Career Week 1

Agenda

Expectations Summary
Overview of Evolution of Work
Team Discussion of 3 Generations of Work
Reports, Discussion, Posting Team Findings

Your Expectations for the Course

Learn about the workplace, organizational politics, etc.
Learn skills we can apply to our current activities (clubs, sports, etc)
Key skills: Negotiations, leadership, group interactions, communications
Develop knowledge/skills to support interests in entrepreneurship
Have fun in doing so
How has work changed over the years?

Ask yourself four questions:

What do you want most from your first job after graduation?
What does your employer want from you in your first job?
What it will take for you to be successful in your work and career?
Take a leadership perspective: What will it take for all others in the labor force to be successful in their work, careers, and families?

Two Concepts to Keep in Mind

Work System: the constellation of interrelated features that describe the
employment relationship

Social Contract: the mutual obligations and expectations between workers, employers, and their communities; underlying context in which the employment relationship is situated

Agrarian Work Systems

e.g., the independent farmer: Families working their own or someone else’s land

Agrarian: Key Success Factors

Personal Factors

Hard physical labor; perseverance
24-7‖ Farmer’s work never ends
Family support—work & family tightly coupled
Jack-of-all-trades:‖ able to make tools & fix machinery
Ability to adapt to new methods/technologies

External-Institutional Factors:

good soil, weather, and other natural resources
good credit—local banks financed the planting of crops
University extension research & education systems
Public education for the next generation—ability to move off the farm to new job opportunities!

Craft Work Systems

e.g., the shoemaker or cabinet maker responding to individual, custom orders

Learn from the Masters: “Masters” teach, then hire, supervise, and pay “apprentices”

What are some modern-day “crafts”?

Craft Work: Key Success Factors

Personal:

Deep and holistic craft skills
Access to the craft labor market
Ability to plan, organize, balance, and complete multiple projects
Teaching ability
Access to a master (which hints at nepotism)
Ability to learn/adapt to changing the technologies

External/Institutional

Stable technologies and specialized jobs & work systems
Guilds, craft unions, professional associations
Ability to protect craft jurisdictions e.g., lawyers; doctors, railroad crafts (favorite was railroad “firemen”)

Mass Production Work Systems & Factories

e.g., the autoworker on the assembly line

Mass Production: Key Success Factors

Personal

Physical strength; endurance of repetition (physical & mental)
Learn to take and/or give orders
Union membership
Seniority

External/Institutional

Large mass markets for standardized goods
Large pools of capital; big firms
Good industrial engineering—dividing up the jobs; standardizing tasks; detailed rules; stopwatches…
Steady, reliable supply of low-skilled workers Organization Man: Wife at home doing family work
Industrial unions and collective bargaining
National government set minimum labor standards & laws

Knowledge Work Systems

e.g., writing the code for Harry Potter; designing this building

What are the key success factors for Knowledge workers?

Independent Agent or Organization Man/Women?

How many of you prefer to start your careers as:

A: Independent Agent?
B: Working for a corporation/other organization as an employee?