| Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following
passage. The main idea of these business-school academics is appealing. In a word wt ere companies must adapt to new technologies and source of competition, it is much harder than it used to be to often good employees job security and an opportunity to climb the corporate ladder. Yet it is also more necessary than ever for employees to invest in better skills and sparkle with bright ideas. How can firms get the most out of people if they can no longer offer them protection and promotion? Many bosses would love to have an answer. Sumantrra Ghoshal of the London Business School and Christopher Bartlett of the Harvard Business School think they have one: " Employability. " If managers offer the right of training and guidance, and change their attitude towards their underlings, they will be able to reassure their employees that they will always have the skills and experience to find a good job--even if it is with a different company. Unfortunately, they promise more than they deliver. Their thoughts on what an ideal organization should accomplish are hard to quarrel with: encourage people to be creative, make sure the gains from creativity are shared with the pains of the business that can make the most of them, keep the organization from getting stale and so forth The real disappointment comes when they attempt to show how firms might actually create such an environment. At its nub is the notion that companies can attain their elusive goals by changing their implicit contract with individual workers, and treating them as a source of value rather than a cog in a machine. The authors offer a few inspiring example of companies--they include Motorola, 3M and ABB--that have managed to go some way towards creating such organizations. But they offer little useful guidance on how to go about it, and leave the biggest questions unanswered. How do you continuously train people, without diverting them from their everyday job of making the business more profitable? How do you train people to be successful elsewhere while still encouraging them to make big commitments to your own firm? How do you get your newly liberated employees to spend their time on ideas that create value, and not simply on those they enjoy? Most of their answers are platitudinous, and when they are not they are unconvincing. |