When I was in elementary school, I would watch my older siblings coming home from college with a series of punch cards (in the 1960s computers worked with them). On the other hand, they studied until the wee hours of the morning, using slide rules and large books, making complex mathematical formulas and equations that escaped my understanding. This is why he related them to scientists. Yes, although it seems trivial today, I was proud of my brothers (still equally) for having their heads well set.
Introduction
Upon entering the university to study industrial engineering, I realized that it was not as complicated as I imagined. Scientists are ordinary people with a little more knowledge, in fact much more than mine.
After finishing my university degree, I thought about how important it was to change so many things and improve the working conditions of the people in the companies where I provided my professional services. In fact I did some, but today, I realize that it has not been enough, I have lacked more ability to sell my ideas and achieve it in some cases and the need to obtain means of subsistence, following the orders and wishes of my superiors, have disabled in others my desire to be a more useful member in organizations with my purposes. However, I have not stopped having a critical view of my actions as a professional and of organizational behavior. This essay has a deep content in this regard.
I do not pretend to express my total rejection of change. In fact, technological advances in medicine, biology, agriculture, bionics, and others have been fundamental to increase longevity and in some cases improve living conditions for many peoples.
Technology and change
From the moment the microchip appeared on the scene, humanity has presented important and far-reaching changes in daily activities. At the same time they are accompanied by new administrative and organizational theories. These events happen at such a rate that individuals are not even able to assimilate and understand when others are arriving.
We observe how activities that required a large number of people and considerable time to carry out, are notoriously influenced with the help of automatic machines, computers, personal calculators, bar readers, scanners and instrumentation, accompanied by the no less influential Total Quality Control, Theory of Constraints, Just in Time, Reengineering and many other administrative concepts.
Both the technological and administrative areas, paradoxically, have been developed with the "noble purpose" of improving working conditions for individuals on the one hand, and decreasing personnel requirements with the consequent benefit relief in companies on the other. Some will say that there has been a great displacement of people from their jobs.
In my view, this displacement is partial, because in many cases, individuals who do not have formal training in these new technologies are removed from their jobs, but new and more specialized jobs are being introduced and from there backwards, people who are those who produce them, and what is very important, those who are able to instruct others in the management and maintenance of them, although the relationship is always at a disadvantage for those who depend on that job for support yourself or family group.
Another interesting aspect that technological changes bring, among others, is the so-called outsourcing. Such is the case of the appearance of companies dedicated exclusively to typing and misnamed «information processing», where really the only thing they do is transcribe data to cite an example (It is important in this case to emphasize that the information results from a process analysis and decision, otherwise it's just data).
These events are of a continuous nature, and advanced professions and trades will be obsolete in the short term of that uninterrupted process of "humanity" called change; However, it is to be expected that in economically underdeveloped societies, this does not appear so overwhelmingly in the short term.
Now, if we do a little reflection, delving into the activities of individuals, we gradually and critically find a substantial waste of time spent thinking about themselves. It got to the point of prioritizing the company over its emotional well-being: "Companies seem to buy from people rather than hire them." We are still slaves.
With the advent of new computer-led technologies, something more critical arose. These new teams that were supposedly introduced to improve working conditions, have created individual conflicts and within the organization, because they have been implemented without prior conditioning in many cases, and in others, they led to a greater number of functions per worker.: there is more and more data to be recorded, which is no longer relevant due to the desire to obtain «information», resulting in the excessive growth of data, to get answers from them through information and face the environment, being little relevant on many occasions because it is the result of an imposition without adequate planning and analysis of the environment in which it was to be integrated.It was given a rather immediate character. "Everything is solved by buying computers."
In the organizations that made these changes based on planning, they were based on economic indicators and the directions of the competition. Fundamentally they forgot about the people who should be involved, all because they were in the new trends and affirmed with a certain air of smugness "that they were keeping up with the change."
"If we are going to try to find some meaning in all this confusion that surrounds us, we must find a way to organize it in our minds to begin to understand what is really happening in the world and try to do something about it"
We lead a mad and unbridled race, seeking economic benefit, but in a unilateral way, without taking into account the individuals who are involved and continuously attacking their environment. "We must sit in a circle and wait for our soul to reach us"
In the last 3 decades, technological advances have been so significant that they form the foundation stone for the introduction of new educational trends; Students would no longer have to perform extensive and complicated mathematical operations, since calculators and personal computers would do it for them. It meant more time to spend learning other things. We see in children and adolescents an overloaded extracurricular activity in some cases (Sports, Music, dance), and in others, excessive time devoted to television and electronic games, displacing a true family activity.
"Under capitalism, growth depends on making some people envy other people so that they want what others have"
Curiously, the areas of human and social sciences were greatly diminished, to give greater emphasis to other advanced calls, to reinforce the story of being up to date with science. But this indirectly meant a methodology in disguise (although that was not the end) of leading to the sometimes unnecessary consumption of all these elements that technology and knowledge provide us.
To cite an example, we talk about how advanced a company is due to the number and capacity of computers it has, as well as the latest organizational doctrine implemented within it and not about the human quality of its members.
However, the new organizational and administrative theories were also conceived with the noble purpose of promoting the development of companies, they did not escape the trend of using them for fashion and also in most cases those in charge of their implementation fell into a lack objective vision of its use, as has happened in the technological area. There has been a great deficiency in the preparation of individuals for the correct assimilation, which are ultimately the benefited or harmed of the use that is given to both technology and all that sea of administrative doctrines. “If things go well, it is taken for granted that this should be the result and not recognition of a job; otherwise they are the people who were unable to make them work. '
“For years we have placed the search for efficiency and economic growth above all else because we understood that this was the path to progress. But we have done it at the expense of our workers, our communities and, as we have realized in recent years, our environment.
But this situation is definitely part of the educational process of the individual . Society is not preparing people who are creative, a fundamental factor for any change process, individuals who are capable of innovating and adapting all these conceptions and, more importantly, adapting to them. It is instilled and done throughout the lives of people, looking for the guilty instead of solutions, competition instead of the common good through teamwork; The individual is asked to be creative, but is not given the necessary elements to achieve it. (Here also the negative and highly harmful environment within today's society comes to play an important role, where the individual from an early age has knowledge of deception, misery, murder, violence starting from the family to that committed by the state, groups paramilitaries and guerrillas, to name a few).
At the beginning of the child's education, important steps are taken in the development of creativity, giving free rein to the imagination (in kindergartens), but little by little the schemes are closed with master classes, first in the primary education, more critical in high school and not less in college in undergraduate and graduate. The few rebellious elements that were able to escape this educational conception, come to work in organizations that "kill" the little creativity that they could have, due to the rigid schemes of rules and procedures, or in the worst case, due to power struggles and protagonism. The large volume of tasks to be carried out is not escaping this.
Regarding university education, it seems relevant to highlight the fact presented at the university where I studied my industrial engineering degree, which is recognized as the first institution in the country. The best teachers were from the science area which included calculus, physics and other basic subjects.
Many professors of the professional cycle had never had contact with the business environment. That is, they did not have work practice that delved into experiences to transmit to the students, outside of the books and old class guides that have turned yellow over the years.
The state must first reassess the educational process of its members, and the private company, which is ultimately the one that is going to use them in its production processes, is obliged to continually and critically rethink its course, so that Individuals are thinking, creative and critical elements, capable of making decisions or selling ideas, becoming objective leaders, a fundamental factor for all change within it.
Bibliography:
1. Handy, Charles. Finding Meaning in Uncertainty.
2. Ende, Michael. Notes folder. Responses Worthy of Reflection.
3. Ende, Michael. Notes folder. Foster a Critical Awareness.
