own activities. So the
workman has often a general disposition of antagonism to his employers which cannot
be changed by argument or exhortation, but only through certain activities which will
create a different disposition. One of my trade union friends told me that he
remembered when he was a quite small boy hearing his father, who worked in a
shoeshop, railing daily against his boss. So he grew up believing that it was inherent in
the nature of things that the workman should be against his employer. I know many
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working men who have a prejudice against getting college men into factories. You could
all give me examples of attitudes among your employees which you would like to
change. We want, for instance, to create an attitude of respect for expert opinion.
If we analyse this matter a little further we shall see that we have to do three things, I
am now going to use psychological language: (I) build up certain attitudes; (2) provide
for the release of these attitudes; (3) augment the released response as it is being carried
out. What does this mean in the language of business? A psychologist has given us the
example of the salesman. The salesman first creates in you the attitude that you want his
article; then, at just the "psychological" moment, he produces his contract blank which
you may sign and thus release that attitude; then if, as you are preparing to sign, some
one comes in and tells you how pleased he has been with his purchase of this article,
that augments the response which is being released.

If we apply this to the subject of orders and obedience, we see that people can obey
an order only if previous habit patterns are appealed to or new ones created. When the
employer is considering an order, he should also be thinking of the way to form the
habits which will ensure its being carried out. We should first lead the salesmen selling
shoes or the bank clerk cashing cheques to see the desirability of a different method.
Then the rules of the store or bank should be so changed as to make it possible for
salesman or cashier to adopt the new method. In the third place they could be made
more ready to follow the new method by convincing in advance some one individual
who will set an example to the others. You can usually convince one or two or three
ahead of the rank and file. This last step you all know from your experience to be good
tactics; it is what the psychologists call intensifying the attitude to be released. But we
find that the released attitude is not by one release fixed as a habit; it takes a good many
responses to do that.

This is an important consideration for us, for from one point of view business success
depends largely on this namely, whether our business is so organized and administered
that it tends to form certain habits, certain mental attitudes. It has been hard for many
oldfashioned employers to understand that orders will not take the place of training. I want to
italicize that. Many a time an employer has been angry because, as he expressed it, a
workman "wouldn't" do so and so, when the truth of the matter was that the workman
couldn't, actually couldn't, do as ordered because he could not go contrary to lifelong
habits. This whole subject might be taken up under the heading of education, for there
we could give many instances of the attempt to make arbitrary authority take the place
of training. In history, the aftermath of all revolutions shows us the results of the lack
of training.
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 In this matter of preparedinadvance behaviour patterns that is, in preparing the way
for the reception of orders, psychology makes a contribution when it points out that the
same words often rouse in us a quite different response when heard in certain places and
on certain occasions. A boy may respond differently to the same suggestion when made
by his teacher and when made by his schoolmate. Moreover, he may respond differently
to the same suggestion made by the teacher in the schoolroom and made by the teacher
when they are taking a walk together. Applying this to the giving of orders, we see that
the place in which orders are given, the circumstances under which they are given, may
make all the difference in the world as to the response which we get.3 Hand them down
a long way from President or Works Manager and the effect is weakened. One might say
that the strength of favourable response to an order is in inverse ratio to the distance the
order travels. Production efficiency is always in danger of being affected whenever the
long distance order is substituted for the facetoface suggestion. There is, however,
another reason for that which I shall consider in a moment.

All that we said in the foregoing paper of integration and circular behaviour applies
directly to the anticipation of response in giving orders. We spoke then of what the
psychologists call linear and circular behaviour. Linear behaviour would be, to quote
from Dr. Cabot's review of my book, Creative Experience, when an order is accepted as
passively as the woodshed accepts the wood. In circular behaviour you get a
"comeback." But we all know that we get the comeback every day of our life, and we
must certainly allow for it, or for what is more elegantly called circular behaviour, in the
giving of orders. Following out the thought of the previous paper, I should say that the
giving of orders and the receiving of orders ought to be a matter of integration through
circular behaviour, and that we should seek methods to bring this about. 4 The rest of
this lecture could profitably be spent on this point, with further explanation and with
illustration, but I am trying to cover a good deal of ground in these talks by making
suggestions for you to expand for yourselves.

