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The games people play

Project managers who are held politically accountable for the success of the new policy initiative are obliged to cope. To do so they will have to play management games. Typical of these sorts of activities are “tokenism” and “monopoly” games.

• The "Tokenism" game involves attempting to appear to be contributing to the implementation process publicly, while conceding only a small contribution (Sax, 1994). The essential management tool is procrastination. Another ploy is to substitute an inferior quality contribution, for example; “we can’t arrange appropriately subsidised and trained carers, but we can easily and quickly arrange…(a less costly and far less effective alternative)." However, tokenism often requires persistence and ingenuity, so that many managers seek to avoid it as a games strategy, since it is time and energy consuming.
• The "Monopoly" game. The tokenism game is often played by monopolies whose will is enforced either by political protection or by government agency protection (Coulson, 1996). Unions and certain large service provider institutions fall into this category of player, combining political protection with formidable political strength. In some ways, with regard to the implementation game, monopolies are rather like huge whirlpools that suck all opposition into their depths. They have the capacity to create enormous disruption in the policy and program implementation process.

A variety of other games will be identifiable in the new vision impairment support services implementation process, some well-hidden (covert), some played on the open playing field (overt). These games will include some or all the following sorts:

• "Energy Dissipation" games. These result in substantial implementation delays as individuals, organisations and other stake-holders waste large amounts of energy in the following ways:
  • By trying to avoid responsibility
  • By defending themselves against the games of others
  • By trying to set up advantageous situations
• The "Tenacity" game. This is a game that everyone can play. It involves stymieing the progress or completion of a particular program until your own terms are satisfied. Often as a result of player tenacity, project death or delay is the consequence. The message to those charged with information access project implementation is that the risks and costs of altering the potential benefits of the project from its generally accepted objectives will require careful consideration before engaging in these sorts of activities.
• The "Territory" game. The acquisition of new territory is a game is played by all bureaucratic organisations and it can often have positive results as long as no one really wins and as long as the tensions that are created generate information leading to evaluation. Competition for territory can have adverse effects if it interferes with operational responsibilities that ought to be coordinated.
• The “Not Our Problem” game. The desire for expanded territory and augmented budgets rapidly evaporates when organisations realise that a particular implementation problem will impose a heavy workload or launch them into the realms of controversy or blame, or that the required tasks are too difficult and they lack the capacity to successfully undertake them. The solution is to shift the problem. If nobody wants the problem area, the regulatory activities that arise from it are simply not performed and the users or customers start to get the “run around”.
• The “Their Fault” game. This is a more aggressive form of the “not our problem” game in which blame for failure is deflected by finding a scapegoat. A particular feature of the game is that the numbers of players who can be drawn into it affects its outcomes. The more actors who can be persuaded to play the game the less likely is program completion. The greater the number of delays generated, the less likely is the project or program to succeed if completed.
• The "Odd Man Out" game. This is a game played by relatively autonomous players once they have weighed-up the playing field and made decisions about their contribution to the implementation process. These organisational leaders or individuals are generally uncertain about the actions of the other players. As the policy initiative implementation process develops and expands, their uncertainty is either reduced or magnified and this creates or maintains options for some of them to “cut their losses” and withdraw. As the several actors continue to monitor what is going on, they simultaneously attempt to manoeuvre the other players into foregoing their options. If the uncertainties are large enough, none of the players will be willing to make the early moves and the program will not get off the ground.
• The "Resource Diversion" game. Some of the implementation games that have adverse effects on the program assembly process include the following:
  • Diversion of money (resources) that ought to be used to obtain or create some of the program elements,
  • Deflection of the policy goals stipulated in the original mandate,
  • Resistance to all efforts to control behaviour administratively; and
  • Dissipation of personal and political energies in games playing that might otherwise be channelled into constructive program actions.
• The "Easy Money" game. This is a game often played by parties in the private sector who wish to make off with Government monies in exchange for program elements of too little value. Their activities are not invariably illegal. Sometimes they arise from unclear agreements about what should happen. Sometimes "Easy Money" games take the form of bilateral monopoly games that have one round of play. Sometimes, a great deal of time and effort is wasted in games that involve continued liaison with all the affected public agencies and political authorities. The Americans call these behaviours “boondoggles” (Williams, 2000). On the darker side of these games one can find abuses of public trust, graft, kickbacks, bribes and vertically integrated monopolies. A classic example of this sort of game might involve doctors who accept fees from private patients, who then place the patients in the nursing homes they (the doctors) own and receive pharmacy kickbacks from the monopolies they create.
• The "Goal Deflection" game. Typically the goals in the original policy mandate’s implementation processes will change over time to accommodate changes in time, environment and player turnover. These shifts are particularly problematic when the original goals are ambiguous or when problems have been initially ill defined and understood, or in instances where there has been weak consensus among key players. Additionally, those with interests opposed to the project’s original goals might have stayed quiet during the initial phases of implementation, and have been waiting for an opportunity to have their way. A policy of renegotiating goals can lead to trimming them back, as well as distorting or preventing their attainment. As project goals become redundant, they are added to the unsupportable political burden of the project and become a danger to its continuance.
• The "Easy Life" game. This is a game generally played by public servants who tailor the environment to suit themselves. This is a particularly easy end to accomplish when services involve rationing. Rationing leads to queuing which results in a relatively powerless, voiceless and disorganised public. The Easy Life game is best played with reorganisation, restructure and incessant transition as its strategies.
• The "Pork Barrel" game. Because the political process expands the boundaries of eligibility for benefits from most projects, and because Government needs support from as many sources as possible, there is always an attempt at spreading resources. Pork barrelling is the process that ensures that ones friends, relatives and mates benefit from what is within one’s hands to give. For example, representatives of “the powerless poor” or the “disabled minority” concentrate on securing payments for themselves and positions of influence for their family and friends. This phenomenon generates as well as results in “patronage”.
• The "Piling-On" game. This is a game in which the initial successes of a project or a new program provide the potential for longer-run debilitation. The new program is in fact seen primarily as a new political resource, and all the players “pile-on” to the band wagon, until the wheels collapse and the program founders, having run its course to the benefit of the few who jumped on early.
• "Budget" games. These generally take the form of budget maximisation activities in which implementation success depends on shaping incentives for those who control the budgets. Some games take the form of “ready-to-go, must “move the money” strategies. Others involve inflating the costs of goal attainment by “padding” In others the designers provide few incentives for the resource donors to police spending. In others there are difficulties in specifying quantifiable indicators. In general terms, the older a money-moving agency grows, the less adventurous and ideological it becomes (Support Center of San Francisco, 1995).
• The "Up-for-Grabs" game. Sometimes a new policy or program mandate provides elements, for example, for a piece of bureaucracy with a modest budget, without actually prescribing or envisioning its purpose or its connection to other elements of the system. These few unambiguous elements are “up-for-grabs” to be shaped to whatever ends generate the most gains for the “grabber”.
• The "Keeping the Peace" game. Some social programs and policies originate from a desire to “do the right thing” and extirpate a real or imagined evil. (Haas, 1998). The arenas on which these games are played are generally replete with players who are hotheads, zealots or extremists. Actors are sometimes intent on sparking a counter-reformation, or on intense scrutiny, or on criticising or even terrorising. The goal for the senior manager or project executive in these circumstances is to “keep the lid on” the implementation process, while those with special agendas attempt to capture the program. This they do by, for example, offering to write the program guidelines or regulations.