The Charismatic Organization: Vision 2000 and Corporate Change in a State-Owned Organization

Abstract

British Telecom’s 1984 partial privatization set in motion the privatization and deregulation of many international state-owned telecommunications carriers. Most previous research on the privatization and deregulation of state-owned telecommunications carriers has focused on the economic outcomes. However, this was also a time of changes in managerial practice and thinking influenced by organizational theory. This article presents an analysis of the use of the prescriptions of Rosabeth Kanter in the attempted reform of the organizational culture of Australia’s largest business in the 1980s: the government-owned telecommunications monopoly Telecom Australia (now Telstra). It details the attempt to transform Telecom under the incipient threat of the introduction of competition to the telecommunications market and demonstrates how the country’s largest change management program, Vision 2000, represented an alternative approach to telecommunications reform.

Introduction

The 1979 election manifesto of the incoming Thatcher government proclaimed a need to reduce the role of the state in the British economy. The mixed-economy approach that had been dominant in Western political and economic thinking since the end of the World War II was blamed for the United Kingdom’s economic problems, and a reinvigoration of the economy was proposed along with a reduction in public spending. By the time of the 1983 election, this push for economic reform included a proposal to privatize British Telecom, the national monopoly telecommunications carrier. Conservative politicians in the United Kingdom dismissed traditions of state ownership and advocated market-based solutions to the economic malaise that had gripped the developed economies in the 1970s. As when deregulation and privatization became increasingly popular throughout the industrialized world, Australia felt these winds of change, where some of country’s largest businesses were organizing to challenge Telecom’s monopoly and push for legislative changes that would deregulate the telecommunications market and encourage competition with Telecom. ¹

At the same time, the 1980s saw a new movement emerge in management studies that was based on notions of transformation, innovation, and culture. One key promoter of this new form of business thinking was the American sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter, whose 1983 work, The Change Masters, advocated a new approach to business reform. ² Other key contemporary works, from Edgar Schein’s Organizational Culture and Leadership to Bernard Bass’s Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations tended to be produced by organizational psychologists and relied on theories of charismatic leadership and how managers could transform organizational culture. ³ Kanter’s work was more explicitly focused on corporate entrepreneurship and overcoming the limitations of bureaucratic structures through encouraging employee participation and promoting corporate renewal. Kanter’s work, like that of many of her contemporaries in 1980s organization studies, was characterized by reference to charismatic and palingenetic concepts without actually being based in sociological studies of charisma or often even naming the key conceptual issue that haunted their analyses. Calls for renewal were a key feature of the political culture of the time, which had an obvious reflection in the management theory developed by figures such as Kanter.

The new organizational studies of the 1980s reflected the political climate characterized today by its critics as neoliberalism. ⁴ As the UK and US governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, respectively, developed policies of economic reform in light of the “stagflation” of the 1970s, a similar renovation occurred in management studies. The charismatic nature of the new organizational theory of the 1980s was clear in the attempts to implement the recommendations of theorists such as Kanter in organizations. As the “discipline of the market” was being introduced by the marketization and privatization of state-owned businesses, a similar movement to unlock the entrepreneurial potential of organizations emerged, supported by leading management scholars. As Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman searched for standards of “excellence” and Edwards Deming advocated Total Quality Management, ⁵ Kanter argued that the “quiet suffocation” ⁶ of employee creativity in organizations needed to be addressed and that a “reawakening the American spirit of enterprise” should occur. ⁷ Yet there has been little research into the significant transformation in management discourse that occurred in the early 1980s—the early years of neoliberalism—and both Kanter’s work and early accounts of transformational leadership have not been studied in terms of concepts such as palingenesis or Max Weber’s ideal of the charismatic organization.

In the Australian context, the most significant attempt to implement Kanter’s prescriptions occurred in 1985 at the national telecommunications carrier Telecom Australia, when a change management program inspired by Kanter’s The Change Masters began under the direction of Greg Campbell and Associates, a fledgling management consultancy. At the time the Government Business Enterprise (GBE) Telecom (now Telstra) was Australia’s largest capital enterprise with assets almost double that of BHP, Australia’s largest private company, and had a workforce of approximately 90,500 people. ⁸ An analysis of Campbell’s change management program, the largest attempted in the country, underscores the inherently problematic underpinnings of Kanter’s approach as a large technocratic organization was encouraged to become more entrepreneurial and market-focused. Where marketization and the associated deregulation was heralded as a way to make telecommunications carriers more innovative—by exposing them to market forces and measuring their performance by their share price—Kanter’s focus on “unlocking” the entrepreneurial potential of “grass roots” employees represented an alternative, internal approach to reinvigorating a state-owned business at the time.

