Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Automated “Shirk”?

Shirk: to evade (work, duty, responsibility, etc.).

“Shirk” in economics has the same definition that appears above. However, one component of shirk studied in the field of economics is shirk appearing in differing organizations of the firm. Collectivist firms suffer multi-stage shirk. Late stage collectivist models suffer from rampant shirk.

What if “shirk” becomes automated within a collectivist model? Automated shirk: data processing systems that automatically set the conditions for shirk. A completely automated and impartial shirk condition producer.

What if shirk goes beyond being embedded within the collectivist organization’s workers. Shirk goes beyond the collectivist organizational structure. What if shirk becomes embedded in the automated systems of the organization? What if data processing technological advances allow for ever increasing “automated shirk”?

Lets take an example. You visit your friendly local public school system. Records are not correct. You want the record to be corrected. What is the first thing you hear? “Well on the system it says……”.  "You see, after two weeks the system....".

Does the problem then languish with you having to produce a mountain of paper work, tons of personal trips, numerous phone calls, speak to eleven different people, and maybe on a good day with the wind behind you solve the problem. That your cost is elevated as you must spend time/resources to overcome automated shirk.

In the example above the “system” creates the condition for shirk which sets off cascading conditions of shirk. Why did the system shirk? It didn’t. It is most likely the data system was merely produced with such central planning parameters its inflexibility creates the condition for shirk.

Hence we have an automated data processing system with design parameters set forth by the members/power purveyors of the collectivist firm. The "system" is designed rigid just like the rigid collectivist firm it serves. The data processing system becomes an integral part of the collective based firm. When a correction is needed the data system's design doesn't easily allow for change. Therefore each error creates a condition for "shirk". The collectivist based firm's members then display shirk regarding correcting the error as the data system has created the conditions for shirk. Blame the system and fail to solve the problem.

Given the condition presented by the rigidity of the automated data system, each member of the collectivist firm then has the opportunity to shirk their responsibility to correct the error as shirk conditions have been created/are present. One member merely shirks to another shirker. That is, as you climb the ladder of the eleven people, member one merely shirks to member two and so on. That is, shirk cascades. All the while you suffer the effects of shirk as the error remains. Automated shirk!

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