tw384

     "THE NEW WORKER

     As the adolescent matures and enters the job arena, new forces come into play on his or her personality, rewarding some traits and punishing or penalizing others.
     Throughout the Second Wave era, work in the factories and offices steadily grew more repetative, specialized, and time-pressured, and employers wanted workers who were obedient, punctual, and willing to perform rote tasks. The corresponding traits were fostered by the schools and rewarded by the corporation.
     As the Third Wave cuts across our society, work grows less, not more, repetative. It becomes less fragmented, with each person doing a somewhat larger, rather than smaller, task. Flextime and self-pacing replace the old need for mass synchronization of behavior. Workers are forced to cope with more frequent changes in their tasks, as well as a blinding succession of personnel transfers, product changes, and reorganizations.
     What Third Wave employers increasingly need, therefore, are men and women who accept responsibility, who understand how their work dovetails with that of others, who can handle ever larger tasks, who adapt swiftly to changed circumstances, and who are sensitively tuned in to the people around them.
     The Second Wave firm frequently paid off for podding bureaucratic behavior. The Third Wave firm requires people who are less pre-programmed and faster on their feet. The difference, says Donald Conover, general manager of Corporate Education for Western Electric, is like that between classical musicians who play each note according to a predetermined, pre-set pattern, and jazz improvisers who, once having decided what song to play, sensitively pick up cues from one another and, on the basis of that, decide what notes to play next.
     Such people are complex, individualistic, proud of the ways in which they differ from other people. They typify the de-massified work force needed by Third Wave industry.
     According to opinion researcher Daniel Yankelovich, only 56 percent of U.S. workers - mainly the older ones - are still motivated by traditional incentives. They are happiest with strict guidelines and clear tasks. They do not expect to find "meaning" in their work.
     By contrast, as much as 17 percent of the work force already reflects newer values emerging from the Third Wave. Largely young middle-managers, they are, declares Yankelovich, the "hungriest for more resonsibility and more vital work with a commitment worthy of their talent and skills." They seek meaning along with financial reward.
     To recruit such workers, employers are beginning to offer individualized rewards. This helps explain why a few advanced companies (like TRW Inc., the Cleveland-based high-technology firm) now offer employees not a fixed set of fringe benefits but a smorgasbord of optional holidays, medical benefits, pensions, and insurance. Each worker can tailor a package to his or her own needs. Says Yankelovich, "There is no one set of incentives with which to motivate the full spectrum of the work force." Moreover, he adds, in the mix of rewards for work, money no longer has the same motivating power it once did.
     No one suggests these workers don't want money. They certainly do. But once a certain income level is reached they vary widely in what they want. Additional increments of money no longer have thier former impact on behavior."

    I skipped a paragraph,

     "Meanwhile, the most ingrained patterns of authority are also changing. In Second Wave firms every employee has a single boss. Disputes among employees are taken to the boss to be resolved. In the new matrix organizations the style is entirely different. Workers have more than one boss at a time. People of different rank and different skills meet in temporary, "ad-hocratic" groups. And in the words of Davis and Lawrence, authors of a standard text on the subject: "Differences...are resolved without a common boss readily available to arbitrate...The assumption in a matrix is that this conflict can be healthy...differences are valued and people express their views even when they know that others may disagree."
     "This system penalizes workers who show blind obedience. It rewards those who - within limits - talk back. Workers who seek meaning, who question authority, who want to exercise discretion, or who demand that their work be socially responsible may be regarded as trouble-makers in Second Wave industries. But Third Wave industries cannot run without them.
     Across the board, therefore, we are seeing a subtle but profound change in the personality traits rewarded by the economic system - a change which cannot help but shape the emerging social character."