Surely it is impossible to perfectly apportion influence so there is self management as you define it - does that upset your vision?

Not at all. Self management is a social concept, arrived at by a social process. It isn't some kind of mathematical variable that you either get to the fifth decimal place or your bridge falls or plane crashes. What is necessary in seeking to apportion influence to actors in proportion as outcomes will affect them is really just two things. 1) That all actors agree that the apportionment has been fair and sensible, reflecting available knowledge (which of course could be wrong) and taking into account the cost in time or hassle of trying to achieve too great precision. And 2) that whatever deviations due occur whether by error or due to settling rather than expending excess energy for minimal gains, are random rather than one-sided. They should not accumulate, in other words, but rather average out over time.

Once one understands that what self management means is correct apportionment in the eyes of those involved and deviations that don't snowball into lasting injustices, the mystery and complexity dissipates quickly.

In most workplaces it will mean, for example that there are different categories of decisions - all known and categorized in advance by the council, perhaps revisited once a year. For some there will be majority rules, for others consensus, and still others might have a different voting pattern. Some will involve all workers, some will involve subsets of the whole though often operating within broad policy guidelines.

It is true that if a group, whether in a workplace or a community, were to fetishize precision and argue over every tiny detail, it would waste inordinate time and likely achieve little greater accuracy, as well. But why would anyone bother Much easier to agree on broad norms regarding information transfer, transparency, deliberation, and tallying of prefernces for different kinds of decisions, then acting in accord with each as necessary.

 

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