Joe’s Journal: Knowledge Work and the Hispanic Community

Feb 282012
 

“What does capitalism mean when knowledge governs rather than money? And what do ‘free markets’ mean when knowledge workers are the true assets? Knowledge workers can be neither bought nor sold. They do not come with a merger or an acquisition. It is certain that the emergence of the knowledge worker will bring about fundamental changes in the very structure and nature of the economic system.”

—Peter F. Drucker

Many discussions about knowledge work refer to Peter Drucker’s pioneering insight, formed as early as the 1950s, that those in developed countries were entering an era in which we’d use our heads more than our hands. There is, of course, no question that this shift is occurring and is causing “fundamental changes” in our economic and political system. Consider, for instance, the growing participation rates of Hispanics in the workforce.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that about 23 million people of Hispanic origin made up 15% of the labor force in 2010. That is projected to increase to 18% in 2018.  Moreover, the same study reports that unemployment among this group was 6% among those with a bachelor’s degree or above, 11.5% among those with only a high school education and 13.2% among those without a high school education.

Efforts by both political parties to secure the “Hispanic vote,” as though it was only a matter of immigration policy and how we treat illegal immigrants, amounts to a half-truth.

In the age of knowledge work, this segment of the population, which also tends to have a strong family culture, should be encouraged to place the highest priority on education. Otherwise, we in the U.S. are going to begin to look more and more like a less-developed country.

Our political parties would be doing the country a great favor to emphasize the importance of higher education for this fast-growing group and provide incentives for our colleges to become more “Hispanic friendly” without lowering standards. This includes paying special attention to marketing, as well as to the care and nurture of these students, to encourage high graduation rates especially for those who may be the first in their family to attend college.

It is a social responsibility and also an institutional responsibility to increase diversity. Our economic wellbeing as a knowledge society depends on it.

—Joe Maciariello

Joe’s Journal: Opportunity Out of Change

Nov 222011
 

“Now as to what the work of the social ecologist is: First of all, it means looking at society and community by asking these questions: ‘What changes have already happened that do not fit “what everybody knows”?’; ‘What are the “paradigm changes”?’; ‘Is there any evidence that this is a change and not a fad?’ And, finally, one then asks: ‘If this change is relevant and meaningful, what opportunities does it offer?’” — Peter F. Drucker 

In my most recent book we took a good look at the great shifts that are already taking place in the demographics of the Latino population in this country. There are many areas where these shifts will have a major impact and lead to tremendous opportunities.

In education, for example, we are going to have to consider a few things like teaching English as a Second Language (ESL). Because Spanish-speaking immigrants seem to be different from previous waves of immigrants, which pushed more for English fluency, more school resources are spent on things like ESL and getting teachers certified to teach English Language Learners; but those resources are becoming increasingly scarce. One has to wonder if there is a more cost-effective way to reach these students. Perhaps we could look to some sort of technology or outsourcing to organizations that are expert at foreign language learning. We also see that statistically, Hispanic students tend to go into the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics less often than students from other groups. This tendency is going to have a serious impact on the workforce in those fields. We do see that more colleges and universities are addressing the issue and finding better ways to reach Latino students.

There’s also going to be tremendous opportunity in the healthcare industry for attending to the unique needs of the growing Hispanic population. The increased probability for adult onset diabetes, for instance, will create new markets for both food companies and pharmaceutical makers as they try to find ways to alleviate the impact of this problem.

Government will also have opportunities to address issues that are important to this community. Evidence suggests that Latino voters strongly oppose immigration laws that seem punitive rather than measures which address the fact that there are so many undocumented Latino residents here. Lawmakers will have to understand that perspective as they try to draft legislation.

As we look at all these changes, we must be mindful to consider how they will shake out in the future as more immigrants become acculturated. The demographics indicating growth in the Latino population are certain. What is not certain is how the subsequent generations will behave and whether the opportunities that arise will carry on past the first and second generations.

– Joe Maciariello

Joe’s Journal: Focus, Focus, Focus

Oct 112011
 

“Organizations are special-purpose institutions. They are effective because they concentrate on one task. If you were to go to the American Lung Association and say, ‘Ninety percent of all adult Americans suffer from ingrown toenails; we need your expertise in research, health education, and prevention to stamp out this dreadful scourge,’ you’d get the answer: ‘We are interested only in what lies between the hips and the shoulders.’ That explains why the American Lung Association or the American Heart Association or any of the other organizations in the health field get results.”

–Peter F. Drucker

Peter Drucker is trying to tell us that in social sector organizations, if you do diversify too far away from your mission it destroys the performance capacity. In education, for example, if you compare public schools to parochial schools what you often find is that the public schools are forced under law and regulation to do a number of things that pull them away from their main mission, which is to educate children.

So, private schools are delivering significantly better results now. And sure, there’s some self-selecting that comes from parents applying pressure and paying tuition, but basically the private schools are dedicated to delivering just education and not dealing with all sorts of other social issues.

