Individuals wondering about their chances of being unlucky enough· to experience outplacement consultancy at first-hand might like to try a brief test. All they have to do is compare themselves with company colleagues and others who could be viewed as career-competitors, and then answer the following questions. By comparison with them, would you say you were:
(1) A calmer person?
(2) Less inhibited socially?
(3) A good deal more imaginative and unconventional ?
(4) More natural and forthright?
(5) Less inclined to worry about your own performance?
(6) More relaxed ?
Anyone who answered yes in all cases would do well to start looking for another job. The six traits covered by the questions comprise the main ways executives who get sacked differ in personal make-up from those who do not, according to research done by the UK's Cranfield Management School with support from the Pauline Hyde and Associates out placement company.
Mrs. Hyde's consultancy made personality assessments of 204 discarded executives, of whom about 60% had been in senior positions. Their results were sent to the management school's psychologists who compared them with assessments made by the same method of more than 1 ,000 comparably ranked people who consistently stayed employed.
The Cranfield staff concluded that the prime reasons for the 204 executives' predicament lay in the six key personality differences. But the fault was not the positive aspects of the attributes as they were listed here. It was more what the sacked contingent lacked in consequence of possessing those positive characteristics.
Their strength in forthrightness left them weak in shrewdness, for example. The gift of imagination left them short of cool realism. As a result, even though they mostly scored high for alertness, intelligence, leadership, and emotional adjustment, they were missing some of the key abilities on which survival, let alone success, in organizations often depends: political and social skills.
The fact that executives missing those abilities tend to lose their jobs does not mean their organizations are wise to fire them. The management school's psychologists report concludes that companies would probably gain more by providing training to develop the skills which are lacking. The reason is that men and women not endowed with them by nature or early upbringing are nevertheless some of the most "energetic, imaginative, creative people" available for employment.
Even so, the 204 showed another characteristic which would appear to distinguish them from the typical person doing well in an executive career in Britain at present. It is that, on the whole, they were relatively old. Their average age was 47. And, while there are numerous cases of older people proving enterprising and creative as well as canny, there is research evidence that most tend to lose their former get-up-and-go.
SOURCE: Financial Times (London), July 16, 1987, 8.
Notwithstanding the current depressed state of organized labor, it is important for managers to understand the basics of the concept of unionized labor. Labor disputes evoke emotional responses and usually make front page news. The media in most countries are eager to show picketing workers and more often than not portray the company's management as the villains. Knowledge of the basic workings of a union can help a unionized company to become more effective in dealing with the union and help a nonunionized company to maintain its nonunion status.
The nature, role, and power of unions will vary from country to country depending on a multitude of factors, including the following:
(1) The level at which bargaining takes place (enterprise or industry level): In the United States and Japan the local or company level is preferred; in most European countries the employer's representatives bargain with union representatives at a national or regional level.
(2) The centralization of union management: In the United States the AFLCIO does not bargain directly with employers. Its role is to act as a coordinating body and resolve disputes among its member unions. In Europe confederations have more decision-making power.
(3) The scope of bargaining
(4) The degree to which the government intervenes
(5) The percentage of the work force represented by unions 1
These factors in turn will depend on variables such as labor mobility, level of unemployment, homogeneity of the labor force, the political system, and the educational level of the work force.
In most developing countries the Department of Labor (or the equivalent office) is the appropriate place to go for information about labor relations, as they are regulated by the federal government. As a result of this power of the government, as a general rule unions in developing countries are supportive of the governing party.
SOURCE: R. D. Robinson, Internationalization of Business: An Introduction (Chicago: The Dryden Press, 1984) , 96-97.
Graph A of Figure 15.9 illustrates the relative positions of most of the developed countries with respect to level of bargaining (horizontal axis) and degree of centralization (vertical axis). The United States and Canada are the most "localized" and least "centralized" countries; the Scandinavian countries and Austria are the least "localized" and most "centralized" countries. Graph B shows that the United States, Canada, France, and Japan are the least unionized countries (approximately 20% of the work force is unionized), and the Scandinavian countries are the most unionized. Despite the relatively low levels of union membership in some of the developed countries, "the most important method of establishing conditions of work in the major industrialized countries remains free collective bargaining in a framework of law and customs." 2
Recently, organized labor has begun to explore additional ways of influencing working conditions. Increasingly labor is demanding the right to participate in what is considered to be management's territory: the decision making that affects the company's operations and performance. In some countries labor's wishes for participation have been met with sympathy and even legislation. 3 This trend goes under many names, the most common one being industrial democracy. FIVE FORMS OF INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY summarizes the characteristics of five of the most common forms of industrial democracy.
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