CULTURE
-----------------------------------------Is the corporation losing its soul?
-----------------------------------------
Sir Paul McCartney was once described as a 'workaholic'. I've also heard the same cliched response used to describe actors, celebrities and owners of multi-national concerns. Is it me, or do you get the feeling that we are being patronised by a sycophantic media?
Wasn't it Springsteen who said "show me someone who doesn't want to be a rock star and I'll show you a liar"?
Who, for example, wouldn't want to strum a guitar for a living? Who wouldn't want to head up a huge money-making machine, or pretend to be someone else and get paid astronomical sums of money for the pleasure? I mean who wouldn't want to find a job they are passionate about?
For the average blue or white-collar Joe or Josephine, banging out bolts in a factory, sales assistant in a hardware store, laying down blacktop on the highway, or crowded into call centres like battery hens, their motivation might not be so great.
On Planet Work, the economic realities of the labour force are linked to the organisation and operation of the business. But, it is not an easy fit.
In this relationship the transnational corporation holds the legal advantage and has always been the richer and more powerful partner. Across history, workers have become more organised and unionised, but this has been minimal, at around 8% of the private sector US labour force. Rarely acknowledged, however, is the tension that exists between both sides of the industrial divide.
Martin Stairs, an independent business psychologist, illustrates this tense relationship when he speaks about an "increasing misalignment between organisational and individual aspirations." There is, Stairs contends, a growing gap between the needs of the corporation and the wants and needs of labor. "Organisations," he explains, "are typically concerned with globalisation, risk and reputation management, operational excellence, service quality, performance, productivity, innovation, corporate social responsibility, management of diversity, war for talent, leadership, and planning." Compare this to the modern desires of the worker. "Individual aspirations," Stairs continues, "are increasingly focused around autonomy, flexibility, work life balance, well being, personal growth, variety, support and feedback, career planning and reward."
The psychologist goes on to explain that the fundamental reasons why people work in the first place, has also changed across history. Writing in the Selection and Recruitment Review, Vol. 21, No 5, 2005, Stairs states that 'once upon a time' western "employees tolerated poor management, long hours, even poor conditions, as long as basic physiological, safety and belonging needs...(were)...satisfied."
Today, a better informed and educated workforce doesn't seem so keen to endure such incompetence and privations. As Stairs puts it "the need for personal growth and development to 'be our best', and feel at ease with what we do in line with our personal values - is playing an increasingly important role in the workplace and society more broadly." Here, Martin Stairs is making reference to the hard-wired linkages between our working and personal social lives. A feature of individual existence often ignored in discussions about corporations and the labour force.
Maybe, after some degree of industrial evolution, the US labour force, and western workforces in general, are wising up. Perhaps, they are a bit more surefooted about their place in the food chain and the integral role they play in the well-being of the corporation.
Any economic textbook will tell you that the goal of the corporation is to accumulate ever increasing amounts of cash at ever accelerating rates. A proposition Noam Chomsky points out, which is also a legal requirement. Referring to Joel Bakan's book The Corporation, Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, states that "a core principle of Anglo-American corporate law is that corporate management must be dedicated, single-mindedly, to maximising profit and market share."
The business, therefore, is continually driven to search for cheaper sources of labour and less expensive ways to manufacture its products or provide its services. A process it carries out with little or no regard for the people who populate its shop floor and/or offices. "It's technically illegal for corporations to show compassion," Chomsky explains.
As technology increases the accessibility of information, knowledge and ideas, and with faster travel opportunities, the modern corporation can take this search for lower labour costs and reduced overheads overseas. Multi-nationals can now move the manufacturing process to cheaper locations with cheaper labour and cheaper additional costs. Often moving into locations where locals are desperate for work, and unable to challenge or resist their exploitation.
The enterprise can also maintain their profits by licensing their 'brand' at a price to third parties. Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger need no longer own the means by which their products are manufactured. They remain, however, the chief beneficiaries of the process thanks to the mysterious selling power and continued ownership of the 'brand'.
The same technology which gives the corporation significant advantages in searching for higher capital returns, and this includes call centre enterprises, also makes it easier for the media to report social injustice worldwide.
