Quality when you have no choices

Last week I argued that Quality has a role in determining the attitude management should take towards workers in the organization; because if management doesn't offer the rank-and-file such simple considerations as respect, truth, transparency, and justice, the organizational machinery is going to break down. In that sense, I said that showing your people respect and justice are just a form of preventive maintenance.

Was I wrong?

I got a reply telling me I was wrong. Specifically, this reader argued that sometimes people are trapped and can't walk away. She reminded me that I have written before about monopoly situations (like public utilities) where competition is absent, and that in such cases customer care often takes a back seat. 

As an aside, it is clear to everyone how these two cases are the same?

Under a monopoly, one party (the seller) provides a good, often a necessity (like gas, electricity, or water). So long as he continues to provide it, he can charge more or less whatever price he wants and can offer more or less whatever level of service he chooses. People who need the good in question will continue to buy from him because there are no alternatives.

By the same token, if membership in some organization offers benefits that some people can't do without—or if an employer hires people who can't afford to quit—those people will stick with the organization on (more or less) whatever terms the organization chooses to offer, because there are no alternatives.

The full comment introduces other examples as well, ranging from slaveholding to contracts with teaser rates. But in all cases the topology of the power relations is the same, even if the magnitudes are very different. 

Anyway my critic concluded—with respect to the discussion of ASQ's current controversies that started this whole thread—that "if there is a benefit to membership that’s (a) independent of the local programs, and (b) unavailable elsewhere, it seems to me that ASQ leadership can do whatever they darn like with your dues, and you members just have to lump it."

"We don't care. We don't have to."

It's a logical argument. We've already discussed that if the lines are too long when you go to renew your driver's license, you can't just patronize a competitor instead; so, perhaps unsurprisingly, there is usually a line. If a public utility messes up your service order, you may not have a lot of recourse short of contacting the regulatory entity that oversees them. And everyone remembers Lily Tomlin's famous line as Ernestine the telephone operator—even people who aren't old enough to remember Ernestine herself: "We don't care. We don't have to." (Ironically, she was spoofing the phone company, which is no longer a monopoly.)*

As for ASQ, whose management controversies, as I say, started this whole thread, there does seem to be a sense in some quarters that the membership are responsible to the management and not vice versa.

• On the one hand, there are regular exhortations from ASQ management encouraging the local sections to find new ways to attract and retain members.
• On the other hand, as noted in an earlier post, headquarters has cut off all the regular remittances of member dues to the local sections (notwithstanding that people are sensitive to loss).
• Nor was there discussion or consultation with the section leadership in advance of this decision (notwithstanding that people are sensitive to slights).
• Nor has there been any public discussion of these controversies inside ASQ. In fact, just last week there was an update to the Community Guidelines for the myASQ discussion forums, forbidding discussion of ASQ's Board of Directors or their decisions.** Nominally the update was to "ensure myASQ remains a welcoming, helpful space focused on our shared professional interests." But concretely that means, among other new provisions, that "Community members shall refrain from using myASQ for activities related to the ASQ Board of Directors or other Society elections, including posting discussions, blogs, and direct messages, unless explicitly authorized in writing." It is not clear to me whether ASQ hopes to keep members from finding out about the controversies, or just wants to push discussion to other locations. (There is extensive discussion on LinkedIn, for instance.) Either way, these developments have all taken place notwithstanding that people can judge independently of how you want them to.

So on the face of it, it does look like there is some point to my critic's argument.

Yes, but no

But I think "on the face of it" is the key qualifier. In general, exploitative monopolies can succeed in the short run, but they fail in the long run. Unless they offer benefits that are worth the cost, in the long run people figure out how to make other arrangements.

My critic talked about slavery. I am no expert in the economics of slaveholding, and I will leave any discussion to those who are. But if we look at a situation that was similar in some respects—I'm thinking of mandatory collective labor in the old Soviet Union—everyone knows that the private or black market economy was far more productive than the official, collective economy.*** It's true that most people couldn't run away. But they were often unmotivated. We've discussed before that the deepest source of Quality is love. For that very reason, though, if you don't care about what you are doing then your work will be no good. It will be at best transactional: Do this to get that. Pretty soon that becomes Do as little of this as you can get away with to get that. If everyone else is doing the same thing, the whole enterprise becomes a house of cards. The joke in the Soviet Union ran, "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work."

Think about it for a couple of minutes and you can come up with any number of other examples. It is true that sometimes the obstacle posed by this or that monopoly is very large. It may seem insuperable. But sooner or later, someone will find a way around it, if the monopoly doesn't fall apart first (like the Soviet Union) from its own internal inefficiencies. The only reason Christopher Columbus tried to reach Asia by sailing west was that the people who controlled the overland route were charging too much for spices.

What about ASQ? The society sells educational materials related to Quality, and it offers certification in the various Quality disciplines. These goods are professionally valuable to anyone in the field. In the terms posed by my critic above, they are "(a) independent of the local programs, and (b) unavailable elsewhere"—at least today. But strictly speaking you don't have to be a member to buy them. Members get a discount on classes and certifications, but non-members can buy them too. So is membership worth it? That's a personal decision, but it does give you the chance to make personal and professional connections with other members. And for some forty thousand people worldwide the answer is plainly Yes.

On the other hand, membership has been dropping. ASQ does not formally advertise membership totals, but Google estimates the following numbers overall:

• In the 1990’s: 136,000 members
• In the early 2000s: 100,000 members
• In 2010: 80,000 members
• In 2020: 52,456 members
• In 2024: 40,000+ members

Was this decline caused by the controversies over ASQ management? There is no way to know. All we can say is that it is consistent with what we might expect if members were unhappy with the direction the society's management had taken, but did not think they had the means to change it. But there could be any number of other causes as well. And, as Quality professionals, we know better than to jump to conclusions.

In the end, I stand by my argument that Quality matters in management. Yes, it is always possible for someone to mistreat his employees in the short run and still get some kind of results. But in the long run, such a system will get brittle and sluggish and fall apart. It's the same thing in the market: in the short term, a fast-talking shyster might fleece a few people out of their cash by selling them the Brooklyn Bridge, or gold-painted rocks. But it never lasts. 

__________

* Yes, this counts as "foreshadowing."

** By a remarkable coincidence, the update came shortly after I published this blog post here.

*** "Collective farmers were allowed to cultivate small plots of land and sell surplus produce in private markets. These private plots, though only about 3% of all farmland, produced a quarter of the country's agricultural output." See this article, "How Did the Soviet Economic System Affect Consumer Goods?" by Andrew Ancheta, Investopedia, September 09, 2023.