The Elephant will lose its power and the Fleas will have the overall control on the market, being able to choose the price and time- within limits- as they will now be in competition with other Fleas. The Fleas will have all the skills and technology to deal with the requirement of the Elephant. The Fleas will leave the Elephant only to band together for safety making less competition and giving them greater control over the Elephant.
The Fleas will develop and grow if they keep their skills up to date which may lead to restrictions within their given market, for example Computer Engineering. Furthermore if the Elephants want to keep good Fleas working for them, they will offer better working environment and freedom as well as a good wage.
2. What will be changing patterns of work?
Change can be studied on many different levels: individual, group, and organisation, social and global. Organisational change influences conditions of work, occupational identities and divisions, the training and experience of employees and hierarchical relationships.
The patterns of work will change, caused by external triggers for Organisational this can include:
- developments in technology and new materials
- changes in customers’ requirements and tastes
- the activities and innovations of competitor
- new legislation and government policies
- changing national and global economic and trading conditions
- shifts in local, national and international politics
- changes in social and culture values
Internal triggers for organisational change can include:
- new product and services design innovations
- low performance and moral, triggering job redesign
- in adequate skills and knowledge base, triggering training programmes
- office and factory relocation, closer to supplier and markets
- recognition of problems triggering reallocation of responsibilities
- innovations in the manufacturing process
-
new ideas about how to deliver services to customers (Organisational Behaviour pp.461)
One of the main critics has been the English academic Andrew Pettigrew who argues that organisational change should be seen instead as a complex and ‘untidy cocktail’ of rational decision processes, mixed with differences in individual perceptions, stimulated by visionary leadership and spiced with ‘power plays’ and attempts to recruit support and build coalitions behind particular ides and lines of action.
Pettigrew emphasizes the importance of the process of change, which is messy, combining attempts to solve organisational problems with the games of organisational politics. Pettigrew also emphasizes the importance of the context of organisational change. The inner context of change concerns the structure and culture of the organisation and the events in its history that have shaped current attitudes and behaviours. The outer context relates to environmental factors: customer demands, competitor behaviour and economic conditions. (Organisational Behaviour pp.476)
Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1989) identifies seven skills, which the change agent of the 1990s requires, to perform effectively in the flexible, ‘integrative’ organisation. These are:
1) The ability to work independently, without the power, sanction and support of the management hierarchy.
2) The skills of an effective collaborator, able to compete in ways that enhance rather than destroy co-operation.
3) The ability to develop high trusts relationships, based on high ethnical standards.
4) Self-confidence, tempered with humility.
5) Respect for the process of change, as well as the content.
6) The ability to work across business functions and units, to be ‘multifaceted and
ambidextrous’.
7) The willingness to stake reward on results and gain satisfaction from success.
(Organisational Behaviour pp.480-481)
3. How the ‘psychological contract’ will change for future workers?
Jobs were considered for life by both the organisation and the worker, now however the worker could have as many as 19 different jobs in a lifetime, as we look for better working conditions, more pay and shorter hours or flexibility time.
Psychological contract will change for many future employees. There are potentially three scenarios that we may face.
First, at present day many people complaint about the quality of working life and employment security will decline. The employment relationship becomes more explicitly transactional and contractual in order to buy-in commitment and the organisation experiences a higher proportion of dysfunctional behaviour.
Second scenario reflects a deeper change and a more serious set of issues for HR practitioners. Younger employees may be willing to sign up to a new raison d’etre in their work life. Furthermore the field of organisational behaviour will be forced to go back to basic assumptions and question whether the traditional motivational drivers and their causal effect on organisational behaviour still work. In the second scenario, this change is considered to be temporary, whereby the presumed links between commitment, participation, satisfaction, motivation and performance have become ‘submerged’ as part of a temporary culture shock or stress-reaction process. In the transition period, the motivational power of traditional job design characteristics and work incentives becomes dulled. Moreover, employees can be seen to ‘input’ various attributes to the ‘new deal’ such as their work values and attitudes, motivational needs, and personal dispositions or competencies. They are then subjected to various contract formation and breach processes. On the basis of which, attention is turned to a series of ‘output’ or outcomes, such as commitment, job satisfaction, trust and organisation citizenship behaviours.
The third scenario presents a more perturbing possibility. The change in motivational drivers becomes permanent. Under this scenario, new work values become solidified and the dynamics of all the psychological processes, such as employee values, motivational needs, attitudes, satisfaction, commitment and trust- will be altered and ‘reset’. In this scenario what we are witnessing at the millennium is not just the redesign of business processes, but also the redesign of the mechanisms that underpin the psychological contract.
Organisational responses to the psychological contract tend to operate at two levels. The first is to engage in a new dialogue with employees (either individually or through specialised processes such as focus group, task forces, etc.) and to identify their HRM preferences. The second level of responses to the need to renew the psychological contract is to move not just towards local dealing, but also towards individual dealing.
