Work organization : France in logic of honor when USA in logic of contract

In the last post, I've discussed how the French Ancient Regime (period from the wake of last millenary to the French Revolution in 1789) is still shaping the way we're governed. I will pursue with those considerations on a more day-to-day illustration : the way French Ancient Regime society organization is still largely tainting today's french society and mostly work organization. It explains a lot of misunderstandings and failures when a US company manages a french subsidiary and vice-versa. This post is based upon a book that has been written in 1987 : sociologists have studied organization and behavior in 3 plants of the same industrial group (US, France, Netherlands). This was 25 years ago and mostly blue collars, but the lessons learned are curiously similar to what I've personally experienced when my company was taken over by a US company less than 5 years ago,  in a completely different sector (software manufacturer). 

Ancient Regime

France has lived for 6 or 7 centuries under what we're calling the "Ancient Regime". It was a very rigid "class system" with strong barriers to move from one class to another. You had the aristocracy (including kings and queens), not engaged in any business but fighting, forming alliances and marrying amongst themselves to keep power and estates. You had the nobility and gentry, some of them more a sub-aristocracy, some of them doing business which was considered something "dirty" and kept you under aristocracy (a real aristocrat could not make a living conducting business). You had a class of religious (monks, priests), and then you had a class of people that had access to a better class through heroic behavior in battles : cavalry was for example considered as a superior class. You had craft-makers and shop-owners with a perpetuation through master/apprentice relationship (and protection through syndication). And most people were poor farmers working for small gentry. They were not slaves but working on lands that were not their property. They were working for their lord.

Everybody was under a logic of 'honor'. Belonging to a class came with a list of rights and duties. Those lists evolved with time but the system kept on being the very same. When in a class, you cannot do something that is devoted to an inferior class (or stick your nose too much into the inferior class business), that would lead you to dishonor. This is still surviving : in France, a manager cannot dig too much into a team member's work without being considered as "breaking the rank". And the team member being too much controlled will find outrageous that his manager is going too much into his business devoted to 'its class'. Even the lower class was in this logic of honor. They were into domination but were very proud and jealous of their autonomy in some rights and were not in rebellion of the duties they found 'natural' to their rank. The whole society was working well provided everybody stayed 'in his rank', benefited from 'his rights' and ensured he properly respected his 'duties'. A lord had all powers over poor farmers but he was meant to use it with moderation according to his duties. If he did so, the farmers accepted the domination. If not, there was rebellion. Nevertheless, this domination was difficult to endure. That's why, in France, "working for someone" is still seen as a problem because it always refers to a master/servant relationship, not to a contractual relationship as it is in the USA.

French revolution and US model

The French Revolution which started in 1789 was meant to break all of this. The King was beheaded in 1793 and it's true that the whole system was shaken around. The whole "class system" was torn and the aristocracy barely exists today. But the class logic and the 'logic of honor' is still vivid. The classes are far more numerous come in many shades. But each group refers to a system of rights and duties, even if it's not consistent anymore with the current reality. Some strikes are starting just because the 'honor' of a group is endangered.French employees are ready to be utterly committed in their work but don't accept  that their manager is checking on their work too much. Some people say french people are lazy and don't care about their work. That's simply not true. The fact is, people are very disappointed by companies more than most other countries simply because they put too much expectation on work (polls show very clearly the over-commitment of french people in their job). Some also say french are unmanageable. That's more true because each group refers to its own code of honor rather than to orders. And we're still reluctant to management because of the memories of the master/servant relationship. Just like the defiance toward the riches could be interpreted as remains of the time where conducting a business was considered dirty (vs aristocracy).

