Order Out Of Chaos

Macroeconomics is the attempt to understand the long term trends of economic growth, inflation and international payments and the short term fluctuations that cause unemployment.

Growth is the expansion of capacity to produce goods and services, an economy's production possibilities. It is measured by increases in domestic real GDP, the actual production levels of output, the value in price terms of the output of all the farms, factories, shops and offices in a year. Potential GDP is the production capacity when all factors are used to their full potential. Business cycles are fluctuations of real GDP around the trend of potential GDP. It is not regular or predictable. The current recession has seen record lows of the pound against the euro, big cuts in interest rates, a rise in inflation and a predicted even greater rise over the next few years, job losses and businesses closing.

Many shops have been cutting prices to generate spending in the run up to Christmas and to increase sales generally to help control inflation. An increase in consumption expenditure will certainly help. The two recent cuts in interest rates will put the pound in a position in foreign exchange markets that will make exports more attractive.

People can borrow and so can countries. They can borrow to consume or to invest. Borrowing to invest in assets that create interest can be profitable. The income stream will help pay off a debt and the debt interest. As long as the interest rate on the investment is greater than that on the debt it is not a problem. We have probably been borrowing to consume to some extent. The actual percentages of borrowing to invest and consume are difficult to determine. Wise borrowing and an increase in exports will decrease the current account deficit, improve the capital account and put the balance of payments in a healthier position.

The good news is that the cyclic nature of these economic phenomena mean that eventually the recession will end and we will go into another period of expansion.

Friedman And Keynes Have Currency

The Keynesian social democratic consensus which prevailed from 1945 and the Atlee government to 1979 like any other consensus not without major differences and was replaced by a new consensus under the Thatcher government in 1979 based on qualified free enterprise. The Keynesian consensus had reached its height during the mid-70s and had come under stress from the Conservatives with their right wing economic and anti-union policies and Labour itself. Labour's small majority may have been the reason why they did not embrace more radical left wing policies after 1974 but when Thatcher came to power in 1979 the consensus was still intact.

Keynes had suggested that when the private sector could not or would not invest in the economy and caused a depression and high unemployment it was up to the government to increase its spending and investment. It was primarily a short term focus to cure an immediate problem. It had its origins in the Depression of the 1930s and became attractive when the dogmas of the day produced no answers to the problems they faced.

There was a fundamental change of policies after 1979. There had been no new ideas to capture the imagination of policy makers until the 1970s when the radical right promoted free enterprise instead of state control. The ideas were based on the work of Hayek and Friedman who maintained that state power was a threat to liberty and that tight control of the money supply and credit in fighting inflation was more important than Keynesianism. A small number of influential people articulated these new policies and gave them force. The collapse of the Keynesian system in the 1960s and 70s gave Thatcherism its chance.

Thatcher never pursued full employment and watched it rise to 3 million. Trade union power diminished greatly and contacts almost completely ceased because they were seen as being involved in bringing down governments. Privatisation increased and pushed the economy into private rather than the public ownership. Equality was replaced with 'stimulating inequality' and differential pay as an incentive to effort and enterprise. The welfare state and foreign and defence policy remained largely intact.

What parties say in opposition is not important compared with what they do when they are in power. Labour became more moderate. Union membership decreased, home owning and share ownership increased and the Conservatives got more of the working class vote. Labour adapted its policies to meet the new electorate and in 1997 another major realignement emerged as New Labour won a landslide victory.

Monetarist and Keynesian rules are still influential. Labour and the Conservatives are philosophically a lot closer than they used to be. Labour, since the Kinnock review, has accepted free market economics. The Conservatives accepted unbridled market economics would not work. The gap between rich and poor has however continued to grow. All four Conservative Chancellors lowered tax burdens on the rich and refused to use Government expenditure to reduce regional unemployment. Labour under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are committed to raising taxes on the better off, a more effective regional policy and to reducing inequality. It has abandoned its unilateral anti-nuclear stance and embraced Europe.

Monetary policy is very much in focus at the present time. The cut in interest rates should increase consumption expenditure and investment. Exports should rise and aggregate demand increase. It should help real GDP growth and increase inflation. These things tend to happen in cycles. Those who have anticipated all of this will of course be making a profit from buying and selling bonds. New information may change everything as markets can be volatile and there are a number of broad policy categories and different sources of change.

