Suchergebnisse

The basic feature and specificity of Yugoslav pluralism are the institutional interest groups. These groups are the elements of the structure of the political system itself, and therefore directly included — institutionally and legislatively in the consideration is here primarily given to the enterprise. As the enterprise is given a special status in the constitutional political system of Yugoslavia in which it is legally recognized as a political category par excellence, the consideration is here primarily given to the enterprise. Analyzing the results of the interviews with the presidents of Communal Assemblies in Socialist Republic of Croatia and directors of some bigger enterprises in the same republic, the author investigates whether and to what extent the enterprise uses its power and influence in the political process — in what degree it is a policy making factor. The research results show considerable differences between the formal authority and factual power of the enterprises. Although all the enterprises have the same status constitutionally, the real differences are so great, that some enterprises make the policy of communes and even larger regions, and the influence of others is meager. The factor is the economic power. Besides the differences between the enterprises in power and influence, the research results give the evidence to the author's thesis that the enterprises significantly influence the process of political decision making. The actual possibility of the enterprise to act as an interest group is determined by many conditions — some of political and legislative, some of factual nature, primarily: a) by political and legal status in the total system, b) unstable normative structure which is subject to many influences and constant change, c) lack of the more stable criteria that would provide an evaluation of organizations and individuals according to their results, and last but not least; d) democratization of the system itself which is becoming more open to the expression of different interests and actions of interest groups. Finally, author examines some relevant theoretical and political aspects of the strike as a mean of the political pressure in the self-management system in Yugoslavia.

Considering the System theory the author conceives the Yugoslav enterprise to be an open system. Moreover critically taking into consideration all the various definitions for the purpose of operationalization he defines the environment as a communicative influential domain, integrating in this way the theory of the environment and of the organization. Accepting the phenomenological hypothesis and considering the actual influence as equaling the perceptional one — the influence has been investigated, with a help of some innovations, by means of the graph of control on the top management in 55 industrial organizations. The difference between the external and internal, passive and active influences has been distinguished. Internal influence is the one within and the external is the one outside the relevant enterprise; passive is the one to which the respondent is subjected by other members of the organization and active is the one which is exercised by the respondent on other members of the organization. According to the indexes got in this way the enterprises seem to be influenced by the examined factors of the environment to a larger extant than vice versa. The grouping of the bodies of the environment has shown the dominant status of the bank and the trade organizations in their relation to the industrial enterprises. Still that environment is not very much like the system that was typical of eighteenth century liberal capitalism although it might appear so. Considering the system of the country itself we seem to be speaking of the seemingly liberal environment with the state itself appearing indirectly through the banks. The results seem to be confirmed and even more differentiated by the factor analysis. Regarding the internal influence it should be pointed out that the influence of the top management on the organizational groups in the enterprises is almost equal to the amount of the influence exercised on the top management by the organizational groups. Generally, the internal organizational relationships of influence are more intensive and more balanced. We can assume that the social relations between the organizational groups within the enterprises are more socialized and more integrated than the relations between the enterprises and their environment. Top management in an enterprise has a marginal relation towards the political representatives, a central relation towards the professionals and self-managing bodies and a firm-hierarchical-superordination-and-superordination-relation towards managerial groups. The analysis of the correlations has shown that the active and passive external influences make up a united system of power — if viewed from the standpoint of the top management. That does not mean that the top management are exposed to the system of total control because there is also a united system of influence, which is exercised by the top management on the bodies outside the enterprise. In the same way the uncontrolled power does not appear either in the influence of the top management on the organizational groups within the enterprise. So we claim the existence of only two integrated subsystems of the active and passive influences. The increasing influence of the top management on the environment and the organizational groups leads to the reverse influence, that is, the increasing influence of the environment and organizational groups on the top management, exhibiting thus clearly the logic of the reciprocal influence. The author has found out a considerably different influence of the environment within the work organizations than he expected. He expected the influence of the administrative-political environment to lessen the internal active influence of the top management, and the influence of the business professional environment to increase the internal active and passive influences of the top management, and the influence of the trade organizations to increase the active internal influence of the top management. He has found out that the redistribution of power within the work organizations is not influenced by the administrative political environment, and that the influence of the top management within the enterprise is even diminished by the trade-organizations. Moreover, though in a system of external- -internal power-relations the self-managerial bodies and political organizations are not reduced to being merely marginal factors, the backbone of the whole system of the external-internal power-relations still makes the influence of the top management on the leading organizational groups and the influence of the business organizations on the enterprises. That means that the business circle from other enterprises exercises a considerable influence on the internal status of the top management within individual enterprises, and thus on the interactions between the other managerial groups as well. This circulus vitiosus of power is uncontrolled and spontaneous product of the division of labor at the macro-level of the whole society and also at the micro-level of the work-organizations because it makes possible an intensive reciprocal influence between the external and internal managerial groups. This proves the functional autonomization of the management which will be sustained spontaneously up the time when a functionally adequate, and not only politically adequate redistribution of managerial function will be varied out.