At the other end, the US system is built on a very different basis. The burden of the past is way thinner. US can be seen as the aggregation of free men, meant to be peers, working together under a "logic of contract". The key word is "fairness". Of course, there are a lot of inequalities in US, much more than in France. But France refers since 1789 to "equality" when US refers to "fairness". It's more acceptable in US to "work for someone" because you're meant to have freely chosen and accepted the situation and it could be reversed one day. Hence the important figure of the "self-made-men". Therefore, the work organization relies much more on procedures (job description, management by objectives, performance review). Each level, from shareholders to blue collars, is giving objective performance expectations to the inferior level which can work, inside those orders, with a fairly good autonomy. And, unlike in France, it's not a dishonor for someone to be 'checked' : in France, it's seen as a lack of trust and defiant gesture. US can also rely on contracts because it's a lot supported by culture which is tainted by community and fairness values. This contract system does not work very well in France when people are still entrenched into honor.

Models

Management and organization models, theories, books, seminar consultancy, it's a big business. Each country, each company, is trying to find best-of-breed models. Hence "copycat effects" and dramatic changes in model popularity. We have always been impressed in France by US economic power so we've always tried to import US management methods. This is still true even if it has a little bit faded away. We've had our "Japanese model" (community and inputs bottom-up) time and now the "German model" is in everybody's mouth (consensus). "Japanese model" was also very popular in the US when Japan automotive manufacturers began to gain huge market shares in the US in the 80s with a productivity that was way superior to the US.

We've been so involved in trying to copy US methods for 4 decades that some management methods very unnatural to the French have now become quite common and seems to have always been around. This is the case for job descriptions and management reviews (for white collars at least). It would seem very unprofessional in my line of business (IT service & software manufacturing) to hire an employee without a proper job description and to not have a yearly or biyearly performance review based on objectives measurements. Still, most of the time, it's just make-up, a travesty of what the reality is about.

I've myself written a bunch of job descriptions. Most of them were never respected (except maybe the core components) because the employee was going over or under its prescription. Most of the time, I did not expect myself employees to respect it and I was expecting them to act autonomously in the company's best interest. It's the same for performance reviews : I conducted a lot of them, having prepared metrics and formal reviews and finally found myself turn the review into an informal talk. That's a real advantage for small companies in France (I've always worked for small business) : you don't need formal procedures, people will do their best and know what they have to do whatever their job desc states. And they will spontaneously help their colleagues if they feel their 'honor' commands them to do so. Problem is what works perfectly in a 30-people company does not work that well in a 10,000-people company. And also explains why we do have in France a lot of "small wonders" that never turn into "huge champions" like Google or Apple.

My personal experience

I was CFO and General Manager for France for a software manufacturer (approx 75 employees). The CEO  was french but had moved to California to develop US business. We'd been acquired by a San Jose, CA based company. It was fairly easy to deal with my new boss (company's CFO) and "indirect bosses" (General Counsel and HR VP). But I experienced a lot of tensions, struggles and misunderstanding with "peers". Finally, after 10 months, I decided to quit. Partly because of those tensions and mostly because my position was making less and less sense as control was centralized in California.

Tensions were largely between me and the VP US controller (may be the wrong title - the person was just "under" the CFO). Let's call him John. John was a real nice guy, very pleasant to deal with outside work when I was on business travel in San Jose or when he was in Paris or Lyon. But I must admit John was bothering me. A lot. And I could easily feet it was reciprocal. So the company CFO was constantly forced to act as a referee, which he was reluctant to do because he was very busy with other things and he did not want to push back nor John nor me. I was feeling that John was stubborn and not dedicated to the company, being in a pattern when he was just doing "his job", no matter what the company needed. It was easy to understand that he was thinking (as well as the CFO, at least for a part) that I was unmanageable, constantly doing things I was not asked to do, challenging things not meant to be challenged and a factor of disorganization. I can't remember us arguing is San Jose. I had a big number in my balance sheet on €/$ conversion risks. In my eyes, it was something to address. In his eyes, it was not to be taken in account because company procedures did not mention it. I was under the impression he was pushing the dirt under the carpet, he was under the impression I was making a world of something not that important while I was not addressing issues I was meant to address.

