I'm learning about business and corporate culture. I have the impression that service-based business is harder on employees than product-based business, i.e. the softer professions have a tougher environment than the harder professions. As an very small case study, I'm thinking of the difference between two places I've worked recently: Waste Management and Microsoft - both international corporations (though very different in size); one is service based (waste collection/management) and one is product based (software & technology).
I think the difficulty for service-based/"soft" employees is due to the service-based business having less room and motivation for creativity and innovation. When one is selling stuff, this stuff tends to need to be "new & sexy" so people will want it. When one is selling a service, especially a basic one (waste collection, medical care, etc.), reliability and consistently are more valued than new and flashy. It's rather like other soft professions that are basic to our society - education, social welfare, emergency services, utilities; these are generally undervalued in dollars compared to professions that produce luxury items...and services.
Perhaps that's the difference. Folks working to provide luxuries are treated better than folks providing basics. The culture of basics is bureaucratic, micro-managing, distrustful, and focused on maintaining the status quo. The culture of luxuries is open, trusting, supportive, and focused on doing the best work possible. As much as I've shunned business and corporations for all the "bad" those entities do in the world, I've found that they hold many of the values as I do for how they treat people - respect, trust, support, encouragement, fun. The worlds of government and academia in which I've spent so many years are furtive, stress-filled, grasping, draining.
Perhaps it's been my position in these environments, that of entry-level and mid-management; agian, position of basic service to the whole endeavor. I'm sure these characteristics show up in all work places, in all places where people have to be together who don't necessarily choose each other.
How can we better value the basics and those who provide them? Can the basics also be realms of creativity and innovation? Is there something implicit in sustaining basic services/products (food) that demands objectification of the workers, i.e. treating workers as drones or mechanistic cogs, who provide them? I want to think that we have the capacity and the technology to treat every kind of contributing worker well - but do we have the will? Is it just too much to pay for what our food is worth? Do we really need so much "disposable income" so that we can buy things and services we don't need?
Well, I guess consumerism (not necessarily capitalism) needs us to do that. If we were to flip our value system upside-down and tax "bads" instead of "goods" - as has been suggested by Alan Thein Durning - and paid more for spinach than for a latte...what? Would civilization collapse? Would our children be better off? Would we work as hard, as long, and as thanklessly as many of us do now? I've noticed a gap in how we are with each other and I want to bridge it. One first step would be to find out if anyone is on the other side of the chasm who could catch my kite and real in the first cable.
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