This article analyses Kanter’s The Change Masters and its prescriptions as applied in a large and contemporary change management program. It employs a traditional historical methodology ⁹ analyzing documentary sources (e.g., archival materials, commissioned videos, and written documents) and supplementing them with interviews with eight select key figures involved in Vision 2000, from Telecom Australia staff and managers to union officials. As an historical study, it relies on the happenstance survival of evidence (both in archives and personal collections) and reflects a comprehensive analysis of key documents informed by recollections of junior staff, junior union officials, and middle management (most of the relevant senior figures have now passed away). The article argues that the change management approach adopted at Telecom was a form of workplace charismatization; that is, the company attempted to transform its organizational culture by using charismatized theory. The approach taken by Greg Campbell and Associates bypassed long-standing union consultative arrangements and alienated the key unions when they attempted to charismatize the company by empowering workers. This underlined a conceptual weakness in Kanter’s book that was characteristic of management theory in the 1980s. The calls for innovation and rebirth represented an advocacy of charismatization that had yet to be conceptually developed and had not been part of previous management studies.

This article begins with an analysis of Kanter’s 1983 book and its intellectual precursors. It then introduces the previous approach to participation employed at Telecom and the pressure to adopt reforms as a result of global moves toward marketization and privatization. The article provides an account of Vision 2000 and its implementation by Greg Campbell and Associates and the various responses to the program by Telecom Australia management, staff, and unions. The article concludes with an analysis of the issues raised by this historical case study in light of the charismatic foundations of the new 1980s organizational theory. It argues that Vision 2000 represented a managerialist reflection of telecommunications reform and the program to charismatize Telecom Australia was an attempt to deter governmental privatization and place the GBE in a sound position to compete against other carriers, should deregulation occur.

The Change Masters

Kanter’s bestselling The Change Masters developed themes raised in her earlier academic work. In a 1980 study cowritten with Barry Stein, Kanter argued that organizations would face increasingly uncertain environments, and the solution lay in the development of “parallel organisations”—“flat, flexible, but formal problem-solving and governance organisations that serve to supplement bureaucracy and exists side by side with it, not to replace it.” ¹⁰ This parallel organization would exist alongside and function as an alternative to the bureaucratic organization first described by Weber. ¹¹ It would give the bureaucratic organization the ability to respond to rapidly changing external environments and institutionalize change and new practices into originally bureaucratic organizations through responsive, short-lived, problem-solving project teams.

Kanter’s 1983 book, a popularization of her academic articles, spends much of its time extolling themes of transformation and rebirth. Its focus was on “transformation,” ¹² “energizing,” ¹³ “empowerment,” ¹⁴ “renewal,” ¹⁵ “reawakening,” ¹⁶ and developing “a culture for enterprise and innovation.” ¹⁷ Without making a single reference to Weber, it is clear that Kanter drew on the notion of charisma first articulated by Weber in his Economy and Society and sought to apply it to business management. Weber developed the concept of charisma, but the idea of charismatic leadership had passed into general discourse in the 1950s before being adopted in management theory in the early 1980s. ¹⁸ Like the later works of Bass and Schein, ¹⁹ Kanter’s book is written in the language of palingenesis, one of the key features of the charismatic political movements of the 1930s. ²⁰ Palingenesis occurs when a political party tries to resolve a crisis faced by society through a call for internal renewal, cultural revitalization, and the embrace of new sources of collective vitality. Central to palingenesis is the emergence of a charismatic leader who embodies a new vision of society. The ideological renewal “establishes the hegemony of a new ideocracy experienced . . . as a lived reality, a total . . . new order.” ²¹ Kanter called for the “need for an American corporate renaissance” to be led by corporate leaders, ²² yet, as just noted, she did not reference Weber’s original articulation of the concept of charisma or how it should be applied to organizations.

Weber’s notion of the charismatic organization, even though it was a key aspect of his organizational sociology, ²³ is not described in surveys of the history of organizational theory such as by Wren and Bedian. ²⁴ Weber developed the idea of charisma from the religious history of Rudolf Sohm, well before political scientists popularized the concept by applying it to political leaders. According to Sohm, charisma was the “gift of grace” that was recognized in leaders of the early Christian Church, who led their faith communities without election, hierarchy, or coercion. ²⁵ As bureaucracy was to “rational-legal” authority, charismatic organization was to charismatic authority. As Weber explained:

The corporate group is based on an emotional form of communal relationship. The administrative staff of the charismatic leader does not consist of “officials”; at least its members are not technically trained . . . Rather it is chosen at the behest of the leader on the basis of the charismatic qualities of the chosen. There is no “hierarchy”; the leader merely intervenes in general or in individual cases when he considers the members of his staff lack sufficient charisma to fulfill a task. ²⁶

Weber’s idea of bureaucracy was modeled on rational-legal authority and top-down decision making. In contrast, his charismatic organization was typified by charismatic authority, “flat” structure, and staff empowerment. Leaders needed to intervene only when individuals needed help; otherwise, all decision making would be left to staff, who would be guided by a shared vision of the purpose of the organization.

Kanter’s parallel organization is conceptually different from Weber’s charismatic organization in that the hierarchical power structure of the bureaucracy is retained and the parallel organization exists as a second and overlaid organization to solve problems and guide change. ²⁷ While the nature of the bureaucratic structure limits work opportunities and power, Kanter’s proposed parallel organization would provide workers with new challenges, learning, growth, and access to resources and recognition. As part of this reform, workers would be empowered and energized through their involvement in participative structures that moved them beyond the mundanity of their usual roles to tackle more meaningful issues. ²⁸ They would act in accord with the vision presented to them by management, and managers would support the parallel organization because it did not challenge their position or authority.

