JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Pivoting: The Future of Work and a Sustainable Caribbean Society

by

Guardian Media
1454 days ago
20210718
Dr Paula Thomas

Dr Paula Thomas

UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness has or­gan­ised a Busi­ness Round­table se­ries dis­cussing top­ics re­lat­ed to the re­cov­ery of busi­ness and the econ­o­my, giv­en our cur­rent con­text dur­ing this COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Dr Paula Thomas, Chief En­gage­ment Of­fi­cer, Peo­ple-Cen­tric Con­sult­ing/Ad­junct Fac­ul­ty, Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness, was a fea­tured speak­er at the round ta­ble on June 17, 2021, where she dis­cussed the top­ic of "Mod­ernising Labour Re­la­tions in the Caribbean". The fol­low­ing sum­maris­es some per­ti­nent ques­tions raised dur­ing the round ta­ble.

Caribbean busi­ness lead­ers will no doubt en­gage in tons of de­bates to de­ter­mine ap­pro­pri­ate strate­gies to emerge from the coro­n­avirus cri­sis. But those who have cho­sen to prac­tice the art of ‘piv­ot­ing’ will un­de­ni­ably guar­an­tee a more sus­tain­able fu­ture. While their cur­rent fo­cus may have been piv­ot­ing from a phys­i­cal to a dig­i­tal work en­vi­ron­ment, ac­cord­ing to the work sys­tem mod­el the­o­ry, to en­sure bal­ance, de­ci­sion-mak­ers should in­ves­ti­gate op­por­tu­ni­ties to al­so align the oth­er el­e­ments with­in the mod­el.

An ex­am­ple that comes to mind is a small busi­ness own­er, Chris­tine, who op­er­at­ed a 12-room guest house tar­get­ed at in­ter­na­tion­al tourists. When the T&T bor­ders were closed in March 2020 her op­er­a­tions im­me­di­ate­ly came to a dead stop. Af­ter eight months, she suc­cess­ful­ly piv­ot­ed her op­er­a­tions to a “Stay­ca­tion for Re­tirees,” in­te­grat­ing her hos­pi­tal­i­ty ex­pe­ri­ence with el­der­ly care. Six months lat­er she has a striv­ing op­er­a­tion, al­so pos­si­bly cre­at­ing a par­a­digm shift for el­der­ly care in T&T.

With­in the work sys­tem mod­el the­o­ry, this ex­am­ple il­lus­trates how cre­at­ing bal­ance in the mod­el leads to a pletho­ra of busi­ness suc­cess. First­ly, Chris­tine’s or­gan­i­sa­tion­al mod­el was sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed by the ex­ter­nal forces and she was in­spired to piv­ot by re-po­si­tion­ing the op­er­a­tions of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Im­ple­ment­ing this strat­e­gy, re­sult­ed in her al­so piv­ot­ing the oth­er el­e­ments with­in the mod­el such as the tasks, phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, tech­nol­o­gy and tools, and the peo­ple. From the out­side, this may ap­pear as a smooth tran­si­tion with­in a short pe­ri­od. If so, the ques­tion then is, why are so many busi­ness­es, small, medi­um, and large not en­joy­ing the same suc­cess, but in­stead are strug­gling and have had to re­sort to down­siz­ing or per­ma­nent clo­sure?

As a busi­ness psy­chol­o­gist, I would like to present one per­spec­tive that may at­tempt to pro­vide a plau­si­ble an­swer to the ques­tion. It is quite ap­par­ent that Chris­tine may have been ‘called’ to the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try, re­sult­ing in her mo­ti­va­tion to cre­ative­ly use her tal­ents to piv­ot to a more vi­able op­tion. Un­de­ni­ably, the in­sti­tu­tion of work plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in every­one’s life, yet it is ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fer­ent­ly. Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al Be­hav­iourist Amy Wrzes­niews­ki (2003), who fo­cused on how peo­ple make mean­ing of their work, con­cep­tu­alised that while some may ex­pe­ri­ence it as “pain, drudgery, and bore­dom,” oth­ers may ex­pe­ri­ence it as “ joy, en­er­gy, and ful­fil­ment,” and still oth­ers may ex­pe­ri­ence it as a “com­plex mix” of these two ex­tremes. The dy­nam­ic in­ter­play be­tween the in­di­vid­ual, the or­gan­i­sa­tion, and the work it­self pro­vides the con­text for an in­di­vid­ual’s per­cep­tion of work, whether it is viewed as a ‘job,’ pri­mar­i­ly for the mon­e­tary ben­e­fits; as a ‘ca­reer,’ for the ben­e­fits ac­com­pa­ny­ing ad­vance­ment through the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture; or as a ‘call­ing,’ for the ful­fil­ment of do­ing the work and not for ad­vance­ments or fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits. Ap­proach­ing work as a ‘call­ing’ is an end in it­self, as­so­ci­at­ed with the be­lief that the work an in­di­vid­ual en­gages in con­tributes to a greater good while mak­ing the world a bet­ter place.

