Participation and collective decision-making neutralize rather than redistribute subordinate power

Evidence

Of course, limitations on the capacity of the superior stand in opposition to those on the capacity of the subordinate. If the former lacks awareness, the latter lacks communication. The power accruing to subordinates accrues to them individually or, at most, in cliques. It results from situations, and remains dependent on personal initiative and sufficient prior understanding. Initially, at any rate, it cannot result in a simple reversal, in the subordinates taking over power, because structurally their power rests on their position as subordinates and on the relative impotence of their over-powerful superiors. Of course, individual subordinates can try to become superiors by renouncing the power of their previous positions, but they cannot behave like a horse trying to climb into the saddle. If this is so, there would have to be tendencies for the power of the subordinate to collectivize, to systematize, domesticate and legitimize the power of the subordinates. And this is in fact the case. It is put to the subordinates more and more that it is good for them to exercise their power collectively, to select representatives, to constitute committees which become involved in making decisions. Nowadays this idea is being sold with the help of slogans such as participation or collective decision-making – hand in hand with the suggestion of false consciousness. Thus ‘emancipation’ becomes management’s last trick, denying the difference between superior and subordinate and thus taking away the subordinate’s power basis. Under the pretence of equalizing power, this simply reorganizes the power which the subordinates on the whole already possess. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 800

Categorization

• XREF: Strikingly parallels Ishiguro’s Darlington Hall: ‘co-operation’ and apparent participation are management tools that preserve hierarchy — the same dynamic Stevens experiences as deference. — connects to: Apparent collectivism can conceal pure domination through delegated labor; Workers support board-level participation once representatives explain its directive power. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2074; Participation without control over parameters is not democracy but its evisceration — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 247 (+5 more)
• CANDY: ‘Emancipation becomes management’s last trick’ — a startling, tweetable inversion: apparent power-sharing actually strips the subordinate’s power basis.