They're not employees, they're people

In this essay, business thinker Peter Drucker examines the changing dynamics of the workforce--in particular, the need for organizations to take just as much care and responsibility when managing temporary and contract workers as they do with their traditional employees. Two fast-growing trends are demanding that business leaders pay more attention to employee relations, Drucker says. First is the rise of the temporary, or contract, workers; 8 million to 10 million temp workers are placed each day worldwide. And they're not just filling in at reception desks. Today, there are temp suppliers for every kind of job, all the way up to CEO. Second, a growing number of businesses are outsourcing their employee relations to professional employee organizations (PEOs)--third-party groups that handle the ever mounting administrative tasks associated with managing a company's employees. (Managers can easily spend up to one-quarter of their time on employee-related rules, regulations, and paperwork.) Driving these trends, Drucker observes, is the shift from a dependency on manual labor to create wealth and jobs to a dependency on specialization and knowledge. Leaders are increasingly trying to keep up with the needs of many small groups of product or service experts within their companies. Temps and PEOs free up leaders to focus on the business rather than on HR files and paperwork. But if organizations outsource those functions, they need to be careful not to damage relationship with their people in the process, Drucker concludes. After all, developing talent is business's most important task--the sine qua non of competition in a knowledge economy.     

The discipline of innovation

Some innovations spring from a flash of genius. But as Peter Drucker points out in this HBR Classic, most result from a conscious, purposeful search for opportunities. For managers seeking innovation, engaging in disciplined work is more important than having an entrepreneurial personality. Writing originally in the May-June 1985 issue, Drucker describes the major sources of opportunities for innovation. Within a company or industry, opportunities can be found in unexpected occurrences, incongruities of various kinds, process needs, or changes in an industry or market. Outside a company, opportunities arise from demographic changes, changes in perception, or new knowledge. These seven sources overlap, and the potential for innovation may well lie in more than one area at a time. Innovations based on new knowledge, of course, tend to have the greatest effect on the marketplace. But it often takes decades before the ideas are translated into actual products, processes, or services. The other sources of innovation are easier and simpler to handle, yet they still require managers to look beyond established practices. Drucker emphasizes that in seeking opportunities, innovators need to look for simple, focused solutions to real problems. The greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to say, "This is obvious!" Grandiose ideas designed to revolutionize an industry rarely work. Innovation, like any other endeavor, takes talent, ingenuity, and knowledge. But Drucker cautions that if diligence, persistence, and commitment are lacking, companies are unlikely to succeed at the business of innovation.     

How Bell Labs creates star performers

How can managers increase the productivity of professionals when most of their work goes on inside their heads? Robert Kelley and Janet Caplan believe that defining the difference between star performers and average workers is the answer. Many managers assume that top performers are just smarter. But the authors' research at the Bell Laboratories Switching Systems Business Unit (SSBU) has revealed that the real difference between stars and average workers is not IQ but the ways top performers do their jobs. Their study has led to a training program based on the strategies of star performers. The SSBU training program, known as the Productivity Enhancement Group (PEG), uses an expert model to demystify productivity. The star engineers selected to develop the expert model identified and ranked nine work strategies, such as taking initiative, networking, and self-management. Middle performers were also asked what makes for top-quality work, but their definitions and ranking of the strategies differed significantly from those of the top performers. Taking initiative, for example, meant something very different to an average worker than it did to a star. And for the middle performers, the ability to give good presentations was a core strategy, while it was peripheral for the top engineers. Once PEG got underway, respected engineers ran the training sessions, which included case studies, work-related exercises, and frank discussion. The benefits of the program were striking: participants and managers reported substantial productivity increases in both star and average performers. The PEG program may not be a blueprint for other companies, but its message is clear: managers must focus on people, not on technology, to increase productivity in the knowledge economy.     

Attaching Workers through In-Kind Payments: Theory and Evidence from Russia

External shocks may cause a decline in the productivity of fixedcapital in certain regions of an economy. Exogenous obstaclesto migration make it hard for workers in those regions to reallocateto more prosperous regions. In addition, firms may devise "attachment"strategies to keep workers from moving out of a local labormarket. When workers are compensated in kind, they find it difficultto raise the cash needed for migration. This endogenous obstacleto migration has not yet been considered in the literature.The article shows that the feasibility of attachment dependson the inherited structure of local labor markets: attachmentcan exist in equilibrium only if the labor market is sufficientlyconcentrated. Attachment is beneficial for both employers andemployees but hurts the unemployed and the self-employed. Ananalysis of matched household-firm data from the Russian Federationcorroborates the theory.     