Late­ly, ‘call­ing’ as a con­struct has been re­ceiv­ing grow­ing at­ten­tion. Re­cent stud­ies con­duct­ed in a mul­ti-in­dus­try con­glom­er­ate in Trinidad and To­ba­go and across the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean both con­clud­ed that in­di­vid­u­als who per­ceived that they were ‘called’ to their line of work in­cul­cat­ed a stronger work eth­ic than those who were not (Thomas, Wan­ner, Cheema, & Charles, 2019; Thomas & Sa­ha, 2021). Sim­i­lar­ly, stud­ies con­duct­ed across the USA con­clud­ed that in­di­vid­u­als that en­dorsed their work as a ‘call­ing’ were more sat­is­fied with their life and work, dis­played more or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and oc­cu­pa­tion­al com­mit­ment, and viewed life as more mean­ing­ful.

Chris­tine’s busi­ness suc­cess dur­ing the glob­al pan­dem­ic and the in­sights gained from the re­cent stud­ies that in­ves­ti­gat­ed the ‘call­ing’ con­struct should act as a beck­on for oth­er de­ci­sion-mak­ers to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment re­cruit­ment, se­lec­tion, mo­ti­va­tion, and re­ten­tion pro­grammes that will iden­ti­fy em­ploy­ees who are ‘called’ to their line of work.

While busi­ness lead­ers de­lib­er­ate how they can utilise the ‘call­ing’ con­struct, there are oth­er po­ten­tial chal­lenges that should al­so be con­sid­ered. One such chal­lenge is the dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tional co­horts that co-ex­ist among their peo­ple. Al­though there are con­flict­ing per­spec­tives in the de­vel­oped coun­tries with re­gards to gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences at work, some re­searchers con­clud­ed that work val­ues dif­fer across gen­er­a­tional co­horts, while oth­ers con­clud­ed that the work val­ues of the younger gen­er­a­tion are re­ju­ve­nat­ing and op­ti­mistic.

A study re­cent­ly con­duct­ed across the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean con­clud­ed that work eth­ic dif­fers across Ba­by Boomers & Gen­er­a­tion Yers and Gen­er­a­tion Xers & Yers (Thomas & Sa­ha, 2021). These re­sults sug­gest that for or­gan­i­sa­tions to sus­tain this glob­al health cri­sis, now more than ever, de­ci­sion-mak­ers must al­so take the time to gain a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of the work val­ues spe­cif­ic to these dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tional co­horts.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2013-2016, the work eth­ic was re­port­ed as the most prob­lem­at­ic fac­tor for do­ing busi­ness in T&T. These dis­cour­ag­ing re­sults may have sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the de­pressed T&T econ­o­my and the re­cent glob­al pan­dem­ic would have fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion. There is some ev­i­dence of busi­ness lead­ers tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to piv­ot from a phys­i­cal to a vir­tu­al en­vi­ron­ment. How­ev­er, piv­ot­ing the en­vi­ron­ment with­out align­ing the oth­er el­e­ments with­in the sys­tem, with the same peo­ple who may not have been ‘called’ to their line of work, and with no con­sid­er­a­tion for gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences, more than like­ly will con­tin­ue to per­pet­u­ate the work eth­ic dilem­ma that cur­rent­ly ex­ists in T&T and add lit­tle val­ue to the suc­cess of in­di­vid­ual busi­ness­es.

This is, there­fore, an ur­gent call for busi­ness lead­ers to take a more holis­tic ap­proach as they de­vel­op strate­gies such as: prac­tis­ing the art of ‘piv­ot­ing’ while en­sur­ing bal­ance with­in the work sys­tem mod­el; de­vel­op­ing re­cruit­ment, se­lec­tion, re­ten­tion, and mo­ti­va­tion pro­grammes to de­ter­mine if their peo­ple are ori­ent­ed to their work as a ‘call­ing;’ and de­sign­ing strate­gies cus­tomised for gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences. It is ex­pect­ed that these ini­tia­tives will en­sure more en­gaged peo­ple who are com­mit­ted to their or­gan­i­sa­tion’s vi­sion, re­sult­ing over­all in a more sus­tain­able Caribbean so­ci­ety.

Con­tin­u­ing next week

Commentary


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored