Handy begins the article discussing how Margaret Thatcher’s winning vote in the Conservative Party election in Britain was not good enough to keep her in power. He uses her loss to highlight how the current age is the age of unreason, with a world continuing to change unexpectedly. According to Handy, in this world, businesses have given up on planning, and before long there will be more people doing paid work outside an organization than within it, a change that is part of what he calls a new portfolio work life. Handy proceeds to discuss how companies have been affected by this portfolio change, in that it is really their people and their ideas which have become the true intellectual property, and how people are now being regarded as assets in recognition of their increased individuality and value, requiring management by consent rather than mandate. A part of this change in organizations and portfolio work will be the development of a Third Age, and modern social institutions like marriage will also undergo change to become portfolio marriages. Finally, Handy notes, technological advances will make it such that work will move with the worker and traditional office spaces will not be utilized as in the past.
Handy, Charles B Thatcher, Margaret Harvard Business School Press Washington Post Company Organizational behavior Organizational change Organization theory Employment (Economic theory)
Source
Washington Post article, written by Charles Handy, on the new age of unreason, and how the changing nature of work and organizations will require portfolios, 1990; Charles Handy Papers; Box 19, Folder 1; 5 pages
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