Monthly Archive for January, 2012

How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

From Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher in the New York Times:

When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Apple’s manufacturing decisions exemplify the altered circumstances of high-technology commodity production in the contemporary world. The article describes the situation, but not the solution for regions and nations wishing to insure stable and remunerative work for their people. Note especially the conditions of daily life for product assembly workers sketched out in the article. The industrial revolution appears to be repeating itself yet again with similarities of both triumph and tragedy.

To read the article…

Recently Published: Management Journal

management

The latest issue of  The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management includes:

Organizational Culture, Learning, and Knowledge Management

Organizational Culture, Learning, and Knowledge Management an edited collection by Jonathan H. Westover is now available from  The Organization imprint.

We live in an increasingly hyper-competitive global marketplace, where firms are fighting to stay lean and flexible in an effort to satisfy increasingly diverse and specialized consumer demand around the world. Additionally, with the shifting global economy in recent decades and the emergence of the technology and service-oriented knowledge organizations, how do organizations effectively foster a continuous learning and innovation culture? What can organizational leaders do to promote ongoing organizational learning that will have a measurable impact on increased firm effectiveness and employee productivity? How can organizations more successfully manage organizational knowledge to achieve strategic organizational goals and add value to all organizational stakeholders? These are just some of the pressing questions facing the organizations of today.

This edited collection provides a comprehensive introduction to organizational culture, learning, and knowledge management and explores the wide sweeping impacts for the modern workplace, presenting a wide range of cross-disciplinary research in an organized, clear, and accessible manner. It will be informative to management academics and instructors, while also instructing organizational managers, leaders, and human resource development professionals of all types seeking to understand proven practices and methods to create organizational systems and culture to promote ongoing organizational learning and innovation to drive firm effectiveness in an increasingly competitive global economy.

The Business-School World in 2012

From J.L.H.D., The Economist

Assuming you have largely recovered from holiday celebrating, you are now free to contemplate the coming of 2012 by mulling over this newspaper’s predictions. Granted, it does not make for the happiest of reading. “The world won’t end in 2012,” writes our editor. “But at times it will feel as if it is about to.” The fate of the euro is still in doubt; America, France, Russia, and China all face potential changes at the top; business confidence is down; and it may be best not to think too much about climate change, given the potential for collective inaction. As the song goes, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.

Perhaps fortunately, change comes more slowly to academia, and so the business-school world as a whole should see less upheaval. Applications will probably remain down, as potential students see less hope of studying out the recession and worry more about the loans required to take an MBA. Executive-education budgets will also suffer, with only the occasional CEO able to indulge in a high-ticket course. Expect a few curriculum reworkings along the lines of Harvard’s, and, in the wake of the Occupy movement, the incorporation of income inequality and taxation into discussions of corporate social responsibility. On a lighter note, the 2012 Olympics in London will provide the excuse—er, background—for many a discussion of the business of sport. More…