The Return of The Exiles

Aggressive personalities take pleasure in dominating, humiliating and even brutalising others. They think themselves tough. They think they can mask themselves but persecution gives them away. There is no justification for persecution on the moral grounds of maximising pleasure if the pleasure gained is not greater than the pain suffered by those persecuted. The intellectuals who have thought about it in those terms may have missed a chance to transform human nature and the opportunity to criticise the ideals implicit in that individual and social dream. It goes against the natural law and right reason. It calls for courage on the part of others. It is also an opportunity to do some good.

Perseverance requires courage. Courage requires patience and perseverance to endure for as long as it takes for virtuous acts to be performed. Grand narratives and meta-narratives like emancipation require freedom of speech, association and religion, but when another discourse becomes inflexible there follows the elimination of other narratives and voices. That would of course raise questions about social contract theory and degrees of social control. There may also be a religious deception and a pseudo-messianism where man glorifies himself. The people who have fought the good causes in the opposition of darkness to light and won should be the liberators of others.

Global Indicators

There are glaring global inequalities and disparities in income and wealth which explain the poverty in LDCs. Global indicies rank countries according to their degree of globalisation, competitiveness, human development, political and economic freedom and risk, FDI confidence, market potential and growth, corruption and much more. The correlations between the various indicies suggest the rich Western countries are getting richer and the poor poorer as rich countries trade more and poorer countries remain the same, trading less and getting less for it.

Actions and events in one part of the world can adversely affect other parts. Globalisation policies should take poorer countries into account and poorer countries should have more say in decisions that affect their economies. MNEs should have social responsibility codes of practice. Institutions that have signed agreements should be made to keep their side of the bargain. Creativity and innovation should be promoted in closed economies to help businesses grow.

LDCs themselves in the past have called for a new world order. Political idealists call for reforms to ensure peace and security. The perspective of the 'Third World' is that the international institutions are deeply biased. TW countries have the majority of the world's population, produce a large proportion of the world's output and get only a small share of world trade. They want regime change in the form of rules, norms and procedures not just an end to colonialism.

There are rival perspectives and paradigms, changing contexts and continuities. Theories and models are developed as problems arise. Self righteousness leads parties to see themselves as positive and constructive and others as negative. False assumptions can be punished and lead to dramatic events. People get angry at some of the things that happen. Agriculture and population are two reasons often given as causes of underdevelopment in LDCs. The signs should not be confused. The proper interpretation of signs is important.

Equality Counts

Lorenz curves show in quintiles the cumulative percentage of incomes against the cumulative percentage of households. They give a picture of inequality against a line of equality. A Lorenz curve can also be drawn to measure wealth against individuals. The distribution of wealth is usually more unequal than the distribution of income in most market economies. Lorenz curves are measured at a point in time. The difference between the top 20% and the bottom 20% can be quite staggering. The Gini Coefficient shows inequality over time. The households most likely to be on the lowest incomes are those with one adult. Characteristically a widow over 75 will be among the poorest and households with two 30-50 year old graduates with two children will be among the best off.

Attitudes towards money are not necessarily related to how much people have and managing money is as much a state of mind. Money can have a variety of associations such as success, security and freedom. How much money is spent isn't the only important determinant of social structure. How it is spent is also important. Some people like to flaunt it, others prefer to keep it quiet. Some people can afford to give a lot to charity and worthy social causes. Poorer people also give what they can even though they have less to spend and the same basic needs. Social class also affects access to the means of production. The rich control resources and use the labour of those who have to sell their labour to survive, to maintain their position. In some societies changing social class can be very difficult. Variables like occupation and income are determinants of social class. Education is closely related. Differences in endowments of the means of production also affect income inequality and all of these are affected partly by the choices we make.

Social class may still be an important way to segment customers but there are many failings yet to overcome.

Two Kinds Of Angels

The struggle between faith and philosophy and science and technology goes back many centuries to the Inquisition and witchcraft and even further. It is not a simple division however and people complain that there are exceptions on both sides. It might better be delineated by metaphors like hawks and doves, analogies like the earthly city and the City of God or even absolutes like good v evil or right and wrong. As science goes marching on pushing back the barriers philosophers and theologians have a lot to complain about. Often it comes down to respect for the sanctity of human life and the profiteering of capitalists. The increasing secularisation of society and the predominance of Modernism and Positivism is creating a society in which traditional values are in a minority and a voice often ignored, unheard or treated as a nuisance even by those in authority. The process of globalisation in making the world a smaller place for so many people is also making it easy to disseminate doctrines of any kind. It has to be reiterated, cultural development must include proper respect for existing cultures and enduring traditional values.

