Organization workshop

Comment re OTRS

I'm not at all happy that the link provided brings me to a login page, rather than the page with the content, but the text has been provided in the OTRS email, plus, I assume that no one will identify a possible copyright problem unless they can actually access the page.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:13, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: To do: Double-check languages, link to responsible autonomy instead of autonomous?, wikilinks for organizations in "Post-OW", summarize Correia's qualitative assessment in "post-OW", merge post-OW list of OWs with international scople list of countries?, resolve redundancy in "controversy" vs. "field of study", have another look at references 27+. Huon (talk) 00:21, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

The Organization Workshop (OW) - or "Laboratorio Organizacional" (LO) in Spanish and Portuguese - is a type of learning events for groups where participants master new organizational knowledge and skills through a learning-by-doing approach. It is aimed at large groups of unemployed and underemployed. The OW addresses locally identified problems which can only be solved by collaborating groups. During a Workshop participants form a temporary enterprise which they themselves manage and which contracts to do work at market rates. Once the workshop temporary enterprise is over, organizational, management and vocational skills gained can be used to form new businesses or social enterprises.

The creator of the OW is the Brazilian Sociologist Clodomir Santos de Morais. The main elements of the workshop are a large group of people (stipulated originally by de Morais as "minimum 40, with no upper limit" or, as many as local conditions allow); the freedom to organize themselves within the law and all necessary resources in the hands of the group. de Morais' OW guidelines, originally distributed in mimeographed form, were (re)printed in several countries, languages and formats (including popular cartoon) over the years. The text was first translated into English by Ian Cherrett for use in anglophone Africa.

Field of study

de Morais’ initial observation was that people, forced by circumstances and sharing one single resource base, learn to organize in a complex manner, involving a division of labor. During the seminal (1954 Recife, Brazil) event which he attended, a large group of activists had gathered in an ordinary town house, where "the cramped conditions of the house, combined with the need for secrecy so as not to arouse the suspicion of the police, [...] imposed on the group a strict organizational discipline in terms of division and synchronization of all the tasks needed for such an event". The subsequent finding that little was learned about the event's supposed topic but instead, "an enormous lot about organization" became the inspiration and starting point for the design of what eventually was to become the Organization Workshop. Building on this, subsequent Moraisean practitioners corroborated de Morais’ original finding that "organization" is not taught but "achieved" by a properly composed large group.

The OW field of study in the broadest sense is social psychology, the discipline that bridges the gap between psychology and sociology. The OW's activity-based large group method is generically different from behaviorism-based "small group" methods (eg group dynamics) prevalent in that field.

"Activity-based" means that for people to learn, a real object has to be actually present; as Jacinta Correia puts it: "to learn how to ride a bike, you need a bike to ride on". Thus, for a large group to learn how to manage a complex enterprise, it has to have a complex enterprise to manage. In the OW context, this means that a group averaging 150, many of whom often with lower levels of education, are actively engaged, for an entire month, in (a) real productive or service provision enterprise(s). Although similar to vocational on-the-job training, the difference with OW-based learning is that it is autonomous - or self directed learning/training - ie, with the instructor playing a mere subsidiary role. In South America, its place of origin, this approach is known as the Método de Capacitación Masiva (MCM) or Large Group Capacitation Method (LGCM).

International scope

The OW originated in Brazil with de Morais' 1954 Recife workshop. In the wake of the coup d'état of March 1964 de Morais went into a 23-year exile in Chile, and the OW spread from there in the late sixties. After specializing in Cultural Anthropology (Santiago University) and in Land Reform at the ICIRA (Capacitation and Research Institute for Agrarian Reform Institute), de Morais became consultant for international and national development institutions and NGOs. Since then, the Organization Workshop became a constant in a number of agrarian reform efforts in Latin America and (community) development projects elsewhere. From Chile, the OW spread to Costa Rica, Mexico, Panamá, Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil, the Caribbean, a number of African countries as well as Europe. In the 1980s the method was transferred and adapted to anglophone countries, especially to South and southern Africa.