Kanter was, in effect, arguing that employees could be delegated authority without the prevailing rational-legal authority being undermined. She argued that, in many companies, the focus of management was on the productivity of their workforce, but in the 1980s this now needed to shift to innovation. It was here that middle managers could play a key role. Just like heroes of Socialist labor, ²⁹ efficient middle managers were important for a company’s innovation and adaptability because their position in the organization made them ideally placed to develop innovative ideas and put them into action. The type of organization that made it possible for managers to use these skills was one in which the culture fostered collaboration and teamwork, the structures adopted encouraged people to act, and senior management consciously incorporated innovation and achievement into the company’s structures. With this corporate renaissance, companies would become like families by committing to employees’ health and prosperity and looking to them for productive new ideas. ³⁰

Rather than through the rational-legal process envisaged by Weber, the industrial democracy proposals of the kind supported by the Taylorists in the 1930s, or even the transformational leadership approach that focused on charismatic formal leadership, ³¹ Kanter chiefly advocated employee participation. This acted as an alternative to democracy, where the Weberian “routinization” of charismatic innovation could be controlled and harnessed by senior management. Kanter defined participation as “involvement in a team with responsibilities for a joint product,” with that product being, for example, a recommendation, decision, or solution to a problem. ³² According to Kanter, participative management is the “building and nurturing of a collaborative team that is more fully consulted, more fully informed than the ordinary—one that shares responsibility for planning and reaching outcomes.” Kanter cautioned that participation “is not necessarily the same as organizational ‘democracy’ and a ‘voice’ is not the same as a ‘veto’ or a ‘vote.’” ³³ Kanter argued that there were decisions that were best left to a single authoritative person, but that teams could allow an avenue for workers to participate in change by “step[ping] beyond their roles in the hierarchy of core jobs and get[ting] involved in team problem solving efforts.” ³⁴

Telecom Australia and Regulatory and Technological Changes

The Australian telecommunications sector was mature and stable until the late 1970s. As in many advanced economies at the time, Telecom was the sole telecommunications provider and operated as a publicly owned natural monopoly with universal service obligations. It used a system of cost sharing between customers, services, and geographical areas, and it was engineering-driven with low rates of investment, long waiting lists, and uniform standards of service. ³⁵ In the 1980s, transnational corporations suffered from falling rates of profit and increasing competition, and sought low-cost telecommunications. This saw national telecommunications carriers come under scrutiny as needing policy attention and by transnational corporations as potential places for investment. Telecom’s strong technocratic and engineering orientation led to a perception of it as an inefficient and bureaucratic organization that was slow to embrace technological innovation. ³⁶ During the 1970s and 1980s, large telecommunications users organized themselves into interest groups, such as the Telecommunications Managers’ Association in the United Kingdom and the Business Telecommunications Services in Australia, to further their collective interests and lobby for legislative changes that would allow for competition. ³⁷ They were assisted by academic economists who lauded the benefits of free enterprise at a time when the vertically integrated US carrier American Telegraph & Telephone (AT&T) was broken up in 1982 into a long-distance carrier with seven Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) responsible for local networks. This reform saw the end of the cross-subsidy between local and long-distance calls and advantaged globalizing US corporations. It also enabled AT&T and the RBOCs to compete in global markets and brought pressures on other countries to deregulate their own telecommunication carriers. ³⁸ The AT&T break-up provided Australia businesses with the opportunity to argue for deregulation on the basis they would be disadvantaged unless they too had access to cheap telecommunications. ³⁹

During the 1980s, neoliberal telecommunications reform took place in Britain and Australia, with the notion of a natural monopoly replaced with that of contestable markets. ⁴⁰ In 1979 the newly elected Conservative government in the United Kingdom regarded private ownership as inherently more efficient than public ownership. It saw privatization as the means to substitute market efficiency for political controls while simultaneously delivering customer benefits and providing the government with a significant revenue windfall that would reduce public debt and finance tax cuts. ⁴¹ In 1981 British Telecom was created as a separate public corporation from the Post Office, and its monopoly was broken when the government licensed a new privately owned carrier, Mercury, to provide a long-distance network. In 1982 the government announced plans to partially privatize British Telecom, and in 1984 the government sold 51 percent of its shares for £3.9 billion—the world’s largest single share issue. ⁴² The reform of telecommunications was a significant regulatory development in the early years of both the Thatcher and Reagan governments.

