Research papers on Social Responsibility
Globalisation Impacts
Various Countries
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AUSTRALIA IN A FRAGMENTED, NODAL WORLD
Presentation by Kevin R Beck
at the Post Graduate Conference, University of Melbourne, Australia
24 July 1999
ABSTRACT
Australia is undergoing
a period of high economic growth, a boom time, and yet this nation also has
unacceptable levels of unemployment coupled with disillusionment, insecurity,
apathy and alienation. Researchers are seeking to understand why.
Human capital is undervalued
and much is wasted. Industry undergoes continued re-engineering and downsizing
whilst slavishly following questionable management methods and practices.
Political policy lacks a depth of research and debate.
Age and experience is
too often disregarded in favour of youth. Deeper learning is being devalued
by an over emphasis on competency based learning. Society is influenced by
the moment, by what is immediately at hand, by the craft of images, perception
and pervasive consumerism. Dissent is frowned upon, and practitioners are
too often victimised or ridiculed while the lesser morality of business and
politics is accepted as an every day part of life. The forces of global capitalism
intrude, some would say, with a decaying effect.
This paper, among other
sources takes, as its underlying theme, the research work of Richard Sennet,
specifically his book titled "The Corrosion of Character". Sennett teaches
sociology at the London School of Economics and New York University. He is
the co-author of "The Hidden Injuries of Class" (1972) with Jonathan Cobb.
In his latest work "The Corrosion of Character" (1998) he "explores the disorienting
effects of new capitalism".
For him there are two
worlds, the almost vanished rigid, hierarchical organisation, where what mattered
was a sense of personal character and the new world of corporate re-engineering,
risk, flexibility, networking and short term teamwork, where we must reinvent
ourselves constantly. The presentation examines this work in the context of
an Australian experience, extracting elements of Sennett’s story and asking
you, the reader, to examine them in the light of your own beliefs, perceptions
and experiences.
THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER©
Sennett defines character
as "the ethical value we place on our own desires and on our relations to
others. They are the personal traits that we value in ourselves and for which
we seek to be valued by others."
Post war Australia, similarly
to Sennett’s America, was a reasonably predictable environment where one took
a single profession, career or job and expected to work for a given period
to buy a house, raise children and retire. People had an idea when they would
retire and how much money they would have. Regardless of station, the narrative
of experience and place in the community provided a sense of self respect.
Those who worked under these conditions could say "this is what I do and this
is what I am responsible for." Today however there are many people that cannot
offer the substance of work life as an example to others, or their children,
of how they should conduct themselves ethically. The qualities of good work,
according to Sennett, are not the qualities of good character.
The whole of the workforce
is contingent, with jobs being replaced by projects and fields of work.1
And yet careers rather
than jobs develop our characters. The short term, flexibility of new capialism
precludes substantial narrative.
The economist Bennett
Harrison believes the source of the hunger for constant change is impatient
capital and the desire for rapid returns. Organisations are no longer pyramids,
they are being conceived as networks which are lighter on their feet, more
readily decomposable or re-definable than fixed assets (Powell). There is
no long term and this, according to Sennett, is the principle that corrodes
trust, loyalty and mutual commitment. The short time frame of modern institutions
limits the ripening of informal trust. Fleeting forms of association are
more useful to people than long term connections and strong social ties like
loyalty have ceased to be compelling. The time dimension of the new capitalism,
rather than high technology, the stock markets or free trade, most directly
affects people’s emotional lives outside the workplace. This short term capitalism,
according to Sennett, threatens to corrode the character of Rico, a central
individual in the research, particularly those qualities of character which
bind human beings to one another and furnishes each with a sense of sustainable
self.
This modern world of work
and politics is culturally conservative, there is a tendency to stereotype
and to loathe social parasites embodied in the figure of the welfare recipient.
Such philosophies appear to have permeated conservative governments that frame
policies in political speak – the "mutual contribution" requirement. The recent
comments by Minister Tony Abbott, demonstrate and reinforce this attitude,
whilst Mr. Abbott forgets that he is a servant of the people including those
he condemns.
