Bogusław Nierenberg, Review of a Monograph by Dr Roman Batko: Golem, Avatar, Midas & the Golden Calf

Zarządzanie Kulturą, tom 6 (2013), nr 3 / Culture Management, vol. 6 (2013), no. 3

Bogusław Nierenberg AREVIEW OF A MONOGRAPH BY DR ROMAN BATKO: GOLEM, AVATAR, MIDAS, ZŁOTY CIELEC. ORGANIZACJA PUBLICZNA W PŁYNNEJ NOWOCZESNOŚCI [GOLEM, AVATAR, MIDAS AND THE GOLDEN CALF: PUBLIC ORGANISATIONS IN LIQUID MODERNITY]

I wish to start with a few general remarks. I think dr Batko’s work to be original for three reasons. Firstly, I know of no other Polish work on management, within the humanities, which has investigated public organisations in such a competent and academically rigorous manner.

Secondly, the way the subject is handled (presenting public organisations in terms of four metaphors: Golem, Avatar, Midas and the Golden Calf, although in principle the fifth, Anima, should also be included); dr Batko’s language (vigorous, vivid, sometimes even poetic i.e. “There are situations, in which the Golem of bureaucracy bares its oppressive face, disclosing dominance, a demonstration of power and determination to make citizens’ life hard”– p. 88); and the clarity of the argument makes for a truly ‘crisp’ read. I am using the colloquial term, which perhaps does not commonly appear in academic reviews, similarly to the author of the book, who deliberately intertwines scholarly terminology with journalistic phrases, colloquialisms, oxymorons or poetic metaphors. In fact, dr Batko often quotes lines of poetry in support of his reasoning, and the stylistic devices he uses reinforce his arguments (see the fragments, in which he discusses bureaucratic language by referring to the aphorism by Stanisław Jerzy Lec: It’s not enough to speak to the point, you must also speak to people (p. 83) and all this positively affects our perception of the subject considered in the monograph.

And thirdly, because of the scholarly passion with which the author describes the issues he investigates. It is commonly considered that a researcher should be a person washed out of feeling, who merely sticks to his guns, in the form of his research instruments (my apologies to the author and to readers of the review for more colloquialisms). Well, the passion, which is transparent throughout dr Batko’s writing, clearly highlights his arguments while, most importantly, it never strips them off scholarly precision and objectivity. It is at this point that I also wish to mention the author’s erudition and competence, which are evident not only in general matters but also in the smallest details. In fact, the in-depth knowledge of his subject is not used in the monograph for the display of intellectual pyrotechnics but for a better illustration of the issues tackled and for laying emphasis on the legitimacy of his arguments. At the very beginning, dr Batko uses well-chosen metaphors to illustrate various paradoxes of the ways public organisations in Poland operate. For example, he quotes from the queen of L. Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There”, which distinctly reminds us of the principle introduced to management studies by Henri Le Chatelier: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”.

The monograph’s methodological assumptions are primarily rooted in the intellectual resources of researchers who work or have worked within the postmodernist ideology, which – as

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Zarządzanie Kulturą, tom 6 (2013), nr 3 / Culture Management, vol. 6 (2013), no. 3 the author summarizes – are characterised by “dynamic metamorphoses of organisation, liquidity and amorphicity” (p. 15). Of course, dr Batko is well within his rights when he accepts, after the postmodernist classics, that generalizations do not make much sense and reality should be described on the basis of micro-narratives. In his monograph, the description of the issues researched is holistic and his methods are hermeneutic, and he is also within his rights there. However, it is a shame that when justifying his research perspective dr Batko entirely condemns the achievement of modernism.

He says: “Modernist narratives were dominated by the myth of progress, change, objectivism and these are collapsing and deconstructing right before our eyes” (p. 15). If these words were to be taken seriously, a lot, perhaps even most, of science would have to be consigned to the waste bin.

