# Organizational Problems as Raw Materials By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2022-12-15 In a factory, all the elements of production are relatively obvious. There are machines, materials, and people. These three elements combine in various forms to produce products. Office work is slightly less clear. The people aspect is the easiest to identify. Perhaps the machines are second. An important distinction between factories and offices is that the machines of modern office work (e.g., phone, computer, internet) are things an individual could, and probably already does, own. But what is the raw material equivalent in office work? Organizational problems are the raw material on which modern office workers use their machines to solve and sell. The subjugation of labor is predicated on workers not owning the means of production. If one owns only their personal labor to be sold, to use company equipment and raw materials in the production process, the individual worker has very little power. This is by design. Isn’t it odd that companies would incur an unnecessary expense to provide computers when nearly everybody already owns one? This is contrary to the cost-minimizing strategy one would expect. Organizations providing computers is not a “perk,” it is a means of control. The definition of problems is more complex and less clear. Traditionally, management holds the exclusive authority to define institutional problems. As such, management controls the raw material of work. Increasingly, organizations want to maintain the control which comes from the exclusive authority to define organizational problems but also wants to reap the benefits derived when employees are “empowered” to scan the environment for opportunities and solve problems without being directed to do so. Thinking of organizational problems as the raw material of production provides useful insight. The dominant work ideology in America would categorize this as “initiative,” and provide the worker with just enough marginal benefit to incentivize the behavior without calling into question the system. Questioning the system might reveal that if a worker has the tools and raw materials of production, one doesn’t need the organization. One becomes an internal consultant. The organization can have all the computers, desks, and problems it wants; without workers, those resources will remain fallow. Under such a construct, organizations have a monopoly on problems. Nobody wants problems without solutions. Increasingly, workers control the generation of solutions. If workers come to understand they can control the means of production in modern offices, and if they privilege solidarity over competition, power will shift from management to labor. #### Related Items [[Problem Solving]] [[Work]] [[Management]] [[Organizational Analytics]] [[Productivity]] [[Consulting]]