We were purely in the cultural mismatch I was exposing in the first chapter. I was in a "logic of honor". I had a view of my CFO's job that was not based on my job description but on feelings. So I thought this forced me to address issues I felt were important for the company even out of my scope. I also thought I had not only the right but also the duty to address this issue and couldn't care less about the effects on the company organization or on my peer's feelings. And I really apologize to John (and the CFO) for that. Not addressing those issues would have meant losing honor to my eyes and that was not bearable. The same applies to my peer. John was in a pure 'logic of contract'. He had a job to be done, following his job description and company procedures. He was working hard and very efficiently pursuing this goal. For him, addressing other issues would have bring disorder in organization and less efficiency in 'real issues'.

We were both right, both eager to do the best for the company, willing to interact at best, yet we mostly failed because we were trapped in our cultural vision bias. I can see this now ... 4 years after. This is something to keep in mind for people managing other people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. And also for managers or governments. You can't just look at the Japanese, US, Scandics, or German model and copy/paste into your country. That does not work well. Taking good ideas in other countries ? Of course but you have to deal with your history and culture. The 1789 Revolution did not ban the Ancient Regime organization that still survives more than 2 centuries after. A CEO or a Republic President who'd think he can delete History would be foolish and would fail.

France/USA, same diplomacy, same messianic foreign affairs. US copes with it, France's in hypocrisy

I do believe that diplomacy (or foreign affairs) is a matter where France and USA and quite similar but also utterly different. If you look at the purpose of countries diplomacy, you'll basically find only two ones sharing the same "messianic"  (or proselytistic) vision : France and USA. For United States, this vision is built on a "God's choice" (pledge of allegiance I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all). In France, now a mostly post-religious society, it's based on the strong belief in our philosophical superiority based on what we call "Century of lights" (roughly 18th century with famous intellectuals like Diderot, Rousseau or Montesquieu). There are many grounds to contest this vision but only USA and France are acting today not only to "push" their geo-diplomatic interests but also because they do think they're enlighten and they have something to bring to the rest of the world. Moreover, they feel they have a moral obligation to do so. Look at Germany : they waived this ambition in the ruin of Berlin in 1945. England gave up when the Commonwealth collapsed. China is acting to gain leadership but they're not trying to act so we adopt their way of life or their life vision. Russia had also gave up in 1991 after the USSR collapse. Some countries just never tried even though they had strong power during History (Italy, Portugal, Spain) or a huge population (India). That leaves USA and France, brothers in arms in this fight. That may explains why those two countries are seen as the most arrogant in the world, even in the eyes of each other. But France and USA do not manage their diplomacy the exact same way, despite sharing the same goal. They don't have the same power, either. Let's see it through.

France : the difficulty of being when you had been

France has a glorious past. We had been the most powerful country in the world. Consider sciences, philosophy, warfare, we really were. Our territory was huge including what we called colonies (e.g. Algeria or Vietnam) or when we invaded half of Europe with Napoleon as a leader. We had to battle very hard against England or Germany, sometimes they were ranked #1, sometimes we were. Nowadays, we have slipped on most domains : we obtain only few Nobel prizes, our army capacity is limited, our cultural influence is either strong in small countries (western Africa) or weak in huge countries (US, China), our language is less and less spoken on the planet (in part of the overall population), our economic marketshare is decreasing day after day, we hadn't been the leading edge of the latest technology revolutions like Internet or biotechs. We still have a seat  at the very selected club of permanent members (with veto right) of the United Nations (UN) Security Council (inheritance of WWII) but our influence on US or China policy is limited. And, as hard as we try, we're less and less involved in conflicts resolution like Israel vs Palestinians. We're far from insignificant but we've been ousted of the major league (which undoubtfully includes USA, China and Russia). That's not a drama in itself but French people, deep inside, are living this as a punishment. And french leaders are often still acting as if they were still part of this league. Hence the question: is this possible to be, here and now, when you've been greater in the past ?