Paths To Peace

Down the ages there have been two paths to peace sought by the international community, one political and the other military. The miltary paths use alliances, disarmament, arms control and the balance of power, the political path uses international law with its principles of right reason and natural law, world order and political integration.

The United Nations offers collective security for the preservation of peace and carries out its peacekeeping and peacemaking duties all over the world. The general principles of both private and public international law are accepted but there is no executive body to enforce it. It lacks universality, it justifies the pursuit of national advantage without any regard for morality or justice, it is an instrument of the powerful to oppress the weak, it justifies existing practices and can be used as a propaganda tool.

The development of regional trading blocs is a popular form of integration and in some cases has political integration as part of the vision. The European Union has brought lasting peace to what was once the most war torn part of the world. Geographical proximity, cultural homogeneity, comparable political systems, similar historical experience, social development and military prowess, stable economic conditions and possibly most importantly the support of public opinion and enthusiastic and sagacious leadership are the things which increase the likelihood of integration and peace. In democratic countries public support is the most important thing but public opinion changes. Where support was once strong or weak, changes of fortune can change minds.

Europe has served as a model for other parts of the world. More may also try it. There is no guarantee it will work. There is the paradox of the world coming together and falling apart at the same time. There have been numerous new states and autonomous regions created in recent years. There are calls for independence from within sovereign states. There is no reason to expect integration to progress on its own. It requires trust and commitment.

Use Your Gifts, Don't Waste Them

We are all created equal. We are all individually different. Our equality is essentially in our human dignity and rights. There are social and economic disparities that constantly need addressing. We are unequal in our conditions and functions. We are different in our aptitudes. We all have a conscience and so our moral lives are different. In our materialism we each respond differently to the things we perceive. There is often an element of risk involved. If we can proceed with confidence it helps but we are sometimes let down by our people and our leaders. Only those who respond and behave positively and faithfully should be given responsibility and merit. Those who are unfaithful and respond negatively because of fear or disobedience are unproductive and cannot be trusted with great authority.

Westerners are often stereotyped as materialistic and value people by how much they own. It is particularly true in America. Europeans tend to take the abundance of products for granted but not everyone stresses the value of materialism equally. It has been measured in degrees of success, centrality and happiness to study individual differences in orientation. Analysis of cross cultural differences suggest materialism is not linked to affluence but is a consequence of several factors including social stability, access to information, reference models and historical developments and cultural values.

In terms of their own materialism people tend to try to justify it or excuse it. Various kinds of justification go from being a connoisseur, to instrumentalism and from social excuses and modernism to deserving it. Perhaps a good justification is to say it is shared with others.

A Call To Humility

The call goes out to the rich to come down from the heights and share with the poor. The call puts demands on them. There have been great entrepreneurs like Carnegie, Rowntree and Cadbury who gave away large sums to worthy causes and the poor and set up institutions and social enterprises and they are well remembered for it by more than the beneficiaries of it. People are always sceptical suspecting there is more to it, that it is nothing to them or that they could do more. Yet they may have always been generous in secret.

There are some safeguards against individuals becoming too rich and greedy. A progressive tax system, the Combined Code gives guidelines for the rewards for executives. The Nolan Commission sets out guidelines for standards in public life. The vision and mission of a venture can be kept alive and referred to in temptation. It can act like a light at the end of the tunnel. It is something to hold on to when things get tough. It can remind people of what they had in mind when they started.

Those who have secure social and economic positions have been known to become complacent. They think themselves rich and powerful yet in a way they are poor and pitiable. The many philanthropists and social entrepreneurs risked not only their money but their reputations as well as social rejection in taking up their social and philanthropic ventures. They have successful in using their talents in creating lasting ventures for social change.

A Time Of Crisis

Your people may be working hard and putting up with a lot, patiently and without complaining but you and they may need to know about it. Morale and motivation may be suffering. Rewards may need to be looked at again.

