What is productivity? And, why does it matter?Learn Management Articles on management-info.biz. What is productivity? And, why does it matter? article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
By: Robert F. Abbott When Phil hires a new helper for one of his construction projects, he first watches to see whether or not the newcomer has the right attitudes and habits to keep him as an employee. And, if the newcomer meets expectations,' Phil introduces him to his philosophy about work by telling him the woodcutters story. Two woodcutters who are working together for the first time, set off in the morning to cut down trees. One woodcutter works very hard, and aside from a couple of breaks, works steadily all day. The other woodcutter, though, seems to take many more breaks, at least one every hour. So the first woodcutter expects he'll have cut down many more trees by the end of the day. But, when they quit for the day, the first woodcutter finds, to his surprise, that the second woodcutter has done more, despite taking all those breaks. And, in his frustration, the first woodcutter wonders out loud how the second woodcutter did it. The second woodcutter couldn't help but hear the first woodcutter's question, and replies, 'Yes, I take many more breaks, but every time I take one, I sharpen my axe.' Phil uses this story of the woodcutters to explain his ideas about productivity, and he doesn't relate it to the productivity which economists refer to in their statistics. Phil thinks of productivity in a very immediate way: how many nails you can drive in one hour, for example. The economists are talking about the same thing, only they're talking about it as the sum of many millions of businesses and organizations, so they're talking about productivity in an abstract way. Whatever the case, productivity simply refers to the amount of value you can get from labor, land, or capital (invested money). As we'll see in the next section, Phil's income goes up when he (and his helper’s) productivity goes up. Increasing productivity across a whole nation is also good news. It means everyone in society becomes more prosperous, that everyone (or almost everyone) will have more money to spend or save. Increased productivity can also mean lower prices. For example, if carpenters and home building companies increase their productivity, then house prices will go down. Generally speaking, though, consumers, owners of businesses, and workers in those businesses all share productivity gains. And what about people without job? Well they often gain, too, because when businesses owners and workers make more, they pay more in taxes. In turn, that makes more money available to governments for social programs. Having heard all that, you may be skeptical, thinking your prosperity hasn't gone up much, if at all. But you'd be wrong. Productivity has gone up, and gone up a lot over the past two hundred years, and especially over the past 50 years. It may be invisible to most of us, but productivity is one of the silver bullets that have given us our prosperity and so many of our choices.
|
More Articles:1. Business Management - Be Aware Of Fear And-Greed By Hans Bool This is probably such a day as many others. Business as usual. Nothing wrong, no alerts, you loose some, you win some. You go with the flow and let your profits grow.... Do not think that this jargon is for investment managers only; business management and investment management is not that different.When you are in the business arena you know that you have to follow the market. You watch the competition, you check the trends and you respond to other incidents that you are involved in. Until th… 2. Activities vs Results You have two employees, one that comes to work early and is always the last to leave. They always seem to be busy rushing here and there. The second employee doesn't ever work late unless asked to and really doesn't seem to be that busy. If you had to choose one, which employee would you rather have in your company?In my opinion, the amount of activity they seem to be doing tells me nothing. I am not interested in how much an employee runs around and how many hours they work. What is important i… 3. Twitch Speed: Reaching Younger Workers Who Think Differently By Marc Prensky Every parent, educator, and manager knows that "Nintendo children"--those born after 1970 and raised on video and computer games, Walkmans, the Internet, etc.--are different. Unfortunately, the Gen-X discussion has focused mainly on the youths' supposedly short attention spans and attention-deficit disorders, ignoring or underemphasizing what is perhaps the most crucial factor--that this under-30 generation thinks, and sees the world, in ways entirely different from their parents.An example: T… 4. Time to Quit the Rat Race? By John McKee 1. Most leaders die with their mouths open.I recently read an article in Fast Company magazine about the issue of leadership. In it, they quote Ronald Heifetz, the founder of Harvard's Center for Public Leadership, who made the above comment back in 1999. He followed it up by saying, "leaders must know how to listen - and the art of listening is more subtle than most people think it is. But first and just as important, leaders must want to listen."You'd think this is simply basic stuff, right?… |
||||
