David Harvey's Postmodernity As an Essay

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Traditional point schemes, in which the size of a person's salary is a
function of the size of his or her budget, also don't fit in a process-
oriented environment." (Hammer & Champty, 78) Indeed, the authors here
identify one of the core principles to a changed global marketplace, where
the nature of supply chain processes, product delivery or service rendering
will have a dominant impact on how the bottom line is decided. Within this
context, the individual is to be assessed and rewarded not according status
in the company, but according to the value created by the individual.
(Hammer & Champy, 78)
The Harvey text provides a yet more nuanced perspective on this idea,
if not one shrouded by negative disposition. Indeed, we find that the
postmodernist text is watchfully uncomfortable with the implications of
capitalism to this proper valuation of creative efforts and internal
ingenuity. Instead, Harvey identifies the current structure as one put in
place not necessarily to drive an organization to its utmost potention for
excellence, but to use it as a means to reinforcing already existent class
divisions. The focus on labor rights movements and the philosophical
positions volleyed on either side thereof offer a compelling lens through
which to consider the implications of that which is demanded by the
reengineered corporation. Harvey's discourse on the impact of
industrialization points to the moment at which "came into being 'the
familiar landscape of industrial capitalism, with the time-sheet, the
timekeeper, the informers and the fines.' The battle over minutes and
seconds, over the pace and intensity of work schedules, over the working
life, over the working week and day, over the working year, has been, and
continues to be, right royally fought.
" (Harvey, 231) This idea of the
corporation as an internal battlefield where those with higher earning
opportunities and positions of authority exploit and subjugate those with
lower wage jobs is, of course, a deeply destructive and self-defeatist way
to orient an organization, at least in an era where labor rights and civil
liberties are regularly pursued and, in some instances, institutionally
protected.
The Harvey text seems to center on this understanding that as a
culture, we have arrived at a point where capitalism's inherent imbalances
have caused exceedingly problematic rifts and cultural shortcomings within
those corporations that have failed to evolve. Going to lengths to note
that social resistance in the face of overwhelming corporate power is often
a vain struggle akin to windmill tilting, Harvey is nonetheless moved by
the same point of fact as are Hammer & Champy, that the modern corporation
absolutely must change its total identity and orientation if it is to
survive a more sweeping social transition based on the economic merit of
more democratic intra-organizational policy.
In the intercession between the two texts in question, we are given a
practical discussion with deeply philosophical undertones. As Hammer &
Champy provide the business-theory perspective on that which must be done
to help organizations prepare for already occurring shifts in corporate
priorities, Harvey provides a foreboding discussion on the ideological and
socio-economic obstacles which detain so many organizations in a place of
willful regression. Where the two texts meet, there is an overarching
recommendation for organizations to engage practices which are more open,
honesty, fair and ethical.
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