There's an interesting article in Monday's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/business/19GRAD.html
> "A growing number of companies are turning to grading systems, also known as
> forced rankings or distributions, as a way of making sure managers evaluate
> employees honestly and make clearer distinctions among them. At companies that
> do not compare employees with one another this way, nearly every employee can
> come away feeling above average, like the children of Lake Wobegon. But under
> the grading system, managers are forced to identify some people as low
> performers. [/] At General Electric, for example, supervisors identify the top 20
> percent and bottom 10 percent of their managerial and professional employees
> every year. The bottom 10 percent are not likely to stay. [/] As John F. Welch Jr.,
> General Electric's chief executive, wrote last month to shareholders, 'A company
> that bets its future on its people must remove that lower 10 percent, and keep
> removing it every year - always raising the bar of performance and increasing the
> quality of its leadership.'" ("Companies Turn to Grades, and Employees Go to
> Court", by Reed Abelson, The New York Times on the Web, 19Mar01)
I personally kknow someone who experienced this. This person
had a manager who would speculate to them about how the
manager could not imagine anyone could have such massive skills
deficits. Then the manager would explain to the
employee in detail how even if the employee made up their deficits,
the employee still might lose their job because they would be
competing against everyone else and every year the bottom 10%
would be weeded out.
Capitalism's inventiveness in dissolving all fixed social
relations (I think there's a phrase to that effect in Marx...)
seems truly "infinite".
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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