Is Personal Management Bankrupt?

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Chapter 22: Is Personal Management Bankrupt?
Summary:
Personnel administration is more preoccupied with looking for a “gimmick” in an attempt to impress the management associates. Over the years, personnel administration has remained sterile for some reasons. Firstly, it assumes that individuals do not want to work. Hence, personnel administration views satisfaction as something that workers get outside of the organization. Secondly, personnel administration looks at the management of people as the function of a specialist as opposed to being part of the manager’s job. Lastly, personnel administration appears to be concerned with fixing things that threaten the smooth running of the production process. Unlike personnel administration, human relations assumes that individuals want to work. In this case, the work of managing people is the responsibility of the manager as opposed to a specialist. The main challenge with human relations approach is the assumption that focusing on the work is not important. Human relations focus on inter-personal relations and ignores the analysis of a worker and work. In order to address the problems of the two approaches, scientific management has been widely adopted. It seeks to organize the study of work, analyzing the work into simple units and identifying ways of improving the performance of the workers on the individual elements.
Reflecting:
This chapter offers important insights regarding personnel management. It demonstrates that whereas the concept is great, it has its limitations. For instance, personnel management has failed to fulfill its promise of managing worker and work. With the advancement in technology, the chapter demonstrates the need to re-examine how managers view the worker and the work.
Question:
How is technology changing how managers view work, working, and workers?
Chapter 23: What we know about Work, Working and Work
Summary:
The best way of understanding work is to analyze, synthesis and control it. It is critical to appreciate that work is a process as opposed to an individual operation. Hence, it requires a built-in control with a feedback mechanism. The feedback senses unexpected deviations which assist in maintaining the process at a level that is required to obtain the required results. Work has five major dimensions that are essential in explaining it. The first one is the physiological dimension which advocates that humans work differently from machines. Humans work in a configuration of operations as opposed to a single operation. The second dimension psychological which outlines the curse and blessing of work. The next dimension views work as a social and community bond which makes an individual have access to society. The other one is the economic dimension which provides the basis of living for the workers. The last one is the conflict between work as a living and works as a wage.
Reflecting:
The chapter explores comprehensively the conflict that exists between workers and companies regarding wage. While it is desirable that workers have a financial stake in a business, the chapter demonstrates that this works when the business is pe...