To explain such attitudes
of government Sennett refers to Michael Albert’s theory of the Anglo-American
model that stresses the state bureaucracy’s subordination to the economy,
and thus a willingness to loosen the safety net provided by government.2
These regimes, with the
exception of Australia, may have low levels of unemployment but they also
have increasing wage inequality. Former Secretary of Labour in the United
States, Reich says that America is on the way to becoming a two tiered society
composed of a few winners and a larger group left behind.
The Chairman of the US
Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Greenspan (1995) declared that unequal income would
become a major threat to our society.3
Corporations are imbued
with human characteristics, treating their ongoing existence as paramount
to the interests of real human beings.
In this modern world there
is nothing unfair about a corporation making itself tighter, leaner and even
meaner or even reappearing in another form after they have failed. The representatives
of business interests oppose legislators altering the corporations law to
place workers rights and entitlements ahead of other creditors. Governments
procrastinate while moral imperative would have them act immediately. A coal
mine goes broke, the owner’s assets and directors, are protected from loss,
the workers lose their jobs, their superannuation, their leave and their redundancy.
Downsizing, right sizing,
or whatever desensitising language may be used to make it palatable, is something
readily accepted by society, governments and the business community as a fact
of life and a right of the owners of capital.
When IBM downsized, or
as Schumpeter says, engaged in creative destruction, the characters in Sennett’s
story took it upon themselves as their own burden having first overcome the
shock of recrimination. They believed they should have foreseen the circumstances
and should have planned for the contingency.
Paul Gollan, a lecturer
in management at the Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University,
says that companies that downsize destroy the experience network and the knowledge
of what made the organisation tick, informal networks, cultures and trust
relationships. Henry Mintzberg (1996) said "there is no re-engineering in
the idea of re-engineering, just reification, just the same old notion that
the new system will do their job".
Uncertainty today exists
without any looming disaster, instead it is woven into the everyday practices
of vigorous capitalism. Instability is meant to be normal. In modern capitalism
those employed "experience a distinction between their own time and the employer’s
time." 4
The modern manager, or
owner of business, too often sees commitment to the firm as something beyond
the separation of the two demanding that work take precedence as if the firm
owns the employee’s time, at its will and command. The working week is now
regularly over fifty hours often extending into periods of seven days, consistently.
This causes conflict in the individual and a feeling that they are not in
charge of their own lives. People are "surrendering life to capitalism" (Long,
1999). Sennett says the power that directs this world of work and time is
now more subtle. He defines "the modern system of power" in three forms, the
discontinuous reinvention of institutions, flexible specialisation of production
and concentration of, without centralisation of, power. Reinvention is decisive
and irrevocable. Technology is the primary tool.
Discontinuous re-invention,
or if one prefers other terms, delayering, vertical disaggregation or re-engineering,
gives employees many multiple tasks to perform. Sennett says that only in
the fantasy life of consultants can large organisations define a new business
plan, trim and re-engineer itself to suit, then stream forward to realise
the new design.
Erik Clemens says many,
if not most, re-engineering efforts fail. The American Management Association
and the Wyatt Companies found that repeated down sizing produces lower profits
and declining worker productivity. Craig Littler researching Australian firms
holds a similar view, and has documented at least two thirds of firms that
down sized did not achieve the targets or increased profitability.
Flexible specialisation
tries to get more varied products ever more quickly to the market. The market
may be consumer driven as never before in history.5 A strategy
of permanent innovation: accommodation to ceaseless change, rather than an
effort to control it.6 The concept of flexible specialisation suits
high technology and it is favoured by the speed of modern communications.
The shifting demands of
the outside world determine the inside structure of institutions. Sennett
talks of his annual visits to Davos where the ‘kingdom of achievers’ owe their
success to flexible specialisation. A place filled with ex communists extolling
the virtues of free trade and conspicuous consumption. These people have the
capacity to let go of their past and the confidence to accept fragmentation
which are the "traits of people truly at home in the new capitalism". These
same traits begetting spontaneity are more self destructive for those who
work lower down in the flexible regime.
