Group items tagged

This article from the National Post talks about five cultural shifts that are changing the corporate workplace. These include the level of trust between employers and employees, the ways in which companies hire and fire employees, the end of the "40 hours work week" and importance of task related work as opposed to time constraints in new young workers, reputation and the need for young workers to find satisfaction and meaning in their work, and demand for corporations to donate a portion of profits to charitable causes. An interesting article that relates to trends in upcoming generations of young workers.

Although a couple years old, this article points out some important/interesting factors related to our readings about what the Canadian economy needs.

Friedman describes three convergences that have changed the playing field. The second one describes new technologies combined with new ways of doing business and how it creates a bigger impact. Friedman uses SouthWest Airlines as an example and this article is about five businesses that have changed because of technology - travel being one of them.

Salman Sakir's article is relevant to the issues raised in Friedman's book The World is Flat in which Friedman in a sense laments over the impact of globalization upon the developed countries, the USA for him, because the developing countries like Brazil and Asian countries like China and India have a massive work labour influence upon the West. Sakir focuses on both the positive and negative aspects of globalization, one of the five forces in Gratton's The Shift and a form of global economy as discussed by Stanford in his Economics for Everyone. Because of low wage and easy availability of experts/labour in the developing countries, foreign investments have been attracted by those Asian and developing countries where the jobs have been created for the locals. On the other hand, the citizens of the developed counters of the West and the North America have consumed the products from the developing countries in a reasonably lower price. Poverty ratio has been decreased in the developing countries which have also been integrated by the phenomenon of globalization. These are positive impacts. But in the developed countries, manufacturing industries have been moved out. so unemployment rate is ever increasing, Sakir highlights these aspects of globalization in this article.

In part III, Gratton speaks to the positive affects of the five forces on one's lives. Demographics are mentioned. As mandatory retirement has been abolished in many jurisdictions, the changing demographics of workers living longer and thus having the ability to work longer may have positive and negative effects. This link is a survey of UK firms on the impact of mandatory retirement and the specific qualitative issues that may arise, such as enhancing customer service and employee performance, as well as the difficulties including less 'headroom' for younger workers and performance decline

This article provides preventative strategies for negative outcomes within virtual working environments. As the trend is currently increasing the ability of individuals to collaborate via the internet, the "killers" must also be made public, to ensure virtual organizations and employee teams can become aware and prevent the potential implications of working over the internet rather than in traditional work spaces. This enables work to continue to be innovative, rewarding, and meaningful to each employee.

A short article on how to think in terms of a career carillon instead of a single career curve.