High Society in a Workers' Society: Work, Community and Kibbutz

Abstract

The recent attention paid to corporate culture by managerial gurus has revived interest in the relationship between occupation and community, particularly the influence of social organisation upon work experience. Examination of kibbutz industry supplements these contemporary debates by extending the analysis into a form of work organisation formally devoid of managerial control, instead determined by those informal social relations identified by writers critical of corporate culture. Indeed, kibbutz industrial workers find relative compensations to unpleasant, tedious and demanding work through intense social interaction. Tightly cohesive work groups provide both a defence mechanism against the brutality of the work and, through the creation of group work norms, act as a spur to ensure productivity. Awareness of this dialectical relationship between occupation and community is not new. However, the qualitative analysis presented of the communal socialism of the kibbutz does provide a unique insight into the function of social relationships within the organisation of industrial work beyond that usually examined in either capitalist or state socialist economies.