The three elements, discontinuos
reinvention, flexible specialisation of production and concentration of without
centralisation of power, according to Sennett, corrode the characters of more
ordinary workers who try to play by the rules. Risk is a daily necessity being
shouldered by the masses. To quote Sennet, "it is the driven man bent on proving
his moral worth through his work". In the postmodern theories the notion of
fragmentation of identity, not simply enstrangement but dislocation, according
to Giddens (1990), comes about through ruptures in the discourse of modern
knowledge and information.
Sennett further says that
the driven man is intensely competitive but cannot enjoy what he gains. He
refers to Max Weber’s (1947) observation that man is weighed down by the importance
he has come to attach to work as being extremely relative to today.
According to Sennett,
detachment and superficial co-operativeness are better armour for dealing
with current realities than behaviour based on values of service and loyalty.
The older models of a
learning organisation are now typified, in new concepts of organisational
structure. Typified by subcontracting of work, reduction in salaries against
the national average, individual worker commitment, the disappearance of union
practices and unionised workplaces (Cardoso, 1998) and organisational entities
are now heterogeneous networks of human and non human materials (Easton, 1996).
Modern production equipment
enables less skilled workers to follow "iconised’ instructions and when the
equipment (computer) stops they stop. These are not learning organisations.
This is "program dependent
labour" with a shallow competency and increasing loss of knowledge in their
work. The work is not legible.
Sennett uses the modern
computerised manufacturing bakery as an example. When difficulty and resistance,
an important source of mental stimulation, is diminished through the use of
`fool proof’ technology uncritical and indifferent activity arises on the
part of the worker. The engagement with work becomes superficial.
If this is the case, then
re-engineering style, scientific process models, proposed by Champy and Hammer
(1993,4,5), as tools of management, cannot capture the human elements of the
absence of loyalty and values of service and will be doomed to failure in
their objectives.
Certainty, in the past,
available to one generation, is disappearing for the next. The most telling
example is the loss of the security of a job for life and the shortening of
the timeframe of work (Guillemard, 1993) "Over fifty and burned out"
Postmodernity has no single
inherent meaning or value and it is a new social arena with a universe of
events that is difficult to understand (Giddens, 1990). Those who can afford
it educate themselves privately which undermines the public system of education
(Probert, 1993). Governments, and employers, are making decisions that have
long term ramifications. The population, struggling to exist and absorb this
mosaic of change is left behind in the debate.
Education is being framed
with the single dimensional objective of fitness for employment. Argyris and
Schon (1978) termed this `single loop learning’. The need to understand learning
better in all of its dimensions is now imperative says Argyris (1991). The
purpose and the context of change have been lost to the practitioner.
The continued rhetoric
and focus on words such as clever and intelligent signals we are in the process
of creating a technological elite (Rohatyn, 1995) with growing inequality
in terms of the value of technical skills. Raising the wages of people who
produce planes and lower the wages of the unskilled with an attendant huge
transfer of wealth from these lower skilled, middle class workers to the technological
aristocracy. The jobs that are growing in Australia, according to the Australian
Financial Review writer Stephen Long, Wednesday 16, December 1999, are casual
and part time at the lower end of skills. Such climates promote extreme risk
taking in our youth and despondency in the older members who may not want
to embrace lifeless and unintelligent machines. In an unfettered world those
in a position to grab everything do and will.
What value are corporations
to community and how do they serve the civic interest rather than its own
ledger of profit and loss?
Australia, its government
and people mutually must define the common good. Are we in pursuit of unbridled
free market ideologies, a few political restraints on wealth inequality but
full employment or a balance between capital (corporate) interests, welfare,
knowledge and job creation.
REFERENCES AND READINGS
REFERRED IN THE PRESENTATION
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B.D., Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, Vol 10, 1 March, 1997,
pp37-48
2 Albert,
M., Capitalism against capitalism, trans by Havilland, P., in Sennett, R.
