7 ms·

In some ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden, the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is

In some ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden, the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is almost anathema. Imagine if von Neumann had been required to do all of that in addition to making his own airline and hotel reservations, as is the case for many university professors these days.

Ma8ee 9y ago
In Sweden and in other places, everything, including the universities, is nowadays run by economists. Since university professors don't produce anything that has any immediate monetary value it of course make perfect sense to save money by replacing administrative personel that costs money with the professors time, which is free since the professors pay their own sallaries with external funding.
- corpMaverick 9y ago
  > run by economists I am confused. Perhaps you meant to say managers, administrators or bureaucrats ?
  - M_Bakhtiari 9y ago
    Formally they're the ones with the job descriptions, but under New Public Management it's the economists that are the ultimate arbiters of truth.
eesmith 9y ago
Could you confirm that first statement? That is, when I visited Sweden for a consulting job about 15 years ago, there was definitely a secretary for the group I visited. She helped organize the paperwork for the visit, booked my hotel and taxi, etc. The word for secretary in Swedish is "sekreterare", and a search of the Uppsala University domain find things like https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.uu.se%2Fjobb%2Fdetaljsida%2F%3FpositionId%3D78401&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev... : > Being the Secretary-General's secretary means helping coordinate, plan and prepare meetings, travel and reception of foreign and domestic guests as well as coordinate, prepare and plan other commitments. For example, involve helping to prepare information, book and plan trips and meetings, and to be responsible for the calendar as well as ex. certain world surveillance. > You will also be responsible for calls, mailing and agenda appointments, and telephone answering services as well as daily office tasks such as copying, billing, updating of records, ordering office supplies, and providing easier computer support, etc.
- Arnt 9y ago
  There was a secretary for the group, not for any one professor. If you'd visited in, say, 1925 the professors in the group might've had one secretary each.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    Certainly there's a trend away from private secretaries. But the original statement was specifically about "ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden", and the process you mention is also taking place in the US, which (I believe) is not in that category. Moreover, the statement added "the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is almost anathema [in Sweden]." Yet I easily found a job position for a personal secretary. That's why I would like a confirmation that M_Bakhtiari's observation is based on something stronger than hearsay or an assumption of how Sweden compares to not-as-low-power distance societies like the US.
    - Arnt 9y ago
      I suppose it's taking place everywhere where assistant labour is expensive. Faster in the places where having a private secretary is old-fashioned, like Sweden.
  - beojan 9y ago
    That has more to do with those secretaries being replaced by computers than anything else. When everyone can type, and mistakes are easily corrected, you don't need people whose only job is to type anymore.
    - Arnt 9y ago
      I'm Norwegian, not Swedish, but AIUI the societal trends were similar. There's been a trend towards typing ability, yes, but hardly decisive. The old secretaries would do the bulk of e.g. organising conferences or the professor's travel, that's needs typing but not only typing. The trend (in .no/.se etc) towards equality, against certain symbols of prestige, mattered a great deal. A long time ago having a secretary was a symbol of power, appropriate for Professor Dr. Lundman. At some point forgoing one became a symbol of modernity, and private secretaries became much less common, and the universities reorganised to provide specialised services such as ticket purchasers and maybe grant application writers instead of private secretaries.
mseebach 9y ago
The idea that anyone is entitled to a secretary, that a secretary is a kind of status symbol, is rightfully falling out of fashion, and not just in Sweden. But it's not being replaced by nothing, it being replaced by (non-personal) function staff that offloads specific tasks. The department has student relations officers that deal with scheduling, enrollment, tracking grades etc, the university has a travel office, email and digital calendars, available on mobile devices, simply removes a significant part of the need for secretaries in the first place - and professors have TAs (who would probably be responsible for a good chunk of the tasks described today). They just don't have general-purpose personal staff.
- narag 9y ago
  replaced by (non-personal) function staff that offloads specific tasks And it's more practical since it works even if people in those positions gets sick or are away for holidays.
- M_Bakhtiari 9y ago
  > The idea that anyone is entitled to a secretary, that a secretary is a kind of status symbol, is rightfully falling out of fashion, and not just in Sweden. Indeed, the opposite error, seen in many ultra-high power distance societies, is arguably worse: when a secretary and a desk not facing a wall becomes an end in itself and nothing of value is produced. > But it's not being replaced by nothing, it being replaced by (non-personal) function staff that offloads specific tasks. Those things have been around for a long time, but treating it as a replacement rather than a complement to general-purpose secretaries means there will be no-one to do the more open-ended tasks, or tasks specific to the work of a particular person or group.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    > there will be no-one to do the more open-ended tasks, or tasks specific to the work of a particular person or group. Staffs still exists. It's not unheard of for a manager in a company to instruct his department to undertake some particular task. Sometimes that's practically all "business development" does. In larger firms, there is often an "office of the CEO" which has a number of people working on particular tasks for the top management, often with a title like "special projects", and often seconded from staff offices with the relevant skills.
microtherion 9y ago
One amusing aside in that article was that one of the professors who appear to have received the budget to pay an assistant to nothing was Oswald Veblen. His uncle Thorstein Veblen surely would have had a field day with this idea.