Schools have gotten distracted. I think we need to get back to minimum levels of literacy, and we need to find ways to help students discern their strengths and to build on the strengths.

I am still not convinced that teaching English as a second language is the right thing to do for the waves of Spanish-speaking immigrants. The reason I’m not convinced is because it seems difficult to make people fluent in two languages (both speaking and writing), and English is a tough language in and of itself. We need to at least get that right since it is the global language. In earlier waves of immigration, people wanted the next generations to learn English and let the old languages go. Of course, Spanish is a little different because of the proximity and connections to family in Spanish-speaking countries.  While it is wonderful to be multilingual, I just worry that ESL teaching is an example of how our schools are being forced to deal with a lot of problems and dynamics that are redirecting them away from getting the basics right.

–Joe Maciariello

Labor Force or Forced Labor?

Sep 232011
 

You’ve arrived from India to take a factory job in Kuwait, but your boss has taken your passport, you’re not allowed to leave the factory grounds, and your wages are being held back in order to pay for your plane ticket and your recruiter. Are you a slave?

Whatever label you want to give it, forced labor is a widespread problem around the globe. Now, a non-profit group with State Department funding is unveiling a website, www.slaveryfootprint.org, that will allow consumers to track what sort of things in their possession are likely to have been tied to slave labor.

Creators of the site, the New York Times reported this week, “hope to get consumers engaged enough in the issue to do something about it, primarily hoping people demand that companies carefully audit supply chains to ensure, as best as they can determine, that no ‘slave labor’ was used to manufacture its products.”

Peter Drucker wrote about slavery in a variety of contexts, and he pointed out that it isn’t just a concern for the enslaved. In every society that allowed slavery, all parties were debased. “Slavery affected the master just as much as it did the slave,” Drucker wrote in People and Performance. “It is the nature of a human relationship that it changes both parties—whether they are man and wife, father and child, or manager and people managed.”

Indeed, there is little doubt that Drucker would have compared what’s happening in at least some of today’s most oppressive factories with labor conditions of the 19thcentury. “In its eastward march through Europe, industrialization broke not only the bodies but the spirits of entire generations,” Drucker wrote in The New Society.

And yet Drucker also noted that, for the poor, especially for the peasant, a factory job can be an improvement, however slight. This was also the case for many workers during the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. “They were badly off, no doubt, and harshly treated,” Drucker asserted. “But they flocked to the factory precisely because they were still better off there than they were at the bottom of a static, tyrannical, and starving rural society. They still experienced a much better ‘quality of life.’”

When does work become slavery—and what’s a plausible way to combat it today?

Go East, Young Man

Nov 112010
 

In the same week that President Obama traveled to India on an economic mission, we heard this intriguing Public Radio International story about American workers moving to India to take advantage of that nation’s boom economy and to escape the relentless joblessness in the United States.

The radio story wouldn’t have surprised Peter Drucker, who believed that in an increasingly knowledge-driven economy, workers would move fluidly across borders. “Knowledge workers are highly mobile,” Drucker wrote in a 2001 article for The Economist. “They think nothing of moving from one university, one company or one country to another, as long as they stay within the same field of knowledge.”

As India grows (along with China) and more Americans look to live abroad, it is tempting to suggest that the U.S. might be on the verge of a new brain drain. Indeed, Drucker asserted in a 2003 lecture that India and China “are rapidly becoming counterforces to American economic dominance,” and he cited India, in particular, as “a knowledge center.”

We’d be remiss, however, if we didn’t also point to David Brooks’s latest op-ed column in The New York Times about America’s future prospects. Brooks optimistically argues that nations poised to thrive in future economies will be those that serve as hubs of global connectivity. And America’s unique history and diverse population, he maintains, positions it at the center of the global crossroads.

What do you think: Does the U.S. still have a place as the center of the world’s economy, or is gravity pulling us all toward India and China?


Push-Pull

May 282010
 

“To prevent immigration pressure is. . .very much like preventing the law of gravity.”

– Peter Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Amid a firestorm over the potential for racial-profiling, Arizona officials continue to defend their new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.  But Peter Drucker suggested that, law or no law, immigration is an inexorable force.

During a 1981 meeting with Cesar Chavez, he told the United Farm Workers’ leader that “there was no way to suspend” the flow of people crossing the border. The real question, Drucker suggested, was how to ensure that these newcomers—including the undocumented—make “a vital contribution to the U.S.” and become “a great asset.”  More than 20 years later, Drucker (himself an immigrant) was still expressing the hope that immigration would “give America an advantage” over other nations.

In this edition of Drucker Apps, we invite you to join our conversation about the role of immigrants in our economy and society. Weighing in will be Tomás Jiménez, author of Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity; John Schmitt, co-author of Low Wage Work in the Wealthy World; and a young undocumented woman from Ecuador.

We open things up with this question: Should we focus on trying to prevent the undocumented from living in the U.S.? Or should we concentrate on making sure that everyone who is here, regardless of status, becomes as productive as possible?

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