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>From: Edmund Chattoe <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Counter-Productive Systems: Call For Data
>Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2000 13:23:03 +0100
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>Counter-Productivity: The Proliferation of Counter-Productive Procedures 
>in Organisations
>
>The US film Falling Down, in which an individual's efforts to accomplish 
>everyday tasks were frustrated by a sequence of "micro-obstacles", 
>produced a chorus of "me too" responses from the public. The society 
>portrayed was one in which the human capacity for co-operative behaviour 
>had been eliminated and replaced by apathy, fear, mistrust, streetwise 
>individualism and sheer bloody-mindedness. Significantly, the laws, rules 
>and practices ostensibly designed to prevent a descent into the Hobbesian 
>nightmare actually contributed to the chaos, trapping people in impossible 
>Catch-22 situations.
>
>However fanciful such Hollywood portrayals are, the exasperation of the 
>anti-hero (though not his violent reaction), had resonance for people, 
>seeming to echo their own experiences of hassles arising from 
>counter-productive rules.
>
>We would like to test whether there is indeed a proliferation of such 
>hassles and to what extent they can be attributed to different causes. 
>These include declines in co-operative behaviour, the use of bureaucracy 
>as an implicit mechanism of control, unintended consequences in complex 
>systems, inflexibility and diseconomies of scale, introduction of 
>quasi-markets and so on.
>
>We are therefore asking for narrative accounts of counter-productive 
>systems that people have encountered as a preliminary source of data. We 
>are sure there are plenty in universities. Two examples may help to 
>illustrate what can happen:
>
>1. Libraries, in response to loss of books (which has grown as student 
>grants are cut), may decide to charge fines. Students may then resort to 
>tearing out pages rather than risk a fine. Other users then find that 
>pages are missing and new books must be purchased. The extra work of 
>collecting fines, monitoring or repairing book damage and buying 
>replacement copies must be added to the load of librarians. To prevent 
>further damage, surveillance systems may be introduced and so on.
>2. Internal quasi-markets, in which each cost centre (department, school 
>or unit) charges others for services, mean that helpful advice and 
>informal assistance given across these boundaries becomes hedged around 
>with rules and accounting procedures. Staff shrink from the paperwork (and 
>ideology) of selling their services and interdisciplinary projects are 
>stillborn. Rather than providing an accurate picture of flows between cost 
>centres, the control system simply chokes them off.
>
>If you have examples of counter-productive practices, please send them to:
>
>Edmund Chattoe, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, 3 George 
>Street Mews, Oxford, Oxon, OX1 2AA, <[log in to unmask]>.
>Jay Ginn, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 
>7XH, <[log in to unmask]>
>
>We would also welcome comments on these ideas. Have others put forward 
>something on these lines? Is there existing research we should look at? 
>(Our preliminary bibliography is available at: 
><<http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/counterp.html>http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/counterp.html>.) 
>Finally, we are also happy to receive other forms of written or visual 
>data: sets of rules, impossible memos, examples of excessive attempts at 
>control, policy web pages and so on. All data received will treated in 
>strictest confidence.
>=========================================================================
>Edmund Chattoe:  Department of Sociology,  University of Oxford, 3 George
>Street Mews, Oxford, Oxon, OX1 2AA, tel: 01865-278833, fax: 01865-278831,
><http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk>http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk, Review 
>Editor, J. Artificial Societies and  Social Simulation (JASSS) 
><http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/>http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/, 
>"So act as
>to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an
>end, and never as only a means."  (Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles)
>==========================================================================
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