Alternatives to Traditional Patterns of Work Quiz

PDF page 316: In job sharing, two or more employees perform the work of a full-time position, each taking part of the total workload for the job. For example, one job-sharing employee might work three eight-hour shifts a week and the other would take two such shifts at the same job. In some ways, job sharing is simply another name for

PDF page 316: to the rise of what some call the new precariat. The precariat, for “precarious proletariat,” is a new social class of people whose work offers little predictability or security. The existence of such a class raises ethical dilemmas for business managers, who may be tempted to substitute gig workers, to whom benefits like health

PDF page 316: to the rise of what some call the new precariat. The precariat, for “precarious proletariat,” is a new social class of people whose work offers little predictability or security. The existence of such a class raises ethical dilemmas for business managers, who may be tempted to substitute gig workers, to whom benefits like health

PDF page 316: insurance are ordinarily not provided, for regular employees entitled to costly benefits.

PDF page 317: between job-sharing partners, especially if neither is formally in charge. Job-sharing arrangements also presuppose that the two people are going to work together collaboratively, but competitive instincts could lead one partner to withhold information or even sabotage the project. Another drawback is the “two Mondays effect”—the potential productivity loss due to the time it takes each partner to get up to speed on

PDF page 317: each other daily on their work. Specific examples include translators of legal documents at an international law firm—one translator takes the morning shift; the other, the afternoon. Or technical writers at an engineering firm—one might work Monday through Wednesday noon; the other, Wednesday afternoon through Friday. This scenario works when common documents are being written or translated. If the job sharers are equally competent, work can be passed off to one another at specific intervals. Other aspects of job sharing actually benefit employers, but not necessarily employees. Replacing a full-time position with two or more part-time employees may allow an employer to avoid paying for the benefits to which a full-time employee would be entitled, such as health insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act, and sometimes optional benefits as well. The number of involuntary part-time workers varies over the course of the business cycle: In 2009, as a consequence of the Great Recession, U.S. Department of Labor statistics put the number of involuntary part-time workers at more than nine million; in mid-2018, that number was just

PDF page 318: The practice of offering flexible hours, or flextime, lets employees choose their own start and finish time each day, arriving and leaving earlier or later than the normal 9-to-5 workday. Parents benefit particularly because they are better able to schedule their work around their children’s lives. Women are the predominant users of

PDF page 318: job-related criteria. Without an objective policy, employees could claim discrimination if all were not eligible. Employers should also be aware of the law; in some states, daily work hours are set by law, and allowing some employees to work more than eight hours a day might require payment of overtime.

PDF page 318: this family-friendly work policy. Flextime was a starting place for creative new approaches to work. Teams now trade shifts to accommodate members’ needs for time off. Some companies allow a compressed work week that caters to the efficient employee who can get a week’s work done in less than forty hours. In some professions, such as accounting,

PDF page 319: The access economy is essentially a resource circulation system in which consumers participate on both sides of a transaction, as both providers and obtainers of resources (the transaction is usually facilitated by a third party acting as a go-between). The model, sometimes called peer-to-peer (or P2P), is particularly popular when the asset is expensive to obtain and is not fully consumed by the user (such as a house or condo). In the traditional capitalist economic model, goods are bought and sold by businesses and individuals, but in the access or sharing economy, goods and services are traded on the basis of access rather than ownership. In this business model, owners make money from underused assets. The global online hospitality marketplace is an example. Airbnb says consumer-hosts in San Francisco who rent out their homes do so for an average of about sixty nights a year, making almost $10,000 from such rentals. Car owners using the service RelayRides make an average of $250 a month from allowing others to use their cars. This helps consumers supplement their incomes or even finance the purchase of the assets they share. Many of the original sharing-economy businesses are now household names, including Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft; thousands more are part of the P2P decentralized markets. Most sharing or collaborative economy business models use the Internet to facilitate transactions, so it might be more accurate to refer to them as part of the online platform economy. However, whereas some facilitate the renting of assets, such as real estate (think Airbnb), others are essentially selling labor (think Task Rabbit), and some bridge the two categories by offering a combination (think Lyft) (see Figure 10.7). The new business models all have something in common, however: a decentralized and democratized marketplace featuring broad-scale participation, with consumers serving multiple roles.

PDF page 320: Oasis Collections is a real estate rental marketplace or platform similar to Airbnb, with a few key differences. Founded in 2009, the company fills a market niche by matching house and condo owners with travelers who want something more personal than a hotel but more upscale than a room in someone’s house. Oasis sought venture capital funding but was turned down multiple times. An IPO was not feasible because the company was too small. This financing quandary demonstrates the limited access to capital that often forms a barrier for entrepreneurial startups to overcome. Oasis’ founders turned to sources often used by entrepreneurs, including a mix of seed funding from founders, friends, and family, and angel funding from a private investor. The company operated on a relatively tight budget for several years. In 2017, Hyatt Hotels decided to invest $20 million in Oasis, after it had proven it had a niche in the access economy. Steve Haggerty, Hyatt’s global head of capital strategy, said the investment “reflects Hyatt’s established strategy to super serve the high-end traveler by offering new experiences beyond traditional hotel stays. Travelers who book Oasis Collections homes are . . . leisure and often business travelers who seek more space for a longer time, but also want the peace of mind, personalized service and amenities

PDF page 321: As the Oasis case shows, getting access to funding is often a challenge for entrepreneurs. An IPO is essentially a method of funding a startup by selling its stock to the public at large, a process heavily regulated by the government. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) oversees the applicable federal laws, which require the filing of a registration statement and a full disclosure of financial information, along with months of effort by accountants, attorneys, underwriters, and company executives. The cost and complexity of this process usually outweighs the benefit for entrepreneurs who want to raise a modest amount of capital ($10 million or less). However, as a matter of business ethics, businesses of all sizes should be able to participate fully in the U.S. economy and not be shut out by the “gatekeepers of capital”—the investment banking community. Thus, in 2012, Congress enacted new legislation called the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act, which amended U.S. securities laws to enable small businesses to use a variation on a technique known as crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is already in use as a way to give or lend money to consumers and businesses through web portals such as GoFundMe. But those sites do not offer SEC-compliant sales of securities in a business, as the JOBS Act now permits emerging growth companies (EGCs) seeking capital to do. This new type of funding

PDF page 321: As the Oasis case shows, getting access to funding is often a challenge for entrepreneurs. An IPO is essentially a method of funding a startup by selling its stock to the public at large, a process heavily regulated by the government. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) oversees the applicable federal laws, which require the filing of a registration statement and a full disclosure of financial information, along with months of effort by accountants, attorneys, underwriters, and company executives. The cost and complexity of this process usually outweighs the benefit for entrepreneurs who want to raise a modest amount of capital ($10 million or less). However, as a matter of business ethics, businesses of all sizes should be able to participate fully in the U.S. economy and not be shut out by the “gatekeepers of capital”—the investment banking community. Thus, in 2012, Congress enacted new legislation called the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act, which amended U.S. securities laws to enable small businesses to use a variation on a technique known as crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is already in use as a way to give or lend money to consumers and businesses through web portals such as GoFundMe. But those sites do not offer SEC-compliant sales of securities in a business, as the JOBS Act now permits emerging growth companies (EGCs) seeking capital to do. This new type of funding