Book report part 3

In this chapter of my book, the author focuses on the increased “uselessness” of educated workers in countries that have more industrialized economies. By using the term uselessness he is referring to the fact that there is an abundance of highly skilled, highly educated workers in the economy but many people are either unable to find work to utilize their knowledge and skills, or they are underemployed. The Author explains that there are three primary reasons contributing to this phenomenon. The first reason deals with the global labor supply. This relates to the increasing trend of domestic companies using outsourcing to foreign counties. There were two prime examples of this conveyed in the text. First, the use of call centers being used in India, as well as auto manufacturers moving their production to Mexico. Although everyone believes that companies are moving to foreign countries only for cheap labor, it is explained that this is only part of the story. Even though the ultimate goal is to save money on the part of companies, many of the individuals taking these types of jobs away from American workers are more trained and educated than their American counterpart. Not only are the companies benefiting by lower costs but they are also getting higher quality work at the same time. The second explanation is that there is an increased use of automation and the use of machines to do work once done by humans. Many experts believed that an increase in automation would create more white collar jobs but this is not turning out to be the case. More and more automation of labor is taking away jobs because of machines increasing ability to do tasks that humans are not capable of. A third reason for the increased uselessness of individuals is the factor of an aging population. People are living increasingly longer lives but conversely their skills are becoming obsolete at an increasing rate. According to the book people will need to relearn their skills on average three times throughout their career to stay at a qualified level. Apart from discussing the reasons for the uselessness of workers the author touched on aspects of the attitudes we take towards our work and some of the impact that has on this topic. The idea of craftsmanship was a large part of this discussion. The author put emphasis on the idea of putting pride into the work we do and doing something to get it right rather than to just do it. This is something that is not as emphasized as much nowadays and has led to a decrease in quality of work as well as innovation. Also, the author brought up the idea that organizations are supporting a system that stresses skimming over detail instead of dwelling on issues and bringing an aspect of craftsmanship to the table. These topics discussed can be related to what we have been discussing in class regarding culture. The fact that so many companies are resorting to outsourcing as a means of employment can be looked at from the organizations cultural standpoint. Since outsourcing has been such a heavily talked about topic, it is obvious that it is a concern of the public. The fact that companies are using outsourcing tends to be looked at negatively by most individuals. This is because it is taking jobs away from home and this is even more worrisome in the economic times we are facing. Even though it is important to the companies that are implementing these practices to save money, it is important for these companies to reflect and see if the decisions they are making are worth the negative social implications that are resulting. Even if it would cost more money to keep jobs domestic, companies need to determine if their core business values are going to include the idea of these social concerns. Also, the idea that there is a decreased emphasis put on craftsmanship is a reflection of the culture of big business. As a result of there being so many large corporations that are producing products on a mass scale, there is little room for entrepreneurs to compete and provide higher quality products to customers. I think it is important for business to reward those who strive to take pride in their work as well as do a quality job rather than doing a job just to do it.

Wal-Mart

I think that there were several good points brought up on Wednesday during our discussion on Wal-Mart and their employee attire.  I can definitely see why management wants to move away from having the smocks to having employees dress in khakis and a polo. I think that this would help improve the company image somewhat. I think that the new look would be a step up and a good way for Wal-Mart to lose some of its super discount store image. Even though this is what the company’s business model is based off of, it may help to attract some newer, higher income shoppers. One of the main points that we discussed was how the employees felt about the smocks that most of the stores currently wear. On the one hand I feel as if the smock is better for the employee because it can help them identify with their coworkers better as well as allow for personal expression through what they wear underneath the smock. On the other hand I feel that the business casual look may have the employees feel that their job is more important or worthy, but they may not like having to conform to wearing the same thing every day. Where I work back home, we wear a vest similar to that of the Wal-Mart smock. My personal opinion is that I would rather have to wear the vest than have to wear business casual. I am able to wear a t-shirt and shorts to work which I really enjoy. I would not like to have to wear khakis and a polo to work every day. Although, this may be influenced by the nature of my work and the fact that wearing this attire would make it less comfortable with the amount of physical activity I am involved in at work.

Influence on Social Norms

I really enjoyed the discussion that we had on Monday regarding the underlying influences of culture. I read the Nacirema article before so I already knew that it was describing our own culture. The first time I read it I was able to pick up on the fact of what it was actually describing us, because of this I did not really find anything particularly strange about it. Even though it may sound really weird, it all has a logical explanation when you realize what is actually being described. Even though all of what is being described can be explained it does make a good point of questioning why we do things the way we do. It is interesting to take a look at what influences our social norms and why this is. One of the major things we talked about was Americans obsession of having perfect teeth. Although it is practical to take care of your teeth for health reasons, we do tend to take it to an unnecessarily extreme level. Looking at it from this aspect does help to show what we value as a society. I thought the story someone bought up about the guy in the dorms being shunned when people found out he didn’t brush his teeth was really interesting. This proves the authors point of losing your friends when not conforming to these social norms. Before hearing this story I did not think that people would really act this way towards someone because of something like that. Something else interesting relating to this happened to me today. As I was doing some shopping in Wal-Mart, I needed some toothpaste and it was until I consciously thought about it that I realized that I was only looking at the toothpastes that were whitening. I think this reinforces what we discussed in class regarding the high value we place on having perfect teeth.

Ford Vs. Union

For my group’s topic we chose the conflict between the Ford Motor company and its workers.  The conflict originated from disagreements over a four year contract deal between the labor union and Ford. This will be a good topic for the project because of all the different organizational behaviors we can tie in with this. There is obviously a conflict in this situation and its needs to be taken care of. By using what we know about conflict and conflict resolution this will assist us in coming up with a solution for these two groups. Also we will be able to examine things that are specific to the company such as the role of leadership and top management. We can also take a look at the culture within the company to get an understanding of why this disagreement took place to begin with.  Additionally there is obviously the fact that there is negotiation taking place. With how much we have discussed negotiation we should be able to effectively come up with a way in which to resolve the conflict while still keeping both party’s interests in mind.

Biases

I think that the activity we did in class on Monday was yet again another good activity to show the importance of how to properly make decisions. It seemed as if a majority of the class got more questions wrong than right. I got many of these questions wrong myself. When answering the questions I felt as if I thought through them pretty well, although this apparently was not the case. It seemed as if many of these questions could be answered using common sense, but to find the correct answer you had to look deeper than what seemed obvious. For many of the problems I tried to use math to help get the right answer. My approach seemed logical but it was not until review of the questions that, for the most part, without substantial knowledge of statistics some of these questions would prove more difficult than they first seemed. I thought it was interesting that for some of these questions, some of the information within them could lead you astray from the correct answer. What seemed to be important information for decision making was often irrelevant and only led to an incorrect conclusion. This is why it is important to take into consideration all of the biases that we discussed while reviewing these questions. If you are not aware of these biases this could lead to an improper decision. Something that I noticed about these biases is that many of them seemed to be related to things we already know in one way or another. This is why it is important when involved in decision making to take every situation as independent rather than making connection to other situations that may skew your clarity of the situation. This is not to say to not rely on experience and knowledge to assist in decision making but do not be lead astray by fallacies and biases when making decisions.