3 Cf. Creative Experience, p. 65: ". . . we shall have to keep in mindfirst, the objective situation as constituent part of the
behaviour process; secondly, that internal conditioning is of equal importance with external conditioning . . . . Often for
instance we see the head of an industrial plant trying to solve a situation by studying his men rather than by considering men
and situation,and the reciprocal effect of one on the other."
4 Cf. Creative Experience, p.6g:"We cannot study the `psychology' of the work man, the `psychology' of the employer, and
then the `facts' of the situation, as so often seems to be the process of the investigation. We must study the workman and
the employer in their relation to the factsand then the facts themselves become as active as any other part of the `total
situation.' We can never understand the total situation without taking into account the evolving situation. And when a
situation changes we have not a new variation under the old fact, but a new fact."

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Psychology has another important contribution to make on this subject of issuing orders
or giving directions: before the integration can be made between ordergiver and order--
receiver, there is often an integration to be made within one or both of the individuals
concerned. There are often two dissociated paths in the individual; if you are clever
enough to recognize these, you can sometimes forestall a Freudian conflict, make the
integration appear before there is an acute stage.

To explain what I mean, let me run over briefly a social worker's case. The girl's parents
had been divorced and the girl placed with a jolly, easygoing, slack and untidy family,
consisting of the father and mother and eleven children, sons and daughters. Gracie was
very happy here, but when the social worker in charge of the case found that the living
conditions involved a good deal of promiscuity, she thought the girl should be placed
elsewhere. She therefore took her to call on an aunt who had a home with some
refinement of living, where they had "high tastes," as one of the family said. This aunt
wished to have Gracie live with her, and Gracie decided that she would like to do so. The
social worker, however, in order to test her, said, "But I thought you were so happy
where you are." "Can't I be happy and high, too?" the girl replied. There were two
wishes here, you see. The social worker by removing the girl to the aunt may have
forestalled a Freudian conflict, the dissociated paths may have been united. I do not
know the outcome of this story, but it indicates a method of dealing with our co--
directors make them "happy and high, too.”

Business administration has often to consider how to deal with the dissociated paths in
individuals or groups, but the methods of doing this successfully have been developed
much further in some departments than in others. We have as yet hardly recognized this
as part of the technique of dealing with employees, yet the clever salesman knows that it
is the chief part of his job. The prospective buyer wants the article and does not want it.
The able salesman does not suppress the arguments in the mind of the purchaser against
buying, for then the purchaser might be sorry afterwards for his purchase, and that
would not be good salesmanship. Unless he can unite, integrate, in the purchaser's mind,
the reasons for buying and the reasons for not buying, his future sales will be imperiled,
he will not be the highest grade salesman.

Please note that this goes beyond what the psychologist whom I quoted at the
beginning of this section told us. He said, "The salesman must create in you the attitude
5
that you want his article." Yes, but only if he creates this attitude by integration not by
suppression.

Apply all this to orders. An order often leaves the individual to whom it is given with
two dissociated paths; an order should seek to unite, to integrate, dissociated paths.
Court decisions often settle arbitrarily which of two ways is to be followed without
showing a possible integration of the two, that is, the individual is often left with an
internal conflict on his hands. This is what both courts and business administration
should try to prevent, the internal conflicts of individuals or groups.

In discussing the preparation for giving orders, I have not spoken at all of the appeal
to certain instincts made so important by many writers. Some writers, for instance,
emphasize the instinct of selfassertion; this would be violated by too rigid orders or too
clumsilyexercised authority. Other writers, of equal standing, tell us that there is an
instinct of submission to authority. I cannot discuss this for we should first have to
define instincts, too long an undertaking for us now. Moreover, the exaggerated interest
in instincts of recent years, an interest which in many cases has received rather crude
expression, is now subsiding. Or, rather, it is being replaced by the more fruitful interest
in habits.

