Globalisation

Globalisation

Introduction

To begin with, tell them that they will need to look at the essay questions today

Later we will be doing a trial reflective exercise

Let’s look at Globalisation

My story

When my colleagues and I were faced with redundancy we were placed in a unique position. Or perhaps it wasn’t quite so unique, just unspoken; ‘experts’ are not renowned for publicly applying their own theories to themselves. After years working as labour researchers or workplace change consultants we found ourselves in the position of having the stories we told other workers and their managements about why change was happening being reflected back to us by our managers and the people employed to facilitate our departures. We shifted from being purveyors of the discourses and narratives about why change was necessary to sitting in judgement of whether these very discourses and narratives applied to us, made sense to us, or were believable.

Armed with more information than the average potentially redundant worker, we gathered around photocopiers, water coolers, staff room dining tables, coffee shop booths, each others desks - and discussed, argued, complained, questioned. As labour researchers we turned on labour theories, as change consultants we turned on theories of workplace change, and asked ourselves and each other, “Is what I’ve been saying for the last ten years really the case in my case? Now that I’m down there amongst it all instead of looking at it from the safety of an analyst’s lofty heights, does the story look and sound the same?”

The Globalisation Story

The stories we told the workers went generally like this: Globalisation led to economic and industry restructuring which leads to organisational change which means jobs change which means you have to do things differently to how you did them before and if you do not change, you won’t be able to give your customers what they want and you and your company and your country are gone” (hereafter called The Globalisation Story). Simple. Logical. Inexorable. Until we started telling it to ourselves and to each other. Then, with remarkable alacrity, we shifted from a reliance on causal explanation to an emphasis on interpretive understanding.

Putting yourself inside the picture

With many of us ‘experts’ in different stories - some were macroeconomists who understood globalisation theory, some of us were labour or industry economists who understood the theories of work and industry change, some were organisation researchers who knew about change management - we started to pick holes in other people’s stories and they picked holes in ours, many with the preface, “Your story doesn’t work for me because .