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| New worker and work management |
| A large number of organizations in America are managed under a set of principles that were developed during the early part of twentieth century, when workers, work, and the work environment were totally different from those existing today - and radically different from those that are expected in the future. The basic theme of "twentieth century management" has been to delegate responsibility and to centralize authority. Under this design, owners and managers give employees work to do. |
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| Up to now, for the most part, this management paradigm worked. However, changes that are taking place in the human socio-psychological environment, and the changes that have occurred in the general business environment during the last two decades will make this management style the formula for organizational self-destruction. |
| A large number of organizations regularly monitor relevant changes in their environment, but only a few engage in proactive strategies in response to them. In the forefront of the latter group are a large number of companies in industries such as investment banking, information and computer technology, communication, and medical technology. |
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| These companies understand and respond to environmental changes and, in return, have made good progress in suitably positioning themselves up for the coming generations of workers and managers. They are creating a work environment that facilitates innovation and enhances productivity. On the other hand, however, some others, even in these same industries, have not made such strides and are finding themselves in organizational turmoil, struggling for survival in an increasingly competitive market. |
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| In contemporary organizations, the twentieth century notion of division of labor that divided work into staff or intellectual work and line or routine work will no longer suffice. New organizational work requires a greater integration of the intellectual function of work with its execution function. This fusion is essential to help reduce, and possibly eliminate, the negative human element in mundane, repetitive work. Observations tell us that the contemporary work environment favors such an integration. While, on the one hand, the "new work model" has become too complex for any meaningful leadership from individuals not directly connected with it, for example a supervisor. On the other hand, a new generation of employees certainly has the essential intellectual and technical competence to permit such a fusion. Under these circumstances, continuing to follow the work division principles and other management techniques of the last century is simply bypassing the opportunity to advance through innovation and productivity enhancement. |
| The first requirement of the "new model" to exploit these changes is a total redesign of work. The new design should be done to make work more interesting, in fact, pleasurable, and to create a work environment that is almost controlled as far as possible by the persons who work in it. This design should aim at eventual total elimination of the organizational work environment as has been known in the traditional sense. There should not be any factors, forces, or conditions on worker that he or she does not directly or indirectly control or influence. Every worker should be empowered to know and understand the organization and be enabled to set goals that are relevant to his or her work. This will be the baseline of the new organization, one in which a collection of people work together to achieve the fulfillment of their "own goals," using the organization as a vehicle rather than working to achieve organizational goals others set for them. In the new organization, managers will have to know how to group task, fit job processes, structure organization, and set its priorities, all to fall in line with the goals and needs of the individual. |
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| The second requirement for creating the new organization is the principle of mutualism, the rule by which all in the organization should live. The ability to exploit opportunities will depend on mutualism, turning organization into work symbiosis. This will mean a new definition of the traditional roles of employer, his or her agent/substitute, and the employee, such that the lines between these roles gradually fade away. This is how each employee will be able to map, control, and ideally, eventually eliminate almost all controls on him or her. Under these circumstances, the limits on one's performance will be in consort with one's goals and the resultant behavior, a state totally conducive to learning and innovation. Everyone else, including the employer, will become a nonfactor in this regard. While this will naturally buoy an employee's individual innovation and talent, it will also bring out similar latent talents in others connected with the new organization, invigorating the whole organization, making everyone to espouse organizational goals and to work towards their attainment. In the new work environment, managers will become functionally less and organizationally more important. They will become the true motivators of front-line employees, spurring them on to set and achieve goals in a mutually supportive atmosphere. |
| How effectively an enterprise creates the new organization will make the difference between its success and failure during the next millennium. Further, the prosperity of a nation or a society as a whole will depend upon how this view permeates the organizations which comprise the capitalist model. |
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