Hands, Hearts and Minds: Changing Work and Workers at the End of the Century

Abstract

Charles Handy has argued that we do not have ‘hands’ in today’s organisations. The popular view is that organisations are opting, by choice or necessity, to engage with hearts and minds instead. It sits slightly oddly with a recent report on the fastest growing US occupations in the decade from 1994, which include home and health service aides, varieties of therapists, corrections officers and security guards. It seems that the future is care or constraint. Actually, there is a considerable amount of common ground among popular business and academic commentators about what the trends in work and workplace are. That commonality starts from a relabelling of the big picture. We are now living in a post-industrial, information or knowledge economy. As one recent study put it, ‘Future prosperity is likely to hinge on the use of scientific and technical knowledge, the management of information and the provision of services. The future will depend more on brains than brawn’ (Barley, 1996:xvii).

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