Corporate Restructuring and Liberal Learning.
Saved in:
| Title: | Corporate Restructuring and Liberal Learning. |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Useem, Michael |
| Source: | Liberal Education. Win 1995 81(1):18-23. |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 6 |
| Publication Date: | 1995 |
| Document Type: | Opinion Papers Journal Articles |
| Descriptors: | Business Administration, Business Administration Education, College Curriculum, Economic Climate, Educational Needs, Futures (of Society), Global Approach, Higher Education, International Studies, Liberal Arts, Organizational Change, Organizational Climate, Professional Education, Trend Analysis |
| ISSN: | 0024-1822 |
| Abstract: | This paper contends that trends in business (restructuring, downsizing, decentralization, managerial empowerment, internationalization) strongly imply a need to reorganize the college curriculum to provide future professionals with the skills and intellect to meet multiple economic and organizational challenges. This means a new learning model and new emphasis on liberal learning. (MSE) |
| Journal Code: | CIJJUL1995 |
| Entry Date: | 1995 |
| Accession Number: | EJ499688 |
| Database: | ERIC |
|
Full text is not displayed to guests.
Login for full access.
|
|
| FullText | Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN9502140012;LIB01WIN.95;1995Apr06.08:13;v1.1</anid> <jsection id="AN9502140012-1"> DISCOURSE</jsection> <title id="AN9502140012-2">CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING AND LIBERAL LEARNING </title> <p>Liberal education both singly and collaboratively has had much to offer prospective company employees. In combination with technical and professional skills, a liberal-learning foundation can provide a kind of high-octane platform, especially for those entering business firms that are internationalizing and restructuring. The relationship between education and careers, however, is always dynamic, with changes in each re-shaping the other. Recent developments on the corporate front thus suggest that we should also rethink the academic front. </p> <hd id="AN9502140012-3"> Managerial challenges abroad and at home </hd> <p>As American companies make the world into their stage, as firms expand their operations and markets around the globe, their executives are increasingly called to act as roving ambassadors. The scale of the American surge outside our boundaries is evident in virtually any economic statistic. Direct investment by U.S. corporations in foreign operations stood in 1987 at $339 billion; five years later it reached $474 billion. American investors in company stocks expanded their global reach as well. During the 1980s, investors annually acquired less than $10 billion worth of foreign stocks. In 1991 they purchased $35 billion worth of stock abroad. In 1993, they invested $68 billion. </p> <p>To some, however, the unfamiliar territory outside the walls of the firm presented a formidable challenge. Consider an oil executive with international operations. Besides extracting petroleum and refining its products, the executive must negotiate with foreign ministries, work with local unions, and understand environmental movements in a host of settings. Or consider a computer manufacturer with international sales. In addition to assembling components and selling systems, the executive should be able as well to move with some historical familiarity, cultural sensitivity, and language ability through diverse markets on several continents. </p> <p>Even at home, the external challenges are many. Beyond meeting payrolls and moving products out the door, a plant manager must also work with the United Way, civic officials, and newspaper writers. Similarly, not only must a bank executive judge risks and pay dividends, but he or she must also cultivate relations with Congressional committees, federal regulators, and community leaders. </p> <p>Fast, on-the-job learning of necessity comes with promotion up the managerial pyramid. But that learning and even the promotions themselves can be enhanced by early preparation. Lessons in international relations and American politics, comparative religion and foreign language may one day prove invaluable assets for the otherwise culturally challenged. </p> <hd id="AN9502140012-4"> Corporate downsizing and restructuring </hd> <p>Along with globalizing, American businesses have experienced a second transformative development. The most striking outward feature has been a seemingly relentless downsizing. The Fortune 500, the nation's largest manufacturing firms, hit their employment high-water mark in 1979. Some 16.2 million found work there just at the turn of the decade. By 1993, their numbers had dwindled to only 11.5 million. During the early 1970s, the Fortune 500 employed one of every five Americans in the non-agricultural workforce; by the early 1990s, only one of ten. </p> <p>Downsizing left a swath of destruction in its wake. Some employees lost all, or were on the precipice of losing all. Job security, pension income, and health insurance were all at risk or gone altogether. U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich warned that "companies are cutting their hearts out." Parade asked rhetorically, "You're forty-nine, and the boss just told you to empty out your desk. . .who will hire [you] now?" The Wall Street Journal found that"jobless males proliferate in suburbs" and "survivors of layoffs battle angst." The New York Times offered a photograph of dismissed IBM executives and spouses in prayer. Humorists took aim as well. The caption of a New Yorker cartoon read, "The Downsizing Continues." Above it stood a small delicatessen with the IBM logo over the door, all that remained of America's great computer