The Corrosion of Character, WW Norton Press, NY, 1998, p53
Applebaum, E. and Batt,
R., The new American workplace, Ithaca NY, Cornell Uni Press, 1994, p22-23
Argyris,C. and Schon,
D., Organisational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Addison-Wesley,
Reading, Mass,1978
Argyris, C., Teaching
smart people how to learn’, Harvard Business Review, May – June, 1991
Bartlett, C. and Ghosal,
S., Managing Across Borders, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1989
Baudrillard, J., Simulacres
et Simulations (translated) NY Semiotext(e) 1983
Baudrillard, J., America,
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Baudrillard, J., in Wilson,
T., Reading the postmodern image, A Cognitive Mapping Screen, 31:4 Winter,
1990
Belbin, M., Management
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Bell, D., The coming of
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Berger, The Knowledge
Class, Capitalism in Crisis and Everyday Life, Brighton Harvester, 1997
Binney, G. and Williams,
C., Leaning into the future, Nicholas
Brealey, London, 1995
Boies, J. and Prechel,
H., American Sociological Association, 1998
Boucher, C., Gender Work
and Organisation, Vol 4, 3 July 1997, pp 149-158
Callinicos, Against Post
Modernsim, A Marxist Critique, Cambridge Polity Press, 1989, p7
Carty, V., Gender, Work
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Champy, J. and Hammer,
M,. Reengineering the Corporation, Harper Business, New York, 1993, p48.
Champy, J., Time to reengineer
the manager’, Financial Times, 14 January 1994
5 Champy,
J., Reengineering Management: The Mandate for New Leadership, Harper Business,
New York, 1995, pp 39-40, p119,
Clemens, E., See Sennett,
R., p49
Cohen Rosenthal, R.E.,
Human Relations, Vol 50, 5 May 1997, pp585-604
Cooper in the Journal
of Social Work Practice, No 11, 1/5/1997, (author Blackwell, D.) pp41-45
DeCock, C. and Rickards,
T., International Journal of Organisational Analysis, Vol 4, 3 July, 1996,
pp233-251
Easton, G., Organisations,
Vol 3, 2 May, 1996, pp210-310
Focault, M., The Focault
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Administration (editors Fox, Elliott & Unwick, Lyndall), Harper and Row,
NY 1941
Giddens, A., Socialism,
modernity and utpoianism – New Statesman and Society, 2 November, 1990, pp20-22
Giddens, A., The Consequences
of Modernity, Cambridge Polity Press, 1990, pp2-3
Giddens, A., Modernity
and Self Identity, Cambridge Polity Press, 1991, p417
Gilligan, C., A different
voice, Psychological theory and women’s development, Cambridge Mass, 1982
Goodson, I.F., Nations
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Mass 1994
Graham, L., On the line
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Greenspan, A., in the
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pp 60-79
Hamel, G and Prahalad,
C.K., Competing for the Future, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1995
Handbook of Economic Sociology,
referenced below at Powell and Smith Doerr
Handy, C., The Future
of Work, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1984
Handy, C., The Age of
Unreason, Business Books, London, 1989
Harvey, D., The condition
of post modernity, Oxford, Blackwell, 1989, pp35-65, 67
Hargreaves, A., Changing
teachers and changing times, Casell, London, 1994, p23
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Wishart, 1989, p89
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T., Trust in Organisations, Thousand Oaks Sage, 1996, pp39-50
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According to economists the nation as a whole is wealthier collectively and individually.
We have been told in that same period, that we
can afford a number of income and other tax cuts
but despite the
introduction of the Goods and Services Tax,
the states cannot afford
better healthcare,
even though
misery and death might be the outcome,over time,
education,
along with transport, power stations,
dams
and
public services.
The privatisation of electricity has reaped the greatest windfall for
the interaction between politics and corporations.
There have been other privatisations,
and Telstra, Australia's largest corporation,
is to be privatised. The governments undertaking these ideologial exercises,
supported by
think thanks
with close political associations,
do not carry out economic and social evluations after the event to test the hypothesis they presented to justify the
policy action. They do not want
to know the consequences and if
others undertake such evaluations
the politicians
responsible,
and the corporate beneficiaries, ignore
the results. These interacting interests have been referred to as
thieves in the night.
