> Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 09:33:15 +0000
> From: bgirard@Dialup.FranceNet.fr (Bernard Girard)
>
> >In most Japanese offices (....) if I go to a
> >colleague's door and s/he is chewing a pen and gazing at the ceiling, or
> >staring out of the window, THEN I go away - for it is at those times that
> >I know that the most important work is going on
>
> Are you really sure the most important work is going on while chewing a
> pencil? I never saw a worse productivity than in japanese offices (nothing
> to do with the factories where they know how to increase productivity).
> When there, I saw a lot of bureaucracy (letters go through layers of
> management before being sent to anyone), some lazziness (I know it's not a
> thing to say, but it looked like it) and the difficulty to take any
> decision. Even the japanese are starting to doubt somme of their methods.
I think that in industrial organizations, there is no
productyivity at all in the office side of the equation. A few years
back, Ford Motor Co. eliminated some 4,000 managerial positions and the
productivity of the whole comp[any improve. I really thinnkk that we are
waking up to a new era in which the administrative functions are being
scrutinized very carefully. The ones that are absolutely necessary are
being transferred to self-managed production who can, for instance, handle
budget concerns, inventories, fire and hire members; a few of them are
still being performed in house. Most of those administrative functions
that are not directly related to the main source of revenues are being
outsuourced (e.g., payroll). If we continue on this path, the number of
white collar employees will continue to decrease, and the "MBA side of the
house" will have to reinvent itself.
Ivan,
--
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"Las naciones marchan hacia el termino de su grandeza, con
el mismo paso que camina su educacion." "The nations march
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