Modern businesses are therefore obliged to give the impression that they are 'green friendly', are working to make poverty history and doing their bit to feed the starving of the world. Using the sleight-of-hand of public relations and the illusive trickery of advertising, the corporation can offer images that the general public will buy. For Noam Chomsky it is a nothing more than a sham. "They can do good works", he concedes " But only if it is hypocritical, as a PR gesture."
It is a kind of Orwellian doublespeak that is threaded throughout the organisation. What IS happening, and what appears to be happening.
But as much as the transnational swallows up technology and the advantages of the age to its own selfish ends, the labour force - the very soul of the industrial system, the very heart of the corporation - are becoming increasingly alienated.
In a survey conducted by custom research agency TNS for the Conference Board of New York, returns showed a clear decline in worker contentment between 1995 and today. Respondents claiming to be satisfied with their jobs had fallen from 60% to 50%.
The Conference Board, an organisation who conduct business research, analyse business trends, make corporate forecasts and organise seminars, also discovered that job satisfaction - unsurprisingly - varied by salary. Employee contentment, by this measure, had fallen dramatically in just over a decade. Those who earned $25,000 to $35,000, for example, had declined in job satisfaction from 58% to under 42%.
The most remarkable statistic, however, from the survey of 5000 American households, was the figure for those who claimed to be 'very satisfied' with their job - a paltry 14% in total. What about the other 86% Mr Chief Executive? They don't seem to be obsessed with finding a condo in the Hamptons.
Of course, a decline in worker satisfaction cannot be ignored by corporations. The business needs its labour force and the issue of retaining corporate 'talent' is rapidly becoming a priority for corporate investigation. Without the true 'captains of industry' - the men and women who keep the well-oiled wheels of the transnationals turning - there would be no corporation.
As Virginia Rassmusen, who teaches 'Rethinking the Environment, Rethinking Democracy' at Alfred University, Alfred, New York, observed in her paper 'Globalisation and Capitalism', "They (the corporations) shape our cultures and communities, define what is of value and what is not, what news we hear and what we won't. They define our work, what is produced and consumed, where investments are made, what technologies are developed. They subject the natural world to assault... They shape our laws and policies and politicians. Corporations," she concludes, " are in charge of our lives."
Somehow, it all seems strange to me. I mean, why would we give up all the control of the above to the corporations quite so easily when, at one and the same time, complaining that our working lives are becoming increasingly miserable?
Sergio Burns
Wasn't it Springsteen who said "show me someone who doesn't want to be a rock star and I'll show you a liar"?
Who, for example, wouldn't want to strum a guitar for a living? Who wouldn't want to head up a huge money-making machine, or pretend to be someone else and get paid astronomical sums of money for the pleasure? I mean who wouldn't want to find a job they are passionate about?
For the average blue or white-collar Joe or Josephine, banging out bolts in a factory, sales assistant in a hardware store, laying down blacktop on the highway, or crowded into call centres like battery hens, their motivation might not be so great.
On Planet Work, the economic realities of the labour force are linked to the organisation and operation of the business. But, it is not an easy fit.
In this relationship the transnational corporation holds the legal advantage and has always been the richer and more powerful partner. Across history, workers have become more organised and unionised, but this has been minimal, at around 8% of the private sector US labour force. Rarely acknowledged, however, is the tension that exists between both sides of the industrial divide.
Martin Stairs, an independent business psychologist, illustrates this tense relationship when he speaks about an "increasing misalignment between organisational and individual aspirations." There is, Stairs contends, a growing gap between the needs of the corporation and the wants and needs of labor. "Organisations," he explains, "are typically concerned with globalisation, risk and reputation management, operational excellence, service quality, performance, productivity, innovation, corporate social responsibility, management of diversity, war for talent, leadership, and planning." Compare this to the modern desires of the worker. "Individual aspirations," Stairs continues, "are increasingly focused around autonomy, flexibility, work life balance, well being, personal growth, variety, support and feedback, career planning and reward."
The psychologist goes on to explain that the fundamental reasons why people work in the first place, has also changed across history. Writing in the Selection and Recruitment Review, Vol. 21, No 5, 2005, Stairs states that 'once upon a time' western "employees tolerated poor management, long hours, even poor conditions, as long as basic physiological, safety and belonging needs...(were)...satisfied."
