COMPONENTES BASICOS DE LAS ACTITUDES

Local Authority Borough Corporation of a Northern Town. I joined the site at an early stage in its development. Much of the time I spent either in the main

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administrative building, a Portacabin, or wandering around the site, observing, taking notes, occasionally taping, although most of my taping was done indoors for obvious reasons of audibility. As I am sure everyone knows, construction sites are often very noisy places. Sometimes I would wander around the site in my Donkey Jacket, jeans and hard-hat, looking much like any of the other workers on site. Other times I would sit in a corner in the site hut, at a table piled high with bits and pieces, including my tape recorder, in the room which the Project Manager occupied. Often I would have the tape recorder on as I read a book or a photocopied paper, breaking off every now and then to talk, to walk, to lunch and tea-break and so on.

By chance, I found that I was often present at a number of more or less impromptu site-meetings. Some were, in fact, quite formal ones. These became the major, although not the only, source of data for the study.

3

Previous research

The data that I collected from these meetings took the form of tape recordings of what actually was said as it happened during them. At first sight the findings that emerged from these data might not have seemed too dissimilar to some of the existing findings that had been produced by social researchers who had researched construction sites in the past. There had been at least one major piece of work done on British construction sites by social scientists. A project had been commissioned by the Building Industry Communications Research Project into

‘communication’ on sites. The work was undertaken by researchers from the Tavistock Institute and published as Interdependence and Uncertainty: A Study of the Building Industry (Higgin et al 1966). This was very much a piece of research into ‘normal’ sites: as the researchers said at the outset ‘In selecting projects for study we concentrated on those which seemed likely to go well. No purpose was seen in criticizing projects which were obviously inefficient’

(Higgin et al: 17). Despite this, they found that ‘normally’, ‘none of the projects seemed to live up to expectations… misundefstandings, delays, stoppages and abortive work’, resulting from ‘failures in communications, and impressions of confusion, error, and conflict’ were the norm.

While practitioners might find this troublesome for me it was reassuring. The data that I had collected did not seem to be aberrant: the misunderstandings, delays, stoppages and abortive work that the data demonstrated were normal, it was business as usual. When I encountered joiners on site, idly kicking a football about and then telling me ‘there must be something wrong with this bloody job’

(Clegg 1975: ‘The Joiners’ Tale’: 87–91), which they went on to elaborate in terms of the lack of managerial control, I need not have worried; when I observed and taped the Project Manager, Office Manager, Measurement Engineer and General Foreman ‘Cooking the Books’ (Clegg 19075:91–100) and constructing fictive figures to disguise the appalling weekly results, then I should

not have been alarmed; when the Office Manager later insisted to me on the obdurateness of the figures which were being cooked (Clegg 1975: ‘Them figures…are figures you can’t argue with’: 102–107), and claimed that they had a reality which was distinct from that which was being represented in the weekly accounting terms, I should have felt no surprise; when, later still, in terms which were almost Weberian in their lauding of efficient, formal and bureaucratic organization, he castigated the management of the present site for its alleged incompetence (Clegg 1975 ‘Al, the ideal typist’: 107–119), I should have realized that this was just the everyday achievement of the British construction industry. No worries, no problems, nothing amiss: a typical site, the usual work, the characteristic organization.

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Organization: formal, informal and faithful

How was this regular achievement possible? That was the sociological question which both I and the Tavistock researchers set out to answer. Before proceeding to my own interpretation, let us first consider that proffered by the Tavistock Researchers. At the outset they reject the terms which were often presented to them by industry figures. The record, they say, has ‘commonly been seen in personal terms—incompetence, laziness, or financial greed of others for example, and although bitterness, and even hurt, can be given by accusations in such terms

—these behaviours are seldom crucial’ (Higgin et al, 1966:52). Instead, they identify the real reason in a disjuncture between the ‘formal’ and the ‘informal’

system of organization.

The formal system of organization is identified as that which is laid down in formal tomes such as the RIBA Handbook of Architectural Practice and Management. In this formally sanctioned view of organizational practice are emphasised the independence and sequential application of tasks such as briefing, designing, design quantification, construction planning and control, manufacturing, sub-contracting, and so on. The formal model of organization assumes that these tasks have a ‘sequential finality’ which

does not seem suited effectively to control a process characterised by the interdependence of its operation, fraught with uncertainty and requiring carefully phased decisions and continuous application of all control functions (Higgin et al, 1966:45).

Interdependence and uncertainty result, it is claimed, from the functional demands of the building process. Interdependence arises from the ‘relevance of different streams of information to each other in particular contexts’ (Higgin et al, 1966:45). The construction site is a complex inter-organizational world in which many different types of specialist knowledge are required at different stages in the construction process. Any decision taken at one time, with respect

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to a particular application of specific knowledge(s), may well have wider implications in space and time and for other forms of specialized knowledge in the site organization. It is this which introduces one potent source of uncertainty into decision-making. Yet, there are at least two further sources of uncertainty, they say:

First, there are the uncertainties engendered by the action of those not directly involved in the building process, such as government departments, planning authorities, public bodies, client organizations, and even the general public… Second, there are the uncertainties which stem from resources: labour, equipment and materials (Higgin et al, 1966:34)

All these sources of uncertainty make the formal organizational model one which will not work well in practice. In consequence, when we actually observe what it is that professionals and other people do on construction sites we find that

the characteristics of the formal system are so much in conflict with the control functions required to achieve effectiveness in the system of operations that, in practice, the formal system cannot be closely followed.

