This paper addresses corporate policymaking and its varied meanings through organizational hierarchies and across departments. We argue for an approach to policymaking and implementation in large companies such that the impact on work remains visible to decision makers, and such that employees engage with, and promote the changes being made. In evaluating the effects of a policy change inside our company, we found that not only did the justifications for the original policy not hold up, policy implementation negatively impacted certain job roles and departments and employee engagement was undermined. A key implication of our findings is that implementation plans should assess the impact on affected parties, and we suggest that anthropologists are well-suited to conduct this assessment. If deployed to evaluate the effects and effectiveness of policy changes on people, work practices and perceptions, anthropologists can influence the direction of policy as it is being formulated and tested, and recommend adjustments to better achieve policies’ stated aims.
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INTRODUCTION
The makings of corporate policy are often invisible to those affected by it; likewise policymakers themselves are often unaware of the impact of the rules they develop on workers below. Policymaking can have a significant effect on the ability of a corporation and its employees to “take care” of business, however, these implications are often not well understood by the policy makers themselves. This paper addresses corporate policymaking and its varied meanings through the corporate hierarchy and across departments—and the resulting effects—many of which are unintended. As corporations respond to dramatic economic changes, internal policy can have considerable influence on how those shifts are perceived and implemented, as well as on the engagement and commitment of employees.
Policy Research
In social science literature, the term “policy” generally refers to “public” policy or governmental policy. But policy inside organizations or corporations has been largely neglected in published research. Likewise, very little anthropological writing considers the workings of policy from inside large corporate entities. To the extent that anthropologists consider policy, they have done so largely from the standpoint of advocacy, i.e., either how actors such as non-governmental organizations and transnational corporations push for public policy, legal, or social change (Ferguson 1994, Hardt and Negri 2000, Gupta and Sharma 2006). Nevertheless, anthropology has long dealt with issues of institutions and power. And since its days in colonial administration, anthropology has, perhaps less directly, studied policy (Wedel, Shore, et al 2005:32). More recently, ethnography has been touted for its strengths in evaluating policy, including how local actors implement, interpret and sometimes resist policies (Hornberger and Cassels Johnson 2007). When employed by anthropologists, the emphasis is generally on “local” actors engaging with the policy process, framed as people from below engaging with policy from above, and demonstrating how that engagement changes the meaning and outcome of the policy itself. As in other domains, anthropologists who engage in policy research demonstrate a taste for “resistance” and “opening spaces” for action for those typically thought (by non-anthropologists) to have little agency in larger processes.1 Focus on resistance narrowly characterizes policy as a dominating force against which locals employ “weapons of the weak.” Our focus is rather on contradictions, effects, unintended or otherwise, and multiply determined meanings.
Despite the scant research on organizational policy, lessons can be drawn from tracing how policy is designed or implemented in broader contexts such as states or even cities—the domains in which most policy research, including a limited amount of ethnographic research, has been carried out. For instance, policy formulation and implementation are often not carried out by the same bodies. Who generates the policy and the presumed, perceived, or actual authority they have over those expected to implement or follow it might make a significant difference in whether those who implement believe they have a choice in the manner of implementation or whether to implement a given policy at all. Those who implement will have their own views of the policy and to neglect these is to neglect an important dimension in how the policy gets put in action. This means that translation through the hierarchy, country, or bureaucracy will invariably create multiple meanings, interpretations and practices.
Since those who implement the policy and those impacted by it influence both the meaning and the results of a given policy, it is worth considering mechanisms by which stakeholders at all levels and functions of an organization can be included more directly in the process of policy formulation and revision; a quick ethnographic audit could help identify affected parties crucial to bring into the process (cf. Hornsby 2006:78).
As one study puts it: “An anthropological approach attempts to uncover the constellations of actors, activities, and influences that shape policy decisions and their implementation, effects, and how they play out” (Wedel and Shore et al 2005:39). In our case, that constellation of actors, influences and factors shaping our policy and how it played out include the following: 1) external factors stimulating the perceived need for a given policy; 2) organizational culture and structure; 3) original decision maker(s); 4) those who communicate the policy; 5) those who are directly affected; 6) those who carry out operational changes; 7) and those who evaluate the change and implementation.
Before continuing, it is worth laying out definitions of some of the key terms at play in this paper. By implementation, we mean “decisions made in carrying out a policy” (O’Toole 1979). By impact, we mean effects of policy, implementation, and interpretation, whether intended or unintended. Unlike “public” policy, corporate policy can cover aspects of a business or workplace that are not obviously of fundamental concern to the organization. Corporate policy, moreover, is to be distinguished from a given corporation’s “mission” and “vision.” A mission is a short statement of the nature of the business and its purpose; a vision is a short statement of the direction the organization hopes to take, an aspiration for the future (Hornsby 2006:77). As Hornsby puts it, “Missions address what organizations do, visions identify where they are going, and values identify what they believe about the nature of their work.” Policies put these into practice through an attempt at action (ibid).
Organizational Context and Mail Delivery Policy Change
At the time of the study, both authors were employed as Workplace Anthropologists in the research division of Pitney Bowes (PB), a 90 year old US based Fortune 500 company. Best known for postage meters, PB has extensive businesses in mail, document management, and business software solutions, including a complex mix of operations and organizational social groups made up by dozens of acquisitions carried out in the last decade. In 2001, the research division was reorganized to take on a more customer centric approach, and non-technologists, including designers and anthropologists, began to join the staff. At the time of research, two dedicated anthropologists were employed at the company and both were put on the project.