At the time, Australia made a similar commitment to telecommunications reform. The Australian Telecommunications Commission (trading as Telecom Australia) was formed in 1975 by restructuring the federal Postmaster-General’s Department. Telecom Australia operated as a government-owned monopoly separate from the public service, and it was organized as a “traditional vertically-structured organisation with hierarchical, mainly downward, lines of communication.” ⁴³ It was headquartered in Melbourne and had seventy-eight state-based districts that provided telecommunications services. The district structure had been implemented in 1975–1976 on the recommendation of the American consultants Cresap, McCormick, and Paget (now part of Willis Towers Watson) to make management more accessible to customers and make staff more accountable. ⁴⁴ Within the broader context of the increasing influence of neoliberalism and large business interest groups such as Business Telecommunications Services arguing for change, the Australian government reframed telecommunications regulation and overturned the previously egalitarian approach to customers, which treated residential and business customers equally. ⁴⁵ The Vernon Commission of Inquiry in 1975 and the Davidson Inquiry in 1982, both commissioned by the conservative Fraser Liberal government, led to a changed emphasis on business customers and foreshadowed competition and privatization. This created disquiet among some employees, who viewed Telecom as a quasi-public service rather than as a business enterprise. ⁴⁶

Telecom’s profit-oriented charter allowed its shift from the Postmaster-General’s Department’s paternalistic management style to management practices more in line with the government’s new commercial requirements. This more commercial orientation created tensions in the organization, which traditionally had been led by professional engineers. The dominance of engineering concerns had led to a technocratic approach to management, in which technological change was introduced without union consultation and with scant attention paid to the job satisfaction of affected employees. ⁴⁷ In 1975, as a requirement of the Telecommunications Act 1975 (Cth), the Telecom Consultative Council (TCC) was established with representatives from Telecom and the major unions. The TCC, which met for 1.5 days twice a year, was a centralized consultative body attended by senior management and union officials, whose aim was to resolve contentious issues at an early stage.

After the adoption of the TCC, Telecom unions pressured management for more formal industrial democracy arrangements. Management resisted this call, however, arguing that participation already occurred in everyday employee and management interactions and that additional consultation would hamper decision-making processes. Management’s uneven commitment to union consultation, employee participation, and the TCC was tested in the late 1970s. Telecom’s strategy included steeply rising growth rates, improving customer service, and increasing productivity by limiting the number of its employees and automation-induced organizational change, which angered the technical unions. ⁴⁸ The unions and union membership were accepted and embedded in the organization to the extent that Telecom’s chief general manager joined the relevant union, and they were used to having a voice. Telecom engineers introduced computerized Ericsson AXE exchanges while ignoring technical staff concerns about job losses, deskilling, and reduced career paths. In 1978 this provoked a bitter national dispute that severely disrupted the telecommunications network, causing Telecom to agree to several initiatives about retraining, redeployment, and relocation of affected employees to allay the unions’ concerns. In the wake of the dispute, at the TCC, management and the unions met and forged a new understanding about early consultation and the introduction of technological change. This led in 1980 to the Technological Change Agreement and it was widely recognized as a model industrial agreement. ⁴⁹ Nevertheless, management were skeptical about the unions’ ability to deal with change.

Management-union industrial issues flared again over wages. In 1979 and 1981, the Australian Telecommunications Employees Association (ATEA) and the Australian Postal and Telecommunications Union lodged wage claims against the increasingly profitable Telecom. Management refused to negotiate, leading to another bitter dispute and the resignation of the managing director. ⁵⁰ Although it seemed that Telecom was free from significant industrial disputation over the next few years, there remained levels of distrust between staff and management and rising levels of union militancy. In this context, Telecom embarked on a program of cultural change. It had a large staff and, unlike the public service sector in which staff could transfer among departments, Telecom staff usually spent their entire careers there, which created a particular staff culture. ⁵¹ A new chief general manager, Mel Ward, was appointed in 1984. He was concerned that the federal government was planning to end Telecom’s telecommunications monopoly. While he was confident his employees’ technical skills would stand it in good stead, he also knew that the “key factor in a competitive environment was going to be the attitudes and behaviour of its staff.” ⁵² Vision 2000 would be the vehicle for achieving those attitudinal and behavioral changes.

The Change Master: Greg Campbell and Associates

Vision 2000, which commenced in 1985, was preceded by a considerable amount of planning through the 1984 Personal Effectiveness Program. ⁵³ Telecom senior management had identified the need for a new corporate culture and hoped this would provide a “common understanding and theme.” ⁵⁴ They proposed that Telecom, with the assistance of external consultants, undertake a study of staff beliefs and value systems to develop a motivational program combining the consultants’ knowledge and Telecom’s materials. Management wanted a collaborative relationship with the unions and believed this was essential to obtain staff commitment. ⁵⁵

They commissioned Greg Campbell and Associates to conduct a survey, which found employees wanted a culture that had a “distinctive customer-orientation” that placed “the customer in a pivotal position but not at the expense of the staff.” ⁵⁶ Greg Campbell and Associates took the Personal Effectiveness Program and transformed it into Vision 2000. Greg Campbell had been the sports psychologist for the Royal Perth Yacht Club crew, which won the 1983 America’s Cup, and he and his associates were influenced by Eastern mysticism. ⁵⁷ A key challenge to implementing this strategy was aligning Telecom’s corporate culture with its organizational direction. The strategy drew on “management science” and the work of Kanter and Stein, with Campbell and Associates producing a report indicating that it was Kanter and Stein’s opinion that “major corporate change interventions of the type envisaged are capable of producing significant improvements in performance.” ⁵⁸ In 1985 Kanter and Stein had conducted a seminar for Telecom management on corporate cultures and the management of change. Kanter had a close association with Greg Campbell and Associates, and her participation was used to endorse Vision 2000 as being “one of the most innovative and significant people-oriented programs under way in the world.” ⁵⁹

