The cover story of the May 25, 2009, issue of TIME is on the future of work, providing a more updated version of what's covered in Chapter 10. In a series of short articles, the magazine outlines how work has changed and trends that suggest new work paths in the coming months and years. Topics include types of jobs, management training, benefits, career trajectories, retirement, women in the workplace, green jobs, Gen X in the workplace, manufacturing, and the office. Plenty of intriguing tidbits of information. For me, the most interesting trend is telecommuting. Already it's estimated that 28% of the U.S. workforce telecommutes either full or part time. Seth Godin, the author of the article, "The Last Days of Cubicle Life," argues:
More and more, though, the need to actually show up at an office that consists of an anonymous hallway and a farm of cubicles or closed doors is just going to fade away . . . I'd rather send you a file at the end of my day . . . and have the information returned to my desktop when I wake up tomorrow.
Many companies are already working this way. I've found the best faculty meetings are those in which we've already done much of the work online and the only work left is what we need to talk about in person.
If you get the change, read the entire cover story. Lots of interesting ideas to think about and discuss.
~ Professor Cyborg
1 comment:
After reading your blog, I became interested in the TIME article. I especially liked the article on “Women Will Rule Business”. It hits many points that the books discusses about motivation and effective leaders. The book points out two ways to motivate employees: Leaders can (1) provide information and feedback about employees’, tasks, goals, performance, and future directions and (2) communicate encouragement, empathy, and concern. In both cases, however, the motivating affect comes from the manager’s ability to endorse particular interpretations of organizational issues through communication (Sullivan, 1988). Some of the same sentiments are discussed in the TIME article about the way women manage people. The article states, “Women are also less competitive, in a good way. They're consensus builders, conciliators and collaborators, and they employ what is called a transformational leadership style — heavily engaged, motivational, extremely well suited for the emerging, less hierarchical workplace.” This is encouraging and motivational in itself that female leaders are on the rise and are making for a better workplace and valued for that effort at the same time. However, I wonder if the reason that “most women in senior management had a higher return on equities — by more than a third”, have this higher return because they are still being paid less than their male counterparts which in turn the company yields a better return.
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