Human Resource and Employment Practices in Telecommunications Services, 1980-1998

[Excerpt] In the academic literature on manufacturing, much research and debate have focused on whether firms are adopting some form of “high-performance” or “high-involvement” work organization based on such practices as employee participation, teams, and increased discretion, skills, and training for frontline workers (Ichniowski et al., 1996; Kochan and Osterman, 1994; MacDuffie, 1995). Whereas many firms in the telecommunications industry flirted with these ideas in the 1980s, they did not prove to be a lasting source of inspiration for the redesign of work and employment practices. Rather, work restructuring in telecommunications services has been driven by the ability of firms to leverage network and information technologies to reduce labor costs and create customer segmentation strategies. “Good jobs” versus “bad jobs,” or higher versus lower wage jobs, do not vary according to whether firms adopt a high- involvement model. They vary along two other dimensions: (1) within firms and occupations, by the value-added of the customer segment that an employee group serves; and (2) across firms, by union and nonunion status. We believe that this customer segmentation strategy is becoming a more general model for employment practices in large-scale service | operations; telecommunications services firms may be somewhat more | advanced than other service firms in adopting this strategy because of certain unique industry characteristics. The scale economies of network technology are such that once a company builds the network infrastructure to a customer’s specifications, the cost of additional services is essentially zero. As a result, and notwithstanding technological uncertainty, all of the industry’s major players are attempting to take advantage of system economies inherent in the nature of the product market and technology to provide customized packages of multimedia products to identified market segments. They have organized into market-driven business units providing differentiated services to large businesses and institutions, small businesses, and residential customers. They have used information technologies and process reengineering to customize specific services to different segments according to customer needs and ability to pay. Variation in work and employment practices, or labor market segmentation, follows product market segmentation. As a result, much of the variation in employment practices in this industry is within firms and within occupations according to market segment rather than across firms. In addition, despite market deregulation beginning in 1984 and opportunities for new entrants, a tightly led oligopoly structure is replacing the regulated Bell System monopoly. Former Bell System companies, the giants of the regulated period, continue to dominate market share in the post-1984 period. Older players and new entrants alike are merging and consolidating in order to have access to multimedia markets. What is striking in this industry, therefore, is the relative lack of variation in management and employment practices across firms after more than a decade of experience with deregulation. We attribute this lack of variation to three major sources. (1) Technological advances and network economics provide incentives for mergers, organizational consolidation, and, as indicated above, similar business strategies. (2) The former Bell System companies have deep institutional ties, and they continue to benchmark against and imitate each other so that ideas about restructuring have diffused quickly among them. (3) Despite overall deunionization in the industry, they continue to have high unionization rates; de facto pattern bargaining within the Bell system has remained quite strong. Therefore, similar employment practices based on inherited collective bargaining agreements continue to exist across former Bell System firms

Knowledge management during radical change: Applying a process oriented approach

During periods of radical organisational change two elements - namely the organisation's strategy and its people - are affected profoundly. Strategic change involves refocusing the organisation in a direction that has little bearing on its past. People are affected by changes, as they are displaced to other parts of the organisation in different roles, or perhaps, are removed under the euphemism of de-layering, rightsizing and re-engineering. Hence, rather than enhance knowledge, senior managers inadvertently destroy knowledge during a radical organisational change. Yet pressures to change and the pace of change are unrelenting. Senior managers are forced to take an approach that can be summarised as ''change first - limit the damage to knowledge later''. Thus, this paper argues that organisations need a process to manage knowledge during periods of radical organisational change. The paper proposes such a process through case study evidence. It highlights actions managers take to ensure that they navigate the paradox of leading the organisation through radical change and nurture knowledge

Friction and inertia: business change, corporate real estate portfolios and the UK office market

It has been asserted that business reorganisation and new working practices are transforming the nature of demand for business space. Downsizing, delayering, business process reengineering and associated initiatives alter the amount, type and location of space required by firms. The literature has neglected the impact of real estate market structures on the ability of organisations to successfully implement these new organisational forms or contemporary working practices. Drawing from UK research, the paper demonstrates that, while new working practices are widespread, their impact on the corporate real estate portfolio is less dramatic than often supposed. In part, this is attributed to inflexibility in market structures which constrains the supply of appropriate space

Ergonomics Contributions to Company Strategies

Managers usually associate ergonomics with occupational health and safety and related legislation, not with business performance. In many companies, these decision makers seem not to be positively motivated to apply ergonomics for reasons of improving health and safety. In order to strengthen the position of ergonomics and ergonomists in the business and management world, we discuss company strategies and business goals to which ergonomics could contribute. Conceptual models are presented and examples are given to illustrate: 1) the present situation in which ergonomics is not part of regular planning and control cycles in organizations to ensure business performance, and 2) the desired situation in which ergonomics is an integrated part of strategy formulation and implementation. In order to realize the desired situation, considerable changes must take place within the ergonomics research, education and practice community by moving from a health ergonomics paradigm to a business ergonomics paradigm, without losing the health and safety goals.corporate strategy;paradigm shift;system performance

Organizational learning processes in downsizing

The purpose of this article is to explore organizational learning processes by examining how companies learn to do something new, namely downsize, on the basis of a small sample of companies in Europe. In a first step, the range of possible responses to downsizing, as discussed in the literature, is presented and compared with the responses described in the interviews. Significant gaps between the options described in the literature and the activities undertaken by the sample companies were found. In a second step, models of organizational learning are presented, specifically focusing on knowledge acquisition, information distribution and interpretation, and compared with the learning processes described by the sample companies. The article suggests that had the companies used a broader range of knowledge acquisition strategies, they might have expanded their range of responses to downsizing. A revision of organizational learning models to include a greater variety of perspectives in a problem definition phase before knowledge acquisition is undertaken is recommended. -- Um erfassen zu können, wie europäische Firmen lernen, die für sie neuen Aufgaben des Downsizing zu planen und durchzuführen, wurden zunächst die Erfahrungen in der US-amerikanischen Wirtschaft anhand einer Literaturanalyse und durch Sekundärstudien ausgewählter Untersuchungen ausgewertet. Anschließend wurde eine Primärerhebung durchgeführt. Es wurden Expertengespräche in 13 Unternehmen aus unterschiedlichen Branchen in vier westeuropäischen Ländern (vorrangig in Deutschland) durchgeführt. Die Auswertung der Interviews mit Führungskräften zeigt, daß in Europa die Erfahrungen der USA bisher so gut wie nicht wahrgenommen worden sind. Dieser Beitrag stellt die Lernstrategien der untersuchten Firmen dar und zeigt die Lücken auf, die sowohl für die Praxis wie auch für die Theoriebildung im Bereich Organisationslernen entstehen.

Methods for the Study of Downsizing: A Review

There has been a world-wide increase in the incidences of downsizing practice across economies and across organizations. This has been considered as the basis for coping with increasing competition. The present paper looks into some studies on downsizing. The focus of the paper is majorly on the research methodology used in these studies. This paper analyses the methods used for the study of downsizing and suggests the ideal methods of study for: a) organizational outcomes, and b) individual outcomes, which include the victims, the survivors and the implementers. The suggestion is to have context specific and issue specific studies with more emphasis towards the triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods to increase the soundness of the study.

Knowledge Management: Are We Missing Something?

As commercial organisations face up to modern pressures to downsize and outsource they have begun to realise that they have lost knowledge as people leave and take with them what they know. This knowledge is increasingly being recognised as an important resource and organisations are now taking steps to manage it. In addition, as the pressures for globalisation increase, collaboration and co-operation is becoming more distributed and international. Knowledge sharing in a distributed international environment is becoming an essential part of Knowledge Management (KM), although this area does not yet appear to be given much attention. In this paper we make a distinction between hard and soft knowledge within an organisation and argue that much of what is called KM deals with hard knowledge and emphasises capture-codify-store. This is a major weakness of the current approach to KM, equating more with Information Management than Knowledge Management. Soft knowledge is concerned more with the social and cultural aspects of knowledge, its construction and the processes through which it is sustained and shared. This paper addresses this weakness by exploring the sharing of 'soft' knowledge using the concept of communities of practice.Knowledge Management, Lost Knowledge, Distributed Working, Communities of Practice

Friction and Inertia: Business Change, Corporate Real Estate Portfolios and the U.K. Office Market

It has been asserted that business reorganization and new working practices are transforming the nature of demand for business space. Downsizing, delayering, business process re-engineering and associated initiatives alter the amount, type and location of space required by firms. The literature has neglected the impact of real estate market structures on the ability of organizations to implement these new organizational forms or contemporary working practices successfully. Drawing from research in the United Kingdom, the article demonstrates that, while new working practices are widespread, their impact on the corporate real estate portfolio is less dramatic than often supposed. In part, this is attributed to inflexibility in market structures, which constrains the supply of appropriate space.

Downsizing envoys: A public/private sector comparison

Aim This study builds on a previous research paper published by Acas (Ashman 2012) that explores the experiences of public sector employees that have been given the task of delivering the generally bad news of downsizing decisions face to face with the victims and then deal with the immediate repercussions – labelled downsizing envoys. The evidence from that paper is combined here with data gathered from envoys in the private sector in order to identify the similarities and differences in the experiences of envoys between the two sectors. The aim of this paper is to develop further our understanding of the envoy situation and to identify what instances of good practice can be garnered from either sector. Methodology In combination with evidence from the public sector study a total of 50 envoys were interviewed; where 24 came from across 9 public sector organisations, a further 24 from across 8 private sector organisations and two independent consultants. The interviewees are all presently or recently based in the North West of England. Including the 2 consultants 30 envoys are HR professionals and the other 20 are envoys drawn from other organisational functions. Findings A broad summary of the data gathered would indicate that in terms of how they undertake the role - that is, regarding attitude and personal conduct - the envoys are very similar irrespective of their sector or organisation. However, where the sector does have a differentiating influence is on how the role affects the envoys – in other words, the emotion and strain experienced in carrying out the task. Factors that make a difference here include how much support is available to envoys and what part they play in decision making processes. Suggestions for good practice The suggestions for good practice include ensuring that envoys are involved in decisions that affect their role and impact upon their understanding of downsizing rationale; that envoys do not feel forced into the role; that realistic efforts are made to train and develop envoys – especially with regard to the emotional aspects of the role; and to ensure that envoys are properly supported throughout downsizing activity