Questioning the mantra of efficiency

December 15, 2004
Issue 

The Decline of the Tea Lady
By Jenny Stewart
Wakefield Press, 2004
195 pages, $24.95

REVIEW BY ALEX TIGHE

This humorous, yet insightful contribution to discussion on management caused me to ponder my own memories of my early days working in the public service.

I recalled those moments when the tea lady would arrive on our floor, as a signal that we could all take a break from whatever repetitious piece of filing or paperwork we were carrying out. The chatter of co-workers gathered around the trolley replaced the concentrated silence and a smattering of normality prevailed, without glares of disapproval from managers. It was never quite the same when the automated coffee machine was installed, which offered up a solo venture to obtain the flimsy plastic cup and powdered offering.

The Decline of the Tea Lady encapsulates the theme of Jenny Stewart's book, which is to pose questions about the mantra of never-ending change and efficiency touted by rising economic efficiency experts and management consultants. Stewart relates the tale about the disappearance of the tea lady as a symbol for the lack of common sense in much management hype.

Stewart points out that the tea lady was phased out in most public service offices during the early 1980s, on the elusive grounds of financial stringency. She questions the veracity of the claim about efficiency, when individual workers now take the time to make coffee and clean their own cups. She captures the unfortunate reality of many offices where the kitchen invariably falls down on any scale of cleanliness. This can result in bickering over who are the culprits or surreptitious notes left over the sink pleading for a clean cup.

This light-hearted approach takes you smoothly through chapters covering the language of management, described as "blah", the rise of the management consultant and theories of organisational culture and the impact of competition policy on the public sector and the community. Based on her own experience, she delivers a serious criticism of recruitment and promotion practices in higher education, which she suggests rely too heavily on publishing, networking and personality instead of merit-based processes.

Stewart suggests that it may be beneficial for budding managers to read a classic of literature, such as Hamlet, to learn about humans and organisation, than that latest set of catch phrases in a management text.

Alongside the anecdotes, she delivers a serious message that management is "easier to talk about than to do". Her book poses a challenge to all workers in organisations, not simply managers, to question the rhetoric in an effort to reassert the role of the person in organisational culture.

From Green Left Weekly, December 15, 2004.
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