Aplicando un arquetipo
Paso 1: eleccion de un arquetipo
There were steady changes in the internal organisation of the mills during the 1950s, but four broad types of departments always exist.
These are basic production departments, such as yarn sheds and cloth sheds; supplementary production departments, such as repair, maintenance and electrical departments; welfare departments, including canteens, nurseries and medical units, etc; and functional departments (which help the top level management to lead production) such as departments of planning, accounting, wages and personnel [ C.K.F.C.K.H., 1957e] .
There are obviously many ways of structuring the internal organ- isation, covering different departments and different levels of control. Complete unity of organisation with all mills being identically structured was not pursued in view of the different sizes and natures of the mills.^ Some flexibility of organisation was allowed. Mills also varied in their speed of response to directives: reports in the literature indicated
(given that x stands for the change ordered by higher levels), that in one year some mills 'did x', some 'prepared to do x', and some 'did not do x'. Because of the flexibility allowed and the varying response lag to orders, the existing structures in the mills tended to vary quite considerably.
Immediately after Liberation the existing internal structures were allowed to continue, as the primary aim was to restore production.
Commencing in 1950, a three-tiered structure was gradually implemented, with the director at the top, workshop foremen in the middle and small teams at the bottom. The main reasons for this change were that the state wished to alter the old systems that were seen as involving antagon- istic relationships between managers and workers; under the existing
systems technical and administrative leadership were often quite separate; and in general there was frequently much obscurity on responsibility,
which induced mutual recriminations whenever anything went wrong. Internal changes included removing maintenance work from the transport department and establishing a maintenance department, and building up various
functional departments, notably for planning and technical inspection. Between 1950 and 1953 it became clear that this three-tiered system (small workshop system) was unsatisfactory, and a four-tiered system began to be introduced. Problems connected with the three-tiered system included
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Mills vary in size from a few thousand spindles to one hundred thousand or more. Some mills only spin, others only weave, most do both; some mills have dyeing and printing sections, others do not.
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the lack of management experience of the workshop foremen; the
proliferation of workshops of small size, especially in large mills; the tendency of the director to lead directly from the top, resulting in an absence of horizontal co-operation and contact and also placing a large burden on the director; and the separation of technical and administrative work remained. The four-tiered system involved the mill director at the top, followed in descending order by work area chiefs, work shop chiefs and small production team chiefs.
From 1953 onward the structure became reasonably settled for the mid-1950s, although functional departments tended to grow rapidly in number, resulting in efforts to streamline in 1955 and 1957. Some small mills reverted to the small workshop system and dropped the work areas.
In 1958 many staff were transferred down and the established internal organisational methods tended to dismantled.
The running of the mills;
Immediately after Liberation, army officers were stationed at many mills. The presence of a military representative was important to bring order and stability out of chaos and uncertainty, but his role in running the enterprises seems to have been almost entirely passive. He was not familiar with production and management and it was necessary to make alternative management arrangements [ Su Ku, 1957] .
An early step was to achieve a democratic reform of mill management. This process was generally carried out under the leadership of the local Party committee, and the main elements consisted of establishing a
Factory Administration Committee (FAC) and a Staff and Worker Represent- ative Meeting (SRVJM) , [ J.M.J.P., 1950/2/6]. The system of running the mills was called 'collective leadership of the Party combined with
individual responsibility', and lasted from 1950 to about 1954.
The FAC was made up of the director, vice-directors, the general engineer, other responsible people in production, (such as the Party secretary) and representatives of the staff and workers, including the trade union chairman ex officio. The ideal size was considered to be about five to seven members. A standing committee existed, composed of the director, the trade union chairman, and one other man (inevitably the Party secretary) for making day to day decisions. The function of the FAC was to run the mill, that is, to discuss and decide all major problems of production and management, including the production plan, business
management, the systems for running the mill, wages, welfare, and the inspection and summing up of results [C.F.E.L,, 1950].
The SWRM was to be set up in all but the smallest mills; it came under the jurisdiction of the trade union and held its meetings in spare time. It listened to and discussed reports from the FAC and could inspect the way the FAC was running the mill. its power was, however, limited to making criticisms and suggestions direct to the FAC.
Several problems existed with regard to this system of running the mills in the early 1950s. The factory management tended to go slow on the introduction of democratic reforms, and the different regions of China adopted different sets of methods of reform. The different mills
in one town often had different approaches to the problem [ J.M.J.P., 1950/2/6]. Once the FAC and SWRM were set up they often became a mere formality with no real power or function.
An important problem was that the Party committee in the mill had a tendency to encroach and take over the function of management [ Li Hsueh-feng, 1956] causing uncertainty about who really was in charge of the small workshops and resulting in the managers adopting a passive role [Chen Keng-jen, 1954]. As a result the Party began to neglect political work and was unable to supervise or control the management,
since they had taken over this function [Huang Cheng, 1955]. Additionally, there was a lack of well defined responsibility system in production.
This was not very suitable for the implementation of centralised economic planning and hindered the setting up of necessary internal systems such as domestic planning [Chen Keng-jen, 1954].
As a result of these problems a change was made in 1953, when 'unified leadership under a single head' (or 'one-man management') began to be established in industry [Li Hsueh-feng, 1956]. This began in the textile industry in Shanghai in the second quarter of 1954, and by September of that year the state run textile mills were in the process of changing to the new system. The power of the enterprise Party committee was severely curtailed and that of the director increased substantially.
From the viewpoint of the government a new set of problems emerged in the period 1954 to 1956. The factory director developed 'full
responsibility* and began to ignore resolutions concerning production management, passed by the enterprise Party committee [Li Hsueh-feng, 1956]. This caused the Party to decline in authority and to adopt a subordinate position in the mills. In turn this 'corroded the Party spirit of the cadres', encouraging bureaucracy ,commandism, self-
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complacency, and arrogant behaviour among the managers. Schurmann sees this one-man management system as being strongly pushed in 1953, under oblique attack in 1954, declining during 1955, and revoked in 1956. He also believes that many enterprises never adopted it, particularly in light industry, and that 'the Chinese never became enthusiastic about one-man management' [ Schurmann F,, 1966:254],
The evidence from an examination of the textile industry supports neither the timing, a minor point since Schurmann deals largely with heavy industry, nor the alleged lack of popularity. In the textile industry the push to establish one-man management began in late 1954, the system expanded in 1955, and despite being revoked in 1956, many enterprises were reluctant to discard it and kept it after it should have been abandoned [ Hsia Cheng-yen, 1956] . It would not appear to have been unpopular with the mill management. Only in the restricted sense that certain members of the ruling elite, such as Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and Party units at lower levels were not overly enthusiastic, is it possible to agree with the point about enthusiasm.
The reason that a good number of textile mills did not implement one-man management was not, as Schurmann suggests, because of the
degree of remoteness from Soviet influence [1966:253], but was because at that time most mills were privately owned or joint state-privately owned. One-man management was apparently never supposed to apply to these
categories. In heavy industry, with which Schurmann is more familiar, one-man management was more prevalent, since the degree of state owner- ship was much higher.
In 1956 another change occurred. The one-man management system was terminated in favour of the policy that the director (or manager) takes responsibility of the enterprise under the leadership of the Party committee [Li Hsueh-feng, 1956]. This was officially announced at the Eighth Party Congress, but the order had gone out earlier to local Party committees and to the enterprises; it had also been announced in the People's Daily, [ 1956/7/8b] .
This new system was designed to increase Party power in the mills, while avoiding the problems that had existed in 1950-54. Under the new rules, all major questions, including management problems, were to be
discussed exhaustively by the Party committee in the mill and the decision
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