I’m pleased to announce another online publication from Policy Progress. This one is written by Owen Harvey and it’s all original material, looking at the issue of workplace productivity, why it’s important and why we never get to grips with it.
From my foreword:
We all know that New Zealand could do better and be more effective in its economic performance. But when we discuss solutions, too often we gravitate to ‘big-picture’ macroeconomic ‘fixes’, which may (savings rates) or may not (tax cuts) have anything to do with the problem at hand.
Owen Harvey doesn’t. His has been a consistent voice, urging to us to look at and think carefully about what happens within the workplace – and what we can do to improve that.
Owen brings together the best and most progressive work in the ‘management’ literature with an appreciation of public policy settings and the contribution they can make.
This short pamphlet provides a useful introduction to his ideas and their implications, which extend to achieving a more environmentally sustainable way of working.
Owen’s discussion of that last point links in nicely to some of the questioning of the ‘growth agenda’ from the likes of Tim Jackson, Wilkinson and Pickett, and Stiglitz and Sen, that I’ve been writing about recently.
You can download a copy here.
And if you’re interested in reading more of Owen’s work, I’d recommend Being More Like Ourselves: Smart New Zealand Enterprises (with Peter Harris and Andrew Huddart), Lean Thinking and Productivity and a conference presentation, Productivity: making skills count.
Tags: lean thinking, management capability, Owen Harvey, productivity, Thomas H Johnson, workplace
Hi David
I’ve not read Owen’s piece yet and I’m looking forward to doing so.
However, I’ve read this recent and shorter article sparked by what appear to be a false analysis in Reuters that claims that the unemployment problem in the US is structural. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/reuters-invents-qstructuralq-unemployment-in-the-absence-of-any-evidence?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+beat_the_press+(Beat+the+Press)
I thought your readers may find this refutation interesting in the face of claims that productivity (another structural issue) is poor in NZ. It has some useful, admittedly macro pointers when looking for signs of structural causes for an economic problem, and I’m keen to share the approach. It also includes questions of trade and the transfer work to be performed by a low paid work force abroad.
Jim
Thanks for that pointer Jim — Dean Baker’s ‘Beat the Press’ stuff is always worth a read!