The discipline of innovation. 1985

How much of innovation is inspiration, and how much is hard work? The answer lies somewhere in the middle, says management thinker Peter Drucker. In this HBR classic from 1985, he argues that innovation is real work that can and should be managed like any other corporate function. Success is more likely to result from the systematic pursuit of opportunities than from a flash of genius. Indeed, most innovative business ideas arise through the methodical analysis of seven areas of opportunity. Within a company or industry, opportunities can be found in unexpected occurrences, incongruities of various kinds, process needs, or changes in an industry or market. Outside a company, opportunities arise from demographic changes, changes in perception, or new knowledge. There is some overlap among the sources, and the potential for innovation may well lie in more than one area at a time. Innovations based on new knowledge tend to have the greatest effect on the marketplace, but it often takes decades before the ideas are translated into actual products, processes, or services. The other sources of innovation are easier and simpler to handle, yet they still require managers to look beyond established practices, Drucker explains. The author emphasizes that innovators need to look for simple, focused solutions to real problems. The greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to say, "That's so obvious!" Grandiose ideas designed to revolutionize an industry rarely work. Innovation, like any other endeavor, takes talent, ingenuity, and knowledge. But Drucker cautions that if diligence, persistence, and commitment are lacking, companies are unlikely to succeed at the business of innovation.     

Looking ahead: implications of the present

On its seventy-fifth anniversary, HBR asked five of the business world's most insightful thinkers to comment on the challenges taking shape for executives as they move into the next century. In "The Future That Has Already Happened," Peter Drucker examines the effects of the increasing underpopulation of the world's developed countries. With growing imbalances in labor resources worldwide, he writes, executives in the developed countries will need to improve the productivity of knowledge and of knowledge workers to maintain a competitive advantage. Esther Dyson's article "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" reveals the mind shift executives will need to make in a networked world, where companies will be known for what they do rather than for what they say. Executives will have to respond openly and intelligently to feedback about their organizations. The old language of property and ownership no longer serves executives, writes Charles Handy in "The Citizen Corporation." The corporation should be thought of no longer as property but as a community, where members are regarded as citizens. Technology has given executives more information than today's machines can help them understand, explains Paul Saffo in "Are You Machine Wise?" Machine-wise executives will know when to turn their computers off and take their own counsel, he writes. Peter Senge's article "Communities of Leaders and Learners" urges executives to reject the myth of leaders as isolated heroes and instead to build a community of leaders. Sustained institutional learning, he writes, requires organizations to reintegrate their typically fragmented learning processes.     

What executives should remember

In more than 30 essays for Harvard Business Review, Peter Drucker (1909-2005) urged readers to take on the hard work of thinking--always combined, he insisted, with decisive action. He closely analyzed the phenomenon of knowledge work--the growing call for employees who use their minds rather than their hands--and explained how it challenged the conventional wisdom about the way organizations should be run. He was intrigued by employees who knew more about certain subjects than their bosses or colleagues but who still had to cooperate with others in a large organization. As the business world matured in the second half of the twentieth century, executives came to think that they knew how to run companies--and Drucker took it upon himself to poke holes in their assumptions, lest organizations become stale. But he did so sympathetically, operating from the premise that his readers were intelligent, hardworking people of goodwill. Well suited to HBR's format of practical, idea-based essays for executives, his clear-eyed, humanistic writing enriched the magazine time and again. This article is a compilation of the savviest management advice Drucker offered HBR readers over the years--in short, his greatest hits. It revisits the following insightful, influential contributions: "The Theory of the Business" (September-October 1994), "Managing for Business Effectiveness" (May-June 1963), "What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits" (July-August 1989), "The New Society of Organizations" (September-October 1992), "The Information Executives Truly Need" (January-February 1995), "Managing Oneself" (March-April 1999 republished January 2005), "They're Not Employees, They're People" (February 2002), "What Makes an Effective Executive" (June 2004).     

小额信贷机构的全要素生产率——基于30家小额信贷机构的实证分析

本研究运用30家小额信贷机构2005～2009年的投入产出数据和基于数据包络分析(DEA)的Malmquist生产率指数法,对小额信贷机构的全要素生产率进行测算和分解.实证结果表明:在时间序列上,30家小额信贷机构整体全要素生产力呈下降趋势.引起生产力下降的原因是规模效率低和技术进步缓慢,规模和技术进步成为小额信贷机构...     

