Deborah Middleton:
>My thoughts are that the concepts of sustainability may also be able to be
>applied to the individual in relation to the organization/social
>environment. Etc.
I believe I know what you are getting at, though I would echo Eva's request
that you put things in plain English or Hungarian. My question to you is
what you would propose to do with a definition, or conceptualization, of
sustainable work if you were able to come up with one. To what could it be
applied? Perhaps, as you suggest, mainly the knowledge based industries,
which already are largely "environmentally clean". Many other types of
industries are not only polluters, but are not sustainable as they now exist
because they are based on the use of finite resources. Work performed in
those industries is only as sustainable as the industries themselves.
But, I repeat, if one were able to meaning to a term such as "sustainable
work", what would one do with it? Perhaps much the same as has been done
with Brundtland's concept of "sustainable development". As you are probably
aware, we, as a global society, have used the latter concept to pull the
wool over our own eyes in an astounding number of ways. Recall the great
strides toward sustainability that were to have been made following the Rio
Conference, and then remind yourself of what little has actually happened
(or how far we have really come backwards). Walk into many a government
office and find that much that is being permitted and condoned -- the
depletion of forests and fish resources, the paucity of sound research and
regulation, the encouragement of unsustainable mining or oil and gas
production -- is being done under the cover of "sustainable development". If
you were able to define "sustainable work", might it not lead to a similar
use of the concept -- that is, lead to its use by national and international
bureaucrats and justifiers as a mantra or cover for the destructive stuff
that really goes on. Might workfare, for example, be referred to as a form
of sustainable work? Might Stalin have pointed with pride to the sustainable
work underway in the gulag? The gulag was, after all, created for the good
of society, just as workfare has been established for the good of the poor.
Bear in mind, too, that only a very small part of the world operates in a
"post-fordist" economy. For most of the world's population, work is mostly
difficult and uncertain, if it available at all. "Sustainability" would not
be a concept that the poor of Brazil, Russia or the Philippines would find
very meaningful or applicable to work.
Ed Weick
