TheNewProductivityChallenge.pdf

1、The New ProductivityChallengeby Peter F.DruckerReprint 91605HarvardBusinessReviewHBRNOVEMBERDECEMBER 1991The New Productivity ChallengePeter F.DruckerThe single greatest challenge facing managersin the developed countries of the world is toraise the productivity of knowledge and ser-vice workers.Thi

2、s challenge,which will dominatethe management agenda for the next several decades,will ultimately determine the competitive perform-ance of companies.Even more important,it willdetermine the very fabric of society and the qualityof life in every industrialized nation.For the last 120 years,productiv

3、ity in making andmoving thingsin manufacturing,farming,mining,construction,and transportationhas risen in devel-oped countries at an annual rate of 3%to 4%,a45-fold expansion overall.On this explosive growthrest all the gains these nations andtheircitizens haveenjoyed:vast increases in disposable in

4、come andpurchasingpower;ever-wideraccesstoeducationandhealthcare;andtheavailabilityofleisuretime,some-thing known only to aristocrats and the“idle rich”before 1914,when everyone else worked at least3,000 hours a year.(Today even the Japanese work nomore than about 2,000 hours each year,while Ameri-c

5、ans average 1,800 hours and West Germans 1,650.)Now these gains are unraveling,but not becauseproductivity in making and moving things has fallen.Contrary to popular belief,productivity in these ac-tivities is still going up at much the same rate.Andit is rising fully as much in the United States as

6、 it isin Japan or West Germany.Indeed,the increase in U.S.manufacturing productivity during the 1980ssome3.9%a yearwas actually larger in absolute termsthan the corresponding annual increases in Japan andGermany,while the 4%to 5%annual rise in U.S.agricultural productivity is far and away the larges

7、trecorded anywhere at any time.The productivity revolution is over because thereare too few people employed in making and movingthings for their productivity to be decisive.All told,they account for no more than one-fifth of the workforceindevelopedeconomies.Only30yearsago,theywere still a near-majo

8、rity.Even Japan,which is stillmanufacturing intensive,can no longer expect in-creased productivity in that sector to sustain its eco-nomic growth.Indeed,the great majority of workingpeople in Japan are knowledge and service workerswith productivities as low as those in any otherdeveloped country.And

9、 when farmers make up only3%of the employed population,as they do in theUnited States,Japan,and most of Western Europe,even record increases in their output add virtuallynothing to their countrys overall productivity andwealth.The chief economic priority for developed coun-tries,therefore,must be to

10、 raise the productivity ofknowledge and service work.The country that doesthis first will dominate the twenty-first century eco-nomically.The most pressing social challenge devel-oped countries face,however,will be to raise thePeter F.Drucker is the Clarke Professor of Social Scienceand Management a

11、t the Claremont Graduate School inClaremont,California and the author of,most recently,Managing the Nonprofit Organization(HarperCollins,1990).This is Mr.Druckers twenty-ninth article in HBR.Copyright 1991 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.All rights reserved.productivity of service wo

12、rk.Unless this challenge ismet,the developed world will face increasing socialtensions,increasing polarization,increasing radicali-zation,possibly even class war.In developed economies,opportunities for careersand promotion are more and more limited to peoplewith advanced schooling,people qualified

13、for knowl-edge work.But these men and women will always bea minority.They will always be outnumbered bypeople who lack the qualifications for anything butlow-skilled service jobspeople who in their socialposition are comparable to the“proletarians”of 100years ago,the poorly educated,unskilled masses

14、 whothrongedtheexplodingindustrialcitiesandstreamedinto their factories.In the early 1880s,intelligent observers of everypolitical persuasion were obsessed with the specterofclasswarbetweentheindustrialproletariatandthebourgeoisie.Karl Marx was hardlyaloneinpredictingthat the“immiserization”of the p

15、roletariat wouldlead inevitably to revolution.Benjamin Disraeli,per-haps the greatest of the nineteenth century conserva-tives,was equally persuaded of the inevitability ofclass war.And Henry James,the chronicler of Ameri-can wealth and European aristocracy,was so fright-ened by the prospect that he

16、 made it the centralthemeofThePrincessCasamassima,one ofhismosthaunting novels.What defeated these prophecies,which seemedeminently reasonable,indeed almost self-evident tocontemporaries,was the revolution in productivityset off by Frederick W.Taylor in 1881,when he beganto study the way a common la

17、borer shoveled sand.Taylor himself worked in an iron foundry and wasdeeply shocked by the bitter animosity between theworkersandmanagers.Fearfulthatthishatredwouldultimatelyleadtoclass war,hesetouttoimprovetheefficiency of industrial work.And his efforts,in turn,sparked the revolution that allowed i