company. Another New Yorker humorist placed a motorist's warning at the edge of a desert town: "No layoffs next 200 miles." </p> <p>For managers and professionals ensconced in or embarked on a career among the Fortune 500 or kindred companies, it will continue to be a tumultuous era. Liberal learning offers little antidote to the threat of corporate layoff. But it may well serve as a useful booster for the day after. Fewer than half of those forced from management ranks will later find themselves restored to comparable work. For many, the next stage can be a very different stage. It may entail teaching, volunteer work, perhaps the Peace Corps. It could involve running a smaller firm, maybe a religious ministry or even a political campaign. Whatever the destination, personal flexibility, learning ability, and an appreciation for diversity are among the skills required for a soft landing. If a company manager were to ask how he or she might better prepare for that fateful day when the boss arrives with a pink slip, I can think of few better foundations than what a liberal education, however acquired, is intended to sustain. For many, a liberal education would have equipped them well to move across specialist boundaries, to master new realms of knowledge, and to work with diverse groups of people. </p> <hd id="AN9502140012-5"> Decentralized organizations, empowered managers </hd> <p>Yet the corporate restructuring story contained another, more affirmative lesson. For those veterans who survived the downsizing or those newcomers who entered the now leaner company world, the landscape looked far different. Firms pushed authority to succeed and fail lower in the company, leaving managers with fewer line decisions and more oversight responsibilities. Companies contracted headquarters, strengthened operating divisions, and empowered teams to get the work done. </p> <p>Tall hierarchies, autocratic bosses, and musty paperwork were still to be found. But many companies had substantially flattened their pyramids. Bosses coached more and ordered less. The only paper remaining at some was glued to the walls. Process re-engineering, flexible work methods, and streamlined hierarchies improved employee productivity and product quality. For many the restructured company constituted, in short, a better place to work. </p> <p>The managers and professionals who remained and those newly recruited are likely to find the elements of liberal learning--breadth of reference, critical thinking, precise expression--a more useful asset than in the past. Communications skills, learning how to learn, and breadth of perspective have always been assets in the private sector. An earlier AAC&amp;U program led by Joseph Johnston (1986) has documented that fact. Two features of emergent corporate form make such skills of even greater value now. </p> <p>The first feature is job mobility, though not in the traditional upward sense. White-collar employees in the private sector find themselves moving less often up a hierarchy, more often across it. The flow is horizontal--among jobs, around divisions, between companies. For managers working in 1983, 68 percent were still with the same employer four years later. But for managers employed in 1987, only 62 percent remained four years later. Compare also the average expected length of tenure in a job in 1983-87 with that in 1987-91. For managerial, professional, and technical employees in the mid-1980s, the median tenure with a given employer stood at 6.2 years. Four years later, it had dropped to 4.7 years. </p> <p>The second distinctive feature of the new corporate terrain is enlarged job responsibilities. They have broadened as a direct corollary of company decentralization. Traditionally, managers had been assigned relatively specific functional responsibilities, a natural result of the increasing division of labor. Only those highest on the organizational chart could serve as general managers. That expanding division of labor has now reversed itself, with managers at lower levels expected to oversee several functions or more. In the past, they might have specialized in finance, accounting, engineering, production, marketing, research, sales, or personnel. Now they would have to take all into account. A large telecommunications firm had moved in this direction, and its chief executive signaled its implications for his 80,000 employees: "We have to transform everybody from a bureaucrat to an owner," he argued, "and an owner has to be concerned with everything in the business." </p> <p>If corporate restructuring is broadening and diversifying the responsibilities of managers at various levels, dexterity in working across boundaries and learning from others can be an invaluable asset. Prior preparation and practical experience helps in both cases. Interdisciplinary studies, challenging summer internships, and study-abroad experiences promote such connections. If a prospective company manager were to ask how he or she might better prepare for that fateful day when the boss arrived with an entirely new assignment, here too I can think of few better foundations than the habits of mind and the knowledge base from a liberal education. </p> <hd id="AN9502140012-6"> The liberal arts and the useful arts </hd> <p>The paradox is that neither managers facing reassignment nor those facing out-placement could have readily achieved their present company positions without a set of tangible entry-level skills. Companies hire college graduates with that specific job much in mind. Senior managers often insist that their long-term promotability is important as well. But the fact remains that without a definable set of job-related skills, or at least a general familiarity with business culture and company practices, it can be