There is much more that we could learn from psychology about the forming of habits
and the preparation for giving orders than I can even hint at now. But there is one point,
already spoken of by implication, that I wish to consider more explicitlynamely, the
manner of giving orders. Probably more industrial trouble has been caused by the
manner in which orders are given than in any other way. In the Report on Strikes and
Lockouts, 5 a British Government publication, the cause of a number of strikes is given
as "alleged harassing conduct of the foreman," "alleged tyrannical conduct of an
underforeman," "alleged overbearing conduct of officials." The explicit statement,
however, of the tyranny of superior officers as the direct cause of strikes is I should say,
unusual, yet resentment smoulders and breaks out in other issues. And the demand for
better treatment is often explicit enough. We find it made by the metal and woodworking
trades in an aircraft factory, who declared that any treatment of men without regard to
their feelings of selfrespect would be answered by a stoppage of work. We find it put in
certain agreements with employers that "the men must be treated with proper respect,
and threats and abusive language must not be used."

What happens to a man, in a man, when an order is given in a disagreeable manner by

foreman, head of department, his immediate superior in store, bank or factory? The
6
man addressed feels that his selfrespect is attacked, that one of his most inner
sanctuaries is invaded. He loses his temper or becomes sullen or is on the defensive; he
begins thinking of his "rights"a fatal attitude for any of us. In the language we have been
using, the wrong behaviour pattern is aroused, the wrong motorset; that is, he is now
"set" to acting a way which is not going to benefit the enterprise in which he is engaged.

There is a more subtle psychological point here, too; the more you are "bossed" the
more your activity of thought will take place within the bossingpattern, and your part in
that pattern seems usually to be opposition to the bossing.

This complaint of the abusive language and the tyrannical treatment of the one just
above the worker is an old story to us all, but there is an opposite extreme which is far
too little considered. The immediate superior officer is often so close to the worker that
he does not exercise the proper duties of his position. Far from taking on himself an
aggressive authority, he has often evaded one of the chief problems of his job: how to
do what is implied in the fact that he has been put in a position over others. The head of
the woman's cloak department in a store will call out, "Say, Sadie, you’re 36, aren't you?
There's a woman down in the Back Bay kicking about something she says you promised
yesterday." "Well, I like that," says Sadie. "Some of those Back Bay women would kick in
Heaven." And that perhaps is about all that happens. Of course, the Back Bay lady has
to be appeased, but there is often no study of what has taken place for the benefit of the
store. I do not mean that a lack of connection between such incidents and the
improvement of store technique is universal, but it certainly exists far too often and is
one of the problems of those officials who are just above the heads of departments.
Naturally, a woman does not want to get on bad terms with her fellow employees with
whom she talks and works all day long. Consider the chief operator of the telephone
exchanges, remembering that the chief operator is a member of the union, and that the
manager is not.

Depersonalizing OrdersObeying the Laws of the Situation

Now what is our problem here? How can we avoid the two extremes: too great bossism
in giving orders, and practically no orders given? I am going to ask how you are avoiding
these extremes.

5 This is probably a reference to the Annual Reports and Comparative Statistics of Strikes and Lockouts, subsequently incorporated
in the Annual Reports of the Ministry of Labour.

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My solution is to depersonalize the giving of orders, to unite all concerned in a study of
the situation, to discover the law of the situation and obey that.6 Until we do this I do
not think we shall have the most successful business administration.

This is what does take place, what has to take place, when there is a question between
two men in positions of equal authority. The head of the sales departments does not
give orders to the head of the production department, or vice versa. Each studies the
market and the final decision is made as the market demands. This is, ideally, what
should take place between foremen and rank and file, between any head and his
subordinates. One person should not give orders to another person, but both should agree
to take their orders from the situation. If orders are simply part of the situation, the
question of someone giving and someone receiving does not come up. Both accept the
orders given by the situation. Employers accept the orders given by the situation;
employees accept the orders given by the situation. This gives, does it not, a slightly
different aspect to the whole of business administration through the entire plant?

We have here, I think, one of the largest contributions of scientific management: it

tends to depersonalize orders. From one point of view, one might call the essence of
scientific management the attempt to find the law of the situation. With scientific
management the managers are as much under orders as the workers, for both obey the
law of the situation. Our job is not how to get people to obey orders, but how to devise
methods by which we can best discover the order integral to a particular situation. When
that is found, the employee can issue it to the employer, as well as employer to employee.
This often happens easily and naturally. My cook or my stenographer points out the law
of the situation, and I, if I recognize it as such, accept it, even although it may reverse
some "order" I have given.