The post-capitalist executive. Interview by T George Harris

For half a century, Peter F. Drucker has influenced senior executives across the globe with his rare insight into socioeconomic forces and practical advice for navigating often turbulent managerial waters. In his latest contribution to HBR, Drucker discusses the impact of the ideas in his latest work, Post-Capitalist Society, on the day-to-day lives and careers of managers. Drucker argues that managers must learn to negotiate a new environment with a different set of work rules and career expectations. Companies currently face downsizing and turmoil with increasing regularity. Once built to last like pyramids, corporations are now more like tents. In addition, businesses in the post-capitalist society grow through many and varied complicated alliances often baffling to the traditional manager. Confronted by these changes, managers must relearn how to manage. In the new world of business, information is replacing authority as the primary tool of the executive. And, Drucker advises, one embarks on the road toward information literacy not by buying the latest technological gadget but by identifying gaps in knowledge. As companies increasingly become temporary institutions, the manager also must begin to take individual responsibility for himself or herself. To that end, the executive must explore what Drucker calls competencies: a person's abilities, likes, dislikes, and goals, both professional and personal. If executives rise to these challenges, a new organizational foundation will be built. While a combination of rank and power supported the traditional organization, the internal structure of the emerging organization will be mutual understanding and trust.     

Productivity Analysis of UK Auditing Firms

This study analyses the productivity change in the United Kingdom (UK) of auditing firms over the period 2005–2012, using a Malmquist index with a technological bias. Productivity is the rate at which goods or services are produced relative to the input. A common measure of productivity is the ratio of output per unit of labour used in the production. Productivity change is the change in the total output relative to the change in the total input and it is composed of technical efficiency change (managerial practices and scale effects) and technological change (innovation and investment in new technologies). Until 2005, the auditing profession in the UK employed a regime of self‐regulation; after a brief hiatus, the country adopted the new European Statutory Audit Directive in April 2008, changing the regulatory framework. This study analyses the productivity change among UK auditing companies both before and after the regulation change. Our results indicate that the productivity change among UK auditing companies is mixed and not dictated by regulation. Furthermore, the traditional growth accounting method, which assumes Hicks‐neutral technological change, is not appropriate for an analysis of the productivity change in auditing firms.     

Optimal taxation and welfare benefits with monitoring of job search

In order to investigate the interaction between tax policy, welfare benefits, the government technology for monitoring and sanctioning inadequate search, workfare, and externalities from work, we incorporate endogenous job search and involuntary unemployment into a model of optimal nonlinear income taxation. In this setting, the government faces a trade-off between boosting employment of low-skilled agents and raising work effort of high-skilled workers. If sanctions for inadequate search effort can be targeted at high productivity types for whom it is socially optimal to search, the government can afford to levy higher labor taxes on marginal workers without discouraging these agents from seeking work. This allows for lower marginal taxes on work effort of agents with a job. In contrast to workfare, job externalities in the private sector raise marginal tax rates, as the government attaches more importance to boosting employment of low-skilled workers.     

Learning in organisations: a corporate curriculum for the knowledge economy

This paper elaborates on the argument that the economy is transforming into a knowledge economy. Therefore, individuals, teams and companies need to develop the necessary competencies to be able to participate in a working life that is mainly based on knowledge productivity. The traditional approaches to management, training and development will not provide the learning environment that is required for knowledge work. Each company should consciously design a corporate curriculum that turns the day to day work environment into a learning environment. The knowledge economy may bring prosperity to those who join the new elite of knowledge workers. Inherently, it also creates new imbalances.     

Capital Structure as a Strategic Variable: Evidence from Collective Bargaining

I analyze the strategic use of debt financing to improve a firm's bargaining position with an important supplier—organized labor. Because maintaining high levels of corporate liquidity can encourage workers to raise their wage demands, a firm with external finance constraints has an incentive to use the cash flow demands of debt service to improve its bargaining position with workers. Using both firm‐level collective bargaining coverage and state changes in labor laws to identify changes in union bargaining power, I show that strategic incentives from union bargaining appear to have a substantial impact on corporate financing decisions.     

Bank productivity growth and convergence in the European Union during the financial crisis

This paper examines the bank productivity growth and integration process for the 28 EU countries during three main phases of the financial crisis: the U.S. subprime crisis (2007–2008), the global financial crisis (2009–2010) and the sovereign debt crisis (2010–2012). We extend the Malmquist Productivity Index by applying an additive two-stage DEA model. This allows us to explore the sources of growth in different stages of production. Furthermore, we assess the integration of European banks by analyzing the β-convergence and σ-convergence of the two-stage Productivity Index. Our results show a productivity growth during the U.S. subprime crisis, but a consistent decline during the global financial crisis. The loss of competitiveness of the European banking system is due to the drop in growth of the performance stage and technical change. Finally, we find a strong convergence pattern during the financial crisis, mainly driven by the catch up process of some Eastern countries and the drop in performance of Western countries.     