In this article the author attempts to analyse the power relationships in the Yugoslav society, in post-war historical perspective of development. He is using the difference between power and meta-power as the conceptual framework. The whole development can be demonstrated as the creation of a system by actors who have meta-power and who want to negate their own meta-power by development of self-management. However, the spontaneous developments lead to such social structuring which challenges the established structure of meta^power. The dilemma with which those having meta-power are faced is whether to intervene into the development of the system and thus »come to surface« as the one having meta-power, or leave the development to remain spontaneous and in such a manner endanger their meta-power. Particular attention has been paid to the relationship between an enterprise and the political system as that sphere of the social system where the processes described in this article are shown with great clarity.

This paper describes an attempt of a new methodological approach to the studying of the power structure in organizations. The first part comprises critical remarks directed to the most extensively used method of graphs of control based upon the examined subjects' perception of the existing power structure, (a) A small dispersion of results about some values is not necessarily an indicator of the validity, but perhaps of the generally accepted stereotype, (b) Perception also depends on a series of factors of social position and psychological state of examined subjects. Tending to avoid the disadvantages of the method of graphs of control, and to retain, however, a high degree of standardization, we have tried to create a method which would comprise these qualities. The research work has been carried out in two stages. The first stage consisted of a project based upon the observation with specially prepared forms as persons who contributed in the meetings of workers' councils. Objective data for all the respective persons were collected. In this way a complete picture of activity within the forum with prerogatives of bringing all the key decisions was obtained. However, even if this method offers a very detailed picture of the examined phenomenon, it is not fully satisfactory. As first, it is concentrated upon a fragment (segment) of a continuous process of decision making. Second, this method does not allow the identification of informal groups in organization which might have the key influence upon the decision making. Due to these reasons we have then created an instrument tending to cover the complete process of the decision making (including both formal and informal levels), allowing identification of all the key groups within organization, formal and informal, and being also maximally standardized. The first stage in the obtained scheme refers to the preparation of the decision making which comprises the overall social process before the formal act of the decision making. The second stage refers to the decision making itself. As last, there might appear the control, consisting of the initiative for the control implementation and the implementation itself. It is assumed that in all these various stages of the decision making process it is possible to identify persons actively participating in it. We are, however, primarily concerned with the following — which are the groups whose interests these persons represent. We will also try to analyse goals, strategies and effects of activity. In order to follow directly the overall process through which the decision making passes, we have relied upon the informants, well informed about respective organizations. Therefore this method represents a kind of a »key-men« technique, as we tried to reach persons who had such positions, this primarily through the industrial psychologists already extensively employed in industry and various other organizations. Obviously, there is always a problem of objectivity of such informants. This can be avoided in two ways: by requesting the informants to provide information only and by trying to maximally eliminate their evaluation, and also by the engage meant of several informants from the same organization.

Among the many factors that determine the development of a political democracy, political culture should be stressed. Research by Almond and Verba, and later similar research in Yugoslavia, show that there exists a rather strong connection between political culture and the stability of a democratic political system. As large and ever larger groups of people have access to television, this mass medium plays more and more prominent role in shaping political culture. When the population attains (as in many societies now) a certain basic level of education, the majority of programmes can be understood by everybody. With this, there is lessening of the discrimination as to the political information, at least in principle. Television is an especially potent medium for introducing people into subject areas for which they have shown little or no interest previously. In spite of selective processes, a good measure of such material reaches the viewer and causes changes in his mind. People, in short, become conscious of political processes, which means enhancing of political culture. After the advent of TV, the political process has been transformed into real life, that can be seen, heard and almost touched. With this, the politician and politics itself loses their mystique and moves into the area of the secular things. The politician's image on the TV screen in not only physically diminished, but also psychologically deflated: now everybody can measure and criticize him by use of common yardsticks. In that way ordinary citizens gain certain strength, of the psychological nature, that becomes a part of their new political culture. Furthermore, television acts as an integrator and affirmer of small, isolated opposition groups. This is especially important for political systems in which political life has been integrated around two or three great political parties, and everything outside, remains unnoticed and ineffective. When such a small political group gets a portion of TV time (as it must, because it il »news« by definition), it immediately draws the support of all similar element in society and by that the chance to influence the broader political process. Naturally, television does not have only positive effects on political culture and political process. We not forget that television, with rare exceptions, is under direct and strong monopolistic control of varied political and other elites. The television viewer is to a large extent a victim of manipulation. Furthermore, there are some authors that consider television detrimental for political action, because it purportedly passivizes the public. But our conclusion is still on the positive side. The suppression of news and information in general, cannot go too far except in countries that are cut off the rest of the world in a seal-tight fashion. If people get information and that during long periods, (throughout years and decades), they cannot but form their attitudes, and become readier for political action, »spectoritis« or not. The whole problem of television influence on viewer should be always discussed in a broad time perspective, and not, as in some of the current research, in an artificially isolated moment. And so, to conclude, television does build the basic psycho-cultural prerequisites for better political participation, and by that, for a more democratic world.