The Power of Majority

Exploring the Positive and the Problematic in the Collective

I spoke with someone recently who described an interesting corporate conundrum in terms of group dynamics, voice and silence. They told the story of their department in a large organisation being told by the senior leadership that the policy on home working was going to be unilaterally changed to mandate a return to the office (RTO).

Collectivism diminished by Individualism

The withering of formal collectivism in the workplace means that increasingly the workforce needs to find under the radar ways of coming together to contest such autocratic moves. What was particularly interesting was that the leadership asserted that a majority of the 30 or so people who worked in that section were supportive of this shift.

As soon as they shared this observation with me, I was mindful how people who enjoy positional power are able to manipulate and mobilise pluralistic ignorance through simple acts such as declaring that a majority of staff are content with the change being demanded.

Using the term “majority” in this instance is a prime example of the modality of power that Michel Foucault identifies as disciplinary, as outlined in his book entitled Discipline and Punish. It ascribes a strong sense of normalcy to those who are said to inhabit this category – and consequently serves to Other those who fall into the intrinsically complementary category of “minority”.

This generates a social dynamic wherein those who sense that they occupy this majority position can feel safe and content, whilst those in the minority might then feel compelled to adjust their position so as to cross over into that assumed normality. This is a power that does not purely depend on position; it arises out of the mesh of interpersonal connections that we tend to inhabit as human beings.

The Shadow behind Collectivism

As far as the person with whom I was speaking was concerned, there was no evidence that there was indeed a majority amongst the 30 people that was definitely supporting the RTO mandate. The casual use of the term in this specific context in effect imbues the word with a power that extends beyond the simple fact of someone above you in the hierarchy shouting down at you to do things differently. It was an expressly manipulative act on the part of the leadership.

What came next, according to this person, was particularly fascinating. In the absence of a trade union in this workplace, a significant number of the people in the department who had opted over time to connect through an informal social WhatsApp channel began to use this connection to convene resistance to this imposition. The initial discussion led to a decision to draft a letter to carefully explain why the group felt the change inappropriate. They were adamant that their response should be properly argued and rational.

There was some to-ing and fro-ing of the draft of this letter, with one member of the group stepping momentarily into a leadership position in order to drive this forward. The imperative in such an exercise, of course, is invariably to generate a consensus as to the content of such a letter. The problem there, however, is that, unless a consensus is genuinely agreed by all in the group, the minority opinion is effaced by the dominant opinion and collective responsibility asserts itself, thereby silencing the minority.

In this instance, the WhatsApp group seemed to agree the text (although that appearance may quite possibly have arisen out of the minority complying with the implicit silence required) – and the next challenge was how best to represent the group behind this missive.

Signing Up to Silence

The first response was to simply assert that it came from the staff group in the named department. It seems as though this felt too impersonal for it to be effective. There was then discussion about liaising with the entire WhatsApp group and inviting them to advise whether they were happy to appear as individual signatories to this collective letter. However, as is so often the case in the workplace, speed was seen to be of the essence, with the resisters keen to strike while the iron was hot, rather than be outstripped by the speed at which the management would doubtless follow through on the mandate that they were about to introduce.

Finally, it was agreed that the letter would be signed advising that the letter was coming from The Majority of People in the Department. The person with whom I was speaking was deeply concerned by this, at a number of levels. Of particular significance, there was the use of the term “majority”, once again being used to introduce power into a dialogic space, in exactly the way in which the management had used it.

Additionally, the blanket use of the term “majority” hides the fact that some group members who might have opted to remain silent on the topic of the RTO mandate are inevitably implicated, because the majority remains undefined. What we see here is a potentially contrary voice denied, being instead absorbed in the silence that the collective response inadvertently generates.

It struck me that, even if I were to find myself in a minority of one, the term “majority” used in this way means that my minority status evaporates – unless I find a willingness to explicitly take an opposing view and the courage to find a way to express that. To use the term “majority” without clarifying how that group is constituted is to drag everyone unwittingly to a position underneath that heading, even where they are disinterested by the issue being resisted by this collective or are actually somewhat in favour of it but do not wish to threaten their membership of the group by opposing the consensus. The alternative voice is silenced by the focus on action that is implicit in activism, something that constricts dialogue in favour of massified gesture.

The use of the term majority in this instance was particularly problematic. It sought to efface the fact that there was a potential for differences of opinion across the WhatsApp group. Some of the majority were heard very clearly, contributing their voices to the discussion and the drafting of the letter; it was impossible to assess the extent to which those in that group who were less vocal – who may, indeed, have refused for whatever reason to say anything – were actually part of the alleged majority. And, indeed, that catch-all term encapsulated everyone in that space – and amplified the silence that some had opted to adopt in respect to this topic.

A second problem arises from the fact that, notwithstanding that the WhatsApp group – despite using the word majority to describe the people aligning themselves with the letter and thereby conflating everyone underneath this term, including those who may have silently been taking a position different to that of the self-described majority – may have in itself been schismatic, it was also the case that not everyone in the department were members of that WhatsApp. These particular people were not simply silencing themselves, they were actively being silenced by the way in which the discussion had taken place, namely through a channel of which they were not part.

Balancing the Me and the We

The most powerful act of individualism is to willingly join a collective. However, as the instance outlined above demonstrates, the collective is a space where the crowd is steeped in power – and it can, on occasion, morph into a mob. All of which means that our personal affiliation should not be thought of as absolute; our membership of a collective needs to be constantly reviewed in the moment as we engage in it.

The collective becomes oppressive where dialogue is denied in favour of a group compliance. Some collectivists express the view that people need to submit to the consensus because otherwise the group lacks cohesion and sacrifices the capacity of speaking truth to power as one. What this fails to acknowledge is that the collective is written through with power as well – and so the individuals who constitute it need to speak truth to that internal power, as well as the power outside of the group that it is looking to challenge. This is where the notion of prefiguration – a recognition that the means used will inevitably show up in the end that is achieved is vitally important; in truth, there is considerable peril in cleaving to the idea that the end justifies the means.

They also need to be alert to the fact that this power does not simply reside in one person considering their position, as might be the case in a more formalised structure. The collective may well instead see movement in and out of position, as was the case of the person who came forward in the case study here to take responsibility for drafting the letter, or the subtle occupation of it without facing meaningful challenge. All of which means that one needs to keep this fluidity or rigidity under constant review.

However, it is also the case, as we have hopefully seen in this instance, that power resides in the very warp and weft of the collective, right down to the way in which the various people who make up the collective interrelate with one another; how voice and silence shows up in that space, and the way in which aspects of language are mobilised and understood in this context.

Terms such as majority, collective responsibility, and consensus are imbued with power in such a surreptitious fashion that far too often their oppressive qualities go completely unacknowledged. All members of the collective need to be particularly alert to this.