Rigid adherence to the procedures of the formal system would not be possible, under normal conditions, without unacceptable expenditure—

particularly of time. In practice, reality forces a recognition of interdependence, uncertainty, phased decision-taking, and the continuous application of functions. It forces members of the building team to adapt themselves (Higgin et al, 1966:46).

One can construct from their research an ironic juxtaposition of what formal organization recommends and the informal organization which actually occurs. I shall summarize the points. In theory, design is completed at an early stage. In practice it is not, to a far greater extent than is recognized by the provisional items in the Bill of Quantities. In particular this is the case with the design of services, related to the sequential manner in which the design process is usually handled.

In practice, much of the detail of service design is worked out on the job, during tours of work after site meetings , for example. In theory, the quantity surveyor should quantify the job in detail prior to competitive tender. In practice, there is rarely sufficient information to do so. In theory, the full working drawings should precede the preparation of the Bills of Quantities. The RIBA Handbook is quite explicit about this: ‘Final decisions on every matter related to design specification, construction and cost, and full design of every part and component of the building should be embodied in these drawings it insists. An ominous warning, in bold type, alerts one to the onerous consequences: ‘any future changes in location, size, shape, or cost after this time will result in abortive work’. In practice, of course, this is a caution more often honoured in the breach than in obeisance to the formal model. Finally, the ironical juxtaposition between

theory and practice reaches into the very heart of the social relations that occur on construction sites: their constitution by and as a contract:

The contract, in theory, is arrived at as a result of tendering procedure which is considered to be a legally and commercially rational bargain between the client and the builder—generally the builder who can undertake the work most cheaply. This view is based on an assumption that all details of the project have been finally decided and are specified in detail in the tender documents, and that the contractor can anticipate accurately at this time what all his costs will be. This is not so and it is not surprising, therefore that the builders pricing and the client’s acceptance of any competitive tender must always be acts of faith (Higgin et al., 1966:47–

8).

At the core of the rationally binding contract is an act of faith! The act of faith lies in the tacit acceptance of a model governing construction site relations which is a formal fiction and of little practical moment in the mundane life of the site.

In many respects the observations that I made supported the general impression of the Tavistock researchers. The idea that the contractual documents are a series of instructions, or formally complete and binding rules for constructing a structure from its ‘detail’ cannot be sustained for long after one has observed a site in progress. Yet, at the point of explaining and interpreting why this should be so I would wish to proffer a somewhat different account to that of the Tavistock researchers.

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Contracts, construction and conflicts

Construction sites are constituted by contractual relations to a greater extent than many other kind of organization. It is not only labour contracts with personnel which are central, but the contractualization of virtually everything: who can do what, where, when, in what sequence, with what materials, with what technologies, at what standard costs an so on. Virtually every contingency, according to the formal model, has been covered, yet still, in practice, it remains an act of faith. Why?

The Tavistock researchers argue that it is because in practice communication problems and uncertainties constantly undercut the formally secured organization which the contract seeks to concretize. This formal organization is a stable set of meanings, of interpretations of documents, which are supposed to govern the site.

It is when these are challenged, as a result of contingent ‘uncertainties’, by some members of the site organization, that ‘communication problems’ arise. These exigencies then modify the formal organization into an adaptive informal organization.

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I wish to proffer a contrary, but related, view. Uncertainty should not be seen simply in terms of anticipated if specifically unforeseeable informal modifications of the formal organization wrought by a reality recalcitrant to rationality plotted imperiously elsewhere and in advance. The ‘misunderstandings, delays, stoppages, and abortive work…confusion, error and conflict’ do not just represent ‘communication problems’. These ‘communication problems’ are seen as resulting from a collision between an uncertain reality with the formal organization. The uncertain reality takes the shape of the actual, real, informal organization, while the formal organization ism, by contrast, somewhat unreal: it doesn’t actually exist. The formal organization in this model has hardly any reality at all: it is just a set of symbolic signs, words and drawings, which have only a hazy and problematic relation to what people actually do on site. It is supposed to be ‘uncertainty’ which makes the formal organization unreal, unrealized, nothing. This is because actual practice on site, according to the Tavistock researchers, can not conform to the ideal model because the model does not recognize nor can it cope with the everyday ‘uncertainties’ which occasion the prolific number of ‘communications problems’.

Uncertainty may be defined in a number of ways. I regard it, analytically, as a lack of knowledge about how to go on, an absence of rules for remedying surprise. Uncertainty, defined thus, does not characterize construction sites.

