MNGT1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: The Upsidedown, Lifelong Learning, Total Quality Management
2 Jul 2018
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Chapter 1: The Contemporary Workplace.
LO1: What are the challenges in the contemporary workplace?
Today’s Economy:
The workplace is an evolving area, with challenging opportunities and dramatic uncertainty.
The economy is a networked economy, in which people, institutions and nations are
influenced by the internet and IT developments. This new economy is a global economy,
with national economies becoming increasingly interdependent as a result of globalisation.
This comes with a higher expectation for businesses to excel, consistently, on performance
criteria.
For individual workers, there is no guarantee of long-term employment. They must earn and
re-earn their jobs everyday via performance and accomplishments. Their careers are
redefined in terms of flexibility, skills portfolios, free agency and entrepreneurship.
Intellectual capital:
Employees represent the firm’s ‘intellectual capital’, thus the challenge is to combine the
talents of many people, sometimes thousands, to achieve unique and significant results.
They carry not just the corporate memory, but also represent the firm’s intellectual capital-
defined as the collective brain power or shared knowledge of a workforce that can be used
to create value.
This is a new age of the knowledge worker- someone whose mind is an important asset to
employers and adds to intellectual capital of company. This demands new heights of
personal competency and accomplishment.
Globalisation:
National boundaries of world business have largely disappeared (Ohmae), more products
designed and manufactured in different companies, and still sold in another. Many
businesses, such as Apple, operate as global businesses that view themselves as equidistant
from customers and suppliers. There is now a worldwide interdependence of resource flows,
product markets and business competition.
Technology:
Computers allow organisations to speed transactions and improve decision making. In
‘virtual space’ people in remote areas can hold meetings, access common databases, share
information, make plans and solve problems, together, without having to meet face to face.
In this day and age, computer literacy must be mastered and continuously developed as a
foundation for career success.
Diversity:
Australia’s population is ageing, with 1 in 10 people aged over 65. The workforce consists of
a large portion of employees over 45 years old, but research finds that less than one in three
workplaces are attempting to attract mature-age workers.
‘Workplace diversity’ describes differences among workers in gender, race, age, ethnic,
religion, sexual orientation and able-bodiedness. The legal context of human resource
management is very strict in prohibiting discrimination based on these characteristics in
hiring and promotion, but this still occurs- particularly in age.
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By ‘valuing diversity’, organisations can tap a rich talent pool and help people work to their
full potential. Lingering inequalities remain in the workforce, despite progress being made.
Prejudice, or the holding of negative, irrational opinions and attitudes regarding members of
diverse populations, sets the stage for diversity bias in the workforce. This can take the form
of discrimination, that actively disadvantages people by treating them unfairly, but also in
the form of what some call the ‘glass ceiling effect’. This refers to the existence of an
invisible barrier that prevents women and minority groups from rising above a certain level
of organisational responsibility.
Ethics:
We notice the ‘moral aspects’ of the everyday behaviour of organisations, their executives
and their employees. Societal expectations on moral standards are becoming high, and
strict, and it is clear that businesses will not be able to keep customers if they do not treat
customers and their employees well, acting in ways that are consistent with society’s values.
Expectations of organisations include:
Sustainable development, environmental protection
Product safety and fair practices
Protection of human rights
In the workplace: equal opportunity, equity of compensation, privacy, job security,
health and safety, and freedom from sexual harassment.
Careers:
Today’s career implications include core workers (full time, pursuing traditional career path),
contract workers (perform specific tasks as needed) and casual and part time workers (hired
as needed).
The term ‘free agency’ is increasingly used to describe career management- you must be
prepared to change jobs over time, and your skills must be portable and of current value in
the market.
LO2: What are organisations like in the contemporary workplace?
An organisation is a collection of people working together with a division of labour to
achieve a common purpose. An organisation should return value to society and satisfy
customer needs in order to justify its continued existence.
Organisations can be seen as systems with subsystems, composed of interrelated parts that
function together to achieve a common purpose. They are ‘open systems’ that transform
resource inputs from the environment into products or service outputs. In the open-systems
view of organisations, the customer truly reigns supreme.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
The workplace is an evolving area, with challenging opportunities and dramatic uncertainty. The economy is a networked economy, in which people, institutions and nations are influenced by the internet and it developments. This new economy is a global economy, with national economies becoming increasingly interdependent as a result of globalisation. This comes with a higher expectation for businesses to excel, consistently, on performance criteria. For individual workers, there is no guarantee of long-term employment. They must earn and re-earn their jobs everyday via performance and accomplishments. Their careers are redefined in terms of flexibility, skills portfolios, free agency and entrepreneurship. Employees represent the firm"s intellectual capital", thus the challenge is to combine the talents of many people, sometimes thousands, to achieve unique and significant results. They carry not just the corporate memory, but also represent the firm"s intellectual capital- defined as the collective brain power or shared knowledge of a workforce that can be used to create value.
