Management And Labor In Workplace

Management and Labor in Workplace

In the twentieth century, the world economy grew faster and changes a lot more than before, especially after World War II. The economic growing and changing of United States brought world economy to another stage. In fact, these changes made a huge difference in employers and employees relations. The relationship between labor and management would be a big focus point for the world, and productivity, too. Most industry is related to the economical and social environment. In twenty-first century, the world economy is going down. If we want to have stronger economy again, we have to deal with management practices and see if those practice fit to the society or not. Social and Economic changes always influence management practice on the relationships between employers and employees and on productivity.

The economic environment from the early twenty century and now have a lot of differences, so the management practices in early twenty century and now are also different. In early twenty century, after world war II , the industry was growing fast and new products, new industry were building by what people need. World War II almost destroyed the world economy, except the weapons industry. People tried to rebuild the industry and economy from the damage of the war. Capitalism and communism were both used in this world. Capitalism was used in the United States, Japan and Western Europe. On the other hand communism was used in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe. They have totally different business management practices. In the United States, Western European countries, and Japan, the economy style was capitalism. The management practice was multiple and they believe in the using of nature sources was slow way to develop the economy. The economist called it "post-World War II financial system." In contrast, in communize countries; their management practice was strongly applied to the Centralization principle of Henri Fayol (1925). The management practice was strong and powerful in the organization. The government is the only manager of business. People did what the government said without any objection. However, the power of the manager was strong, but they collapsed with the world economic and social changing in 1990s. The environment could not let the management style of communism exist anymore. The social and economic environment recently is close to the capitalism and doesn't need too many employees to operate the whole chain. It's a high technology business circle system. The managers believe the whole workforce issue falls more into the category of important-but-not-urgent for most chief executives. The explosion and growing in the computer and software sectors in the economy caused low unemployment and inflation. The management practice has been changed to the way which require more communication and global. The management practices were changed a lot from those in early century.

The current social environment contributed to the development of management. The development of management is related to the social environment in this society. In other words, social environment changing helps the management practices develop. In today's workplace, there are more and more diverse workers. According to Watson, Cathleen's (1997) report, the African- American labor grew 46 percent, and "Asian and other" labor force (which includes Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Alaskan natives) grew a whopping 145 percent, from 1975-1990. About 57 percent of the working population is female or minority or both, according to the Glass Ceiling Commission, and more minorities and women are graduating with advanced degrees and sought-after skills. The management practices will become more and more diverse in many directions and levels. Texas Institute (TI) had developed new diverse management practice with the diverse social environment. These are their new management practices:

* Training, training and more training-in-depth and ongoing. For starters, all employees attend a one-day seminar to learn to value diversity, develop teaming skills and uncover unconscious behavioral patterns that could impede advancement of minority or female employees. Senior managers attend a two-day course. Other training programs focus on specific issues such as effective listening, inclusiveness and respect for the individual.

* Grass roots diversity networks. Employees have formed about 20 such groups, including seven different ones for female employees, two groups for Chinese employees and one to address the concerns of employees from India. Representatives from each of these groups attend the TI Diversity Network, a forum where employees air the concerns of their particular group and come up with ideas to improve how people work together.

* Mentoring relationships inside and outside TI. Within the diversity networks described above, various mentoring initiatives are in place for new hires. Employees in place can take advantage of TI's Senior Advisors Program, in which experienced managers volunteer to be listed as mentors, and potential "mentees" can look over job histories and choose the mentor they think would be most helpful to their career.

Indeed, these management practices made their company having a big change, they kept their company from losing money (lost $118.7 million in 1985) to earning money (in 1995 TI earned $1.5 billion on net revenue of $13.28 billion.). After that, because of the increasing of female workers, Texas Institute also provide a new practice for women employees. As a result, this practice also helps their company becoming bigger. Enterprises have better observe the social and economic environment around them and develop a consummate management practice. Those management practices will bring much more benefit for the enterprises and small business.

According to last paragraph, the management practices change with the social environment changing, so the new practices would be more appropriate for today's workers. As workers get higher slavery day by day, the leisure times and safeties for employees are getting serious in today's labor force. Good manager should have better health management practices for all personnel. The old management practices were already not suitable for today's labors. In the past decade, there were more and more enterprises working on building a safe workplace and climate. In order to take care of workers' safety, some big companies established the professional health center and hire real doctors working in the center. The article (David M. Dejoy, Robyn R.M. Gershon & Bryan S. Schaffer), provides information on the safety culture and safety climate can lead to increased worker productivity and creativity.