Vision 2000 aimed to turn Telecom into the “best” enterprise in Australia by the year 2000 by focusing on three tenets—“customers come first,” “we make it possible,” and “business success builds our future.” ⁶⁰ The company defined Vision 2000 as a “process to enable Telecom’s people, at all levels and in all areas to better achieve their goals and those of Telecom by working together to build Telecom into the type of enterprise identified as being best by everyone”:

[Vision 2000 was] not an employee participation scheme, a cultural change program, quality circles, industrial democracy, TQM [Total Quality Management], a productivity improvement scheme or any of the other well known management strategies. VISION 2000 is Telecom’s own process . . . to meet our current needs and ensure our future success and survival. ⁶¹

Through Vision 2000, staff and management’s commitment, purpose, and value would align, and both company performance and job security would improve because support for the program was explicitly linked to future security. ⁶²

Vision 2000 was structured around forums, steering committees, action teams, and local area change teams, whose role it was to cascade the Vision 2000 approach throughout the organization. Participants in the local area change teams, known as “change agents,” were drawn from different work areas and chosen by management. The role of managers in Vision 2000 was to “develop, encourage, facilitate and support ‘positive change,’” and their challenge was to relinquish control to allow committed staff to identify solutions to problems and then gain approval and implement them. ⁶³ This challenge included five responsibilities: (1) involving staff in the changes; (2) managing and motivating people; (3) communicating effectively; (4) providing direction; and (5) demonstrating leadership. ⁶⁴

As a former Telecom Training executive reflected:

A central aspect of Vision 2000 was to involve people, to empower them. . . . The Vision 2000 program was partly about empowerment so you contribute to the organisation in the way that you feel and you are not just following supervisors’ or managers’ orders. You have power to do things, so there was also a productivity angle to it. ⁶⁵

In 1986, 4,000 people participated in Vision 2000 teams, and it was anticipated another 8,000 people would follow in 1987–1988. The program was scheduled to run until 1995, and by then all 88,500 Telecom staff would have participated. ⁶⁶

However, the unions were skeptical of Vision 2000 and commissioned Alex Carey, an industrial psychologist at the University of New South Wales, to investigate the program. In 1986 Carey met with Greg Campbell and Telecom senior human resources managers to discuss his concerns. He charted the long history of such programs, their unitarist underpinnings, and association in the United States with union busting. He argued that change needed to occur at all levels of the organization, not only at the lower levels. Carey attended some of Greg Campbell’s workshops and formed the opinion that the goal was not to change the corporation but merely workers’ perception of it. He suggested to Greg Campbell that the Vision 2000 program focused exclusively on changes in “attitude,” “images,” and “culture.” Campbell rejected Carey’s view that Vision 2000 took “an unduly psychological view of attitudes and attitude change,” and he suggested in turn that Vision 2000 could form the basis of an accord between the unions and management. ⁶⁷ Carey argued that Vision 2000 was hostile to unions and intended to put in place alternative staff communication channels. He was concerned that Campbell drew his intellectual inspiration from Kanter, who was an admirer of the Hawthorne studies that Carey labeled “the Vision 2000 of the 1920s.” ⁶⁸ In 1967 Carey had published a “radical critique” of the Hawthorne studies in the American Sociological Review, which argued that the conclusions drawn from the pioneering American studies had been “almost wholly unsupported.” ⁶⁹ Carey concluded that Vision 2000 was untested, and that few of the staff that he had talked to had told him they saw it as providing a solution to the organization’s problems. What they said that what was needed was communication that was less top-down and more bottom-up. ⁷⁰

Nevertheless, Greg Campbell and Associates were given free rein to implement Vision 2000, and they began with a series of half-day and full-day seminars. Campbell himself was to act, in Kanter’s terms, as the “Change Master” by using creative and interactive tools and dealing in symbols and visions. ⁷¹ There had been strong support from staff development and organizational behavior staff in Human Resources for Vision 2000. However, while the staff development branch was given responsibility to run the program, they were marginalized because Campbell was dealing directly with senior management. ⁷² Campbell took a theatrical, and even evangelical, approach to the seminars. At a middle management seminar, Campbell appeared dressed in a white suit on a stage with floodlights highlighting Vision 2000 posters, using dramatic posturing and voice to emphasize points. He stressed that Vision 2000 was an innovative program that was unique and creatively developed specifically for Telecom; and if people believed it would fail, then it surely would. Campbell portrayed himself as an ordinary Australian who had succeeded, and for others to do the same they must be open to change, be prepared to experiment, and always try to find the best way forward. He portrayed the unions as self-interested and stressed that they needed to shed the ways of the past and cooperate with management. He argued that he was not a “union basher” and was apolitical, and that those who resisted Vision 2000 feared change. For support he drew on the advice of “Dr Kanter from America,” who had characterized Vision 2000 as a process rather than a program, that it was developed by Telecom, and it was not simply “structural change” or “mind games.” ⁷³ Campbell argued that Vision 2000 involved staff at all levels, and it not only gave them the skills, tools, and training to change but also that these skills could be used anywhere. Those involved in the middle management seminars, chosen from across the organization, were considered to have the desire to be involved and were progressive thinkers, opinion leaders, and good communicators.

