I want to clarify what I said about churches and Taylorism in a recent post. Churches are not and never have been similar to businesses employing a Taylorist approach. My point is that there are sufficient parallels between churches and traditional manufacturing businesses for there to be a degree of unconscious confusion.
Aspects of Taylorism have entered the public imagination and often when the role of management in churches is debated I get the impression it is this model that is being criticised as unsuitable for churches. On the principle that there's no smoke without fire I suspect that a lack of awareness of the range of approaches to management can lead to this confusion shared by some leaders and some of their critics.
Churches can be deeply hierarchical. An immediate objection is that church hierarchies predate modern manufacturing businesses and so also Taylorism. Churches were never intended to be led in this way but that does not mean that churches are immune to the influence of this approach.
Another similarity is that just as Taylorist businesses produce thousands of standard products so churches, sometimes across the world, produce standard activities to a timetable or lectionary. The model of authority descending through hierarchies to be consumed by thousands of consumers must be seductive at least to some leaders.
Despite these similarities churches cannot in practise perform to the Taylorist model. The reason for this is not theological but economic. It is the threat of redundancy that enable Taylorist managers to achieve their goal of a standard product. Workers who will not comply lose their jobs.
Churches face a very different reality. They do not employ their congregations and although it is possible to discipline their ordained ministers, the members are far harder to control, especially as they pay the bills. Consequently church hierarchies must resort to other sanctions if they wish to control the beliefs and activities of their congregations. Leaders with a Taylorist mindset will employ any means to do this but others will see the need to use discussion and debate as a means to arrive at a consensus.
This is one reason why reception is important. Decisions cannot be imposed and in even the most top down traditions there still has to be consent from the ground up. People might accept a degree of coercion but in reality it will not do as a means to conduct long-term change.
I offer this explanation of the tendency for churches to be top down in their approach to change. This model of change is likely to be the default position of any leader who knows nothing of organisations or management. For ecumenists, the search for effective ways of finding consent for the results of ecumenical talks is complex and needs close examination.
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