Challenges in management of communes

Challenges in management of communes In most recognized organizations, management devolves on quite a restricted part of the lives of people involved – usually their position in the organization, mostly a professional position. Being parents, citizens, consumers, actors in other organizations, are res privatum, subject to their personal decisions. While in the communal structure a wide spectrum of human life was res publicum, subject to the decisions of the general assembly, its committees, and emissaries. Management is essentially hierarchic, entailing a distinctive allocation of power and authority to officials. Exercising managerial power in communes, even if basically agreed, runs counter to egalitarian intentions and to the membership equality of the managers and managed in the communal society. This situation arouses an ambivalent attitude toward managers and challenges their management capabilities. This was achieved by flattening the managerial structure, narrowing the authorities of each position, limiting the powers of managers to the definition of each specific function, including public representatives in management teams, Three structural dimensions are noteworthy when examining management: the scope of the management applied on the people involved; the degree of hierarchy and power in applying the management; and the way the organization’s spheres are integrated. A notable problem in commune flat organizational structure, being dispersed over various spheres of activity and guided by various principles of action and objectives, is the integration between the community and the business sectors. This led to a bifurcated organizational structure, ostensibly coordinated by the general assembly – a role that the assembly can hardly perform because of the breadth of its role, the number of participants, its non-professional nature, and its changing structure. In more than one hundred years of kibbutz experience, some organizational and managerial models where implemented. Those models will be discussed.