The program used shock tactics as a part of the seminars. At one seminar attended by about two hundred people, a Greg Campbell and Associates staff member staged the assassination of Telecom’s chief general manager by pulling out a fake pistol and firing blanks at Mel Ward, who fell down with fake blood coming from his “wounds.” The “assassin” was depicted as a person who wanted to kill Ward because they were opposed to Vision 2000. The aim of this theatrical exercise was to shock people into developing an “if you’re not with us, you’re against us type of thing.” ⁷⁴ Campbell’s presentation style alienated some staff:

Some friends of mine actually went to a Greg Campbell presentation and they said it was really verging on . . . lunacy for want of a better term. . . . [R]ather than endeavour to put the case for compulsory change in the corporation as a matter of business necessity . . . he gave an almost evangelical presentation. . . . He was actually in a white suit, and this is what knocked these guys over—like we’re talking about engineers and scientists . . . people who are typically sceptical. So Greg Campbell rocks up in a white suit and does the evangelical thing. . . . [T]his is the way to go, hands in the sky. . . . [T]hese guys went to this presentation, came back and reported this to all the local members—staff members and union members. Of course, once they said that, you know, there’s Campbell doing the evangelical thing, everybody thought well that’s it. I’m not listening to this anymore. ⁷⁵

Another thought it was “a little New Agey and a bit over the top. . . . Down at Albert Park in one of these huge white tents . . . and after Mel Ward had spoken and there would have been probably 300 people in this tent, Greg Campbell comes in, totally in a white suit and we said what a wanker.” Vision 2000 was described as a “quasi-religious sect” and having “a cultish feel about it and the cult was around the three guys who were running it.” ⁷⁶

The symbol chosen to represent Vision 2000 was a golden pyramid with its key concepts—“Customers come first,” “Success in business builds our future,” and “Our people make it possible”—on each of its sides, and it included a rainbow “Vision 2000” logo (Figure 1). The logo and concepts were reproduced on multiple types of marketing paraphernalia, including ties, badges, tiepins, keyrings, cufflinks, and posters. ⁷⁷

Figure 1 Vision 2000 Golden Pyramid

Source: Author’s personal collection. Reproduced with Telstra’s permission.

This provoked different reactions throughout the organization. At the Telecom Research Labs:

People used to have competitions to think up what kind of ridiculous things you could do with these. . . . [T]hey made this huge gigantic multi-faced polyhedra out of [the pyramids]. Another guy had one where it had little flashing lights. . . . [O]f course, what happened was that it became such a joke that instead of focusing on what is this business about and why we perhaps need to change, people were taking the piss out of Vision 2000. ⁷⁸

For others, the managers who did or did not have golden pyramids on their desks signaled “who was in the club and who wasn’t.” ⁷⁹

The adoption and acceptance of the program varied. Some of the more autocratic state managers opposed it and the staff empowerment that went with it. ⁸⁰ Others found that the program lacked substance:

[A] couple of people at the research labs partook in the change agent program and then came . . . and started to try and do stuff. What we found fairly quickly was that it was just—how can I explain it. There was no kind of methodology or systematic approach to it. It was all about basically personality and ego and—how could you put it—style and stuff like that. ⁸¹

Some saw Vision 2000 as a massive exercise in indoctrination while some change agents found the experience life altering: “Certainly the view was that the change agents . . . would be people whose life experience absorbed Vision 2000. . . . [W]e had . . . one guy, his view of Vision 2000 was such an experience that he basically tried to convert his family to it.” ⁸² Whenever colleagues showed a lack of appreciation for the program, these change agents would move to a different area of the organization so that their participation would be appreciated and their careers would benefit. ⁸³

The Telecommunications Unions

The unions were told that Telecom was introducing a new cultural change program: “There was no negotiation or no consultation, despite the fact that we had a consultative committee established by that stage.” ⁸⁴ One official with the Association of Draughting, Supervisory, and Technical Employees (ADSTE) viewed this failure to consult them as a deliberate attempt to bypass the established consultation mechanisms and substitute them with Vision 2000 groups. ⁸⁵

Initially, the unions ignored Vision 2000: “The unions were not included in the process . . . and took a wait and see approach, what is this all about, where is this going, how is it going to affect our members. In some ways they gave it tacit approval, they let it go. . . . [T]hey didn’t oppose it.” ⁸⁶ ADSTE in particular was concerned about the program. It knew Greg Campbell and his corporate change programs through a similar program at a Melbourne oil refinery, and the union saw Vision 2000 as being influenced by American thought, and particularly that of Kanter, who was being widely read at the time. ⁸⁷ Although many union members were skeptical about the Greg Campbell seminars, they attended local workplace meetings and participated in the program. According to a former ADSTE official:

