In trying to understand the world, we all seek shortcuts. The most intellectual of these is called a ‘conjoncture’ – a set of benchmarks against which all events can be compared, ordered and contrasted. The holy grail for HR, for instance, might well be a logical thread that answers key underlying questions like ‘What is the root of prejudice which exposes a company to legal threats and loss of reputation for discrimination?’ and ‘What makes some groups of employees work productively, whilst other are dysfunctional?’ Yet if we look closer, the connection that makes sense out of everything is less a thread than a simple set of laws.
At the heart of all questions about human attitudes and interactions are phenomena that are strangely akin to the universal laws of thermodynamics. Understanding how to apply these laws can have a profound impact on how effective a manager is in the workplace. Without venturing too far into the science of physics, let’s take a few simple examples. Physicists talk about the basic law of thermodynamics as ‘the zeroth law’. Simply put, if two things are in equilibrium with a third thing then they must be in equilibrium with each other. Turn that logic into the labour relations arena and all the two parties have to do to feel they are in an equitable position is gain a common agreement about a third thing. When I first went into labour relations I always wondered why a colleague started off most discussions with union reps talking about sport. Then I realised that if they both agree that a referee had made a lousy decision in a previous day’s football match, then the rest of the conversation about pay, terms and conditions would be much easier. They had established equilibrium with a third thing and, in doing so, gained it between each other.
Of course, other laws of thermodynamics can make interactions work very differently. The first law states that “energy is conserved; it can neither be created nor destroyed”. We can see this in a situation where negative energy that naturally exists between two people can be turned onto a third. Take a situation where a new person joins a work group. If the group already contains two strong rivals who team up to reject the newcomer, then the combination of negative energy that normally exists between them can become very powerful. The negative energy between the rivals has not been lost, but redirected.
Coupled to the first law is an adiabatic process, which amounts to a change occurring within a system as a result of a transfer of energy to or from the system in the form of only work and not heat – such as the generation of energy in a diesel energy simply from the process of compression. We can see this in our parallel HR universe in the way that new recruits are integrated into work groups. The least effective way to do this is to encourage new recruits to be mutually supportive. In other words, to become involved in the workplace through emotional bonding. Extensive research by a team from Tel Aviv University reported in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology shows this approach to be a huge mistake. This is because it drains resources rather than energises them: “New employees are torn between meeting task-related demands and socially integrating into the workplace.” Therefore, many of them experience a sense of premature burn-out. The researchers found, however, that integration was most effective when newcomers were involved in tasks from the outset and their focus was on work. Energy was maximised in the form of work and not emotional heat.
This takes us straight to the second law of thermodynamics that entropy (disorder) in the universe either stays the same or gets bigger. A social variant of the second law is sometimes referred to as “Murphy’s law” – if things can go wrong, they will go wrong. This is found every time a new policy is implemented or working conditions are changed. There will always be a set of unintended consequences. Take, for instance, the introduction of open-plan offices. This has been commonly assumed to increase interactions, encourage work flexibility and improve communications. However, it has been found in a recent study by a team from Karlstad University, Sweden that there was a negative relationship between the number of co-workers sharing an office and employees’ job satisfaction. A larger shared space produces more scope for entropy to take place.
Another example of entropy being generated when managers make changes with the best of intentions was recently uncovered by a team from University of Jyväskylä, Finland, whose research was reported in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. Much health and safety literature is devoted to the perils of sedentary behaviour on our health and well-being. To overcome this, a number of workstations have been developed that require those using computers to stand rather than sit. The outcome of this, however, is not to reduce shoulder or neck strain, but to also produce extra strain on the legs and hips. Moreover, it was found that the biggest contributor to employee health and reduced absenteeism was not ergonomics, but being “treated fairly at work”. Managers sometimes try too hard to engineer improvements, but in doing so just generate more entropy, more disorder.
There is probably no scientific foundation for a link between thermodynamics and the social dynamics of the workplace – no more than social Darwinism, popular a century ago, actually explained how social systems evolved. However, it has provided us with a practical ‘conjoncture’ to help pull together the mass of often useful, but poorly utilised, research that is constantly being generated by academic and related research.