Managers do not like playing God. It is one of the reasons why performance assessment and appraisal have not been accepted by everyone in management. Performance appraisal is probably the least popular of a manager's tasks. Making those critical judgements and comments about an employee's performance can be very difficult but where applied must be considered part of the relationship between manager and employee. It may be separated from the ongoing relationship but the feedback will have an impact on the employee's view of self. Each individual is different so each response is different. There is no one formula. The appraisal may be an hour a year or a whole year's observation, but the negative effects on the individual and performance can be demotivating. Managers also may feel a sense of guilt about the comments and outcomes of the appraisal process.

A number of ways have been tried to get round the negative aspects of appraisal. Multi-source feedback (MSF) has grown in importance. Employees are invited to comment on their performance as are peers, subordinate staff and customers. An even wider method is the 360 appraisal method which invites views from all round a job. The idea is that it is more balanced and objective than the opinion of one single person who might let any number of personal feelings and biases interfere.

There are ways of delivering better performance. Performance control plans define and target work which is then performed and measured against the plan. Control emphasis is an outcome of this drive to efficiency. Uncertainty and the threat of competition increase the pressure for efficiency and control and the need to conform to the budgets set by the finance department. There are other views of reality that argue for the development of people as well as the development of control. Disillusionment and demotivation can lead to mere obedience as opposed to genuine trust and commitment. Management can try to create a culture where people development is seen as a long term commitment and gain that trust and commitment.

Performance management systems coordinate approaches to MSF. They are usually based around competencies. They can help link business strategies to areas of responsibility and goals, critical success factors and performance measures. They use a combination of quantitaive and qualitative measures. A personal performance and development plan can establish where individual strengths need to be developed and excellent behaviours rewarded and weaknesses and any unacceptable behaviours eliminated. Self diagnosis and MSF can be used to make the individual see what is being done well or not so well and where improvements should be made. Coaching can keep the plan on course with feedback from various sources to monitor progress. Performance appraisals as popular or unpopular as they may be can be a vital link between performance and rewards and career progression. It is a matter of getting the right balance.

Signs Point The Way

There are endless lists of do's and dont's in the literature. There are some very good ones. Maintain good working relationships with others both external and internal, be on the watch for disruptive competition, viruses and trojans and hackers and for people who like to play God and those who offer apparent answers to problems at a high price, to keep within the teachings handed down and not go beyond them into speculation, to ensure that the everyday concerns of life don't interfere with being prepared for the unexpected and doing the job properly, to maintain a healthy work-life balance. There are also the more social commandments that respect others and their rights and demand justice and self-giving. Be aware of and look for signs. Signs point the way.

Socialisation Helps Career Progression

Socialisation has a beneficial effect on performance and work related values. New members should be made to feel involved and accepted by the rest. Training opportunities are considered vital for career progression and personal development. Knowing staff well helps decide who needs what when it comes to training requirements. Internal promotion is more of a possibility when vacancies appear further up the corporate ladder. There are often very useful and profitable people already in a business that could do the job well.

Education and training for career progression require a person to be able to learn. The nature of the work people do leads to a particular view of learning. Low skilled and repetitive tasks lead to associative and behaviourist views of learning even if knowledge and understanding are required to produce behaviour that can be repeated time after time where the conditions change little or not at all. More complicated tasks require more knowledge, understanding and higher order cognitive skills and an outlet for behaviour in the workplace and lead to cognitive learning.

Modern learning theories contain elements of both associative and cognitive learning. Process and continuity are emphasised. Kolb's integrated learning theory is that learning is prompted by the interaction of the learner and the environment. Individual needs and goals are central in determining the type of experience sought and the extent that learning is completed. Completion of the process is vital for development to take place. If the development takes place the individual may be considered for more empowerment.

There is a branch of management philosophy that recognises employee rights to empowerment and participation in decision making beyond collective bargaining. Empowerment means greater freedom, autonomy and self control. Some doubt remains as to whether empowerment is just another term for delegation. Some forms of empowerment aimed at improving the quality of working life produced self-managed work teams and flexible working arrangements. A further development is quality circles. Quality circles are groups of people who meet regularly to discuss day to day working arrangements and problem solving. Problems that prevent effective empowerment include misalignments between responsibility and authority.