Impact

During an OW

Running an OW requires both a Facilitators’ Enterprise(FE) and a Participants’ Enterprise (PE) (originally called "Primary" and "Secondary" Structures by de Morais). The FE is the framework set up for all organizational and learning activities before, during and after the Workshop. It is created before the workshop and remains in place after it closes. The Participants' first job, in turn, is to set up a PE which, usually after a period of trial and error referred to as anomie by de Morais, starts organizing work, subject to negotiation of a contract with the FE. Work delivered during the OW is then paid from the Development Fund at market rates. Lectures on "Theory of Organization" (TO) are an integral and compulsory part of the OW process. These lectures (1 ½ hours a day for 2 weeks) are meant to enable members of the PE to gain a perspective on their historical, social and economic context, on the working of the market economy, on current patterns and models of organization, as well as insights in individual and collective behavior. Skills acquired include practical enterprise organization and management skills including labor and time management, financial record-keeping and reporting, planning, quoting and tendering for work, vocational skills such as eg building, welding, tailoring, farming, catering or IT skills, and literacy and numeracy development.

Post-OW

Sponsoring bodies since the sixties have ranged from United Nations organizations to local and international development agencies and NGOs, among them FAO, ILO, UNDP,terre des hommes, CONCERN, Catholic Relief Services, HIVOS and Norwegian People's Aid, Redd Barna and, recently eg in South Africa, the Soul City Institute and government departments such as South Africa's Social Affairs department.

Qualitative impact of the OW is discussed by Correia. Quantitative impact, especially where OWs are run, as in the case of Brazil, Honduras or Costa Rica, on a regional or national basis - (known as PROGERs-PRONAGERs, Job and Income Generation Programs) - can be gauged from relevant reports. In Brazil in 2000-2002 the FAO conducted 282 OWs with 110,946 participants that led to 3,194 enterprise start-ups and created 25,077 new jobs. 22,000 participated in 104 locations in the Paulo PAE Self-Employment Program from 1976-8, with 711 enterprises created, including "People's Banks" (do Povo). Honduras' 1973-1976 national PROCCARA program had 24,000 participants in 400 OWs and led to the creation of 1,053 new enterprises.; 6,000 Cooperative (INSCOOP) workers graduated under the POR/OIT/PNUD/007 Program (1979 Portugal re: A Future Ch.15); The Costa Rica (2010-ongoing)Costa Rica Brunca Region OW GERMINADORA Project was decreed a 'Project of Public Interest' . Long-term survival potential of enterprises resulting from OWs is illustrated by, eg, the Honduran (1970s OWs) palmoil growing and processing plants HONDUPALMA, SALAMA and COAPALMA. The COOPESILENCIO (Costa Rica) Cooperative, back in 1999, celebrated its 25th year of operation with a book by Barrantes . Since, Coopesilencio has added Eco-tourism to its activities; Also: COOPESA (Aircraft Maintenance). Sobrado in A Future p.56 offers a further list of Cooperatives still in existence in Costa Rica on the date of publication, ie 2000.; Other enterprises (Brazil) e.g.: the COOTEDAM and COPROSER Cooperatives.

Controversy

The OW’s activity-based 'large group' Method (LGCM), while set within the broad field of Social Psychology, finds itself in a minority position as compared to mainstream behaviorist 'small' group-based approaches, a fact, by itself, a potential source of controversy in both Academia and accepted field practice.

Critique of the OW (and, indirectly, of de Morais) has come from both left and right, the latter wary of de Morais' conceptual mode and language "throwback to the 50s" in which de Morais' original Theory of Organization is couched, "felt that his ideas needed rejecting". Nonetheless his format was readily accepted by international organizations over the decades. The "institutional left", broadly defined as countries identifying, pre 1989, with the Eastern Bloc, including Cuba, never embraced de Morais’ autonomous job creation and income generation method. Revolutionary Nicaragua allowed the 1980 COPERA OW pilot project which was to become the mould for a nationwide Nicaraguan SIPGER (Job & Income Generation System), on the Honduran model, but the Sandinista government cut short the project on 29 December 1980, with a Memorandum critical of the OW. (Quote p. 1.: "those Experimental Laboratories" - ('EL'/'EW' was the earlier but later abandoned alternative title of the OW), - "contribute to the bourgeois mindset in capitalist countries" while "surplus production serves the particular group and not the national interest").

