2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY

5098 HUMAN RESOURCE STRATEGIES AT WORK

In the work change is best summed up by the move to Human Resource Strategies (HRS) - to use the jargon of management theory - which are most obviously used by the larger Japanese corporations. There was a reaction against this approach at the end of the 1980s, as there were reactions against so many things which did not bring immediate profits, but their lessons are now so widely accepted that it is inconceivable that they will be forgotten - especially in a time when we are moving from a surplus of workers to one of a scarcity of skills (in the West at least). Again, HRS incorporates a range of ideas, not least some degree of lifetime employment (or, at least, of job security), but it is encapsulated in the recognition that the prime investment is now made in people rather than in machines; and the whole production process, in offices as much as in factories, has increasingly focused on making individual workers more productive. This in comparison with the previous 'Fordism'; named after Henry Ford's invention of the assembly line, which dominated production processes for so many years. The processes of that era, which in many organisations still holds sway, had them service the machine - so that this might be productive.  

16 May 2003 

Other pages you might like to consider are:  

5070 CORE AND PERIPHERY, 5150 MANAGEMENT FOCUS, 5022 ESTABLISHMENT GROUPTHINK, 5086 EXPECTATIONS, 5155 LEGITIMATION, 5122 ORGANIC STRUCTURES, 5137 LIFESTAGE ROLES, 5194 NEW WORK ROLES, 5122 ORGANIC STRUCTURES, 5164 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES, 5177 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES AND IT, 5280 WASTAGE OF PEOPLE, 5225 WORK IS NO LONGER THE GROUP FOCUS

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