If those in supervisory positions should depersonalize orders, then there would be no

overbearing authority on the one hand, nor on the other that dangerous Laissezaller
which comes from the fear of exercising authority. Of course we should exercise
authority, but always the authority of the situation. I do not say that we have found the
way to a frictionless existence, far from it, but we now understand the place which we
mean to give to friction. We intend to set it to work for us as the engineer does when he
puts the belt over the pulley. There will be just as much, probably more, room for
disagreement in the method I am advocating.

6 Cf. Creative Experience, p. 122: "We should notice, too, what is sometimes forgotten, that in the social situation two
processes always go on together: the adjustment of man and man, and the adjustment of man and the situation.”

8
The situation will often be seen differently, often be interpreted differently. But we shall
know what to do with it, we shall have found a method of dealing with it.

I call it depersonalizing because there is not time to go any further into the matter. I
think it really is a matter of repersonalizing. We, persons, have relations with each other,
but we should find them in and through the whole situation. We cannot have any sound
relations with each other as long as we take them out of that setting which gives them
their meaning and value. This divorcing of persons and the situation does a great deal of
harm. I have just said that scientific management depersonalizes; the deeper philosophy
of scientific management shows us personal relations within the whole setting of that
thing of which they are a part.

There is much psychology, modern psychology particularly, which tends to divorce

person and situation. What I am referring to is the present zest for "personality studies."
When some difficulty arises we often hear the psychologist whose specialty is personality
studies say, "Study the psychology of that man." And this is very good advice, but only
if at the same time we study the entire situation. To leave out the whole situation,
however, is so common a blunder in the studies of these psychologists that it constitutes
a serious weakness in their work. And as those of you who are personnel directors have
more to do, I suppose, with those psychologists who have taken personality for their
specialty than with any others, I wish you would watch and see how often you find that
this limitation detracts from the value of their conclusions.

I said above that we should substitute for the longdistance order the facetoface
suggestion. I think we can now see a more cogent reason for this than the one then
given. It is not the facetoface suggestion that we want so much as the joint study of the
problem, and such joint study can be made best by the employee and his immediate
superior or employee and special expert on that question.

I began this talk by emphasizing the advisability of preparing in advance the attitude
necessary for the carrying out of orders, as in the previous paper we considered
preparing the attitude for integration; but we have now, in our consideration of the joint
study of situations, in our emphasis on obeying the law of the situation, perhaps got a
little beyond that, or rather we have now to consider in what sense we wish to take the
psychologist's doctrine of prepared inadvance attitudes. By itself this would not take us
far, for everyone is studying psychology nowadays, and our employees are going to be
just as active in preparing us as we in preparing them! Indeed, a girl working in a factory
9
said to me, "We had a course in psychology last winter, and I see now that you have to
be pretty careful how you put things to the managers if you want them to consider
favourably what you're asking for." If this preparedinadvance idea were all that the
psychologists think it, it would have to be printed privately as secret doctrine. But the
truth is that the best preparation for integration in the matter of orders or in anything
else is a joint study of the situation. We should not try to create the attitude we rant,
although that is the usual phrase, but the attitude required for cooperative study and
decision. This holds good even for the salesman. We said above that when the salesman
is told that he should create in the prospective buyer the attitude that he wants the
article, he ought also to be told that he should do this by integration rather than by
suppression. We have now a hint of how he is to attain this integration.

I have spoken of the importance of changing some of the language of business

personnel relations. We considered whether the words "grievances," "complaints," or
Ford's "trouble specialists" did not arouse the wrong behaviour patterns. I think "order"
certainly does. If that word is not to mean any longer external authority, arbitrary
authority, but the law of the situation, then we need a new word for it. It is often the
order that people resent as much as the thing ordered. People do not like to be ordered
even to take a holiday. I have often seen instances of this. The wish to govern one's own
life is, of course, one of the most fundamental feelings in every human being. To call
this "the instinct of selfassertion," "the instinct of initiative," does not express it wholly.
I think it is told in the life of some famous American that when he was a boy and his
mother said, “Go get a pail of water," he always replied, "I won't," before taking up the
pail and fetching the water. This is significant; he resented the command, the command
of a person; but he went and got the water, not, I believe, because he had to, but
because he recognized the demand of the situation. That, he knew he had to obey; that,
he was willing to obey. And this kind of obedience is not opposed to the wish to govern
one's self, but each is involved in the other; both are part of the same fundamental urge
at the root of one's being. We have here something far more profound than "the egoistic
impulse" or "the instinct of self-assertion." We have the very essence of the human
being.

