[SOLVED] Responding to a discussion board

I need help with a Business question. All explanations and answers will be used to help me learn.

Gloves come OFF!! I need someone who can intellectually Spank this student’s post. He is highly intelligent, I need a response that counters his every premise.

Here is his original post:

This paper is to complete the requirements for the Discussion Board Forum 3 assignment in BUSI 750 Human Resource Development at Liberty University. The contents of this paper include the conceptualization of vocation and the connection of an ideal economy discussed in The Fabric of This World, by Lee Hardy with the codified or standardized work or job design theory as depicted in the book Strategic Human Resource Management, Fifth Edition, by Jeffrey A. Mello. Also, the connection of these topics to the general or overarching theme of investing in human resources with regards to human capital in the Mello book.

Divine Economy

The divine economy is a concept that combines working in harmony as a group of people or a society, investing in people or human resource capital, as both the divine or creation and human-made organizations that are often called businesses. The essence of the richness in the divine economy is the diversity of the population’s vocations which are fulfilled by engaging in an appropriate occupation. Without the support of the other occupations from each individual in the economy, the economy will suffer and decline (Hardy, 1990).

Codified Job Design Theory

When designing a job system, the model must take into account the tasks needed to complete the specific job, what resources are needed to complete the job, and how this will or does interface and interact with the other jobs or tasks in the organization. Once the details are listed, the codification, or standardization, of each job can be completed. The description of the jobs indicates the level of expertise, knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to complete the required tasks accurately and efficiently. The very narrow set of skills would fall in the area of job specifications. Job enlargement would be the antithesis of job specification, with the tasks covering a broad spectrum of responsibilities, requiring a person to be knowledgeable in a wide variety of areas (Mello, 2019).

Frederick Taylor created a system entitled Scientific Management. The reason Taylor focused on the science of management was to maximize efficiencies which, in turn, maximize productivity. Once the optimum method for completing a task is discovered, each employee is to be trained and then complete the tasks as directed. This derived efficiency also contributes to solving the challenge of employee scarcity. By creating efficiencies, fewer employees are needed to accomplish the needed volume of work (Paris, 2019).

In the global economy of the twenty-first century, the product cycles have shortened in length of time, requiring the design of the assembly and logistics to undergo a paradigm shift in order to accommodate this change. Technology has allowed this paradigm shift to occur. Along with emerging technologies, the design of the jobs to manufacture products has undergone a re-engineering to create a design that is quickly adaptable to the shortened product life cycles. This revolutionary change involves a cyber-physical system that creates a social interaction between humans and machines (Hummel, Hyra, Ranz, & Schuhmacher, 2015).

Humans have many constraints that machines are needed to compensate in order to have a job system design that maximizes productivity as well as adapting to frequent changes. Cognitive work analysis is an approach to accomplishing these enhancements. Cognitive work analysis provides a human who is making decisions with information concerning the state and flexibility of the systems in order for the human to make effective decisions in the least amount of time (Read, Salmon, & Lenne, 2016). The cognitive work analysis model creates a system that is easily codified.

Investment Orientation

To create an organization that has an investment focus or is investment-oriented, the organization must see employees as a central part of the completion of the mission. The organization must value the employees’ input into the success of the organization. These two factors can be determined by evaluating the organization’s management philosophy towards its employees as well as the establishment of career development processes that are utilized throughout the organization (Mello, 2019).

Conclusion

Work is either mostly enjoyable or a necessity to sustain life. A person may choose an occupation, but a vocation is something that utilizes certain gifts or talents within the individual. Therefore, if a person has chosen an occupation that utilizes the unique talents the individual possess, the person is in the correct vocation (Hardy, 1990). However, the work itself is in the so-called divine economy if the employer creates a standardization or codified job environment that maximizes the potential of the person doing the work as well as the productivity of the output. The employer must value its employees in both words and financial investments to accomplish these two goals. An example of this appreciation of employees not being the case is the denigration of students and staff by the president of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell, Jr. Calling students and staff “social misfits” and “half-wit” are examples of an employer creating work in which the employee’s view of such employment is, “..we work to make a living, as we must,” (Hardy, 1990, p. 4) (Woods, 2019).

When employees are not treated fairly, they may form unions. If the employees are not treated well after the union is created, the employees may decide to go on strike. The United Auto Workers declared a strike against General Motors on Sunday, September 15, 2019. This strike may lead to a recession in Michigan (Wayland, 2019). Therefore, the employer’s lack of appreciation and investment in the employees may have a negative impact on many of the stakeholders.

References

Hardy, L. (1990). The fabric of this world. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

Hummel, V., Hyra, K., Ranz, F., & Schuhmacher, J. (2015). Competence Development for the Holistic Design of Collaborative Work Systems in the Logistics Learning Factory. Procedia CIRP, 32(), 76-81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2015.02.111

Mello, J. A. (2019). Strategic human resource management (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Paris, I. (2019, June 19). Between efficiency and comfort: the organization of domestic work and space from home economics to scientific management, 1841–1913. History and Technology, 35(1), 81-104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2019.1621424

Read, G. J., Salmon, P. M., & Lenne, M. G. (2016, March 11). When paradigms collide at the road rail interface: Evaluation of a sociotechnical systems theory design toolkit for cognitive work analysis. Ergonomics, 59(9). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2015.1134816

Wayland, M. (2019, September 19). UAW strike threatens Michigan economy, could push state into recession, Moody’s and Lending Tree say. CNBC. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/uaw-strike-threatens-michigans-bonds-could-push-state-into-recession.html

Woods, A. (2019, September 13). Jerry Falwell Jr.’s emails denigrating Liberty University students revealed. New York Post. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2019/09/13/jerry-falwell-jr-s-e…