When choosing one’s own point of view, it simply seems quite unnecessary to condemn all other as wrong. Let me refer here to language as a tool of communication. The author quotes Martin Heidegger Where is it that language itself comes to surface as language? (p. 19) and it is his right to accept such a perspective, but one might just as well cite Herbert Marshall McLuhan’s phrase “the medium is the message” or Słowacki’s “I wish that a dexterous tongue could say everything that the head could think”. As the sage poet Theodor Fontane remarked Alles kommt auf die Beleuchtung an [It all depends on the lighting].

I have accepted the following modus vivendi for my review of dr Batko’s work. I describe the opening fragments of the book using the author’s own thought, which I quote in a manner adjusted to dr Batko’s narrative method. But as the ‘plot’ of the book thickens, the review also becomes clearer and micro-narratives lead to conclusions. Separate sentences become a thought continuum leading us to final inferences.

In Part I, entitled Public organisation in liquid modernity, the author takes us, after Jürgen Habermas, to where modernisation processes have delivered us i.e. the accumulation of capital, development of productive forces, productivity growth, the universality of political participation, development of education, etc. (p. 24). He explains the fall of the Habermasian “modernization project” in terms of Jean-François Lyotard’s thought and, above all, by the experience of Auschwitz and the Holocaust (p. 28).

Continuing the theme of modernity vs. postmodernity dr Batko considers the ideas of Jean Baudrillard: “impressions are equally true to us” (p. 29) as reality itself, Zygmunt Bauman’s “liquid modernity’s consumer society is transformed into a swarm” (p.29), Tadeusz Gadacz’s “there’s less and less thinking and more and more counting” (p. 55) in order to justify his own statement that “public organisations promote themselves as business corporations, using the language inadequate to their role” (p. 30) and that “NMP (New Public Management – reviewer’s note) postulates the publication in the public sector of the management tools and techniques traditionally used in business” (p. 33). The author goes as far as to call it “an assault of neoliberal economy on the public sphere” (p. 39), which causes an overriding perception of public organisations through the criteria of entrepreneurship, competitiveness, client focus, efficiency, etc. As the author summarizes the argument with Tadeusz Gadacz’s words: “There’s less and less thinking and more and more counting” (p. 55).

This way of doing things is a “good front” for the state and, more specifically, for those decision makers who represent it, while they try to avoid responsibility for the public sphere, especially the area of culture. Dr Batko mentions an intervention undertaken in 2012 by theatre circles “Theatre is not a product. A viewer is not a client” (p. 52). He considers this aporeticity to be “a trademark of public organisations” (p. 41), and he thinks it is, to a large extent, a source of Golem’s power, of that monster of bureaucracy which is the subject of closer examination in the next chapter.

The starting point of Part II, Golem – the monster of bureaucracy is the cabalist legend of Golem. The author brilliantly recalls Honore Balzac: “And this is how bureaucracy was born, the gigantic power, manipulated by the hands of dwarves.” (p. 60). However, the ‘dwarves’ are busy producing legal acts, which has risen the administrative costs borne by entrepreneurs to PLN 77.6bn (6.1% of GNP) (p. 77). However, dr Batko does not quote statistics for their own sake or to highlight only negative aspects of the phenomena he describes. He also mentions a positive example of the Ministry of Economy, which has prepared a multi-step programme of deregulation (p. 78), although

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Zarządzanie Kulturą, tom 6 (2013), nr 3 / Culture Management, vol. 6 (2013), no. 3 such examples are few and far between. The situation is usually quite opposite, also in the spheres which were traditionally protected from the pathologies of organisational Golem, such as higher education The author recalls the following thought of Michał Heller, expressed in reference to the academic environment: “A traditional prerogative of universities – a privilege which has grown somewhat from their very essence – is freedom. Even state power has a limited access to universities.

Bureaucracy poses a very insidious threat to this freedom. It does not have to enter a university, it just exists and works from the inside. Its treacherous nature lies in that it pretends to support scholarly work, whereas in fact, it paralyzes it by swapping research and teaching with shuffling papers, which becomes a driving force of the entire process”. (p. 79).