This subject of orders has led us into the heart of the whole question of authority and
consent. When we conceive of authority and consent as parts of an inclusive situation,
does that not throw a flood of light on this question?

7 If it is understood as indicating an interweaving, not mere addition (M. P. F.). Note. To distinguish between Miss Follett's
own notations and the editorial notes, we are initialing the former, as here.

10
The point of view here presented gets rid of several dilemmas which have seemed to
puzzle people in dealing with consent. The feeling of being "under" someone, of
"subordination," of "servility," of being “at the will of another," comes out again and
again in the shop stewards movement and in the testimony before the Coal Commission.
One man said before the Coal Commission, "It is all right to work with anyone; what is
disagreeable is to feel too distinctly that you are working under anyone." With is a pretty
good preposition, not because it connotes democracy, but because it connotes functional
unity. a much more profound conception than that of democracy as usually held.

The study of the situation involves the with preposition. Then Sadie is not left alone by
the head of the cloak department, nor does she have to obey her. The head of the
department says, "Let's see how such cases had better be handled, then we'll abide by
that." Sadie is not under the head of the department, but both are under the situation.

Twice I have had a servant applying for a place ask me if she would be treated as a
menial. When the first woman asked me that, I had no idea what she meant, I thought
perhaps she did not want to do the roughest work, but later I came to the conclusion
that to be treated as a menial meant to be obliged to be under someone, to follow orders
without using one's own judgment. If we believe that what heightens selfrespect
increases efficiency, we shall be on our guard here.

Very closely connected with this is the matter of pride in one's work. If an order goes
against what the craftsman or the clerk thinks is the way of doing his work which will
bring the best results, he is justified in not wishing to obey that order. Could not that
difficulty be met by a joint study of the situation? It is said that it is characteristic of the
British workman to feel, "I know my job and won't be told how." The peculiarities of
the British workman might be met by a joint study of the situation, it being understood
that he probably has more to contribute to that study than anyone else.

(I should like to say incidentally here, that what I am talking about when I say joint study
is entirely different from what is being advocated in England, and tried out in mine and
factory, as "the independent investigation of the worker," "independent workers'
control." I think they are on quite the wrong track in this matter, and this I shall try to
show in a later paper.)

There is another dilemma which has to be met by everyone who is in what is called a
position of authority: how can you expect people merely to obey orders and at the same
11
time to take that degree of responsibility which they should take? Indeed, in my
experience, the people who enjoy following orders blindly, without any thought on their
own part, are those who like thus to get rid of responsibility. But the taking of
responsibility, each according to his capacity, each according to his function in the whole
(all that we shall take up in the next paper under the title of Business as an Integrative
Unity), this taking of responsibility is usually the most vital matter in the life of every
human being, just as the allotting of responsibility is the most important part of
business administration.

A young trade unionist said to me, "How much dignity can I have as a mere employee?"
He can have all the dignity in the world if he is allowed to make his fullest contribution
to the plant and to assume definitely the responsibility therefore.

I think one of the gravest problems before us is how to make the reconciliation between
receiving orders and taking responsibility. And I think the reconciliation can be made
through our conception of the law of the situation.

Obedience and Liberty

I have spoken of several dilemmas: how to take orders and yet not to be "under"
someone, how to take orders and yet to keep one's pride in one's work, how to take
orders and yet to have a share in responsibility. There is still another dilemma troubling
many people which our present point of view helps to solvenamely, whether you can
have obedience and liberty.8 That group of political scientists and guild socialists who are
denying the power of the State, say that we cannot have obedience and liberty. I think
they are wholly wrong, but I think we should ask ourselves to what we owe obedience.
Surely only to a functional unity of which we are a part, to which we are contributing. I
agree with the guild socialists that the State is not that now. Those who are concerned
with the reorganization of industry should take warning from the failures of the state.

James Myers, author of Representative Government in Industry, 9 comes near involving

himself in this dilemma of the political scientists when he tells us that men in industry
have so long merely obeyed orders that we have there a real social danger.

He says, "We must reawaken the instinct of selfassertion." While I think Myers
recognizes a real problem here, I certainly do not think that the instinct of selfassertion
needs to be reawakened in many of us.

