This child-like “fairness” value grew out of the era of the great paternalistic companies that strove to take care of their employees from cradle to grave. Perhaps the worthy “parent” is constant, even-handed and fair. And, certainly, rampant favoritism is a bad thing. Even a dumb thing. So is discrimination. But the issue here is really the use – and abuse – of power, not fairness. Extraordinary burdens in behavior and judgment were placed on managers in order to assure that they appropriately handled the great power the organization had bestowed on them.

But why does the organization give managers proportionally more authority than it gives non-managers?

The rationale for giving managers authority greater than that of non-managers is based on conditions that are no longer true (or no longer need to be true). And, I suggest, the broadly held belief that employees should be treated consistently is rooted in the disproportionate power of managers.

Truths in the early Industrial Age gave rise to the development of management work. Here are some of those old truths:

1. Employees come into the workplace uneducated and unskilled.
2. Employees don’t have capital. Rank and file employees come from low class backgrounds, thus they have no understanding of – or appreciation for – capital or the philosophies and conventions that drive business.
3. The social order of the Agricultural Age (led by a privileged, landed upper class and driven by a skilled-merchant middle class) should be preserved in industrial organizations.
4. An employee occupied by one small job cannot possibly perceive the bigger picture or the broad-reaching consequences of individual actions.
5. Employees only work in our “factories” to earn needed wages; they do not care a bout the business, itself.

These factors were true 250 years ago. Based on that reality, the world of organizations evolved to include a richly over-privileged executive class that protected and expanded the fiscal capital of the enterprise. A middle class of educated managers was spawned to generate efficiencies and to build stable, productive organizations. The “overseers” of the plantation were able to ply their old skills in the factory: watching workers to make sure they came to work, stayed on the job and labored diligently.

Managerial work is valued higher than almost all other work in the U.S. (The only occupational category paid more is that of Professional Specialist, and only recently did that group edge out management pay.)

The reason managers must diligently treat employees consistently is that managers have, for so long, been treated so much better than other employees.

It is time we learned to treat employees as we have learned to treat our customers: inconsistently, with service customized to their needs and demands.