Management and Organisational Culture - Essay Example

the mode of regulation and , 4. the mode of socialization. In the United States and Britain, flexibility typically embodies one of the two primary definitions, as the principal emphasis is on the internal structure of labour. The French regulationist school tends to put emphasis on the role of the state and its legal manipulation of economy, accessibility, labour flows, and labour structures (McDowell 1992; 402-3). Question 1 addresses flexibility as it pertains to a business article about outsourcing to India; Question 2 analyses the same concept with regards to a specific business.

'Flexibility' as described in Gentlemen's article about cyber-coolies (itself a name that is representative of the new boundaries of international business) is a politically-correct term that can and is applied to both legitimate and culturally-exploitative business practices in India and beyond. The mere fact that industries such as Citibank, as well as hundreds of telemarketing and call centre businesses, can base their customer service centres in places like India, the fact that this is both culturally feasible due to intensive training programs, and fiscally lucrative, due to international economics and exchange rates, is extremely indicative of this 'flexibility'.

However, this same term can be used to cover a raft of ills; damaging practices and habits can and have been instituted in a number of countries around the world in the name of this same 'flexibility'.Pietrykowski expands on this definition, writing that the notion of flexibility refers to technology, markets, skills as they pertain to jobs, and the degree to which markets replace the firm in the allocation of resources to production (quoting Schoenberger 1987, 1988; Gertler 1988, 1989, 1992; Harvey 1989; Hirst and Zeitlin 1991).

Pietrykowski notes that, when considered as a group, these factors essentially compose a system of capitalist production that stands in clear contrast to its predecessor, Fordism. While there certainly exist differences between flexible accumulation and mass production strategies of accumulation, "this distinction tends to ignore their similarities and, in so doing, fails to provide a detailed account of the historical transition from Fordist to flexi- centralized mass production (Pietrykowski 1995; 383).

"Gentlemen's article reveals certain trends that have taken strong hold worldwide. The first, and most pertinent, is the concept of outsourcing: in lay-speech, the practice of sending unskilled, semi-skilled, and even skilled jobs overseas in order to pay workers less for their performances. This trend has been both lauded and criticized, and justifiably so. Marketers and businesses claim that outsourcing provides stable income in countries where such opportunities are largely unavailable, perhaps ignoring the cost to the workers at home.

In some cases, Indian workers who are employed at offshore companies experience much better working conditions and benefits than do their nationally-employed counterparts.Outsourcing, however, carries a host of problems. It has the potential to destabilize industries in the business' home country by taking so many jobs away, in the name of financial gain for a few.