Case $12.$ "Low pressure work" and "group effect"American sociologist and psychologist Elton Mayo confirmed the phenomenon of "low$-$pressure work" discovered by F$.$ U$.$ Taylor with his impeccable scientific experiments. Thus, Meyo found that in one of the shops, the workers did not comply with the norm and performed $6$ thousand operations instead of $7$ thousand. According to Mayo's observations, the workers stopped work before the working hours were completed. At the same time, most of the employees openly told the interviewers that they could easily handle a large amount of work, but if they did, the company would increase the rate they set. According to others, the slow pace of work also protects workers from complaints from management. The discovery of this fact proved the existence of unofficial, in other words, limits of productivity that were not allowed by administrative management.Also, according to Taylor, an energetic worker is usually guided by his own norms, but he is forced to obey the prevailing laws of the group that surrounds him. He called it collective pressure, and in modern times this concept has received the name "group effect".Thus, the reason for low$-$pressure work is not that the employee is not interested in work, but that his colleagues pressure him to work worse. Since people differ in their psychological nature, moral values, and social affiliation, their ways of working are also different: some prefer to remain in the shadows, while others take on greater responsibilities. It can be imagined that those who work less and those who work more should have an equal influence on each other. But it doesn't work like that in life. As it happened, the underperforming employees were able to influence the entire team and drag the high performing employees down to their level.F$.$ U$.$ Taylor studied the mechanism of group pressure in concrete examples. In one of his first experiments at Midvale, he tried to direct employees to improve their individual skills by going against collective norms by providing job training and financial rewards to new employees. Each time the new workers promised to do Taylor's bidding, they never followed through. F$.$U$.$ By clarifying the reasons, Taylor found that they were strongly pressured not only by their own groups, but also by the workers of the entire plant $("$collective pressure"$).$ Therefore, they do not risk acting contrary to established rules. F$.$U$.$Taylor wrote that in the enterprise "young and inexperienced workers receive training from adults in this sense. They resort to all options of persuasion and social pressure to prevent a greedy and selfish employee from signing a new record. Because such a record will only lead to a temporary increase in the wages of the young worker, at which time the management will force everyone behind the young worker to work harder for the same amount of wages.The old workers considered the conscious reduction of productivity to be a moral and class duty to their comrades, a measure of human integrity and dignity. For this reason, by not working at full capacity, they confirmed themselves as a highly valued and respected person in front of others. New workers felt informal control over them through a system of enforced norms called "rules of the game."Violators of these rules were threatened with a change of attitude on the part of "respectable persons" and the sanction of lowering their personal status. Sometimes this resulted in exclusion from the group and even dismissal from the factory.It is quite clear that Taylor presented the new workers with an insurmountable problem. On the one hand, they could get a good monetary reward, put their work in order and strengthen themselves in the workplace. This was especially important for an unskilled worker in difficult market conditions. With the opportunity to acquire a prestigious mechanical qualification, these new employees could earn the trust of the administrative leadership and ensure further advancement in the position.On the other hand, by accepting these conditions, they turned into traitors who kept the dream of those who wanted to declare a strike in their eyes. As a rule, this led to humiliation and social isolation, which led to low self$-$esteem. A choice had to be made between official and unofficial options. In this situation, new employees always prefer the first option.Foreign sociologists have calculated that only $10\%$ of workers in American industry do not reduce their productivity in exchange for monetary rewards, in compliance with group pressure. A person works surrounded by those who are similar to him. He cannot be described as a socially isolated Robinson. So$,$ the whole value world of the employee is in a certain way directed in only one direction $-$ "respectable persons". Each of us strives to assert ourselves among those around us$,$ we need support. By actively participating in joint activities, a person considers his group as a part of his social world and requires others to accept group norms. Unfortunately, this voluntary process sometimes takes the ugly form of direct influence. Questions for case work

$1.$ M$.$ H$.$ Meskon, M$.$ Albert and F$.$ Hedouri distinguish a number of reasons why people join informal groups: affiliation, protection, assistance, communication, sympathy. Name the motivation of a group that consciously works with "low$-$pressure work."

$2.$ Do the labor unions described above have the characteristics of informal groups, such as social norms, resistance to change, and the presence of informal leaders? Justify your answer.

$3.$ What negative consequence of control does this situation reveal?

$4.$ What do you see as solutions to the problem of "group pressure"?