Good Citizenship - Global And Local

People should practice good citizenship and carry out their duties within society so that we can all live in peace together. We should be gentle and unassuming. Kindness and love for humanity are directly related to the ethical demands made of people living in society. These virtues are not always passive. People often feel obliged and motivated to take action when they believe their rights are being infringed, ignored or abused. We are also invited to participate in decision making and make our opinions heard. Governments and other authorities should measure their decisions against religion which has recognised man's origin and destiny. The political freedom and responsibility of people should be recognised everywhere. We should be thankful for it and treasure it and look after it.

Authority can be said to come from God when it accords with right reason and does not command what is morally wrong. People choose their leaders. Their power is limited but their duty is to promote the common good. Rights and duties should be protected and promoted impartially.

Likewise with relationships between states. They are also subject to the moral law and involve mutual rights and duties. They should be honest with each other and protect minorities without any discrimination. The arms race should be replaced with a spirit of trust. The principle of liberty should be invoked to ensure that unjust oppression and interference are prevented. The rich countries aid to poorer countries should come without strings.

We are all linked in a common humanity and a common origin. Globalisation is bringing people from all over the world together in common efforts. What happens in one country affects what happens in another. States cannot live in isolation. There is a unity in human nature that demands that attention be given to the universal common good.

The Practice Of The Virtues

Good doctrine should be handed down and added to the knowledge base of the business and retained there and even shared with other individuals and busineses. It might be knowledge that has been acquired by founders and owners, by older members of a family business or by the workforce. It may be part of the culture. It should be part of normal practice. It should help maintain harmony. The virtues it embodies are attitudes, dispositions and habitual perfections of intellect and will. They guide our actions according to right reason. A virtuous person is free to practice good doctrine.

Experience is a key component of knowledge. It is what we have done and what has happened to us. It is something that has built up over years of observation, repetition, trial and error, feeling, analysis, interpretation, learning practice and feedback. It can lead to a build up of intuition. Expertise is a kind of knowledge of the tried and tested, what will work and what will not work. It can therefore be used to decide on an appropriate course of action and can help in situations of variety and complexity. Businesses try to keep the accumulated body of knowledge in the company so that they can continue to use it. The tacit knowledge of employees can be made explicit to the advantage of the firm. A firm can create a spiral of knowledge. When that special knowledge is lost the competitive advantage it gave is also lost. Older people have both explicit and tacit knowledge but the tacit knowledge they have of working in a firm should be valued, if it is good, because it can be passed on to others. It is wise to keep up with developments of doctrine to remain competitive.

There are a variety of ways in which knowledge can be transfered. Formal courses can be arranged in-house or outsourced. Informal methods such as 'sitting next to Nelly' may also be advantageous. The example and experience of older people is a valued asset.

Getting The Right Person For The Job

The ideal person doesn't exist so when looking to fill a vacancy employers have to look at how to approach the matter to get the best person for the job taking into consideration all the individual differences. The business has to attract people in the first place so it is important to get the image right. A good image will start the process of self-selection. Knowledge of the requirements of the job will help to build up a picture of the kinds of things to look for in an 'ideal' person and how well each applicant measures up against the value system and criteria decided by the managers involved in the process. They normally include personal attributes and qualities associated with successful performance. Information elicited during the recruitment and selection process should be both reliable and valid.

Paper qualifications from education and training will normally be an important requirement for many jobs. There is a lot of competition in the knowledge economy. It is however not the most important thing in all cases. There may be other considerations.

Credentialism places importance on 'paper' qualifications particularly educational qualifications in allocating people to jobs and careers. They can be very specific and show a level of intelligence that can be measured against others. The dangers include 'diploma disease' where gaining qualifications becomes an end in itself and the process fails to satisfy the needs of an industrial society. Screening emphasises academic qualifications but is only concerned with general intelligence. It is about sorting out people according to whether they have had a higher education or not rather than looking for any specific return on education. It serves to act as an entry to work rather than as a preparation for it. Cultural capital or wealth in the form of education and ideas and the ability to distinguish between cultural styles and categories is often used to legitimate the maintenance of status and wealth.

