Presentación y análisis de datos

human Agency in Government and Private Team

There was no executive9 for the government team, but the operations of both the private

sector team and the transport section were each overseen by an executive. In the

government team there were six leaders, one of whom assumed the role of supervisor for

the group, although this title (while on a higher scale) did not really represent any

hierarchical position within the team and was actually carried forward from their time in

the Government Medical Warehouse. With the exception of the executives and those

above, responsibilities were not distinctly different from one individual to another; each

of them was given picking and packing based on the allocation made by the leader on the

day. Either the executive or the assistant manager had to approve the delivery schedule

for the purpose of consolidating deliveries that were along the same route, but decisions

on the daily operation rested primarily with the employees on the warehouse floor. For

instance, they had to consult one another to ensure that the picking and packing process

was completed on time, and to decide whether or not to consider urgent delivery.

One of the performance targets of the warehouse department was to deliver the product to

the customer within seven days from the pick lists, and KOPI was used as a basis for the

management of the warehouse to control their performance. The performance of the

individual employees was, however, hard to measure because the KOPI report illustrated

only the overall performance. Additionally, the report was restricted to the consumption

of those who prepared it and of the warehouse management team, and some

organisational members did not even know the existence of the report that reflected the

performance of their activities.

a standardised form, to be completed by each individual in the warehouse to record the

daily numbers of the items they picked and packed. In the private team, the executive

played an important role in encouraging the employees to record these items, and forms

were submitted to him at the beginning of the next working day. He then transferred the

items to a separate log book in order to track the performance of individual employees.

The log book was made available to each employee with the intention that they might use

it to compare their performance with others in their team. Although it took quite some

time for him to gain the cooperation from the employees, the executive made an effort to

remind them every day until the routine was established that there would be someone

who reminded the team to collect their forms before starting their job each day. He

personally believed that something had to be done to improve the performance of the

employees, and also agreed with the style of the previous warehouse manager who

rewarded the staff based on their individual performance, although the executive took a

different approach with the same intention: the performance log book was used to show

the staff their contribution to the team.

“I don’t believe in policing them like the previous manager, but I do agree with him that they can contribute more to the company. So I let them show their contribution, when their performance is not on a par with others, the peer pressure will start.”

Executive Private Team

“In the beginning it is quite troublesome to put down what we do, but then it becomes natural. We are interested in comparing why this month we cannot do as much as last month.”

In the private team, the alteration of practices was not only brought about by the agency

of the executive, but the log book itself also appears to have played an agency role in the

mesh of practices and orders in the warehouse. The log book was created as a result of

human intentionality, i.e. the log book was a manifestation of the executive’s intention to

make performance measurement a visible activity within the warehouse floor. Changes in

the speed of the picking process were in response to the calculative measures in the log

book. The visibility of performance encouraged each picker to compare their

performance against their peers, and the log book became the shared resource that

connected the aspiration of the management with the activities on the warehouse floor. It

thus promoted change as one of the entities in the mesh of practices and orders on the

warehouse floor. It also anchored stability as it did not cause the other elements of

warehouse practices to expire.

Similar to the practice of the previous manager, the executive also believed in face-to-

face monitoring of performance, so that he could reward only the right person. Avoiding

the manner of policing, he usually walked around the warehouse floor during the peak

hours so that he was accessible to the team. By doing this, he did not completely depend

on accounting measures as a mechanism of control from a distance (Roberts and Scapens,

1985); rather, he made accounting practices part of the “compositional and embedding

network” of the management control system (Schatzki, 2002; p.206).

very low. To the supervisor, it was quite impossible to encourage team members to

record their work as many of them were older than him, accustomed to thinking that the

way they did the job was always the best, and usually regarding him as a new boy.

Thinking that pushing for the use of this form would invite an uneasy relationship with

his peers, he chose not to rely on it. After all, the management seemed to give some

freedom in managing their day-to-day activities. What he did was to ensure that all the

pick lists and delivery orders assigned to the team were completed within the day. He

achieved this through informal interaction and verbal report, comparing the information

with the register of pick lists and delivery orders that he maintained. Unlike the practice

of the private team where the picker and packer worked individually to complete their

tasks, the staff in the government team worked at least in pairs to ensure the accuracy of

the items picked and packed. The arrangement to work in pairs or more also constituted a

form of social control since a team member would not want to upset his peer by his

underperformance.

The approach taken by the supervisor of the government team reflects his understanding

of socialisation on the warehouse floor. For that reason he remained true to the TOPIC

principle which promoted the importance of human relations such as teamwork and open

communications in doing their activities. He also complemented this with his

encouragement of informal interactions and verbal reports as a means to ensure that work

was completed on time. Compared with the private team, this illustrated how accounting

practices marginally meshed with the picking and packing practices in the absence of the

achieved through the agency created from the effect of the embedding network of

supervisor, team of pickers and packers and TOPIC discourses.