USA : learn to deal with others

The question is very different for US. The country had seen its power (real and relative) rising from the very beginning until very recently. And it's still in the major league. Some alarms were ringing during the Vietnam war and US is always balancing between exporting its model to the world and focus on itself first (between 1975 and 1981, the "focus on ourselves" briefly won and then Reagan came with "America's back", sending the pendulum in the opposite way). After the Berlin's wall fall, some thought America will lead the world with no rival. Francis Fukuyama predicted the "end of history". All wrong. Iraki war #1, 9/11 awful tragedy, Iraki war #2, Afghanistan war, Guantanamo, all showed that America cannot anymore send the pendulum back to "focus on ourselves", do not have a solo lead anymore in a "multipolar" world, and got to deal with other countries. End of a (brief) illusion for some delusional folks.

France diplomacy : hypocrisy as a compass

The french current Secretary of State, #2 of the french government in the protocol, said, in a press conference on Oct, 23rd 2012 "Our influence is meant to support our interests but also to defend universal values. That's one of the french diplomacy specificity". That's a sentence previous Secretary of State may have made, a "sub-Secretary of State", dedicated to "Human Rights", had been created by previous government. Moreover, the base line of french Secretary of State is always : we're acting for the greater good of Humanity and, in the same time, for french interests. Let's take the Iraki War #2 as an example. When US decided to make on move on Irak and oust Saddam Hussein, France was opponent #1 and our Prime Minister of the time, Dominique de Villepin, made a brilliant speech at the UN tribune (a lot of french people still remember that very speech with emotion as a moment of "french splendor"). I wasn't a fan myself of this war and was not sure about those WMD story but I was very uspet at the time. Because the story told by french authorities to french population, proxied and backed by huge majority of politicians, medias, experts and intellectuals was :

• This is a was for petroleum only
• Maybe this is also a payback for George W. Bush for what his father did not manage to succeed (oust Hussein)
• Bringing democracy to Irak will is bullshit (by the way, we're not sure "those people" are ready for democraty ... maybe dictature fits them better)
• US acts based on their interests only, do not care about local population and that's wrong

Huge majority of french folks believed that and still do. A tremendous hate wave against US President rocked France and also a hate wave against US itself. A year ago, some french people (not a majority but not that isolated ... and even educated ones) thought that 9/11 was, somewhere, "deserved" by Americans for their long-time arrogance. There was a call for a minute of silence in France after 9/11. At the decided hour, I parked my car and "thought" about the victims (I would have prayed but I'm not religious). My colleague looked at me like I was a martian and said to me that we're not Americans and would US people had been more "understanding" with the rest of the world, that would have had never happened. I answered to her if she thought terrorists attacks on France, in 1995 for example, were "well deserved". Of course not.

Regarding Irak, most of french people forget that Saddam Hussein was a long-time "friend" of our nation (photo above is our former president Jacques Chirac with Saddam Hussein). We sold (signature was made by the president itself) in the late 70s a nuclear power plant, OSIRAK, to Saddam Hussein, which had been eventually bombed and destroyed by Israeli aviation. And our biggest company (TOTAL, a petroleum company), long-time Nation's owned monopoly but now private with a lot of political links, was fiercely acting to be the one to benefit the most of an expected stop of "petroleum against food" UN program.

If you're looking at the more recent history, France had been very active to obtain a UN resolution (despite the reluctance of Russia & China) on Libya. The reason was to save population of a town named Benghazi. Noble cause. But we violated the resolution (hence the higher reluctance of China on Syria) : we were supposed to perform an air-ban and protect civilians, not launch missiles on Gaddafi convoy or houses. Humanitarian reasons were true but other considerations were at stake : gas/petroleum supply, influence on Arab's world, not having a terrorist backyard so close to Paris, ...

