Work and play in N.Z.

Press, 4 January 1978, Page 11

Work and play in N.Z.

If New Zealanders spent as much creative energy at work as they do at leisure activities, there would be no productivity problems, according to a British management consultant who has worked in this country since 1976. “Managers and workers alike go through their jobs in a dream, planning the ‘real’ work programme for next week-end,” said Mr W. J. Twinn, writing in the November issue of the “New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations.”

“At play, the New Zealander is a dedicated egalitarian, full of independence and resourcefulness,” Mr Twinn said. “At work, he is cowed, unimaginative, and usually adopts grotesque

worker-boss postures long since discarded in most other countries in the world.” Creative talents shown in home-building, gardening, and other leisure activities rarely came out at work, Mr Twinn said; and New Zealanders endure a type of authoritarianism they would never accept in their private lives. While it was unfair to make sweeping generalisations, most managers he had worked with had “rather limited concepts of their roles . . . Executives seem far more anxious to know what the next man is getting in salary than being concerned with how effective they themselves are in their job,” Mr Twinn said.

Managers showed a failure to innovate and make decisions. They seemed to feel it was not worth the effort. Workers were much the same. “Nearly every large-scale plant I have visited seems to be populated by people wandering about in a dream,” he said. “They are rarely told anything by management about what they are supposed to be doing, and seem totally disinterested, anyway.” It seemed that New Zealanders, particularly in cities, had not accepted work as a significant part of their lives, although the quality of their leisure activities largely depended on the quality of their work.