The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business by Rita Gunther McGrath

Author:Rita Gunther McGrath [McGrath, Rita Gunther]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781422172810
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2013-05-13T14:00:00+00:00

TABLE 4-2

Trends in temporary employment

Period of economic recovery Share of temporary as opposed to permanently employed workers hired

1992–1993 11%

2003–2004 7%

2009–2010 26%

In addition, large swaths of work that can be modularized and shipped overseas are being handled in just that way. Everything from reading radiology scans to scanning legal documents is work that is finding its way to cheaper locales as companies attempt to offload the human capital tied up in doing these tasks. And, of course, outsourcing of tasks such as running call centers, managing computer networks, and handling noncore tasks for organizations is a well-established trend. The key point is that you don’t need to own an asset yourself to benefit from its services. A related theme is to leverage external resources to the extent that you can, rather than trying to complete an ecosystem all by yourself. A disturbing open issue is that although increasing flexibility helps organizations cope with transient advantages, we haven’t yet come up with many humane ways of addressing the social adjustment problems this creates for people who were never trained to bear the burden of employment uncertainty themselves.

Is On-Demand Employment the Future of Work?

Mike Orchard, the founder of Skills Hive, wrote to me in response to a blog I wrote about the topic:

I founded www.Skills-Hive.com in the UK last year to help more people and businesses understand the potential of the emerging employment models. While I agree that many people currently prefer to put their trust in a single employer to provide their security for them, an increasing number are keen to spread the risk and make their own decisions on pensions and healthcare. The benefits are not just with the employer, clearly all parties gain better control and increased agility, which is the key to success in our fast moving world … Personally, I have to agree with a great phrase coined by a young British entrepreneur, Brad Burton … “Having a job is just like having a business, except you only have one client—and how stupid is that?!”

I also heard from Brad Murphy, one of the executives at Gear Stream, a company that does high-end technology design and development work. He wrote:

The nature of work is changing and many folks forget that the idea of a “job” is a relatively recent phenomenon that is an artifact of the master/slave model established during the industrial revolution. It is NOT the future of work (thank goodness). This current transition we’re now in globally will likely take another 50 years to play out, but on the other side are some very exciting economic outcomes. Brave visionaries will pave the way in the interim. I am hopeful we will be one of those companies that builds a brighter future by creating new business models that are respectful and sustainable for all stakeholders—Individuals, Business Owners/Shareholders, and the environment.

Despite these optimistic observations, however, it is clear that for many employees the concept of on-demand employment is highly problematic. The dark side of flexibility for employers is that it creates massive uncertainty for employees.

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