blit is a tumblelog.

No one en­joys his work if he is a cog in a ma­chine.

A man en­joys his work when he un­der­stands the whole and when he is re­spons­ible for the qual­ity of the whole. He can only un­der­stand the whole and be re­spons­ible for the whole when the work which hap­pens in so­ci­ety, all of it, is un­der­taken by small self-gov­ern­ing hu­man groups; groups small enough to give people un­der­stand­ing through face-to-face con­tact, and autonom­ous enough to let the work­ers them­selves gov­ern their own af­fairs.

The evid­ence for this pat­tern is built upon a single, fun­da­ment­al pro­pos­i­tion: work is a form of liv­ing, with its own in­trins­ic re­wards; any way of or­gan­iz­ing work which is at odds with this idea, which treats work in­stru­ment­ally, as a means only to oth­er ends, is in­hu­man.

…

Therefore:

En­cour­age the form­a­tion of self-gov­ern­ing work­shops and of­fices of 5 to 20 work­ers. Make each group autonom­ous - with re­spect to or­gan­iz­a­tion, style, re­la­tion to oth­er groups, hir­ing and fir­ing, work sched­ule. Where the work is com­plic­ated and re­quires lar­ger or­gan­iz­a­tions, sev­er­al of these work groups can fed­er­ate and co­oper­ate to pro­duce com­plex ar­ti­facts and ser­vices.

A Pattern Language is published by Oxford University Press, Copyright Christopher Alexander, 1977.

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