18、ndustrial work-ers to earn middle-class wages and achieve middle-class status despite their lack of skill and education.By 1930,when according to Marx the revolution ofthe proletariat should have been a fait accompli,theproletariat had become the bourgeoisie.Now it is time for another productivity r

19、evolution.This time,however,history is on our side.In the pastcentury,we have learned a great deal about produc-tivity and how to raise itenough to know that weneed a revolution,enough to know how to start one.Knowledge and service workers range from re-search scientists and cardiac surgeons through

20、draftswomen and store managers to 16-year-olds who flip hamburgers in fast-food restaurants onSaturday afternoons.Their ranks also include peoplewhose work makes them“machine operators”:dish-washers,janitors,data-entry operators.Yet for alltheir diversity in knowledge,skill,responsibility,socialstat

21、us,andpay,knowledgeandserviceworkersare remarkably alike in two crucial respects:whatdoes not work in raising their productivity and whatdoes.The first thing we have learnedand it came as arude shockis about what does not work.Capitalcannot be substituted for labor.Nor will new tech-nology by itself

22、 generate higher productivity.In mak-ing and moving things,capital and technology arefactors of production,to use the economists term.Inknowledgeandservicework,theyaretoolsofproduc-tion.The difference is that a factor can replace labor,while a tool may or may not.Whether tools helpproductivity or ha

23、rm it depends on what people dowith them,on the purpose to which they are beingput,for instance,or on the skill of the user.Thirtyyears ago,for example,we were sure the efficiency ofthe computer would lead to massive reductionsin clerical and office staff.The promise of greaterproductivity led to ma

24、ssive investments in data-pro-cessing equipment that now rival those in materials-processing technology(that is,in conventional ma-chinery).Yet office and clerical forces have grown ata much faster rate since the introduction of informa-tion technology than ever before.And there has beenvirtually no

25、 increase in the productivity of servicework.Hospitals are a telling example.In the late 1940s,they were entirely labor intensive,with little capitalinvestmentexceptinbricks,mortar,andbeds.Agoodmany perfectly respectable hospitals had not eveninvested in readily available,fairly old technologies:the

26、y provided neither x-ray departments nor clinicallaboratories norphysical therapy.Today hospitals arehugely capital intensive,with enormous sums in-vested in ultrasound,body scanners,nuclear mag-netic imagers,blood and tissue analyzers,cleanrooms,and a dozen more new technologies.Eachpiece of equipm

27、ent has brought with it the need formore highly paid people but has not reduced theexisting staff by a single person.(In fact,the world-wide escalation of health-care costs is largely theresult of the hospitals having become a labor-inten-sive and capital-intensive monstrosity.)But hospi-tals,at lea

28、st,have significantly increased their per-formance capacity.In other areas of knowledge orservice workthereareonlyhighercosts,moreinvest-ment,and more people.Massive increases in productivity are the only wayoutofthismorass.Andtheseincreasescanonlycomefrom what Taylor called“working smarter.”1Simply

29、,this means working more productively withoutworking harder or longer.The economist sees capital investment as the keyHARVARD BUSINESS REVIEWNovemberDecember 19913to productivity;the technologist gives star billing tonew machines.Nevertheless,the main force behindtheproductivityexplosionhasbeenworki

30、ngsmarter.Capital investment and technology were as copiousin the developed economies during the first 100 yearsof the Industrial Revolution as they have been in itssecond 100 years.It was only with the advent ofworking smarter that productivity in making andmoving things took off on its meteoric ri

31、se.And so it will be for knowledge and serviceworkwith this difference:in manufacturing,work-ing smarter is only one key to increased productivity.In knowledge and service work,working smarter isthe only key.What is more,it is a more complex key,onethatrequireslookingcloselyatworkinwaysthatTaylor ne

32、ver dreamed of.When Taylor studied the shoveling of sand,theonly question that concerned him was,“How is itdone?”Almost 50 years later,when Harvards EltonMayo set out to demolish Taylors“scientific man-agement”and replace it with what later came to becalled“human relations,”he focused on the sameque

33、stion.In his experiments at Western ElectricsHawthorne Works,Mayo asked,“How can wiringtelephoneequipmentbestbedone?”Thepointisthatin making and moving things,the task is alwaystaken for granted.In knowledge and service work,however,the firstquestions in increasing productivityand workingsmarterhave to be,“What is the task?What are wetrying to accomplish?Why do it at all?”The easiest,but perhaps a