difficult to get started. I would finish the conversation with the prospective company manager by recommending that the liberal-education foundation be complemented by a professional foundation as well. The old dictum of combining the "liberal arts and the useful arts" has stood the test of time. Only now it is more applicable than ever. </p> <p>Administrators of business schools and schools of arts and science can thus be expected to find greater common ground. International relations, a core subject of many liberal arts colleges, and international management, a core subject of many business schools, offers one such terrain. Companies and managers stress more of both among those they hire. All the better if the curricula for the two areas are formally linked in a way that prepares graduates for the integrated task of managing both. </p> <p>My own institution, the University of Pennsylvania, has moved in this direction. During the mid-1980s, it created the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies to administer a new graduate program. A joint program of the Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, the Lauder Institute now enrolls fifty to sixty new students annually in a twenty-four-month dual-degree undertaking that leads to an M.B.A. and an M.A. in international studies. Course work includes politics, language, economics, culture, religion--as well as finance, statistics, marketing, strategy, and leadership. Two-fifths of its 450 graduates are presently working outside the U.S., and a majority of those employed within the U.S. are working in internationally oriented positions. </p> <p>The University of Pennsylvania has also just welcomed its first entering class in a parallel undergraduate program in international studies, a track that is annually expected to enroll forty new matriculants once fully under way. Jointly sponsored by the two schools as well, the undergraduates carry an array of liberal arts and business courses on their way to a four-year dual degree leading to a B.S. from the Wharton School and a B.A. from the School of Arts and Sciences. </p> <hd id="AN9502140012-7"> Globalization and restructuring at home </hd> <p>The globalization of American firms points to the need to internationalize our curriculum and student bodies. Many campuses have moved far along this path (Johnston and Edelstein 1993). The restructuring of American finns also points to the need to redesign our curriculum and organization. Many colleges and universities have not traveled as far along this path. Two aspects illustrate what may lie ahead. </p> <p>First, with company managers giving fewer direct orders and depending more upon subordinate initiative, team learning, and self-reliance, one wonders whether the traditional classroom is posing the wrong learning model. If students acquire knowledge by passively listening to authoritative figures at the lectern and experience no dialogue with them or among themselves, will they be prepared to acquire knowledge later in a work environment that stresses personal initiative and collaborative work? Less atomistic and more engaged learning may better model what our students are likely to face as they enter the private sector during the late 1990s. </p> <p>Second, with company managers listening more to their subordinates and customers, one wonders whether the absence of feedback loops is also presenting the wrong paradigm. If students rarely inform faculty of what has worked and not worked in the classroom, will they later be ready to inform their boss and listen to others in a company setting that demands it? Quality circles may be as needed on campuses today as they have become prevalent in many companies. </p> <p>Corporate globalization and restructuring are changing the nature of managerial and professional work in the private sector. The resulting turbulence and flexibility are enhancing the premium of liberal learning in collaboration with professional learning. As companies and their managers define their own new paths in response to the international and competitive challenges, so too will colleges and their administrators. </p> <p>This article draws on information reported in United Nations, World Investment Report: Transnational Corporations and Integrated International Production (New York: United Nations, 1993); Robert B. Reich, "Companies are Cutting Their Hearts Out," New York Times Magazine (19 December 1993): 54-55; Kenneth Swinnerton and Howard Wial, "Is Job Stability Declining in the U.S. Economy?" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 1993); and Securities Industry Association, 1994 Securities Industry Fact Book (New York: Securities Industry Association, 1994). </p> <p>PHOTO: View of the Sears Tower from Jackson Boulevard, Chicago (opposite page) </p> <p>PHOTO: Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco </p> <p>PHOTOS: Eastern New Mexico University (left); Bucknell University (below) </p> <hd id="AN9502140012-8"> REFERENCES </hd> <p>Johnston, Joseph S., Jr., et al. 1986. Educating managers: Executive effectiveness through liberal learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. </p> <p>Johnston, Joseph S., Jr., and Richard J. Edelstein. 1993. Beyond borders: Profiles in international education. