Theories of Work and Identity

Theories of Work and Identity Discuss: Work is a big portion of a person’s life. To say that work is a big portion of a person’s life is a understatement of large proportions. Children are raised with one or both parents who make it a priority. They are raised to make it a priority. They work virtually all their lives. They retire from it. It can be intrusive and ubiquitous and the fact that it is both a noun and a verb does not begin to hint at the complexity of it. In beginning to consider it, a nature path would be to define its nature. Is it feathered or scaled, or more accurately, is it to be relegated as a science of economics, sociology or something else entirely? Many regard it as a pure function of applied economics (Block, Berg, Belman 2004, p. 94). It seems right to regard it as such as at its most basic level it is a about an exchange relationship in which two parties trade something the one owns for something the other owns. Whether this exchange is of time, expertise, property, or ideas is irrelevant. The exchange takes place in a form of a market while both discrete and often not-so-discrete forces are at ‘work’ to set the value of the exchange. These forces, laws of supply and demand, invisible hands and the like seek to maximize the utility of the trade to both parties. As a consequence of the nature of the relationship being able to be characterized by an ‘exchange’, work can also be considered by a legal or contractual basis. By virtue of this, there are certain very explicit rules that govern the conduct of either party with regard to the fulfillment of their respective duties. Such laws, as for example in the United States, often fall under a Department of Labor and generally includes such standards as a forty-hour work week, harassment and discrimination provisions, minimum pay and pay frequency specifications as well as provisions regarding collective bargaining. The goal of such a perspective is to serve as something of a bridge between not only the economic interests of both parties but the social impact of work to the workers. In modern world, a typical exchange takes place between the individual and the organization. With this type of exchange, there are a number of additional concerns and issues that become relevant. In the first place there is generally an asymmetry of power in which the owners of capital employ individuals in masse to literally make up the corporate body and to wield profit maximizing power on employees. This imbalance is potentially offset by the previously mentioned ability of certain workers to partake in collective bargaining actions such as the formation of unions that ultimately can help to give the individual worker a larger voice. This power is wielded as a consequence of the corporation’s greater resources to enforce the often contractual nature of the exchange. Also, as corporate budgets generally exceed those of individuals the ration of the loss to the total ‘budget’ is greater. In addition, as a corporation does not have emotions, the consequences of a ‘failed agreement’ are often of significant magnitude to the individual. Though the worth of the individual worker is indeed significant to the corporation for, without him, the corporation would ‘die’, the time horizon of the two parties is vastly different. This idea is eloquently expressed by Adam Smith, â€Å"In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate† (Smith 1976, p.84). As the nature of work is at least partly economic, to ignore the basic issues of business management would be unpardonable. From Taylor’s beginning of scientific management to the â€Å"high performance work systems† of today, the nature of managing the individual worker presents a range of methods devised in order to maximize the economic return of work. While Taylor’s command-and-control methods largely regarded the average laborer as incapable of being able to self-manage, they did nonetheless create vast increases in efficiency and paved the way for the development of very large organizations. Interestingly enough, these techniques, or at least, the implementation, of them has been supplanted by the like’s of Stanford’s Pfeffer is able to rigorously document the superlativity of a complete system of seven key human resource practices that, when fully integrated into an organization produce superior financial returns to the organization. In place of timed work, close supervision and continuous thrusts for greater efficiency through centralized decision-making, consider the characteristics of the ‘modern’ high performance organization (Taylor 1917; Pfeffer 1998, pp. 64-65): Employment security Selective hiring Decentralized decision-making Comparatively high compensation Extensive training Egalitarian work place Extensive