[The Greg Campbell presentations were] like watching one of those American religious events. I don’t think that went down with the members so well. I think they would have been entertained. That was the American part that didn’t work, but I think the meetings did, early morning meetings. They’d get an hour off work. They’d get morning tea. They’d get prizes. Everybody had their little Vision 2000 . . . triangles . . . also symbolic. ⁸⁸

The ATEA were even more suspicious of the program. They saw Vision 2000 as a crude union-busting exercise aimed at encouraging staff to identify with and trust management and to minimize the distance between managers and workers. Vision 2000 was also seen as a way for managers to identify those they could trust among their own ranks: “If you hadn’t been an active and willing participant in Vision 2000 you weren’t selected for promotion, because you didn’t fit the cultural change.” ⁸⁹ Vision 2000 was seen as an opportunity for management to advance Vision 2000 “believers” over the local technical leaders with a view to breaking down union influence. ⁹⁰ Other union officials were concerned about Vision 2000’s ability to co-opt people: “I was scared of it. I was scared from that evangelical point of view and its power to control people.” ⁹¹

Vision 2000’s Impact and Effect

When Vision 2000 was ended early in 1988, it was judged as both a success and a failure. Although there is no measurable way to determine either, Campbell’s contract was not renewed. Looking back on the program, some managers and staff considered it partly successful; others were not so generous. Much of the criticism was aimed at Greg Campbell himself and his confusion of boosterism with the achievement of lasting change. Particularly criticized was the charismatic aspect of Vision 2000 and Campbell’s association with esotericism—a sign that he was an evangelist of New Age thought who acted more like a proponent of esoteric spiritualism than a phlegmatic and realistic advocate of management science.

Telecom produced videos called “Vision News” that depicted the benefits that would flow from Vision 2000 to both staff and the organization. In one video, Debra Tucker, an assistant technician, relates how she learned new skills that were good for her personal development and job satisfaction. Peter Catell, a programmer, said: “Vision 2000 has allowed myself and everybody in Telecom to go to management with their ideas and talk to other people within their section and I think for me. . . . I’m excited about the opportunities Vision 2000 has.” Another employee commented that Vision 2000 had given him the best opportunity in twenty-seven years to communicate with senior management, with suggestions going up and answers coming back. The video presenter concluded that Vision 2000 was about “individuals taking responsibility for change on their own or in teams. . . . Telecom people using their initiative to solve problems, find new ways of doing things which benefit the customer.” ⁹²

Some staff appreciated the attempt to bring change to Telecom:

How much it [Vision 2000] succeeded is a matter of opinion. . . . Some people felt they could really get on and do things rather than being constrained by the organisation. I think there were grass root types of ideas that bobbed up and quite a few were taken up so people did feel empowered, they became success stories. Some were a bit wanky and a bit wonky too. It showed some people that they could do things. ⁹³

The program disappeared quickly, and many judged it a failure. One belief was that Vision 2000 failed because Telecom’s management was not willing to invest meaningfully in performance improvement but were after a quick fix:

[T]hey thought that they could basically drag in this clown, Greg Campbell and Associates, they would go out and evangelise all these people, then everybody would go halleluiah, I’ve seen the light, they’d all kind of sign up Vision 2000, then in three or four years’ time everybody would be some kind of customer-focused, divisionalised guru kind of thing, which just wasn’t going to happen. ⁹⁴

One former Telecom manager argued that Vision 2000, and many other major Telecom projects in the 1980s, failed because “they never had the structure and they never had the commitment in terms of management’s dissemination to push it down . . . and continue to support it through the life of the project.” ⁹⁵ Other managers suggested Vision 2000 had little effect on changing the workplace culture. ⁹⁶

Some Telecom executives saw it as partially successful, with one recounting: “I think a lot of what they did and tried to do was absolutely terrific. In terms of its personal development programs through to the time that I left and the management training they had in place, was absolutely sensational.” ⁹⁷ A technical manager interviewed by Alex Carey said he thought Vision 2000’s most significant achievement was that “everyone is being told—including managers at all levels—that there is a better way of doing things and that is by getting people involved.” ⁹⁸ The ADSTE recognized that Vision 2000 had identified those people who management could rely on to change the organization and provide a veneer of consultation: “Although I was scared of it, I think it did change people’s opinions. . . . But I don’t think it was as effective as—I would say that Telecom would have said it cost them a lot of money to do very little of what they wanted to do. I think it might have got people ready [for change].” ⁹⁹

The main judgment of the program, however, was how poorly it was managed. One technician wrote to Campbell saying that, while there were aspects of Vision 2000 that were positive, he did not want to move to what he saw as an American way of life. He did not agree with the indoctrination process, likened it to religious brainwashing, and said that the program needed to be altered to suit the Australian character. ¹⁰⁰ A key criticism was that Vision 2000 did not fit the culture that existed at Telecom: “I would be talking to people, especially the lineys [linesmen] and the techs [technicians], and they would say this is a load of bullshit, why, what is going on here?” ¹⁰¹ One key mistake was the attempt to evangelize Telecom staff and not understanding the limitations of such an approach: “Despite all the nonsense they were going on with, about oh people are our greatest asset etc., etc., you look around and you see all of a sudden the six people who were sitting around you have gone, sacked, and they’re coming up with these mantras. They really did believe that people were stupid I think.” ¹⁰²

