ROLELESS ROLES

Dr.C.S.RANGARAJAN

When employees
continued tenure of service is ensured,
then arises the question relating to
'intrinsic' and 'extrinsic' satisfaction in
work. As Blauner in his work on
'Alienation and Freedom' holds, it is
security of employment which is seen as a
condition precedent to employees' loyalty
and commitment. Seen against the
backdrop of insecurity, which is wrought
into the job, one is appreciative of
William Shakespeare’s observations
which runs as follows: ‘You take my life
when you do take the means whereby I
live’. The threat to the existence of
sufficient jobs is identified as the most
and immediate problem confronting the
industrial society. Caught in the vortex of
ever increasing technological and
population trends, individuals, willing to
work, are reduced to the level of not
being able to find work. These 'twin
threats' are negatively correlated with
work in the sense that both technological
and population increase jointly and
severally contribute to decrease in

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employment opportunities. Besides
'product life cycle', technological
obsolescence as well as 'planned
technological obsolescence' leads to
'trained incapacity'. In other words,
technology creates as many jobs as it
weeds out. Another difficulty arises from
managers' preoccupations, among others,
with the rules, conceived as a means
becomes transformed into an end in
itself. As instrumental value becomes a
terminal value, it not only results in '
displacement of goals', but also hastens
the process of 'displacement' of
employees caught on account of their
failure to fall in line with the
organizational blueprint. These
employees not only become 'rootless', but
are also pushed into 'role less roles’ in
the process of displacement leading to a
'crisis of identity'. Shakespeare views
that 'the fault is not in our stars, but in
ourselves, that we are underlings'. Lord
Byron, on the other hand laments 'must
crimes be punished by other crimes, and
greater criminals'. William Wordsworth is
forthright when he comments

'Earth is sick and Heaven is weary

of the hollow words which

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States and Kingdoms utter
when they speak of truth and justice'.

Oscar Wilde without mincing words,

observes that 'in war, the strong make
slave of the weak, and in peace the rich
make slave of the poor. We must work to
live, and they give such mean wages that
we die. We toil for them all day long, and
they heap up gold in their coffers, and
our children fade away before their time,
and the faces of those we love become
hard and evil. We tread out the grapes
and another drinks the wine. We sow the
corn, and our own board is empty. We
have chains, though no eye beholds them;
and we are slaves, though men call us
free'.