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges. </p> <aug> <p>By MICHAEL USEEM </p> <p></p> <p>MICHAEL USEEM is professor of sociology and Rose Term Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences and professor of management in the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He serves on the editorial advisory board of Liberal Education. </p> </aug> <sidebar> <title id="AN9502140012-9">BEYOND BORDERS </title> <p>One of AAC&amp;U's newest publications, Beyond Borders: Profiles in International Education (1993), offers recommendations for developing interdisciplinary, international learning programs on U.S. campuses. </p> <p>"Business, as too few in the liberal arts understand, is oriented to decision-making and employs an intellectual approach--cost-benefit analysis. . . .Business students, for their part, stand to develop a better appreciation for complexity, context, anti ambiguity in a course of study that combines business and liberal arts perspectives. . . .The disciplines of business and the liberal arts can and should look to each other for new frameworks, strategies of inquiry, and modes of learning. They will find one another especially relevant as they both seek a global perspective." </p> <p>"We are connected with distant peoples as never before by economics, politics, transportation, and telecommunication, and we face with them a host of issues and problems--disease, hunger, military conflict, environmental degradation--that transcend national and regional borders. . . .Increasingly, the expansion of the international dimension of higher education is not so much an option as a responsibility--for all institutions and for all programs within them." </p> <p>"Education is a matter of attitudes and habits of mind--including those of valuing other cultures and their distinctiveness and seeing things from the perspective of peoples other than one's own. </p> <p>"International education. . .fosters personal growth through reflection on one's assumptions, values, and moral choices. . . . It is active and experiential, putting a premium on competence--on putting what one has learned into effective practice." </p> </sidebar> |
|---|---|
| Header | DbId: eric DbLabel: ERIC An: EJ499688 AccessLevel: 3 PubType: Editorial & Opinion PubTypeId: editorialOpinion PreciseRelevancyScore: 0 |
| IllustrationInfo | |
| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: Corporate Restructuring and Liberal Learning. – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Useem%2C+Michael%22">Useem, Michael</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Liberal+Education%22"><i>Liberal Education</i></searchLink>. Win 1995 81(1):18-23. – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 6 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 1995 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Opinion Papers<br />Journal Articles – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Business+Administration%22">Business Administration</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Business+Administration+Education%22">Business Administration Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22College+Curriculum%22">College Curriculum</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Economic+Climate%22">Economic Climate</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Needs%22">Educational Needs</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Futures+%28of+Society%29%22">Futures (of Society)</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Global+Approach%22">Global Approach</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Higher+Education%22">Higher Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22International+Studies%22">International Studies</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Liberal+Arts%22">Liberal Arts</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Organizational+Change%22">Organizational Change</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Organizational+Climate%22">Organizational Climate</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Professional+Education%22">Professional Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Trend+Analysis%22">Trend Analysis</searchLink> – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0024-1822 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: This paper contends that trends in business (restructuring, downsizing, decentralization, managerial empowerment, internationalization) strongly imply a need to reorganize the college curriculum to provide future professionals with the skills and intellect to meet multiple economic and organizational challenges. This means a new learning model and new emphasis on liberal learning. (MSE) – Name: CodeSource Label: Journal Code Group: SrcInfo Data: <searchLink fieldCode="JC" term="%22CIJJUL1995%22">CIJJUL1995</searchLink> – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 1995 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ499688 |
| PLink | https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ499688 |
| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 6 StartPage: 18 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Business Administration Type: general – SubjectFull: Business Administration Education Type: general – SubjectFull: College Curriculum Type: general – SubjectFull: Economic Climate Type: general – SubjectFull: Educational Needs Type: general – SubjectFull: Futures (of Society) Type: general – SubjectFull: Global Approach Type: general – SubjectFull: Higher Education Type: general – SubjectFull: International Studies Type: general – SubjectFull: Liberal Arts Type: general – SubjectFull: Organizational Change Type: general – SubjectFull: Organizational Climate Type: general – SubjectFull: Professional Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Trend Analysis Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Corporate Restructuring and Liberal Learning. Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Useem, Michael IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 1995 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0024-1822 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 81 – Type: issue Value: 1 Titles: – TitleFull: Liberal Education Type: main |
| ResultId | 1 |
