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Dec 03, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
One of the mysteries of living in the real world has become a persistent curiosity of mine that I would like to see explained. The subject of sociology provides an answer and to date this is the most plausible one available.
I am not very attracted to that explanation because my life so far has not fitted in to this sociological discourse on the particular issue I am about to discuss. But I do admit it remains the only analysis on the table. What I am talking about?
Why is it that when people belong to an organization, they refuse to change it from within, preserve its functions, embrace it but when they leave, then they speak out?
Why is this so?
In a conversation with a senior journalist (not from Kaieteur News; I know he wouldn’t want me to name him), I put that question to him.
He gave me the traditional sociological reasoning. According to the sociology textbook, humans become creatures of the organization. They lose their identity in the organization and what emerges is not individual behaviour but organizational behaviour.
Over time, employees come to exhibit organization traits. The Freudian mind takes over and you have a merger between organization and its workers. What happens then is that the entity has its own mores, rules, guiding principles and behavioural patterns. I have seen this transformation countless times in my life, especially among the leading administrators of commercial banks.
I had a healthy respect for the late Deryck Bernard. He was taken from the UG staff and made the Minister of Education by President Desmond Hoyte. After seven years, with the loss of electoral power of the PNC, he returned to the staff.
At the University he made severe criticisms of the lack of resources. But why as the Minister directly in charge of UG affairs, didn’t he wrest concessions from the Cabinet for UG? Former Ministers Henry Jeffrey and Sasenarine Kowlessar are back at UG. We hear that Minister Shaik Baksh might return to the campus too.
No doubt they will throw in their support for any movement to bring resources to UG, including salary hikes. But when they were in the Cabinet for sixteen years, nothing came the way of UG
Take the Guyanese Professor, Bernard Ramcharran, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In the August 15, 2009 edition of the Stabroek News, in his column, he wrote; “The position of Pro-Chancellor (of UG) should not be held by a serving officer, not least by the senior information operative of the Government …
“The Pro-Chancellor served simultaneously as head of the Office of Information of the Government…one cannot serve God and mammon at the same time.” (Writer’s note; Pro-Chancellor Misir still serves simultaneously in those two capacities).
What Professor Ramcharran is writing about are the days when he served as Chancellor and Dr. Prem Misir functioned as Pro-Chancellor. Strangely, now that he is out of the Chancellor’s job, we are seeing some brave words by the goodly professor.
But read on. The former student leader, Jason Benjamin, and I visited Professor Ramcharran twice at the Cara Lodge when he was in Guyana on his official visits as Chancellor to UG. We went there to protest the very things we see Dr. Ramcharran writing about.
In one of those conversations, he threatened to bring the evening to a close because we accused him of not seeking changes to the political domination of UG. I will stop there and get back to my philosophical question. Why do people refrain from seeking changes from within but find courage to speak out when they become outsiders?
I do not accept, a hundred percent, the sociological adumbration. I do believe it guides us in our understanding as to how people become “the organization animals” but there have to be other theories. My take is that another variable that should be considered is that this “organizational behaviour” may be a euphemism for regimentation and lack of courage.
I am using these two terms separately. The more important one up for discussion is lack of courage to seek changes from within. The person may feel intimidated. They feel that in speaking out they may be victimized. Maybe they love the status and power that the organization brings so they wouldn’t hurt the institution’s image.
Speaking for myself, I have never been an organizational man and I will never be one. I don’t care how penetrating on the individual is the organization ethos. I will never be a creature of any organization and become silent about its faults. Period!
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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