One can understand why employers fostered that image. Machines are much easier to maintain than people; one goes wrong and it is repaired or replaced. They are specialized and can be expected to perform a particular task well.
Strangely enough, employees readily embraced the concept, perhaps because they too wanted some distance in the employment relationship. In no time they were strolling into job interviews and joining in an odd tango to keep the discussion away from anything that was not job-related. "Behavior for rent" was the way some sages defined the arrangement, little noting that clever description fits the world's oldest profession far more than it resembles a healthy personal or employment relationship.
We can blame this development on the usual suspects - the courts and the efficiency experts - but their contributions do not explain the eagerness to market our wares by showing how machine-like we can be.
This aversion to the subjective and the personal slipped into other areas. At some point, "Government" students became "Political Science" majors. "Liberal Arts" became "Social Sciences." "Personnel" became "Human Resources." Making a discipline more scientific was felt to be a step up. Draining the personal from the professional was considered to be a serious advance. We weren't hiring people, we were selecting candidates, and it was darned cooperative of them to play along with the pretense that, to borrow a sentiment from "The Godfather," it wasn't personal, it was business.
I wonder if we can find some territory in between these two extremes; a place where there is greater recognition of the need to see the whole person while avoiding what most of us would regard as a violation of privacy.
No magic answers here. I'm still thinking about this one.
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Came across this today. Much more at the link.
...the four pillars of smart growth
1. Outcomes, not income. Dumb growth is about incomes - are we richer today than we were yesterday? Smart growth is about people, and how much better or worse off they are - not merely how much junk an economy can churn out. Smart growth measures people's outcomes - not just their incomes. Are people healthier, fitter, smarter, happier? Economics that measure financial numbers, we've learned the hard way, often fail to be meaningful, except to the quants among us. It is tangible human outcomes that are the arbiters of authentic value creation.
2. Connections, not transactions. Dumb growth looks at what's flowing through the pipes of the global economy: the volume of trade. Smart growth looks at how pipes are formed, and why some pipes matter more than others: the quality of connections.
3. People, not product. The next time you hear an old dude talking about "product", let him know the 20th century ended a decade ago. Smart growth isn't driven by pushing product, but by the skill, dedication, and creativity of people. What's the difference? Everything. Globalization driven by McJobs deskilling the world, versus globalization driven by entrepreneurship, venture economies, and radical innovation. People not product means a renewed focus on labour mobility, human capital investment, labour market standards, and labour market efficiency. Smart growth isn't powered by capital dully seeking the lowest-cost labour -- but by giving labour the power to seek the capital with they can create, invent, and innovate the most.
4. Creativity, not productivity. Uh-oh: Creativity is an economic four-letter word. Why? Because it's hard to measure, manage, and model. So economists focus on productivity instead -- and the result is dumb growth.
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