Ask the federal, and state, governments why
the nation cannot afford
the services described above after billions in windfalls, and they blame ecah other, rising costs, global forces. Anything but themselves.
It is also of note that people can afford consumer items regardless of utility, different benefits (tax, welfare and assistance) for
different classes of people,
large numbers of underperforming parliamententarians and
bureaucrats, whole government departments,
wars,
internment camps for refugees and Australians alike,
disgraceful practics managed by bureaucrats and private police forces
locking people up without having committed any crime, and we also
treat
people with disabilities appallingly.
at the individual citizen, employment and
government services level.
We ignore an ever
growing divide between the rich and poor,
a lack of
leadership in the corporate and political sectors,
despite the
rhetoric of the past
and the political leadership has one rule for the ordinary citizen and a more lenient and tolerant view for mates
present,
even though they may
commit illegal acts
and engage in insidious, and anti-social, behaviour.
flaunting all the trappings of their power. influence and mate's clubs.
Economists, governments and interests
selectively use statistics, and measurement systems
to reinforce their messages and claims.
Meanwhile more Australians are
mired in, and captive to, debt,
at levels never seen before.
Australia's health systems are degraded and people are dying, Australian citizens are jailed and deported accidentally by federal agencies, we have a water crisis, our education systems are considered to be substandard in patches and our population is largely under educated.
We have growing
mental depression and illnesses,
social dysfunction, anger and rage across our communities and many do not
respect authority.
As a nation we
do not invest in,
nor utilise our human talent
and many of the nation's employers, and the federal government,
treat employees as utilities of
employability,
and they are
disposable for profit.
Our governments act as benevolent autocrats, and they dissemble, misrepresent and even
lie.
It is a democracy
managed, and under the control of, a handful of politicians, (unelected) advisers, immoral media spin doctors and we are disengaged and apathetic about our democracy.
We have never been richer.
I'm scared, it's different, I don't like it.
What's this web site, and the animals and birds, all about anyway? They are chattering away.
Why use us parrots, what are we supposed to represent? Does anyone take KEVIN R BECK seriously?
We will get into trouble.
Most people probably think Beck is a wanker with a website.
A proposition with some truth but why does he have to engender such an emotive debate and send his missives to the world? He's a spammer.
Shuddup, maybe no one will notice that we are here. It's alright for you, you are a white Australian cockie, I'm a coloured immigrant parrot.
Some people get pissed off real easy if someone speaks their mind and most don't say nothin'.
Best to be seen and never heard.Just take what is dished and keep your head down. Why can't people send out their opinions to others? Are we so busy that we cannot
promote debate? Do corporate executives and others think that they are precious and not to be bothered?
Perhaps they forget, or do not realise or accept, that this technology lets anyone get to their clients, voters, customers, bosses, employees - just about anybody.
No wonder people are so angry, and disillusioned, about their government and corporations.
They do as they are told and run the "employer, corporate, political, party or status quo spin", staying on message despite the moral, ethical and social costs.
This is a
moral failure, don't you think
in our political system exemplified by the refugee policy and policies of our governments?
We do not demand of our governments ethical and moral leadership.
We are just another westernised, developed nation that worships
materialism
and the ideology of wealth and greed.
I dunno if anyone takes anything said here seriously but there are a lot of people having a look and sending emails.
Everyone seems to need drama, of some type, to feel alive.
KEVINRBECK likes to pop into places surprising those who think they know who's in the game and why.
The drama is ratcheted up, and their attention, and resources, are deflected.
Does anyone really know at ant time, in Australia, who are the puppets and who are the puppet masters?
These are interesting questions.
How informed are the decision makers, and the strategists, the ordinary person and the media about events, influences and the ever changing scenarios of influence and action?
The tendency is to assume that the people with title, position and interests, initiate debate, orchestrate an event or outcome.