Africa : the french backyard

France used to have numerous colonies in Northern and Western Africa. What does this mean ? Those lands were governed by France, populations were second-rank french (or not french at all), we extracted resources from their soil for our own purpose (at a very low cost and no dime for local population). After an ugly decolonization process in the 50s (worst of it was Algeria war including terrorism and torture on both side), a new policy had been theorized and enforced. The  name is "Françafrique". It had been setup by a man reporting directly to the President of the time, General de  Gaulle : Jacques Foccart. He set up networks so to keep french influence at any price. The aim of the influence was to ensure the gas & petroleum supply, ensure UN votes of African dictators and obtain indirect influence from those bullies. To do so, France financed rebellions, helped military coup realization, and any other kind of actions that were "necessaries" to fulfill the goal. Note that the system was nicely thought : France was financing local bullies regardless of what they do with their population, bullies were letting us extracting petroleum from their soil at a very competitive cost, they loaded their Swiss bank accounts and send back a part of the money to french politicians.

The system had been smooth but is still alive. Over decades, it led us to play a dirty part in humanitarian aftermath like in Biafra. Our exact role in Rwanda genocide (800.000 casualties chopped off with machete) is unclear but we supported the "future killers" because they were "pro-french" and the "future corpses" were supposed to be pro-US. Now, the game is getting more complex with China arising in Africa.

If  you're looking at a map of the french forces acting outside France, we're part of several ops : Afghanistan (2.200 troops), Lebanon, Tchad (african country, the operation started 26 years ago ...), Ivory Coast, Kosovo (after former Yugoslavia collapsed in 1991). Our "pre-positioned" soldiers are based in Djibouti (North-East Africa little country, led by crook politicians financed by France, close to Middle-East petroleum sea routes; 1.900 troops), Indian Ocean and ashore Arabic Emirates, Gabon (Western Africa, 900 troops), Senegal (Western Africa, 350 troops). No need for a long study to understand what those troops are doing here : protect our influence in Africa and the road to our energetic resources (gas, petroleum, uranium). Where does french petroleum importations come from (we don't have any in our soil) : 33% from Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaïjan, 16% from Libya (hence our interest for Libya population), 16% from other countries in Africa (hence troops there), 15% from Norway and UK, 9% from Saudi Arabia (hence the troops in the area), 4% from Irak (hence our opposition to the Iraki war #2). Our uranium (75% of our electricity is made by nuclear power plant so we need uranium) is mainly coming from Africa. TOTAL, our big oil blue chip, highly linked to Francafrique and french politics ? 35% of its petroleum is extracted in Africa and 37% of its proven reserves are lying under Africa's soil. Gas ? 37% from Norway, 17% Netherlands, 16% Russia, 15% Algeria.

Superpowers flex their wings

So let's not fool ourselves. The purpose of french diplomacy is to preserve our influence and secure our energetic supply. If that's compatible with human rights, that's good. It not ? Too bad. That's why Laurent Fabius (current french secretary of State) sentence is pure hypocrisy. A Secretary of State's job is to push its country interest. Acting otherwise would be treason. Am I happy with this ? Well, I'd like us to manage to fill our car gas tank without having to think about abused children, sure. But that's the way world works. We might be able to change this, little by little. But certainly not by denying the reality.

France and US are alike. They're acting to push their influence, secure their energetic supply. The only specificity those two countries have is that they also want to "teach" something to other countries. And why not? The only difference I see between USA and France is that US is a grown-up country able to face the fact it's using realpolitik. France needs to lie to itself to do so cause we're ashamed of what we do (and maybe it has something to do with guilt associated for what we did in our colonies but that's another story and that'll be another post).

Well if they tried, maybe they'd seeIt'd do a little good to let the world be freeHandshake and a smile, gets you on throughThen turn it all around with a suicide move
But you know it's not foolin' anyone but meYou gotta make yourself see what you want to seeBut you know it's not foolin' anyone but meYou gotta make yourself see what you want to see
I say yeah, "Superpowers flex their wingsHold the world on puppet stringsEgos will feed while citizens bleedThat's always the way it goes"
When will the world listen to reasonI've a feelin' it'll be a long timeWhen will the truth come in to seasonI've a feelin' it'll be a long timeI've a feelin' it'll be a long time

The Offspring "It'll be a long time"