Dual labour market theory divides work into primary and secondary markets along a line separating long term, well paid and important jobs with career prospects and low paid, short term jobs and jobs considered 'less important'. Managers and administrators require knowledge, expertise and experience and fall into the primary labour market and therefore paper qualifications are important. As employers do not need to maintain staff who may only be called on occasionaly, many kinds of skilled and unskilled people may be placed in the secondary market.

Employers are using sophisticated 'scientific' selection methods more. They have to make the right decision. There are expectations on both sides.

The Shrewd Manager

We should be doing more to develop sustainable business paradigms for our own lifetimes and for the future. We already have co-operatives, social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility and business ethics. Stakeholders are being taken into account more now. Businesses generally are trying to be environmentally friendly. It can be difficult to determine the expectations of external stakeholders and is on the boundaries of management. It can be difficult to decide what is discretionary and what is mandatory. Paradigms are difficult to attain or even to define and operationalise but people keep longing, striving and researching ways to achieve their higher ideals.

Environmentalism has grown in importance in recent years. The focus is on the physical, ecological and psychological environments. It has raised public awareness of the impact of industry and consumerism on the environment. Nature and its flora and fauna are affected by industry and urban sprawl. The loss of endangered animal and plant species is a great concern to many scientists and ordinary people. Pollution of the air and water in our rivers, streams, lakes and seas resulting from dumping, intensive farming methods, inefficient use of fertilisers and sprays, phosphates and detergents from household use are problems we are still trying to control. The carbon footprint is something we are all invited to measure. Web sites are available to enter a set of data and have the footprint measured for a household or firm. Climate change is a major problem at a international level. Commercial forestry and deforestation degrade the land, lose top soil and cause desertification and are thought to be one of the main causes of climate change. The development and spread of conurbations and intensive farming methods have brought serious changes to the countryside. We have lost most of our original deciduous broadleaved woodland, lowland grassland and heath and most of the hedges to allow monocultural farming methods. The generation and disposal of large quantities of waste is an environmental issue. It is also an inefficient use of scarce resources. Recycling and industrial symbiosis are a start but not widespread enough and not part of normal functioning. There is waste and extravagance in the private sector and poverty in so many places in the world and in this country as well.

Business paradigms must also include the general application of principles to business behaviour. Ethical problems arise because of self interest and personal gain. It is said that 'Greed is good' and altruism is sentimental and even irrational despite the fact that greed can cause serious harm to individuals, firms and the economy. Competitive pressure can cause some people to engage in unethical practices to protect profits. Goals and values conflict when the ends are said to justify the means. Doing business across cultures where ethical standards differ may result in unethical practices and ethical problems.

Transformational leadership and management can introduce business ethical and moral principles into places where they do not yet exist. The leader should be inspirational, a role model for others in the workplace to resemble. A transformational leader will usually have a strong sense of vision and mission. The members can both rejoice and suffer with him/her, but the guiding principle of their actions should always be 'primum non nocere' which translates as 'at least do no harm' a quote from Hippocrates regarded as the basic principle of business ethics. Terms like continuous improvement help visualise and describe the new paradigm. There should also be commitment at the highest level.

Change For The Better

Change and devlopment programmes mean loss and gain. The forces for change see it as gain. The forces for maintaining the status quo and resistant to change will see it as loss. There will be tension between the groups. The change agent must be sure of all the relevant information regarding both groups and how the business functions. If the information is available to the change agent a change intervention can be designed. Change agents must have support systems. They must maintain psychological distance from others to gain the proper perspective required to lead a change programme. The system will consist of a network of people on whom the change agent can rely and who can act as a sounding board for ideas and problems.

Diagnostic models are conceptual frameworks used to understand problems and plan change interventions. They are everywhere. Systems theory provides us with the general systems model. Any collection of concepts and relationships that represent a system can potentially become a diagnostic model.

Interventions might emphasize group dynamics and attempts to improve working relationships between people. Interpersonal conflict occurs frequently in cyclical episodes. There may be latent issues with no manifest problems. A 'trigger' might bring it out into the open. There are strategies for controlling the conflict and for changing the underlying issues.

Another important diagnostic approach emphasises the deeply held, tacit and shared assumptions of members that guide their behaviour and have an impact on effectiveness. Culture reflects shared assumptions about routines, rituals, stories and language. There may be sub-cultures and counter-cultures. Cultures are difficult to change.