Today, a better informed and educated workforce doesn't seem so keen to endure such incompetence and privations. As Stairs puts it "the need for personal growth and development to 'be our best', and feel at ease with what we do in line with our personal values - is playing an increasingly important role in the workplace and society more broadly." Here, Martin Stairs is making reference to the hard-wired linkages between our working and personal social lives. A feature of individual existence often ignored in discussions about corporations and the labour force.
Maybe, after some degree of industrial evolution, the US labour force, and western workforces in general, are wising up. Perhaps, they are a bit more surefooted about their place in the food chain and the integral role they play in the well-being of the corporation.
Any economic textbook will tell you that the goal of the corporation is to accumulate ever increasing amounts of cash at ever accelerating rates. A proposition Noam Chomsky points out, which is also a legal requirement. Referring to Joel Bakan's book The Corporation, Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, states that "a core principle of Anglo-American corporate law is that corporate management must be dedicated, single-mindedly, to maximising profit and market share."
The business, therefore, is continually driven to search for cheaper sources of labour and less expensive ways to manufacture its products or provide its services. A process it carries out with little or no regard for the people who populate its shop floor and/or offices. "It's technically illegal for corporations to show compassion," Chomsky explains.
As technology increases the accessibility of information, knowledge and ideas, and with faster travel opportunities, the modern corporation can take this search for lower labour costs and reduced overheads overseas. Multi-nationals can now move the manufacturing process to cheaper locations with cheaper labour and cheaper additional costs. Often moving into locations where locals are desperate for work, and unable to challenge or resist their exploitation.
The enterprise can also maintain their profits by licensing their 'brand' at a price to third parties. Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger need no longer own the means by which their products are manufactured. They remain, however, the chief beneficiaries of the process thanks to the mysterious selling power and continued ownership of the 'brand'.
The same technology which gives the corporation significant advantages in searching for higher capital returns, and this includes call centre enterprises, also makes it easier for the media to report social injustice worldwide.
Modern businesses are therefore obliged to give the impression that they are 'green friendly', are working to make poverty history and doing their bit to feed the starving of the world. Using the sleight-of-hand of public relations and the illusive trickery of advertising, the corporation can offer images that the general public will buy. For Noam Chomsky it is a nothing more than a sham. "They can do good works", he concedes " But only if it is hypocritical, as a PR gesture."
It is a kind of Orwellian doublespeak that is threaded throughout the organisation. What IS happening, and what appears to be happening.
But as much as the transnational swallows up technology and the advantages of the age to its own selfish ends, the labour force - the very soul of the industrial system, the very heart of the corporation - are becoming increasingly alienated.
In a survey conducted by custom research agency TNS for the Conference Board of New York, returns showed a clear decline in worker contentment between 1995 and today. Respondents claiming to be satisfied with their jobs had fallen from 60% to 50%.
The Conference Board, an organisation who conduct business research, analyse business trends, make corporate forecasts and organise seminars, also discovered that job satisfaction - unsurprisingly - varied by salary. Employee contentment, by this measure, had fallen dramatically in just over a decade. Those who earned $25,000 to $35,000, for example, had declined in job satisfaction from 58% to under 42%.
The most remarkable statistic, however, from the survey of 5000 American households, was the figure for those who claimed to be 'very satisfied' with their job - a paltry 14% in total. What about the other 86% Mr Chief Executive? They don't seem to be obsessed with finding a condo in the Hamptons.
Of course, a decline in worker satisfaction cannot be ignored by corporations. The business needs its labour force and the issue of retaining corporate 'talent' is rapidly becoming a priority for corporate investigation. Without the true 'captains of industry' - the men and women who keep the well-oiled wheels of the transnationals turning - there would be no corporation.
As Virginia Rassmusen, who teaches 'Rethinking the Environment, Rethinking Democracy' at Alfred University, Alfred, New York, observed in her paper 'Globalisation and Capitalism', "They (the corporations) shape our cultures and communities, define what is of value and what is not, what news we hear and what we won't. They define our work, what is produced and consumed, where investments are made, what technologies are developed. They subject the natural world to assault... They shape our laws and policies and politicians. Corporations," she concludes, " are in charge of our lives."
Somehow, it all seems strange to me. I mean, why would we give up all the control of the above to the corporations quite so easily when, at one and the same time, complaining that our working lives are becoming increasingly miserable?
Sergio Burns
