Many organizations continue to believe that the best way to improve productivity is to strictly supervise their employees every working minute, while optimizing and simplifying tasks. This approach, based on the work of Frederick Taylor, was published in 1911 in The Principles of Scientific Management. Prior to this revelation, work was performed by skilled craftsmen who learned their job through experience gained as an apprentice. They made their own decisions about how best to do the work.

Management approaches change, and today, enlightened organizations understand that what is really important is productivity. This insight emanates from a trust-based work place. Although a seemingly simple concept, many struggle with it. It takes time to build trust. Trust can be lost quickly. Acting inconsistently, withholding information, and close-mindedness quickly result in lost trust. The volatility in the world economy is contributing to low levels of trust in today’s work place.

With the increasing trend toward e-mobility and virtual work, as well as challenges in attracting and retaining top talent, it is even more important to build an organizational culture that enables trust. In order to be successful, there must be smart leadership ― leadership that resists the temptation to micro-manage. The organization must have a clear statement of values that are congruent with a trust-based work place. Building trust requires open communication, integrity, honoring commitments, competence, showing respect for others, sharing goals, accessibility, collaboration, camaraderie, and doing the right thing regardless of risk. Everyone works together facilitating harmonious and effective working relationships. A trust-based organization is able to produce better and faster, and is in alignment with today’s globalized work place. Trust is the foundation for increased productivity and job satisfaction.

“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Further Reading:

Hurley, R.F., "The Decision to Trust" Harvard Business Review, 84(9): 55-62, September, 2006.

Lyman, A., "Building Trust in the Workplace," Strategic HR Review, 3(1):24-27, November/December, 2003.

Other Bytes

Here are some of the things going on in and around the engineering community:

• Nancy Schullery, Linda Ickes and Stephen Schullery discuss the results of their survey of employers’ preferences for resume style, delivery and cover letters [“Employer Preferences for Resumes and Cover Letters," Business Communications Quarterly, 72(2): 163-176, June 2009]. In today's competitive employment market presentation of your credentials is increasingly important to be selected for that all important interview. Interestingly, the authors found that preferences related to resume style and cover letters were similar among employers across all business sectors.

• James Higgins muses on a solar-powered world that he believes is attainable in the next 10 years in “Your Solar-Powered Future: It’s Closer than you Thought” [The Futurist, 43(3):25-29, May-June 2009, www.wfs.org]. Higgins describes the steps which will get us there, including: basic types of systems that convert solar energy into electricity, recent innovations in solar energy, feasible applications, economic issues, and what government must do to facilitate the competitiveness of solar energy.

• Thomas Frey discusses the idea of building offshore islands that are not affiliated with any existing nation or group in “Own Your Own Island Nation” [The Futurist, 43(3):30-35, May-June 2009]. Frey discusses the history of artificial islands and the island building underway in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. The legal status of such created land is discussed extensively, as well as who might be interested in such real estate and for what reasons. Frey forecasts that island countries with new forms of government will begin to emerge within the next ten years, and that they will dramatically shift the face of global politics.

• Frank Caccavo believes that training undergraduates to think like scientists should be a fundamental component of the undergraduate curricula. The scientific, inquiry-based learning of practical information will help them choose a career path and succeed professionally. The approach is discussed in “Teaching Undergraduates to Think Like Scientists” [College Teaching, 57(1): 9-14, Winter 2009]. Implementation approaches include faculty-directed research projects across academic disciplines, off-campus internships, and research-oriented courses.

• Challenges facing the global economy, and how the actions of governments could result in improvement or make the situation worse are discussed by Martin Wolf in “Looking Toward the Future in the Midst of Economic Uncertainty” [The Futurist, 43(3):36-39, May-June 2009]. Wolf discusses the unprecedented forces currently influencing the economy, the role of government, and his view of solutions. Wolf, who is a Financial Times columnist, emphasizes the difficulties of forecasting economies.

• In post-secondary education, there is an increasing reliance on part-time faculty to meet the growth in demand of providing education. Additionally, many educators are choosing to combine working in industry with part-time teaching. Eric Landrum discusses his research on instructional differences between full-time and part-time faculty in “Are There Instructional Differences Between Full-Time and Part-Time Faculty?” [College Teaching, 57(1): 23-26, Winter 2009]. Landrum was surprised that his research showed that student course evaluation scores and course grade distributions did not differ significantly between part and full-time faculty. There were, however, substantial differences with the degree of support provided by part-time and full-time faculty.

• Seyfi Kenan posits that education should be placing more emphasis on social problems in “The Missing Dimension of Modern Education: Values Education” [Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 9(1): 279-295, January 2009]. Kenan believes that today's students receive an education that insulates them from many of the factors generating social problems and their interconnections. He contends that a values education would lead society towards a more humane future in the face of social and ecological change.
  

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