But what of the people beyond their horizons? People tend to seek confirmation of their beliefs, ideas and actions from those within their own circle of like minds.
They make assumptions and tend to presume that only people working in, or having a stake in their arena, are of consideration.
They have no idea of the real dimensions rarely making an enquiry, or checking, before they launch into their spiel.
They really, if ever, wander into the enemy camp, or contrary arenas, to gain a broader picture and input to their awareness.
They love to tell people they have never met before their story, about their world of work, to clarify and inform, presuming ignorance of fact, and knowledge.
Imagine the fun in castigating the big boys.
or telling a
senior political, or corporate, leader that they are full of .. you know what.
Knowing that they often have a false sense of position, power, influence and possibility.
Who set the
uranium debate running in political circles in Australia, in 2005, the uranium mining interests?
Do some people look into crystal balls like some sort of soothsayer and decide such and such will happen? They are called
"futurists".
There are not many in Australia's population demographic.
What do Australians
value?
Their
institutions, democracy, and governments?
Many of them leave it to others to get in and have a go.
They only become interested if it is in their backyard, affects their pocket or perceptions of their individual rights, and freedom, to do as they like.
They are isolated and
disengaged from participation.
Politics, government and the corporate world, are the domains of a privileged few and the greater number of people could not care less.
Maybe they are just quiet types, shy, too busy living and just trying to get by, or they might like to focus just on the money and their own self interests. Perhaps they like it the way it is.
Maybe some of them are afraid to say anything because the power collective (politicians, political party bosses, company board members, employers, managers and everyone with a stake) want to keep a lid on it.
Don't
rock the boat
you stupid parrot. The owner of these web sites does enough of that. The only people who have credibility with the decision makers are the people who have title, office, reputation, status and name.
You are just barking mad and raving on. Nobodies can't make a difference.
What does Piers Akerman have to say about all of this,
and Alan Jones?
That's where I get my opinions on critical issues.
It's about the economy stupid and that is the most important thing from which everything else flows.
Australians are valued! We are valued for our "employability"
and "productivity",
Yeh, sure we are assets, disposable short term assets, utilised when times are good.
When they are bad or you get old, see what happens to you.
Piers Akerman,
and Alan Jones,
like
Andrew Bolt,
are opinion commentators, not substantive investigative journalists and broadcasters.
The Australian Broadcasting Authority had an enquiry demonstrating the link between opinion, advertising and individual contracts.
In today's Australia it is the role of most governments, and definitely zealots, to shape Autsrlia and make life miserable.
Some might argue that the Minister for Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews demonstrates this zeal and commitment to shaping.
He put a private member's bill into federal parliament to over turn the Northern Territory euthenasia law, so that people can live with pain and suffering instead of being able to decide when to go. It was a religious principle that drove him was it, or a moral one, to oppose
choice and euthenasia? The coalition government espouses choice. Some in the federal government were not happy but they are required to toe the executive line.
There is a managerial mandate that the political team must be structured, think and speak as one. It is not the most productive model going but it is popular among Australia's political, and corporate, leaders.
Mr. Andrews next contribution to the quality of life is the reform of the workplace,
legislation that exempts employers with under 100 employees from unfair dismissal law, creating classes of employers and employees.
Employers with less than 15 people will not have to pay redundancy when they sack them.
Why not exempt the same employers from tax and corporations law also?
The justification for this exemption is an untested belief that it will create employment.
Whatever the motivation of the Minister both are controversial actions.
But the people do not get a say, they have to resort to marching in the streets and striking from work.
Why must employers have unchallengeable, and absolute, control in order for job creation to occur? It is probably because the public policy creator, in this case the Howard government
and a greater number of Australian employers have
no concept, or experience, of best practice or linear and lateral thinking.
The system of public policy debate and development does not rest on such knowledge or awareness.
Rather it is based on serving a political constituency, implementing an ideology or idea, because there is a likelihood absence of any other
idea or process to develop innovation and much of the policy that Australian governments enact is borrowed. The proposde changes to industrial relations and employment are not necessary in an environment where employer and employee are mtutally valued and
trusted. The Howard government, and many employers, find these a necessity because of the immaturity, infantile and poor standards of practice that populate Australia.