I find many accurate and fresh ideas in this part of the monograph regarding, for example, organisational communication, and more precisely, the language used by organisations: “Bureaucracy has created its own language which hinders good communication” (p. 80). “Language is becoming one of the tools of Golem’s domination” (p. 81), “Politicians and clerks (the two functions being often inseparable) treat public language as their exclusive property” (p. 82) or one of the universally recognized laws of Murphy. “The more time you have to do something, the more time it takes” (p. 83). As I have already said, these quotes are not merely the pyrotechnics of the learned mind but they convey the results of research conducted by the author who maintains that Golem has built a labyrinth out of law (p.85 and further) which is too expansive, often regulating what needs no regulation. Dr Batko refers to the data of the World Bank, which says that Poland is 161st (out of 181) when it comes to the time it takes to sort out formalities prior to starting building; it is 301 days! (p. 87).

Dr R. Batko meaningfully quotes various literary works, which adds an additional scholarly flavour to his own; to mention just a few authors whose works, quoted in the book, I particularly appreciate: J.S. Lec (epigrams, aphorisms), J. Heller (“Catch-22” – organisational absurdity), G.B. Shaw (Pygmalion – the Pygmalion effect and the Golem effect), S. Barańczak (“Fill in legible handwriting”), M. Gogol (“The Government Inspector”), F. Kafka (“The Trial”), C. Miłosz (poems), G. Orwell (“1984”), K.I. Gałczyński (Theater Green Goose and “A bureaucrat on vacation”) and many others.

The author guides his readers through various meanders of bureaucratic stupidity with mastery of the highest class, for example when describing official absurdities, such as the Władysław Skrzypacz affair, which demonstrated that it is better to throw food away than to give it to the poor, because donated food is taxed. He also unveils certain absurdities of EU bureaucracy (p. 98-99). Dr Batko is by no means against the EU but he is firmly against its pathologies (p. 99). Things look similar in quality management as the author reveals in his discussion of ISO. He does not protest against the idea but against the degeneration caused by its wrong use (p. 146 and after).

On page 101 dr Batko mentions Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” and George Orwell’s “1984” as examples of not only totalitarian system but also of totalitarian bureaucracy.

Generally speaking the author thinks that public organisation management has reached a dead end of measuring and weighing everything and describing it with figures. Dr Batko explains it explicitly by saying “Excel certainly wins with Word” (p. 163), which is another of those clear-cut metaphors which certainly add glamour to his argument.

The argument in part III entitled Avatar – administration in virtual space begins with a discussion of works by Karel Capek, Norbert Wiener and Jean Baudrillard which allows the author to combine Golem with a Robot and an Avatar (p. 107).

Dr Batko is correct in thinking that “Administration has been caught in its own trap. The multitude of regulations, procedures, low quality law, and especially the excess of its mutually exclusive interpretations, as well as unethical behaviour, especially corruption, have made it impossible for e-administration to actually work” (p. 108).

In this part, the reader will find the thought of Jean Jean-François, Lyotard and Max Horkheimer regarding the dangers of the “technicized world” (p. 108) along with the description of netizens – citizens of the web who initiated social actions via the Internet, such as ACTA or the Arab spring (p. 112).

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Zarządzanie Kulturą, tom 6 (2013), nr 3 / Culture Management, vol. 6 (2013), no. 3 The author quotes the wise words of E. Benedyk: “the war of the worlds is underway and the currency is not just the money earned on the sales of music, films, software or games. In fact it is all about new order and understanding of such concepts as power, freedom, privacy, democracy, the public sphere, freedom of economic activity, property and the common good.” (p. 113).

Dr R. Batko refers to many examples of absurdities within e-administration but to end the chapter on a positive note he mentions some positive initiatives, which he calls “digital islands of hope” (p. 133). One island is the Podlasie Voivodeship Office which was the first to replace paper documents with electronic ones (p. 135). This part of the book ends with an anecdote about a certain clerk who consulted the Internet on “Bestia” [Note: bestia is Polish for a beast] whereas in fact she needed assistance with the BeSTi@ software.