Managing demographic risk

In developed nations, the workforce is aging rapidly. That trend has serious implications. Companies could face severe labor shortages in a few years as workers retire, taking critical knowledge with them. Businesses may also see productivity decline among older employees, especially in physically demanding jobs. The authors, partners at Boston Consulting Group, offer managers a systematic way to assess these dual threats--capacity risk and productivity risk--at their companies. It involves studying the age distribution of their employees to see if large percentages fall within high age brackets and then projecting--by location, unit, and job category--how the distribution will change over the next 15 years. Managers must also factor in both the impact of strategic moves on personnel needs and the future supply of workers in the market. When RWE Power analyzed its trends, the company learned that in 2018 almost 80% of its workers would be over 50. What's more, in certain critical areas its labor surplus was about to become a sizable shortfall. For instance, a shortage of specialized engineers would develop in the company just as their ranks in the job market thinned and competition to hire them intensified. Reversing its downsizing course, RWE Power took steps to increase its supply of workers in those key positions. The authors show how companies that face talent gaps, as RWE Power did, can close them through training, transfers, recruitment, retention, productivity improvements, and outsourcing. They also describe measures that companies can take to keep older workers productive, including workplace accommodations, revised compensation structures, performance incentives, and targeted health care management. The key is to identify and address potential problems early. Firms that do so will gain an edge on rivals that are still relentlessly focused on reducing head count.     

创建"服务型机关"——高校机关作风建设的问题和对策

创建"服务型机关"主要是以邓小平理论和"三个代表"重要思想为指导,树立和落实科学发展观.以转变观念为前提,增强服务意识;以提高素质为基础,提高服务能力;以提高效率为主线,提高服务质量;以争创先进为动力,创新服务载体;以建章立制为保证,强化服务效果,将高校机关建设成为基层服务、为教学科研服务、为师生员工服务的"服务型机关".     

Productividad total de los factores en las terminales de contenedores en los puertos de México: una medición a través del índice Malmquist

This paper presents an analysis of change in the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of container terminals in major ports in Mexico in the period 1982-2010. For this, we propose Malmquist Index, which decomposing the change in productivity in two factors: Change in efficiency (catch-up effect) and technological change (shift frontier). The results show that in general there was an increase in productivity over the period analyzed, which is explained by technological change; Manzanillo was the port that had higher growth in productivity, and opposite Tuxpan was the one who had the greatest reduction, it was due mainly for the negative trend in traffic mobilized during containers. These results show the need to develop public policies for ports to operate at maximum capacity.     

日本和韩国落实G20结构性改革承诺的进展

文章是各国落实G20结构性改革承诺系列研究报告的第五篇。金融危机和东日本地震后,日本经济陷入通缩,安倍政府实施了更激进的宽松货币政策、更灵活的财政政策,以及旨在提高日本经济竞争力的结构性改革。韩国结构性改革承诺包括提高服务业生产率、提高女性的劳动参与率、创造就业、保护非正规劳动者、促进绿色增长等内容。     

The effect of learning by hiring on productivity

This article focuses on the phenomenon of interfirm labor mobility as a potential channel for knowledge transfer. Using data from the Danish employer‐employee register covering the period 1995–2005, we investigate how knowledge carriers—technicians and highly educated workers recruited from a donor firm—contribute to knowledge diffusion and enhanced productivity in the hiring (recipient) firm. Structural estimation of the hiring firms' production functions shows that the impact of the recruitment of knowledge carriers on a firm's value added is an increase of 1%–2%. Several robustness checks confirm this finding.     

金融发展对中国企业ODI的影响路径分析

论文从生产率路径、融资约束路径和风险降低路径来论述金融发展对企业对外直接投资的影响。生产率路径主要表现为金融发展能够促进企业增加研发投入,能够帮助企业选择潜在收益最大项目进行投资,能够分散科技投资的风险从而提升企业生产率;融资约束路径主要表现为金融发展能够通过金融规模扩张、金融结构调整、金融效率提升来降低企业的融资约束;风险降低路径表现为金融发展能够通过市场深化与风险识别来降低企业对外直接投资的风险。