It is indeed an indictment of human relations management in this nation when some employers have to rely upon government to make policy, relationships and bring adversarial practices into play in order for them to be productive.
This is not surprising when you consider that the systems in operation in Australia are based on hierarchical structures, discipline and threats as the primary tools of compliance and interaction between people.
What more can you expect from those who strive to achieve "new middles of mediocrity".
Minister Andrews says that there are remedies available to employees who are unfairly treated,andthere are, however
but this implies that relationships are balanced, equal and moral, where everyone starts on a level playing field of bargaining power and that they have the financial resources to go through the courts of they are dudded.
Nice theory, pity about the reality that makes it a bit rat shit.
Could it be that the prospect of unemployment, misery, pain and insecurity are effective tools in keeping the "production" up and the resistance by individuals, down?
The rule of the
capital class
is masked by a claim that this legislative footwork will create employment and make the nation more prosperous.
What of the counter argument that it will make the company, the employer and the shareholders richer and the workers, without bargaining power, poorer?
It may add to the bottom line of enterprise but it may also add to the corrosion of Australia's character.
What's the most common decision made by an Australian company board and management to lift its share price and its profit? To get rid of employees. BHP Billiton has just taken over WMC Resources (June, 2005) and the expected first action reoprted by the media, is the shedding of hundreds of employees.
What do governments do when they want to balance the budget and create surplus?
They get rid of public servants. Can an Australian state or federal government actually become insolvent?
No, but the economists and rationalists and the money market traders want the Australian public to believe that porky.
In a capitalist society there must be a number of people who suffer for the good of the greater number and these people apparently can rely on the government's "safety nets" and the generosity of politicians,
within the boundaries of the
"surplus objective".
The federal government's
Centrelink is there to look after them.
The nation's intellectual property, its people talent, is treated like a commodity, under utilised, or in a vast number of areas not utilised at all.
The Australian management and decision style is probably more practically oriented, and application focused, rather than a mix of lateral thinking examining and exploring contradiction.
Many employers
place little value on academic qualification, study and training.
There is
no government, political policy or strategy to harness the talent of the nation,
other than narrow based competency skills training and the star rated Job Network.
Governments, and employers, appear not to care about this and the perception is that their horizons are the end of year accounts, profits, stock value and the next election and
their own political interest.
Beset by globalism, corporatism, managerialism, and other tisms, the nation appears to be somewhat insecure (not simply beause of terror risks and wars), apathetic about its governments and democracy, self interested and focused on greed.
Are we seeing an ongoing corrosion of the nation's character?
How do you know all of this? Are you a smart arse?
One of those left wing bleeding heart types that thinks that John Howard is a poor Prime Minister and that Australia is in a sad state of affairs and that we should let the rest of the world simply come over and park their bums here?
Do you want to let the rag heads out of the detention centres too? Do you want bludgers on social security and dead wood employed for the sake of it? What's your story?
Oh yes how typical, can't intellectually run an argument so you turn to insults.
It seems that there are a large number of Australian people who are dills, and among them are those who are also xenophobic, broad or selectively racist, bigoted and intolerant as can seen by the rise of the One Nation political party in the nineties and more recently in 2005 by
the behaviour of people with regard to Indonesia and the
Schapelle Corby case.
Cornelia Rau, the Australian woman held illegally in one of the Australian government torture centres has received far less media, and citizen, attention and concern than Corby.
Why? Cornelia displays `difference'. She may be mentally ill, she is like the handicapped, different.
Do Australians
tolerate
those who are different from them? I don't think so.
They are lead by the nose by a shallow, and very opportunistic and socially ignorant, commercial media, by infotainment television dressed up as current affairs and radio where the content, and depth of debate, is at an elementary school level.
One prominent radio programmer, Alan Jones on radio 2GB, posed the rhetorical question, what did it say about Indonesian justice that the
judges in Indonesia do not speak English?
What is that supposed to translate to?