information sharing. Despite the fundamental economic nature of work, there is another side that, were it go unmentioned, the discussion would utterly fail to consider the other perspective on work: that of the individual employee. Even as an economic premise entirely, the goal of which is to increase the profit and well-being of the individual, the sociological aspects of work merit full consideration (Stiglitz 2002, p. 1). In consideration of the individual, it is reasonable that one might consider the very contractual nature of work to be akin to that of a â€Å"social exchange† process through which individuals and groups of individuals engage in transactions (Dreher Dougherty 2002, p. 41). These exchanges are clearly governed first by applicable laws and regulations, perhaps secondly by organizational policies and procedures and thirdly and perhaps most notably, they are regulated by the very nature of individuals to ascribe to something that might resemble a common values system. In this system is the seemingly natural component of a sense of â€Å"fairness†. This guides innumerable behaviors as the individual inevitably seeks a form of â€Å"reciprocal altruism† in which, in addition to following self-serving fulfillment of their own needs, individuals appear to operate on the assumption that there is a bigger picture of morals and the â€Å"right thing† involved (Fred erick Wasieleski 2002, pp.284). An additional consideration of the social nature of work and ensuing issues is the idea that, for many, work is the process by which â€Å"identity† is established. Consider the typical introduction at a party or other function†¦ first, one gives their name and then, almost inevitably either their occupation or work relation status to the host (i.e., â€Å"I work with Ted†, â€Å"I am a client†, etc.). This phenomenon, Social Identity Theory, is quite relevant to the workplace in that it forces one to consider the psychological implications of doing business (Ashforth Mael 1989, pp. 20-21; Stiglitz 2002, p. 1). Bridging this concept with the representation that work is fundamentally an exchange relationship is the idea of the psychological contract. Just as there are explicit rules governing work expectations, so too are there implicit rules. The rules are communicated by the culture of the firm, the seemingly accepted behaviors of others in a similar posit ion and other verbal and non-verbal queues. The conditions of the contract are primarily mediated by the individual’s manager, the immediate representation of the organization in the mind of the individual (Rousseau 2000, February). Thus, it is through the social processes of work that an individual gains an understand of who they are but also gain particular knowledge of the mutual obligations of the economic exchange. In summary, work is. It is: what, why, how, when. It is the noun and the verb, the result as well as the process. A discussion of which cannot omit the fundamental economic nature of it yet one cannot ignore the precepts of sociology and psychology woven into every single ‘unit of production’, the individual worker. Any discussion of work which does not give full deliberation the simultaneous dichotomy is to only give half the argument and less than that for the appreciation of what work represents, to the organization, the individual and to society. Works Consulted Ashforth, B. F. Mael. (1989). â€Å"Social Identity Theory and the Organization†. Academy of Management Review (14), 1, pp. 20-39. Block, R., Berg, P. and Belman, D. (2004). â€Å"The Economic Dimension of the Employment Relationship†, in Coyle –Shepard, J. Shore, L. Taylor, M. and Tetrick, L., (eds.). The Employment Relationship: Examining Psychological and Contextual Perspectives. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK. Dreher, G. and Dougherty, T. (2002). Human Resource Strategy: A Behavioral Perspective for the General Manager. McGraw-Hill Irwin: Boston, Massachusetts. Frederick, W. and Wasieleski, D. (2002). â€Å"Evolutionary Social Contracts†. Business and Society Review, (107), 3, pp. 283-308. Pfeffer, J. (1998). The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First. Harvard Business School Press: Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Rosseau, D. (2000, February). Psychological Contract Inventory Technical Report. Carnegie Mellon University: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA . Smith, A. (1976). An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nation., R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner, eds. Clarendon Press:. Oxford, UK Stitlitz, J. (2002). â€Å"Employment, Social Justice and Societal Well-Being†. International Labour Review, (141), 1-2, pp. 9-29. Taylor, F. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. Harper: New York, New York.

