{"ops":[{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"[Missed Part 6?"},{"insert":" "},{"attributes":{"color":"#002060","link":"https://community.criticalthinking.org/blogPost.php?param=230"},"insert":"Read It Here"},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":"]"},{"insert":"\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true,"bold":true},"insert":" "},{"insert":"\n"},{"attributes":{"italic":true,"bold":true},"insert":"Two Objections [1 of 2]"},{"insert":"\n"},{"attributes":{"bold":true},"insert":" "},{"insert":"\nBefore concluding, I should air a couple of obvious objections. One may be put as follows:\n \nSo far you have not dealt with the most obvious problem of productivity, the unproductive worker, the employee who, through lack of knowledge, training, or motivation, fails to perform in an optimal or adequate fashion. What employers want are dedicated, motivated, conscientious, and skilled employees who carry out their tasks as prescribed, not reflective thinkers who ponder the global problems of society."},{"attributes":{"indent":1},"insert":"\n"},{"insert":" \nThis objection, you should note, assumes that the fundamental problem of productivity is “the worker.” This is, of course, a natural assumption to make if the role one has played is one of traditional management in U.S. industry. From that vantage point, it is natural to key in on employee performance standards and to see those standards as a function of employees in themselves. Studies have demonstrated, however, that in most of the Western world, management and labor both operate with a strong caricature or stereotype of each other. The fact is that each tends to function with a narrow view of its own immediate vested interest. Hence, while it may be in the immediate vested interest of employers to get the most labor from the least investment of capital, it is also in the immediate vested interest of employees to get the highest pay for the least labor. There is minimal incentive in the system to cooperate toward mutual advantage, and maximal incentive to compete as adversaries for available capital.\n \nThe Japanese system of management with its guarantees to the worker of life-long employment and its provision for child care, recreation, profit-sharing, and job-retraining (if necessary) suggests the possibility of the accent being focused on cooperation rather than adversarial competition. It seems to me more reasonable to assume that there are no genetic or “moral” differences between Japanese, and say, U.S. workers, but that the differences in productivity are more a function of radically different philosophies of management/employee relations. I don’t believe that any significant increase in worker productivity will occur unless, and only to the degree that, the interest of workers is more structurally linked to the interests of employers. This is both a global problem and one that can be addressed at the level of individual companies. One reason for the success of high-tech industries, it seems to me, has been a management/employee model closer to the “Japanese” than to the traditional “American” one. Much worker inefficiency arises from these two interrelated causes: workers don’t seem to think; workers don’t seem to care.\n \nPresent instructional practices and management/employee relations seem perfectly designed to produce the first cause. Students are neither taught nor expected to "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"think"},{"insert":"."},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":" "},{"insert":"Such practices as mindless, purposeless drill, over-proceduralization (first do this, then this, then that – don’t worry about understanding it) seem suited to what employers want: workers who keep moving, look busy, "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"seem"},{"insert":" efficient, and don’t question. But this very training-for-mindlessness produces workers who don’t use their heads. Education and industry encourage “going through the motions.”\n \nRegarding the second cause, why "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"should"},{"insert":" workers care about mindless tasks over which they have no control, which they are not encouraged to understand or value, and for which they often get little recognition or reward?\n"}]}