A second form of "left" criticism came from what broadly could be termed the "liberation theology/freirean conscientization" stream of practice, which de Morais encountered when working with the MST (Landless Workers) Movement in Brazil. Morais (sometimes also spelled "Moraes") - typically is criticized by this group, for a.o. being too "rigid and dogmatic". These critical views from the "ideological" left tend to express a preference for freirean-inspired critical pedagogy consciousness-raising and "root cause"-finding approaches.

The anthropologist Josh Fisher’s 2010 exhaustive Génesis case study Building Consciousness: The Organization Workshop Comes to a Nicaraguan Cooperative can be counted as a critique of the OW in that Fisher called "the first OW in Nicaragua" a failure.

See also

• Action learning
• Cultural-historical Psychology

Bibliography

• Carmen, Raff; Sobrado, Miguel (2000). A Future for the Excluded (PDF). London, UK: Zed Books. ISBN 9781856497022. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Andersson, Gavin (2004). Unbounded Governance: A Study of Popular Development Organization. UK: Open University. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Ellerman, D (2001) Helping People Help Themselves: Toward a Theory of Autonomy-Compatible Help Washington D.C.: World Bank Policy Research WP 2693
• Engeström, Y. (2009) Learning by Expanding: Ten Years After Marburg BdWi-Verlag - NB. Although Engeström, -- since 1987 a key internationally-renowned Activity authority -- does not have any known associations with the activity-based OW --, his 'Activity Triangle' goes a long way in elucidating OW processes - re: Andersson, G. 'Engeström's Third Generation Contributions: a Concept of Activity Systems' in: Andersson, G (2013) p. 38ss.
• Langa, M and Von Holdt, K (2011) Bokfontein amazes the nations' Community Work Program (CWP), poverty alleviation and collective trauma healing in a marginal community in: Daniel J, Naidoo P, Pillay D and Southall R (eds.) New South African Review Two. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
• Ramafoko, L., Andersson, G., Weiner R. (2012) "Reality Television for Community Development. The Kwanda Initiative in South Africa" in: Nordicom Review 33 1. 1-162 http://www.nordicom.gu.se/common/publ_pdf/362_ramafoko_andersson_weiner.pdf;
• Revans, Reg (1980) Action Learning: New Techniques for Management London: Blond & Briggs

External links

• Andersson, Gavin (2013) “Unbounded Organization” Gavin Andersson on Kurt Lewin and Lev Vygotsky, 30th May 2013 Andersson presents Kurt Lewin's as showing in some respects a bounded approach, while the activity theory pioneered by Lev Vygotsky shows an unbounded approach. Part 1.
• Andersson, Gavin (2013) “Unbounded Organization” Part 2.
• Labra, I (2012) “Consciousness is in the Act / La Conciencia Esta en el Acto" (English and Spanish/Españoll) is a video that was created in Howard Richards' "Centro para el Desarrollo Alternativo", Limache, Chile.
• Labra, Ivan (2012) "Ivan Labra and the Organization Workshop / Ivan Labra y el Laboratorio Organizacional" (English and Spanish/Español) is a video that was created in Howard Richards' "Centro para el Desarrollo Alternativo”, Limache, Chile.
• "A final treasured moment with Paulo Freire": 1 ½ month before he died - +2 May 1997 - Paulo Freire, the Brazilian adult educationist was awarded a Doctorate Honoris at the Universidade Federal de Rondônia, Amazonia (UNIR) where de Morais then was professor. 33 years (1964) after they shared the same prison cell in Olinda -- (re: de Morais (2009) (transl) Liberation Scenes: Paulo Freire in prison, in exile and in the University --, the two lifelong friends met again. The pictures date from that occasion re: "A final treasured moment", by Correia. See A Future, p. 39.