Descartes Meditation Essay

1. If Descartes’s aim is to find certainty, why does he proceed by doubting as many things as he can? He feels that as long as he goes on believing his old beliefs, laziness and habit will block him from receiving any truths. He feels that if he regards his beliefs in the same way as he does any falsehoods he can remain unbiased when judging information and only then will he receive real truths. 2. What reason does he give for doubting that the senses give knowledge? That a man asleep can have a realistic dream that he is having the same experiences as a man that’s awake. 3. What does the experience of â€Å"dreams† show us concerning the senses? He talks about how real dreams appear even though they are proven to be deceiving. And if one can be deceived in a dream by all of their senses can they not also be deceived in reality by some supernatural demon. He says hypothetically that God may not have created earth, shapes, etc. and everything that we sense could be a form of deception. 4. Why can he doubt even that 2=3 = 5. He talks about the fact that he sometimes doubt others who claim to have the most perfect knowledge. And if that can be the case for them can’t it also be possible for him to be wrong about â€Å"obvious† truths. Also, if one may feel that if God’s goodness would stop him from being deceived SOME of the time, wouldn’t it stop him from being deceived ALL of the time since he is clearly deceived some of the time. Basically he is acknowledging the fact that he could be wrong.

A Students Guide to Economics Written by Paul Heyne Essay

?Monograph Review A Students Guide to Economics Written by Paul Heyne When you first thought about Economics, what did you think of? To me it was pretty much the study of money, as simple as that. I thought it would be interesting to ask a few people what their thoughts were and I heard many different definitions from as simple as â€Å"Money† from a family member to â€Å"To me it is the state of well being – money, housing, unemployment, industry etc. † told to me by a coworker. The true definition of Economics is the study of how individuals transform natural resources into final products and services that people use. This definition is quite a bit different than what I thought it would be, so I was very interested to read the monograph A Students Guide to Economics, Paul Heyne and hopefully learn how this definition came to be. As I was reading the book I found that the changes came and were documented by many different economists and were explained in many of the publications that those economists had written. In the monograph A Students Guide to Economics, Paul Heyne describes the history of economics and how this definition evolved to what it is today. The book starts out with the â€Å"discovery† of the Economics. In 1776, Adam Smith was the first person to question economic growth with a book titled Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith summed up economics as â€Å"the volume of the nation’s annual production will depend primarily on the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which people apply their labor to the natural resources available to them. I take this as, in a good economic society, people will use the natural resources personal talents wisely. Smith also states that everyone is a merchant, by this I think he means that with every transaction, you are making a trade. For example, if a shoe maker sells a pair of shoes, the money that is paid for them is not really the trade, the leather that he buy with the money so he can make more shoes is the trade for the shoes he sold. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money written by John Maynard Keynes was published in 1936. This book stopped many economists from focusing on the trade cycle and started them focusing on government spending to make up the deficiency in private spending that had caused and prolonged the slump during World War II. From what I understand about this publication, Keynes was one of the first people to hold the government accountable for certain economic problems. For example after World War II certain people wanted the government to be responsible for bringing the unemployment rate up to 100% when the employment rate was extremely low at that time. Macroeconomics was brought up for the first time in 1948 in the publication Economic: an Introductory Analysis written by Paul Samuelson. A Students Guide to Economics states that Microeconomics or â€Å"the modern theory of income determination† as Samuelson called it, uses variables including total expenditures on personal consumption, total business investment, and total government purchases of goods and services. Microeconomics is not considered one of the two parts of economics, the other being Microeconomics. People have two possible responses when they start feeling that the organization has changed in a negative way (decrease in quality or benefit to the member), they can exit (leave the organization), or they can voice (try to improve the issue by communicating with the organization). This theory was written about in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty written by Albert O. Hirchman. An example of an exit response would be going into a grocery stare and finding out that they do not carry the type of salsa that you like anymore, when you find this out, you decide to switch grocery stores and go to the one that has your salsa. An example of a voice response would be going to a salon to get your hair colored, you go home and realize the color is not what you asked for, instead of leaving the salon and finding another one, you call and voice your frustration, you end up going back and they fix your hair for free. Written in 1957, The Economics of Under-Developed Countries by Peter Bauer and Basil Yamey looked into the theory of â€Å"growth economics†. At that time people had the notion that if there is an under-developed country, another country can go in and help it with a quick fix. Economists believed that with a small amount of funds and a good economic model an under-developed country would have major economic growth. With this growth they assumed that the country would not cause their country any issues. Bauer and Yamey were not buying into this theory. They wrote in their book that to help an under-developed country many other things would determine the countries outcome like the citizen’s attitude and knowledge. Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit written by Frank Knight in 1921 explains how a market-coordinated economy handles the problem of coordinating activity in the presence of uncertainty. One of the things that stands out most about Frank Knight was that he distinguished between two types of change, risk and uncertainty, defining risk as randomness with knowable probabilities and uncertainty as randomness with unknowable probabilities. Frank Knight stated that risk arises from repeated changes for which probabilities can be calculated and insured against but uncertainty arises from unpredictable changes in an economy changes that cannot be insured against. Uncertainty, he said â€Å"is one of the fundamental facts of life. † (Review by Gail Owens Hoelscher). Fire would be an example of a risk, you know what will happen if a fire occurs. A customer’s preference would be an example of an uncertainty. Deirdre McCloskey wrote that there was no such thing as a scientific method for economics in The Rhetoric of Economics written in 1985, scientists merely argue what they believe is true. McCloskey states that economics needs to get back to the science of facts or responsible rhetoric and get away from the things that economists are trying to persuade people is true. A businessman may know what his costs will be to produce a product and may be very aware of what the demand will be for that product but he may not be able to predict the competition he has from companies producing a similar product. Economics is the study of how individuals transform natural resources into final products and services that people use. A Students Guide to Economics has helped me understand why the definition â€Å"Money† doesn’t quite cut it. There are so many aspects that I never even thought of when it comes to economics like planning for risk and uncertainty and understanding exit and voice responses. Economics has evolved tremendously from the time it was first brought to peoples attention in Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations to the current writings of Deirdre McCloskey. Looking into the future, I predict we haven’t seen the last changes.

The Management Of A Business Organization - 1568 Words

TOPIC 2 The management accountant plays a number of key roles in: (a) Assisting an organization achieve its objectives; and, (b) making sure that the organization is ethical in its pursuit of those aims. Discuss this statement within the context of each of the following types of organization. †¢ A business organization that is a manufacturer; and, †¢ A not-for-profit organization, such as a charity.†¨In each case, ensure that you provide illustrations of how the management accountant can contribute to ensuring that organizational objectives are achieved and ethical integrity retained. â€Å"Managerial Accounting is a profession that includes partnering in management decision making, devising planning and performance management systems, and†¦show more content†¦Productivity is utilized and resources are not wasted on projects with little chance of success. Establishing Goals Setting goals that challenge everyone in the organization to try for improved function is one of the key attributes of the planning process. The goal setting process can be wake-up call for managers that have become complacent. The other benefit of goal setting comes when forecast results are compared to actual results. Managing Risk and Uncertainty Managing risk is essential to an organization’s victory. Even the largest corporations cannot control the economic and competitive environment around them. Planning encourages the development of â€Å"what-if† scenarios, where managers attempt to envision possible risk factors and grow contingency plans to deal with them. Team Building Planning promotes team building and a spirit of cooperation. 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