People do carry on, buildings do get built, they can be recognizably related, in the future, to the future-perfect representations of them which are today’s plans (Schutz 1967; Weick 1969). The formal organization is not a useless model, something which is simply a case for ironical treatment by social researchers. It is regularly and routinely invoked by as a part of the organization of social action on site. It is contained in something which my field-work demonstrated is referred to constantly in the normal course of the site work. It can be found in the detailed contractual documents comprising the ‘bill of works’ on which the contractor tenders. It is these which are constitutive of the specialist trades, professions and practices and their inter-relationships—the knowledges—which one can find on and around the site. The contract is only barely contained in these contractual documents. By this I mean that its meaning, its interpretation, is never self-evident. It is doubtful that in moderately complex organizations that can it ever be so. The contract functions as a potent symbol on site, waiting to be enacted, to be made meaningful, by the possessors of various knowledges, those who hold differential means of interpretation of the formally fictive unambiguity of these documents.

The contractual documents are never unproblematic, never unambiguous, because they can never be unindexical. Indexicality is a technical term. It refers to a situation where the meaning of something is always contingent upon someone interpreting it. Such an interpretation always ‘indexes’ the particulars of the occasion of its interpretation. It is dependent on who is making the interpretation, from what interests, from what knowledge, at what time in the unfolding drama of the site. The contract is some thing which is never, nor never

can be, apparently matter-of-factual, that is, without need for interpretation. By the notion of an ‘interested interpretation’ one means to suggest that no interpretation is ever innocent of interest. Different knowledges, different positions in a hierarchy, different personnel in a network of inter-organizational relations, different times in the temporal flow of events or spaces in their spatial location, can always produce differentially interested interpretations of the matter-at-hand. Hence, indexicality is irremediable. It is, if you like, a part of the human condition. Thus, conflict is ever potential wherever there is indexicality.

And, where there are attempts to frame matters unindexically, in complex organizational contexts extending across space, time and knowledge, through contractual documents, there will always be indexicality, thus the possibility of conflict. It is endemic.

The difference from the account of the Tavistock researchers should now be evident. There is not the (unreal) formal organization and the real (informal) organization. Actual organization on site, that which is real, is not something which uncertainty makes of the formal structure, modifying it into the informal organization. By contrast, I would maintain, it is something which the interested members of, in and around organizations make of uncertainty and the formal organization.

Uncertainty is not a naturally occurring state or an act of God. It is something made, produced, by the site organization members out of their grasp of the indexical nature of the documentation of the ‘formal’ organization contained in the contractual materials. These formal organizational contractual documents provide the constitutional and constitutive grounds and framework within which the meaning of the contract is negotiated, contested, and sometimes contained.

On site these processes take place through the medium of site-meetings, the meetings which I was able to tape in real time as a part of my study of organizational work as it happened, in audio verite. These are socially organized procedures for constituting, formulating, and discussing ‘issues’, what is issueable and what is not. With site-meetings I found that I had come analytically full circle. Construction sites, just as much as media organizations, afforded access to the creation of issues. Issues are instantly recognizable as such because they are addressed as something formulated as a problem. They provide a focus for practical reasoning about the issue of issues—what is to count as an issue and how it is to do so.

In a situation on sites where the contract formally covers every contingency the only remaining contingency is the contract itself. This is why contracts cause conflicts on construction sites. No contract can ever provide for its own interpretation because interpretation is not disinterested. In a complex inter-organizational reality such as a construction site the interests, embedded in different knowledges, different organizations, different hierarchies and different levels in the same hierarchies, are complex. Consequently, the interpretations are rarely uncontested. The contestation is not whimsical, not merely inter-personal (although that undoubtedly enters into it sometimes) but embedded in different

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and distinct knowledge-practices and associated interests which produce different ambiguities in, and different ways of seeing, the documents. Perhaps some examples may serve to make matters clearer.

6 Mocking up

Sometimes one would find techniques such as ‘mock-ups’ of models used to try and resolve an issue. It was during one such session that I began to grasp the way in which contracts function to create conflict on site. There was a discussion of the interpretation of an aspect of the contractual drawings, an interpretation which was being inhibited, the Project Manager said, by the inability of the Client’s Architect to visualize in more than two dimensions. Hence the mock-up.

The mock-up functioned as a device to make the drawings seem less indexical and to secure one interpretation over another. However, corollaries of the Project Manager’s favoured interpretation rapidly emerged: ‘V O’s’ (variation orders),

‘star-rates’, including a ‘buggeration factor’, all rapidly were made apparent (Clegg 1975: appendix 3; also pp. 132–5) in the context of an exquisite appreciation of organizational time. The Project Manager introduced this

‘discourse of temporality ‘as follows:’…well, there’s no skin off my nose really, in doing it, but I’m not doing it now, I will do it, if he gives me a V.O. to cover it, and thereby, it means he pays me extra…for doing it’. It turns out that ‘now’

indexes a time after the issue of ‘normal clay’. There was time before and there was time after ‘normal clay’.

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