Feedback about progress should be provided. Attitudinal outcomes are important for measuring intervention results but in recent years behavioural measures and outcomes are increasingly called for by both managers and researchers. They are generic and should mean something to most managers. Participation-membership is one important category and includes tardiness, absenteeism, strikes and stoppages. A second category is on the job performance and includes productivity, quality, grievances, downtime and repair, accidents, supply overuse and inventory shrinkage. Good measures will be operationalised and are important because they provide the guidelines about observed characteristics and how they should be used. They should be valid and reliable. Changed behaviours should be encouraged and reinforced ensuring improvements become part of normal functioning.

Bright Stars

Some things we have to work out for ourselves. Choice has a fundamental role. Rational argument provides us with alternatives from which we must make our individual choices. Kierkegaard's example was Abraham commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac. His faith was what made him obedient to God. We might believe our moral position to be rationally justified. The conclusion being validly derived from the premises. The premises however must be vindicated and that may involve derivations from more fundamental premises and so on. At some point though a decision must be made and take the place of argument.

Questions of freedom and will and moral life are inseparable. There is no moral life without freedom. For Hobbes freedom is only discussed in terms of the absolute power of the sovereign and to stress that all human acts are determined. He takes no stock of freedom as an ideal and a goal. His theory of motives supposed that ideals were in fact a drive for domination. Schopenhauer saw life as meaningless and cruel and the individual as having no value. One thing the Milgram experiments on obedience show is that there seem to be no limits to obedience in some people even when inflicting pain and suffering is involved.

We should be like bright stars lighting up the sky. Life makes demands. It might mean giving it everything and carrying a cross. Reflection is necessary before important action. Costing and budgeting is necessary before making long range plans and devising strategies.

A Service Model

Services are generally classified along a spectrum from pure personal service with little tangible product at one end to pure product with little intangible service at the other.

They have characteristics unique to service markets. Most obviously no goods change hands and so no transfer of ownership takes place. A sense of ownership can be encouraged and felt by a variety of marketing efforts. The service however cannot be separated from the service provider though there is provider-customer interaction. They both affect the service outcome. Customers use the whole range of the senses in goods purchase decision making. Service products cannot supply the stimuli to the senses in the same way so creating an experience for the customer is important. It is only experienced after the purchase. It is experienced as it is provided and involves the active participation of the customer. Services not taken up mean a lost opportunity. When demand is steady it doesn't matter but with changes in service demand problems may arise. The quality of the service depends very much on who provides it, and when, where and how. Service quality is therefore difficult to control and variable. Each service experience is likely to be different. It is possible to implement quality control measures.

Service quality can be measured, some aspects more than others. Criteria for measuring service quality have been developed. SERVQUAL is survey method for collecting data relating to customer perceptions of outcome quality and input quality of the process. Maintaining quality in all areas is difficult and mismatches occur between what customers expect and what they perceive to have been delivered. Staff training and empowerment can improve the creation and delivery of a service and can also increase productivity. Measurement difficulties arise there because services are performed not produced. It may also suffer from customer involvement. Measurement in terms of transactions, customers or revenue may reflect badly on staff. Productivity should not be allowed to reduce service quality. Service providers should be quality obsessed with management commitment to high quality standards. Satisfied employees are as important as satisfied customers. Good relations all round mean that staff know the standards required and customers know the standards to expect.

A Better Place

Many people including founders, entrepreneurs and workers representatives both known and unknown have fought to make work and workplaces more humane for all concerned.

A workplace can become a place of knowledge, understanding, wisdom, humility, justice, fairness, happiness, utility and rights recognition. Knowledge is a key strategic asset and foundation. It has enormous worth as a source of value generation and competitive advantage. Understanding means that data and information can be analysed and interpreted correctly and applied to some good purpose. Wisdom helps to make the right choices and decisions. Humility guards against unethical practices, unjust wages, poor conditions, persecution and discrimination. Justice is the equitable distribution of benefits and burdens, or 'fair shares'. If the distribution is according to society's rules it is considered ethical. The utility approach is a cost-benefit analysis of an economic, social or human action using utilitarian reasoning. The balance of net benefits over net costs determines how much good the action can produce. Rights mean that people have entitlements to something or to be treated in a particular way. Denying rights, failing to implement or protect them is unethical. They are based on human rights principles.

We can only hope it continues.