Book report part 5

In the last segment of my book, The Culture of New Capitalism, the author discussed many things that dealt closely with our discussions regarding motivation.  The first thing that he focused his discussion on was what he described as narrative. Within this topic were a few sub-topics that made up narrative but were each individual and served their own purpose. First within the idea of narrative was the idea that there needs to be provided to workers “parallel institutions” which will provide workers continuity and sustainability. The main reasoning behind this is that currently there are not enough safety nets for workers in the modern economy. With how volatile the economy is in contemporary times there needs to be a better structure set up for workers that face situations such as unexpected unemployment, although this would be more of a solution to prevent unemployment in the first place. The author gives the example of the United Auto Workers Union as well as the Boston Secretarial Union as unions that are taking an innovative, proactive approach to assisting their members. For example, the Boston Secretarial Union has programs in place for single parents in place to help with communal needs (Sennett 185). This makes me think of our discussion on motivation regarding the motivator hygiene theory. Although some of peoples personal needs being taken care of an employer, or in this case their labor union, may not increase their satisfaction with their job, it can allow for the employee to have less to worry about in their personal life, resulting in a more productive individual in the work place. Another idea that the author discusses is a program called job sharing. This can also be beneficial to workers that are experiencing unemployment due to volatility in the economy. The idea behind this is that for jobs that would traditionally be carried out by one employee are split into duties to be carried out by two or three individuals. This allows for a greater number of workers in industries that are seasonal in nature to find employment during other parts of the year. It was explained that this system being used by the Dutch, which like the United States is negatively impacted by the vigorous use of outsourcing, alleviated some of the negative impact (Sennett 185). The author also touched on the idea of how welfare should be handled. He supports a system which he called “basic income.” In this system every citizen would receive an allotment of funds provided by the government. This amount would be enough to provide for a basic standard of living and everyone would receive this, rich or poor. It would be up to the individual to spend this money as they see fit however, if they were to run out of money, they would not be given any additional support by the government. I think this is a pretty radical idea. It may sound good in theory, although I do not see this working as a suitable substitution for our current welfare system. The second major idea that was discussed in this portion of the book was that of usefulness. This was the idea that people want to feel what they are doing on the job is serving a purpose. People feel more motivated when they are doing work they feel good about and as discussed in the book people are willing to work at jobs that they are not getting paid as much as they could be making elsewhere if they feel that their work at the less paying job is more worthy. This is an idea we have mentioned in class and has been apparent in some of the readings. The last main point that the author brought up was the idea of people considering craftsmanship in their work. He defines this is as doing something for the sake of doing it right. This was brought up previously in this book. It is important for people to take pride in what they do. This is a major factor in the motivation process. If people are doing work that they can enjoy they will have much more motivation to accomplish their work. These last two main points remind me of the nifty animated video we watched in class. These points of usefulness and craftsmanship reflect two of the main points brought up in the video, purpose and mastery. In the video it explained that these along with autonomy are major factors that contribute to highly motivated individuals. By combining these attributes people will be able to excel in their jobs as well as gain satisfaction in what they do.