Part IV of the book entitled Midas – the bankruptcy of business imitation refers to the mania for measuring things which deforms such ideas as effectiveness and efficiency (p. 163). This is exemplified by a quote from Antoni Bartosz, Director of the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków. The author demonstrates that “efficiency above all” is a step in the wrong direction as it often leads to situations found in Mrożek’s plays. A good example here is a “diary” which teachers have to fill in to explain what they do 12 hours a week (the difference between the 40 hour statutory working week and the teacher’s working week of 28hrs). Dr Batko, quotes after the Deputy Mayor of Kraków’s estimate that in the city itself there are 11,000 teachers who fill in such absurd diaries. The question is, what for? Who is supposed to read them every week? Mrożek could not have made it up.

In his book, dr Batko also point us in the direction of what in the Polish language is referred to as “lunar planning” (based on quite randomly forecast figures) e.g. state budget revenues assumed on the basis of predicted traffic fines, based on possible readings of radar data, which in 2012 were supposed to have produced PLN 1.2bn whereas in fact they made up for only PLN 50m, minus the costs of purchasing additional radar equipment, preparation and sending out fines. This is reinforced by a historic anecdote of the weather forecasts during World War II, which were as accurate as random guesses.

In Part V entitled: Golden Calf – the parareligious theatricalisation of the public sphere, the author discusses the presence of the sacrum in public life. This is done in a straightforward manner although the author supports his arguments by summoning the authority of Prof. Józef Tischner. He mentions cases of unconstitutional activities, such as the work of the Estate Committee which in principle operated outside of the law, as its decisions were final, and its members could not be sued for any losses that their work might have caused to the state treasury. The example of Krakow is particularly telling in this context.

In this particularly Polish reality one has to have a lot of personal courage to point directly, as dr Batko has, to the examples of situations, in which the sacred comes dangerously closely to the profane; where religious practices are included in the public sphere as a matter of course (e.g. the blessing of newly opened institutions and plants, even of a sewage treatment plant), not to mention the almost magical call for prayers for rain once announced in the Polish Parliament. The sacralisation of the public sphere is also manifested by “including masses, prayers and other church rituals in all kinds of public national celebrations” (p. 179). Dr Batko also mentions a peculiar kind of protest against the excessive presence of the Catholic Church in public life which is an application for inclusion of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the national register of churches and religious organisations in Poland (pp. 179-180).

In this section, the author also wrestles with some other Polish myths, instrumental in the theatricalisation of Polish public life, for example those relating to the Smoleńsk disaster. He is certainly right in many aspects of his analysis, however it seems that these remain within the realm of social sciences (sociology, political sciences) or cultural studies more than management studies, especially that this section is clearly dominated by journalistic content. Nevertheless, I respect the author’s right to include them in his work, as the examples of theatricalisation of public life, if he thinks this appropriate.

What follows in this part of the monograph, regarding the “public organisation in the role of the Golden Calf”, is of the nature of a scholarly essay of the highest calibre. I think that dr Batko

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Zarządzanie Kulturą, tom 6 (2013), nr 3 / Culture Management, vol. 6 (2013), no. 3 makes a valuable contribution by his discussion of T. Hobbes’ Leviathan in the context of the works of M. Weber, C. Schmitt, A. Touraine and H. Arendt. To fortify his argument he quotes various examples of homage paid to the Golden Calf, such as a certain mayor of a village, Mr Pulit, issuing coins bearing his own image or placing plaques under the storks’ nests in Masuria. This part is maintained in rather dark tones, although the author brightens things up by drawing from the monograph by Mary Jo Hatch, Monika Kostera and Andrzej Koźmiński “Three facets of leadership”. In the book the authors distinguish three models of management, i.e. “manager”, “artist” and “priest”, which helped dr Batko systematize his own thoughts along similar threefold structure.

