Okay, here's a couple of thoughts ....
A company without management would, in my opinion, look like anything it wanted to. Management, in my experience, is a very misunderstood concept which extends from direct (read autocratic) rule to complete laissez faire (read chaos) management. Academically it is studied by looking at what the so-called 'good' organisations are doing with a view to identifying and analysing their traits in order to teach them. But if history and not academia was the teacher we would find that the so-called 'good' organisations aren't looking at what others' are doing, they are going ahead and blazing their own trail.
I do a lot of work in leadership and strategic management and I hear a lot of theorists telling others that what is needed is a good solid business plan and the right team to make it work. My experience is that this is true - up to a point. In the areas I've been working in, the most successful people have tried planning but found that - (a) the only ones who've loved the plan have been the banks, and (b) the moment a plan is developed it is immediately out of date and in need of change. As a result they've found that they have to spend too much time writing and reviewing plans that they can't use and which are only used by others. Planning, for the successful people, has been a waste of time because they rarely know what is around the next corner but by golly they're going to look and then make their plan. Their business plan is one simple statement: Do it!
So, in my experience the organisation without management has either been totally chaotic - run by unions or inept people passing themselves off as managers, or have been brilliantly successfully, run by staff and people passing themselves off as leaders (and doing it brilliantly).
As for the next question, what do people who don't want management look like?, I must respond: there is an old adage that says if you want to practice good management, management yourself first. Then others will follow.
People who don't want management, and here I'm drawing from a lot of years in both management, teaching management and in the military, are people who want leadership. They don't want to be 'managed' (who does?), they want to be led. And if they can't find the right dose of leadership at the top of the organisation they will find it from within the rank and file.
Consider, for example, organisations who have strong management leadership. Look closely at how strong a hold the unions have on their staff. In most cases the union leadership will be less volatile, more cooperative and focussed on the needs of the organisation as well as its people. On the other hand, organisations with weak management leadership invariably have a strongly unionised workforce, a more than average rate of strikes, and perpetually disgruntled staff - at all levels. (Here I mean management at all levels, not just at the top. Lee Iacocca was brilliant but Ford still had strong unions - simply because such brilliance wasn't always matched further down the line.)
My country (Australia) is about to be shut down by the unions because one element of industry has had some pretty pathetic management leadership for nearly a century now. In fact most industries that came out of the industrial revolution suffer much the same problems (here and overseas), management that doesn't know of nor believe in leadership at all levels of the organisation. Why? Because they have often never had to. Management has always been about banging heads or rolling over and playing dead - on the part of both sides of the industrial fence. As a result management is a dirty word, and pity help any rank and file member who graduates from worker to manager - instant scab.
So, where does the leadership in these industries come from? From the union - simply because no-one else is prepared to provide it.
If you want to study a good treatise on management vs non-management, read Lord of the Flies (the original book). This book, I believe, is a study of humankind that will pass the tests of time.
These have been interesting questions. I too have watched the quotes flashing backwards and forwards so I'm glad Barbara threw in her suggestion.
Phil Rutherford
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P D Rutherford & Associates Pty Ltd
Competency-based systems specialists
0011 61 2 6230 4823
robnphil@ozemail.com.au