( Taken from Human Resources Management the New Agenda, P. Sparrow and M. Marchington pp.133-144)
4. Understanding of Organisational Behaviour
The scientific management movement arose during the first two decades of the twentieth century in the United States, and it is remembered to this day, in terms of the ‘time-and-motion study man’. Its chief exponent was Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose methods were refined and extended by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and by Henry Gantt. Scientific management is a systematic method of determining the best way to do a job and specifying the skills needed to perform it and also would bring huge benefit to both parties, and lead to a community of interest with an in-built force for cooperation. (Organisational Behaviour pp.333)
Taylor’s ideas were, and still are, very influential, and his work contains a number of behaviour assumptions. I find his ideas of scientific management are useful that future management could use to try to gather together all of the traditional knowledge (the essence of skills, techniques, etc.) which had been acquired and held by workers in their minds, record and tabulate this information and, wherever possible, reduce it to laws, rules, or even mathematical formulae. It is necessary that scientifically select workpeople and progressively train and develop them to do the jobs that are required. Co-operating between management and workers to ensure that work is done according to the science and dividing up the actual work and responsibilities of the organisation between management and workers are also essential. (Work organisations pp.14)
Future management also could use to try these approaches:
- Select, monitor, study and time the best workers
- Train the other workers to the same standard.
- Introduce changes such as differential pay rates in order to increase productivity.
The behaviour of workforce might change, if the workers stop worrying about the division of the fruits of production between wages and profits and share in the prosperity of the firm by working in the correct way and receiving wage increases of between 30-100% according to the nature of the work. Furthermore the workers should give up their ideas of ‘soldiering’ and cooperate with management in developing the science, and also accept that management would be responsible, in accordance with the scientific approach, for determining what would be done and how. It is necessary the workers agree to be trained in new methods, where applicable.
Hawthorne’s ideas were the most important inference is that people have social needs to be satisfied at work, which can be equally as important as monetary needs. Ideas such as this gave rise to the human relations movement. (Work organisations pp., 17)
Karl Marx argues that management control is necessary for another reason. Capitalism as an economic system creates two broad classes of people. The capitalist class includes those who own and control the means of production. The working class includes those who do not own and control the means of production and who have to sell their labour-power in order to make a living. According to the article, Marx desires that the workers should control the means of production- will have come true.
The capitalist and the working classes need each other- they are interdependent. But their interests are different. The aim of the capitalist is to make profits, which can be used to accumulate more capital and make still more profit. The aim of the workers is to earn higher wages to improve their standards of living. These interests are in conflict and cannot be reconciled within the capitalist system. Marx regarded this is as one reason why capitalism would eventually be overthrown (a prediction that has so far not come true). (Organisational Behaviour pp.722-723)
5. How the recruitment and selection processes in Organisations might adapt with these changing patterns of workforce?
According to the article, Handy states that ‘the big temporary recruitment agencies will put people on retainers on the condition that they keep updating their skills’. This could well be adapted by organisations giving them the key advantage to keep workers with up to date skill, leaving them with a competitive edge within their market.
Recruitment process is essential to the company, because searching for and obtaining potential job candidates in sufficient numbers and quality so that the organisation can select the most appropriate people to fill its job needs. Also the selection develops employees taking responsibility and take on the task of directing and planning their own careers and moreover minimising discrimination with both top-down policy statements and bottom-up approaches to attitude change. Furthermore they are important that both employers and employees have specific duties under the Act to ensure safe methods of working.
The recruitment and selection processes are important for future that skills make business grow, equal opportunity and people become more mature, skilled, and self-confident and self-control, and also attract staff with high reputations from existing people who bring a diverse range of skills and abilities to the workplace, together with a diverse range of experience, aspirations and expectations.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we are groping towards new ways of thinking about businesses. The new skills, which will be needed to cope with these changes, are the ability to win friends and influence people at a personal level, the ability to structure partnerships, and the ability to negotiate and to find compromises. Business will be much more about finding the right people in the right place and negotiating the right deals. So in a funny way the functions that will be the most important are recruitment and purchasing.
Conceptual skills are also becoming much more important. There used to be a big distinction between managerial and technical skills. The ability to analyse number was considered most important then.
I think in the future will happen to the conceptual of the career. It will be a professional career path and not an organisational one. People increasing define themselves by their profession, and the definition of profession is much wider.
Very few jobs in future will be defined as jobs. Those that are- like checkout cashier- will disappear. So people will either be professionals or entrepreneurs- fleas in short.
To promote your career you may work in a large organisation- an elephant- for a while to gain skills and expertise. You may go back to elephants periodically to upgrade your skills or credentials. But you will have to take responsibility for your career and your own life.
References
- Buchanan, D. & Huczynski, A. 1997 Organisational Behaviour, Prentice Hall
- Thomson, P. & McHugh, D. (eds) 2002 Work organisations: A critical Introduction. Palgrave
- Charles, H (2001) ‘Flea enterprise’ in People Management vol. , no 13 September, pp. 44-45)
- Lectures’ handout ‘psychological contract’ spreadsheets
Bibliography
- Beardwell, I. & Holden, L. 1994 Human Resources Management, FT Prentice Hall
- Torrington, D, Hall, L. & Taylor, S. 1998 Human Resources Management FT Prentice Hall