12
 We have considered the subject of symbols. It is often very apparent that an order is a
symbol. The referee in the game stands watch in hand, and says, " Go." It is an order,
but order only as symbol. I may say to an employee, "Do so and so," but I should say it
only because we have both agreed, openly or tacitly, that that which I am ordering done
is the best thing to be done. The order is then a symbol.

And if it is a philosophical and psychological truth that we owe obedience only to a

functional unity to which we are contributing, we should remember that a more accurate
way of stating that would be to say that our obligation is to a unifying, to a process.

This brings us now to one of our most serious problems in this matter of orders. It is
important, but we can touch on it only briefly; it is what we spoke of in the foregoing
paper as the evolving situation. I am trying to show here that the order must be integral
to the situation and must be recognized as such. But we saw that the situation was always
developing. If the situation is never stationary, then the order should never be stationary,
so to speak; how to prevent it from being so is our problem. The situation is changing
while orders are being carried out, because, by and through orders being carried out.
How is the order to keep up with the situation? External orders never can, only those
drawn fresh from the situation.

Moreover, if taking a responsible attitude toward experience involves recognizing the

evolving situation, a conscious attitude toward experience means that we note the change
which the developing situation makes in ourselves; the situation does not change without
changing us.

To summarize, what have we learned from these two papers on the subject of the
giving of orders? That, integration being the basic law of life, orders should be the com-
posite conclusion of those who give arid those who receive them; more than this, that
they should be the integration of the people concerned and the situation; more even
than this, that they should be the integrations involved in the evolving situation. If you
accept my three fundamental statements on this subject: (1) that the order should be the
law of the situation; (2) that the situation is always evolving; (3) that orders should
involve circular not linear behaviour then we see that our old conception of orders has
somewhat changed, and that there should therefore follow definite changes in business
practice.

8 Cf. The New State, Chapters XXVIIIXXXII, on political pluralism.

9 Double day Doran, New York, 1924.

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 There is a problem so closely connected with the giving of orders that I want to put it
before you for future discussion. After we have decided on our orders, we have to con-
sider how much and what kind of supervision is necessary or advisable in order that
they shall be carried out. We all know that many workers object to being watched. What
does that mean, how far is it justifiable? How can the objectionable element be avoided
and at the same time necessary supervision given? I do not think that this matter has
been studied sufficiently. When I asked a very intelligent girl what she thought would be
the result of profitsharing and employee representation in the factory where she worked,
she replied joyfully, "We shan't need foremen any more." While her entire ignoring of
the fact that the foreman has other duties than keeping workers on their jobs was
amusing, one wants to go beyond one's amusement and find out what this objection to
being watched really means.

In a case in Scotland arising under the Minimum Wage Act, the overman was called in
to testify whether or not a certain workman did his work properly. The examination was
as follows:
Magistrate: "But isn't it your duty under the Mines Act to visit each working place
twice a day?"
Overman: "Yes."
Magistrate: "Don't you do it?"
Overman: "Yes."
Magistrate: "Then why didn't you ever see him work?"
Overman: "They always stop work when they see an overman coming and sit down
and wait till he's goneeven take out their pipes, if it's a mine free from gas. They won't
let anyone watch them.”

An equally extreme standard was enforced for a part of the war period at a Clyde
engineering works. The chairman of shop stewards was told one morning that there was
a grievance at the smithy. He found one of the blacksmiths in a rage because the
managing director in his ordinary morning's walk through the works had stopped for
five minutes or so and watched this man's fire. After a shop meeting the chairman took
up a deputation to the director and secured the promise that this should not happen
again. At the next works meeting the chairman reported the incident to the body of
workers, with the result that a similar demand was made throughout the works and
practically acceded to, so that the director hardly dared to stop at all in his morning's
walk.

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 I have seen similar instances cited. Many workmen feel that being watched is
unbearable. What can we do about it? How can we get proper supervision without this
watching which a worker resents? Supervision is necessary; supervision is resented,how
are we going to make the integration there? Some say, "Let the workers elect the
supervisors." I do not believe in that.