Ma8ee 9y ago

In Sweden and in other places, everything, including the universities, is nowadays run by economists. Since university professors don't produce anything that has any immediate monetary value it of course make perfect sense to save money by replacing administrative personel that costs money with the professors time, which is free since the professors pay their own sallaries with external funding.

corpMaverick 9y ago
> run by economists I am confused. Perhaps you meant to say managers, administrators or bureaucrats ?
- M_Bakhtiari 9y ago
  Formally they're the ones with the job descriptions, but under New Public Management it's the economists that are the ultimate arbiters of truth.

eesmith 9y ago

Could you confirm that first statement? That is, when I visited Sweden for a consulting job about 15 years ago, there was definitely a secretary for the group I visited. She helped organize the paperwork for the visit, booked my hotel and taxi, etc. The word for secretary in Swedish is "sekreterare", and a search of the Uppsala University domain find things like https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.uu.se%2Fjobb%2Fdetaljsida%2F%3FpositionId%3D78401&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev... : > Being the Secretary-General's secretary means helping coordinate, plan and prepare meetings, travel and reception of foreign and domestic guests as well as coordinate, prepare and plan other commitments. For example, involve helping to prepare information, book and plan trips and meetings, and to be responsible for the calendar as well as ex. certain world surveillance. > You will also be responsible for calls, mailing and agenda appointments, and telephone answering services as well as daily office tasks such as copying, billing, updating of records, ordering office supplies, and providing easier computer support, etc.

Arnt 9y ago
There was a secretary for the group, not for any one professor. If you'd visited in, say, 1925 the professors in the group might've had one secretary each.
- eesmith 9y ago
  Certainly there's a trend away from private secretaries. But the original statement was specifically about "ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden", and the process you mention is also taking place in the US, which (I believe) is not in that category. Moreover, the statement added "the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is almost anathema [in Sweden]." Yet I easily found a job position for a personal secretary. That's why I would like a confirmation that M_Bakhtiari's observation is based on something stronger than hearsay or an assumption of how Sweden compares to not-as-low-power distance societies like the US.
  - Arnt 9y ago
    I suppose it's taking place everywhere where assistant labour is expensive. Faster in the places where having a private secretary is old-fashioned, like Sweden.
- beojan 9y ago
  That has more to do with those secretaries being replaced by computers than anything else. When everyone can type, and mistakes are easily corrected, you don't need people whose only job is to type anymore.
  - Arnt 9y ago
    I'm Norwegian, not Swedish, but AIUI the societal trends were similar. There's been a trend towards typing ability, yes, but hardly decisive. The old secretaries would do the bulk of e.g. organising conferences or the professor's travel, that's needs typing but not only typing. The trend (in .no/.se etc) towards equality, against certain symbols of prestige, mattered a great deal. A long time ago having a secretary was a symbol of power, appropriate for Professor Dr. Lundman. At some point forgoing one became a symbol of modernity, and private secretaries became much less common, and the universities reorganised to provide specialised services such as ticket purchasers and maybe grant application writers instead of private secretaries.

mseebach 9y ago

The idea that anyone is entitled to a secretary, that a secretary is a kind of status symbol, is rightfully falling out of fashion, and not just in Sweden. But it's not being replaced by nothing, it being replaced by (non-personal) function staff that offloads specific tasks. The department has student relations officers that deal with scheduling, enrollment, tracking grades etc, the university has a travel office, email and digital calendars, available on mobile devices, simply removes a significant part of the need for secretaries in the first place - and professors have TAs (who would probably be responsible for a good chunk of the tasks described today). They just don't have general-purpose personal staff.

narag 9y ago
replaced by (non-personal) function staff that offloads specific tasks And it's more practical since it works even if people in those positions gets sick or are away for holidays.
M_Bakhtiari 9y ago
> The idea that anyone is entitled to a secretary, that a secretary is a kind of status symbol, is rightfully falling out of fashion, and not just in Sweden. Indeed, the opposite error, seen in many ultra-high power distance societies, is arguably worse: when a secretary and a desk not facing a wall becomes an end in itself and nothing of value is produced. > But it's not being replaced by nothing, it being replaced by (non-personal) function staff that offloads specific tasks. Those things have been around for a long time, but treating it as a replacement rather than a complement to general-purpose secretaries means there will be no-one to do the more open-ended tasks, or tasks specific to the work of a particular person or group.
- mseebach 9y ago
  > there will be no-one to do the more open-ended tasks, or tasks specific to the work of a particular person or group. Staffs still exists. It's not unheard of for a manager in a company to instruct his department to undertake some particular task. Sometimes that's practically all "business development" does. In larger firms, there is often an "office of the CEO" which has a number of people working on particular tasks for the top management, often with a title like "special projects", and often seconded from staff offices with the relevant skills.

microtherion 9y ago

One amusing aside in that article was that one of the professors who appear to have received the budget to pay an assistant to nothing was Oswald Veblen. His uncle Thorstein Veblen surely would have had a field day with this idea.