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I took it to mean that workers did what was asked and no more — so productivity stayed constant. Which was contrasted with engaged employees, who sharing in mo
by bopbeepboop 5y ago
I took it to mean that workers did what was asked and no more — so productivity stayed constant.
Which was contrasted with engaged employees, who sharing in more of the profits, have an incentive to increase productivity — eg, by inventing a tooling improvement for the assembly line.
I think the overall point was employers are “penny wise, pound foolish” in that small productivity “gains” caused employees to disengage which is causing long-term slowdowns in improvements — improvements typically driven by employees stepping up and doing more.
- supertrope 5y agoToyota empowers workers to stop production to fix quality issues. But they earn less than unionized workers. Empowering line workers makes sense when there's growth and healthy margins to pursue. If the industry is mature or even shrinking then there's a heavier focus on cost cutting and metrics/Taylorism to maximize free cash flow and pay it out as dividends and stock buybacks.
- bopbeepboop 5y agoYes, your second paragraph is what people are saying is bad. You can’t eat your seed corn in a bad year — that’s madness! Similarly, I don’t think you’ll find industries which are stagnant on the decade scale… which is where the harms being called out up thread manifest. That choice to “Taylorize” in support of buybacks critically weakens your staff at precisely the time you need their engagement to pivot your organization in response to new market conditions. See Boeing and the 737 MAX for a case study.