Up to that point, anthropologists at PB were mostly deployed to conduct research aimed at understanding customer needs to help develop new products, services, and technologies for the company, but an increasingly common secondary role has been to conduct research meant to solve internal problems or with an eye towards driving a desired internal change (more customer-oriented work practice; cultivating a culture of innovation). As word has spread around the company about what anthropologists can do, they have been put to use for an increasing variety of ends. It was in such an emerging climate that senior management and an internal line of business with whom we had done previous work brought us in to evaluate the impact of a recent policy change.
The policy change, which affected the delivery of certain mail items, came at the direct request of PB’s then CEO, who was concerned with the environmental impact of mail, mailroom efficiency, and the potential implications of Do Not Mail legislation on the company’s core business. Do Not Mail legislation has been proposed in many states as an equivalent to Do Not Call; the basic idea of the proposed laws is to allow consumers to make legally enforceable requests to be removed from mailing lists. In order to obviate the need to pass legislation that would stop unsolicited mail altogether, Pitney Bowes executives have been concerned with finding solutions to better ensure that what is delivered to consumers is of interest to them. Coupled with the perceived threat of Do Not Mail was the then peaking concern for the environment. Al Gore’s film and countless business journals and magazines were excitedly describing the opportunities of “green” or environmentally responsible business, and it was against this background that the new mail delivery policy was proposed.
The specific policy was to limit the delivery of Standard Mail (items such as catalogs, advertisements, and magazines) to Fridays only, and to stop delivering “personal” mail altogether in the three largest Pitney Bowes offices where mail services were managed by Pitney Bowes Management Services (PBMS, a business unit that provides mail delivery and associated services to hundreds of companies around the world). Up to that point all mail regardless of postage class or intended usage was delivered to employees every day. The stated aim of the policy change was to reduce the environmental impact of mail and to increase efficiency. The CEO requested this change to the President of PBMS, who in turn assigned the implementation duties to operations directors and on-site managers. The Vice President of research was concerned about the implications of such a change for a company with mail as its core business and, together with the President of PBMS, asked that data be collected to support either the continuation or termination of the policy. Though we were asked to conduct the research after the policy changes were put in place, we were unaware of these changes until we were asked to do the research. In fact, many PB employees were unaware of the changes – unless and until their work was directly affected.
METHODOLOGY
Following conversations with a research director and client representatives, we decided to limit the scope of our research to understanding the impact of the policy on: PB businesses, incoming mail delivery and employee work practices. Our first step was to match this scope to a research design, and, given pressures to maximize efficiency, determine the minimum necessary research to determine these impacts. We decided that we needed to speak to a representative sample of stakeholders who would care most about the policy change or be most affected by it. Since we did not yet know what the impacts of the policy would be, this sampling could be only partially determined in advance.
In the spirit of ethnographic research, we decided to make the best roadmap we could and just begin observing and speaking to people. What we learned first would determine what we needed to know later. We began with what was easiest to set up and with what we knew we would have to explain to our clients no matter what else we found. This approach had the advantage of allowing us to report on insights about the impacts of the policy as it was being implemented, including how those impacts varied across functional, departmental and hierarchical lines.
Since our work was commissioned by the organization in charge of delivering internal mail, we decided to begin our field research directly with mailroom employees in order to understand how delivery changes affected their work. Our client hoped that by delivering less mail, there would be some gains in efficiency and therefore labor cost savings. We therefore observed incoming mail sortation and delivery in two mailroom locations. We conducted observations on both regular weekdays and on Fridays, since Fridays were the assigned day for Standard Mail delivery. We also used the time to talk with PBMS employees about their daily work practices and the changes in their work based on the policy.
We then conducted contextual interviews with 36 employees in 16 different departments. By “contextual” we mean: 1) in the context of both their ordinary work and as related to their functional position; 2) the role that paper mail plays in that work; and 3) any work or activity triggered by the receipt of mail, either observed by us or described by the interviewees. The idea was to trace the varying use and importance of internal mail to different personalities, departments, functional roles, and levels of the corporate hierarchy. We spoke to employees at ranks ranging from Administrative Assistant to President. Our aim was to understand the work practices and values of employees around incoming mail and to understand the opinions of individuals whose businesses or functions might be affected by the change. This included what employees thought of paper mail, delivery practices, and the recent changes as well as the policy itself.
To get a sense of the importance of a sample of mail to interviewees’ work and their conscious perceptions of that importance, we tried to schedule interviews when employees would be going through their daily mail. To get a limited view into what difference different delivery days might make, we asked a number of interviewees to keep several days worth of mail. A subset of these interviewees were asked to keep a log of what mail came in and what they did with it and why. In the interviews, employees discussed their jobs and daily work practices and told us about each mail piece—what it was, what they did with it, what work it created for them, and to what extent it was typical of the mail they generally receive. The interviews often led to more general discussion about the importance of paper mail to work today as opposed to other forms of communication, such as email, and how that has evolved over time.
We quickly saw emerging patterns that shaped our subsequent research and analysis. For instance, one salient pattern was that some departments and functional roles seemed to care more about physical mail receipt than others; some felt that incoming mail was mission critical for their work; others felt that mail had already gone the way of the dinosaur and could not remember the last time they stopped by their mail slot. To begin to trace the differential pattern of the impact of incoming mail to people’s work, we charted the types of mail received for each department or functional group, the work stimulated by the mail, and the impact of missing or delayed mail on the work. In order to create an objective view of what mail was arriving, we also noted the composition of items of different postal class and internal PBMS labeling types: First Class, Standard Class, Interoffice, and “Personal” (as classified by mailroom staff).