How many Australians, let alone Australian judges and other radio shock jocks, speak Indonesian or multiple languages?
What are the character traits of the people who manage, and work in, places that flog bigotry and shallow brain waves day after day?
Do they have no regard for the effects of their rant on the social fabric, and attitudes, of the nation?
Obviously the nation is not interested in intellectual pursuits, learning anything, because 60% plus, of the population, have no formal education beyond year ten.
Under the calculated guidance of parts of the commercial media, many politicians and the under educated, our intellectual academia are subjected to denigration, ridicule and contempt and our institutions deconstructed.
Our senior judges are criticised and pilloried.
The standard of Australia's primary and secondary
education in state government schools
is very diverse, ranging from mediocre to excellence when it should be a quality system across the whole.
All governments in Australia espouse quality
yet outcomes continually differ to the verbiage of glossy presentations.
Governments have reshaped the "public service" using managerial ideology,
demanding sychophancy and compliance, under threat of dismissal and retaliation. This ensures that
there are no "public servants" left in Australia, they are now "government servants"
whose primary task is protecting the interests of a few powerful political elites, at the expense of the citizenry.
Anyone who dares to question the system will be denigrated, ridiculed, marginalised and then shut out.
Deep seated, complicated, insidious, theory based, and ideological, cancers are spreading through Australia, eating
democracy, citizens rights and freedoms.
If it feels good do it, the destructive and ignorant marketing message of a shallow capitalism
preying on the greed and want it now mentality
that corrodes character and nation.
The purveyors of feckless consumerism need stopping in their tracks
Many people are
not coping in their work and lives,
perceptions that decision makers and authorities are
misusing power, exercising poor judgement and management, corruption in public and corporate office is flourishing.
If Australia's organisation, and ethos, are modelled, and structured, on
serving the `master',
"populism" and
"the managerial goal" with its human costs
, and the
"profit motive (surplus) of governments",
innovation and healthy constructive criticism will wilt and die.
The Howard coalition's Workplace Employment Relations reforms are such a model and may be found to be yet another cancer creating an adversarial "bargaining" environment based on survival of the fittest.
In the place of well thought out and visionary strategies, ideas and policies, of governments and corporatons,
are the `spin doctors and 'the corporate media unit', in your face examples such as the federal Department of Immigration,
the NSW Departments of Transport and Health and the Queensland Department of Health.
People having their dignity taken away even dying, corporate behaviour such as HIH, FIA, Ansett,
the selling of almost every standard and value, for commercial gain.
Eveything, and everyone, has a price tag, is that the case in Australia?
Probably not, but a lot seem to.
Corporate interests, business and money can
buy (pay for) influence and input into policy and decisions,
direct face to face access to a minister of any government in Australia, by arrangement with the relevant political party.
Arrangements, and payment, can be made through the state branch of the political party.
There are so many other examples, with many more to come.
Politicians like
Bob Carr, Premier of NSW, and
Peter Beattie
Premier of Queensland, are particularly adept at using media and perception management, as a primary tool supplanting "public service" with "political interests management".
Why is it that many statements, and responses, come from a "media liaison person" or a "communications specialist", rather than the elected representative or that
a Minister will refuse to comment when questioned on a major issue of national interest?
Who elected them, the voters, the shareholders?
What is their role in the day to day activities of the Australian nation, to cover up, dissemble, pump out the smoke, to lie and misrepresent?
The
profession of spin communications
and perception management gives a
diminishing return on freedom of information
in the nation. People working in this profession require very precise traits, and characteristics for practitioners.
Among the criteria for employment is a demonstrable low regard for, or non existent
understanding of, moral and ethical values and behaviour with the singular, and primary, ability to stay on message.
Australia is rich, in an economic sense, but it is also poor.
Anyway, since we're stuck here together have a gander at this,
read about the fascinating discipline of sociology
and how the big corporations are playing with Australia's intellectual property, economy, investments and livelihoods
and doing it on the cheap for their self interest and profit.
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Carbon Disclosure - Business Implications of Climate Change