In the last lecture we examined one of the individuals rituals of tennis player Rafael Nadal, and also the team ritual Walmart cheer propounded by the founder and former owner of the company. Both rituals are effectively condensation symbols. The former evidently does call up in an effective response in adult. The latter was designed to call up enthusiasm in positive feelings toward Walmart on the part of the employees and to motivate them in their jobs. Although it's actually unclear how effective the ritual has have been. It's important to realize that virtually every business enterprise consisting of multiple individuals has it's rituals. And the rituals are evidently important to the operation of the business, at least we can presume they are or else they would be cut out for purposes of efficiency. At the same time many of these rituals are not seen as such, they are seen as just doing business. In this lecture, I want to take up one of those business practices we talked about in an earlier lecture in unit two when we were discussing the cultural border crossing. But this time I want to look at the practice as a ritual and in particular as a ritual functioning as a condensation symbol. The last time we discussed it, we've talk about differences between Japanese and American managers involved in joint business ventures, and described the clash in which an anthropologist Tomoko Hamada put it, Americans put emphasis on individual responsibility and the right to dismiss and confident personnel that is right to fire people. Japanese emphasized team work and group responsibility. They didn't like to dismiss personnel. Here I want to suggest that while American business people think of firing as terms of economic efficiency, a key function of the practice of firing is actually to summon powerful feelings. In particular, fear. And to use those feelings to strongly motivate employees to pursue the goals of the team as defined by the team's leadership. It's really the properties of the ritual of firing as condensation symbol, that constitute the covert meaning of this symbol. In a 2011 blog, featuring an interview with a woman in the British financial sector responsible for firing, the woman’s states when the call comes, and she’s talking about her call to the individual who's about to be fired, when the call comes, people know right away. We may use the most innocent tone of voice when we say, hi, could you pop up to the 20th floor for a moment? They know better. She is describing here the force of that simple call as if it were a condensation symbol. Much more than a symbol call. But the call is a symbol, not just for the individual in question, it's also a symbol for everyone who hears about it. The interviewee goes on to say, it's amazing how fast news of a round of redundancies, redundancies is the word they use for firings, how rapidly the news of a round of redundancies spreads. It's like this tidal wave of panic washes across a trading floor. As she describes it, when the person comes up, their face has this deeply apprehensive look. Let's think about this a little further. The apprehensiveness and fear on the part of the employee being fired leaves to apprehensiveness and fear on the part of those who remain. They must surely think, what if it were them? Of course, the person doing the firing is in a position of power, but it's also the case that even that person knows that one day it could be them also. I should add here that firing is done differently within different companies. Each has their specific rituals, but employees get to know them. Still the ritual purpose of firing within business organizations seems to be similar. It is designed, horrible as this may seem, to motivate the team to achieve its goals. This was very clear in the Donald Trump reality TV show, The Apprentice, which we also discussed. There was a reason the firing was the climatic event. It was the endpoint in the show that packed the emotional punch. Viewers could experience their own anxieties vicariously. One well known corporate manager, Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric once upon a time, used firing as an explicit tool of regular management. He had requirements that employees be ranked from one to five, in terms of their contribution to the team, with the ones high performers, and the fives low performers. 10% of employees had to receive fives. As Welch put it there is no sugar coating this, they have to go. They had to be fired. I want to make it clear in concluding this lecture that I am not suggesting that Welch's strategy actually results in greater team efficiency. In fact I think there is substantial evidence that worker productivity decreases rather than increases under this kind of regime. However, I do believe that the ranking firing system he developed as symbol, creates a specific kind of affective or emotional orientation to the team. Truthfully, Welsh's team, probably not one I myself would want to be part of.