Concerned ATEA members wrote to their union outlining their concerns that Vision 2000 was a corporate change program designed to restructure Telecom in preparation for the New Age, New World Order, or the Age of Aquarius. One member warned that such programs drew heavily on New Age and occult techniques of positive thinking, possibility thinking, visualization, hypnosis, and brainwashing; and that Vision 2000 participants were not offered anything negative or contrary to the corporate vision, which could lead to mass delusion. ¹⁰³ Another labeled it as “corporate spoon-bending” and warned of Campbell’s use of books from occult shops, and in particular the use of occult practices of affirmation/visualization and self-realization/self-actualization. He warned that Christians nationally and internationally had been alerted to the dangers of Vision 2000. He wrote to a senior Telecom manager urging him to abandon the “evil program” before any further damage was done to employees. ¹⁰⁴ An anonymous executive from within Telecom, writing in the South East Christian Witness newsletter, drew links between Vision 2000 as detailed in Campbell’s self-published 1986 book (The Architecture and Engineering of Corporate Change), the New Age movement, and the occult. The newsletter warned of the relentless positivity of Vision 2000, the emphasis on the individual and changing their perceptions of reality, and the fate of those who did not buy into this new reality. The Vision 2000 rainbow and golden pyramid raised suspicions because of their links to the occult, New Age esotericism, and the program’s attempt to change the trade unions’ agendas and objectives. Campbell’s propensity to quote from the Kabbalah about the constancy of change and the universe’s lack of fixity led the article’s writer to warn readers that they needed to look no further for evidence of New Age infiltration in Telecom and society more broadly. ¹⁰⁵

Conclusion

Telecom’s management attempted to keep ahead of the impending wave of deregulation and privatization by pursuing Vision 2000. The aim was to refocus the organization, improve its effectiveness, deter any government tendencies toward privatization, and be better able to deal with competitors should deregulation occur and its monopoly dissolve. Vision 2000 was an internally initiated, consultant-driven instance of organizational change. It reflects an early, and controversial, application of the newly emergent approach to management advocated in 1980s organizational theory.

Vision 2000 was Telecom’s senior management’s attempt to charismatize the organization. Greg Campbell’s role was to be the charismatic leader, or Change Master, who dealt in symbols such as the golden pyramid, the rainbow and the vision at the workshops attended by workplace leaders chosen by management. At these often-theatrical presentations, these employees were told that for Vision 2000 to succeed, they needed to have faith. These change agents were expected to play central roles to the managerially facilitated local area change teams and be part of Kanter’s charismatized parallel organization: empowered workers participating in problem-solving teams who would renew and revitalize the organization.

Although Telecom invested significant amounts of money in the program, Vision 2000’s success was mixed, at best. While some employees wholeheartedly embraced Vision 2000 and its message of personal change in their working and personal lives, others were skeptical. ¹⁰⁶ Campbell’s evangelical presentation style alienated the more phlegmatic members of the engineering-driven, technocratic organization. Some were fearful of what they saw as American religious brainwashing and Vision 2000’s New Age and occult connotations and symbolism. As a form of “corporate spoon-bending” (as it was called by a union member), ¹⁰⁷ many employees recognized the religious aspect of Vision 2000, which represented a secularized form of religious experience and a failed (if idealistic) attempt at charismatization.

The majority of employees lay between these two views of Vision 2000, and it was these peoples’ ideas and commitment that Telecom hoped to capture. It was here where the unions played a central role. The unions were well integrated into Telecom and used Alex Carey to formulate their position on Vision 2000. Carey criticized the program’s unitarist underpinnings and its focus on individual attitudinal and psychological change rather than on the structural reform needed to reshape the power relationship between management and the workforce. The union leaders were wary of Kanter’s influence, and dismayed when Vision 2000 was used to bypass established consultative mechanisms, and were concerned about its evangelical form of cultural control and its potential to marginalize the unions.

Campbell saw his role as charismatizing the organization as if successful organizational change is mainly predicated on motivation. While many employees recognized the need for the government carrier to undergo a cultural change, evangelizing Vision 2000 through dramatic presentations, enlisting cohorts of change agents, and ignoring union concerns did not transform Telecom from a bureaucratic organization to one characterized by staff-driven innovation. Vision 2000 was a failure of both theory and participation. Kanter’s endorsement of Campbell’s work, materials, and approach suggests that the type of change management Kanter advocated and Campbell followed was a significant problem. The charismatizing of business was being promoted by early advocates of transformational leadership at the time, and Kanter’s focus on empowering employees to engage in innovation represented an adoption of Weber’s understanding of charisma, although employed at the staff level rather than only among senior management. The attempt to transform Telecom into a charismatic organization without management surrendering bureaucratic control was not successful. Weber adopted his notion of charisma from a study of religious history, and his charismatic organization was epitomized by those created by religious movements. The charismatic underpinnings of much of the organization theory of the 1980s was reflected in the failure to evangelize Vision 2000 at Telecom Australia.