There are three other points closely connected with the subject of this paper which I
should like merely to point out. First, when and how do you point out mistakes, mis-
conduct? One principle can surely guide us here: don't blame for the sake of blaming,
make what you have to say accomplish something; say it in that form, at that time, under
those circumstances, which will make it a real education to your subordinate. Secondly,
since it is recognized that the one who gives the orders is not as a rule a very popular
person, the management sometimes tries to offset this by allowing the person who has
this onus upon him to give any pleasant news to the workers, to have the credit of any
innovation which the workers very much desire. One manager told me that he always
tried to do this. I suppose that this is good behaviouristic psychology, and yet I am not
sure that it is a method I wholly like. It is quite different, however, in the case of a
mistaken order having been given; then I think the one who made the mistake should
certainly be the one to rectify it, not as a matter of strategy, but because it is better for
him too. It is better for all of us not only to acknowledge our mistakes, but to do
something about them. If a foreman discharges someone and it is decided to reinstate
the man, it is obviously not only good tactics but a square deal to the foreman to allow
him to do the reinstating.

There is, of course, a great deal more to this matter of giving orders than we have been
able to touch on; far from exhausting the subject, I feel that I have only given hints. I
have been told that the artillery men suffered more mentally in the war than others, and
the reason assigned for this was that their work was directed from a distance. The
combination of numbers by which they focused their fire was telephoned to them. The
result was also at a distance. Their activity was not closely enough connected with the
actual situation at either end.

One matter in regard to giving orders which seems to me of the utmost importance for
business administration, I wish you would enlighten me about. When the numbers of
employees are as large and as widely scattered as in the case of the Elevated and
Telephone employees, how should the orders be conveyed? Someone said to me one day,
"How do you suppose the Elevated gives its orders?" I didn't know what she meant and
asked her, and she replied, "The uniform courtesy of the Elevated employees is such
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that I often wonder how the people at the top get their wishes across to so many widely
scattered people."

Our time is more than up, but let me, in order to indicate the scope of this subject,
mention some of the things we have not touched on, or not adequately: the relation of
orders to training; the effect of the emotions (hope, fear, etc.) in the obeying of orders;
how to keep control and yet give control and responsibility to subordinates. Moreover,
perhaps I have not said explicitly that the participation of employees in the planning of
orders should take place before the order is given, not afterwards. After the order has
been given the subordinate must obey. I certainly believe in authorityof the right kind.
And I am sure that I have not emphasized sufficiently the careful, painstaking study that
is necessary if we are to anticipate how orders will be received. A man grumbles at an
order; this makes trouble and the one over him says: "Why is that man kicking?" and he
begins to study the situation. But perhaps by that time it is too late; the trouble has
perhaps got too much headway. To anticipate the kicks, to learn the most successful
methods of doing this, is an important part of the work of the ordergiver.

I began this talk by saying that I was going to consider ordergiving merely as an
illustration of a method, the method of taking a conscious and responsible attitude
toward our experience. I feel strongly on this point, on the necessity of taking a
responsible attitude toward our experience. We students of social and industrial research
are often lamentably vague. We sometimes do not even know what we know and what
we do not know. We can avoid this vagueness only (I) by becoming conscious of what
we believe in, (2) of what we do not believe in, and (3) by recognizing the large
debatable ground in between those two fields and trying our experiments there. Don't let
us try experiments where they are not needed, in regard to matters about which we have
already made up our minds. For instance, there are certain things which people continue
to urge about employee representation which are almost universally accepted. There is
no need of saying these particular things any longer, there is no need of studying them;
let us give our efforts to the things we don't knowthere are plenty of them.

Another point: we should always know whether we are considering principles or

methods. A confusion here is disastrous, as we often see in discussion. I have heard a
discussion on whether shopcommittee meetings should be held in company time, which
seemed to me quite beside the mark because the distinction was not being made between
the principles underlying the matter and the possible methods of carrying out the
principles. Some were talking about one, and some about the other. Moreover, let us not
confuse our methods one with the other; let us try out one until we have come to some
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conclusion about it. As a coach used to tell the Harvard boat crew, "It's better to have a
method and stick to it, even if it's not the best possible method."

This is all involved in what I spoke of as taking a conscious and responsible attitude
toward experience. It is also taking a scientific attitude. The growing appreciation of the
advantage of such an attitude is evidenced by the subject chosen for this course of
conferences: the scientific foundations of business administration.

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