The last part of the monograph entitled Anima in the world of the forgotten values of public organisation, in a way brings together the author’s other ideas expressed in the metaphors of Golem, Avatar, Midas and the Golden Calf through a reference to the world of values. The author declares “This is not just a rhetorical figure, but an expression of a conviction that today’s materialized social life needs nothing more than mindful spirituality towards which public organisations should eventually turn”. Dr Batko’s erudition is on full display here, along with his talent for scholarly work and capacity to relate various, seemingly remote, ideas. I allow myself the privilege of quoting a fragment of Niemöller’s poem (after Havel), which dr Batko cites in his work, in my own, slightly different translation and dedicate it not so much to dr Batko himself as to the readers of his book: First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Social Democrats, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Social Democrat.

Then they came for Trade Unionists and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for me – And there was no one left to speak for me.

I hope that this quote, along with many other poetic citations in dr Batko’s monograph will move his readers in the way which, it seems, is particularly dear to the author’s heart.

The final passages of dr Batko’s work are particularly encrusted with the works of various intellectuals with a special place given to Zygmunt Bauman, especially as far as rationalizing various concepts of his liquid modernity is concerned. The author accurately points us in the direction of two important constructs of contemporary life i.e. 1. dictate of governance 2. equalling modernity with progress, both of which might be, and often are, sources of manipulation, pressure and frustration.

Out of these postmodern narratives the author draws some reasonable conclusions by saying that you should, after all, carry on with “what you think is right” “against all odds” (quoting Wojciech Młynarski), as such people as Janina Ochojska or Jerzy Owsiak are actually doing. What is required is to break through egoistic attitudes and maintain humanist values. And that is enough though it also seems a lot to ask, as the author particularly stresses at the end of the book by saying “It was my task to put the mirror up to the world of public organisation, in which it can see its own image – perhaps the amorphous, hostile ‘face’ of Golem that has come through the research, can prove to be a mask which can be crumbled by our persistently reminding ourselves of the animating ethical values that need to be consistently upheld” (p. 27 in the submitted text, probably a different page number in the book).

Dr Batko’s monograph is full of metaphors, which – as I have already mentioned – help him convince his readers of his arguments. Having read dr Batko’s book, I thought of another metaphor in relation to its author: Toutes proportions gardeés – I see in the author and his work something that reminds me of a Biblical transformation of the Orthodox Saul of Tarsus, a fervent opponent of Christians, to Paul, who became a Christian and whose teaching and public work gave grounds to one of the largest religions in the world. Dr Batko knows the world of Polish public organisations very well. He has investigated its various dimensions, so his diagnosis and recipe for mending its ways are rooted in his in-depth knowledge of this world. He has conducted many analyses and participated in many research projects only to note, like the Biblical Saul of Tarsus, that what he sees is pointless, shallow and insincere. He can see that emptiness looms over polished phrases. And so Saul of Tarsus is transformed into Paul – the bearer of the new (or perhaps not new but merely forgotten) ideas,

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Zarządzanie Kulturą, tom 6 (2013), nr 3 / Culture Management, vol. 6 (2013), no. 3 which should from now on guide our actions (in this case the work of public offices) not for their own sake but for the people for whom they were created and whom they should serve.

Bogusław Nierenberg

Bogusław Nierenberg – professor at the Jagiellonian University and Opole University; head of Media Management and Economics Department in Institute of Culture, Faculty of Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University; deputy dean of the Faculty of Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University; vice-president of the Commission of Culture and Media Management at Polish Academy of Arts and Science; member of the Commission of Organization and Management Sciences of the Krakow Branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Member of Polish Economic Society, Polish Press Law Association, and Polish Communication Association.

Author of nine scientific monographs and almost a hundred of articles and chapters devoted to media management and economics, as well as advertisement and social communication. He is also an author of two books of poems: Dychotomia uczuć and Dychotomia uczuć 2, and a collection of columns.

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