Meconomy. Markus Albers
“In times of crisis, people start asking themselves again what is really important,” analyzed Süddeutsche Zeitung. According to the newspaper, people are trying to get out of a system that they considered devoid of meaning, while a new generation of social scientists is thinking about alternative models of society: “Where old certainties are shattered, people become increasingly willing to try something new.”
Munich-based sociologist Ulrich Beck even thinks that, in terms of new life concepts, there is a “tremendous need for reform – as was the case at the onset of industrialization.” Horst Opaschowski, scientific director of the Stiftung für Zukunftsfragen (Foundation for Future Studies) in Hamburg and consultant in economics and politics, seconds Beck’s point of view. To him, the global crisis is a “turning point” that can even be compared to the German student movement of the late 1960s. “Back then, there was the same sense of a new era.” Germany, says Opaschowski, is about to experience a period of renewal: “Visions for the future are no longer confused with new product visions. Germans want to find ways to the future that are inspired by entrepreneurial courage rather than by faith in the state.”
In a recent study published by German futurist and trend researcher Max Horx, the economic crisis is considered a “cleansing thunderstorm” that accelerates a long-overdue process of change. According to Horx, employees are increasingly turning into self-dependent entrepreneurs. Rigid hierarchies, inefficient communication structures, and linear business processes are becoming more and more incompatible with the ever-changing digital business world. The new working environment is characterized by self-employment, freelance project work, temporary unemployment, and having multiple jobs. In the economy of tomorrow, the wish to do something meaningful and to realize personal aims will become the key drivers of productivity for future-oriented companies.
Life as a Construction Set
It is at exactly this point that the Junge Karriere cover story, which was published at almost the same time, comes in. The spin-off magazine of the big German business paper Handelsblatt describes a new generation of employees who want to actively shape business processes and improve their professional skills, reinventing their jobs and themselves. “Trying new ways and ideas has become more important than ever,” conclude the authors – because: “Today, anyone who chooses a certain career and takes up a job needs to accept that he will have to go through many stages in his professional life.”
Sociologist Richard Sennet estimates that, over 40 working years, an average American changes his job eleven times and replaces his entire know-how three times. In Germany as well, corporate hierarchies are becoming flatter, the number of legal regulations is decreasing, and employment periods are getting shorter. “This situation offers a chance of self-actualization, yet it also implies the risk of not being able to keep up with the development,” says the Junge Karriere magazine.
Today, this phenomenon is as relevant as never before, yet it isn’t new. As early as in 1960, management professor Douglas McGregor coined the term “self-actualizing man” – a man who reinvents himself and who strives for self-fulfillment by making use of his talents and opportunities in a company. By the end of the 1990s, Richard Sennett raised his concerns over the new “flexible man,” who runs the risk of losing his real personality due to constant new challenges posed by an ever-changing capitalist environment. However, around the turn of the millennium, US sociologist Richard Florida discovered the positive side of this unsteady lifestyle: The members of his “Creative Class” are fueled by ideas, prefer loose acquaintances over a few close friends, and are always ready to change their jobs and places of residence – in short: their lives.
Today, more than ever, this is a necessity. Time clock punching is increasingly becoming a thing of the past – “and this is why traditional jobs are dying out,” explains labor market researcher Frank Wießner. Manufacturing processes are increasingly automated or outsourced to low-cost countries. Employees have to acquire new qualifications time and again, and they have to score with expertise that gets outdated at an ever-growing pace. “Knowledge-intensive jobs are booming,” says Wießner.
The economic crisis reinforced tendencies that had already been at work for some time, put them at the center of attention, or simply made them visible. To the generation of 20- to 35-year-olds, these tendencies do not constitute abstract sociological or economic theories: They shape the world that they live in – a world that requires them to develop entirely new skills to get by. Frequently, their parents are having a hard time trying to imagine an existence that is profoundly insecure and extremely mobile, yet at the same time full of enormous possibilities. In a cover story about the “children of the crisis” that was published in summer 2009, the German magazine Der Spiegel wrote: “Now, during the crisis, perceptions of life are increasingly defined by uncertainty, and this is what connects members of this generation throughout the social spectrum to each other.”
Timm Klotzek, Editor-in-chief of Neon – a magazine that is considered the voice, agony aunt, and guidebook of Germany’s less-than-30-year-olds – thinks that his readers share a particular concern: “The big question is: What will become of me?” The children of the crisis have to make the best of a situation characterized by enormous complexity, and they are already pretty good at that. They are globally mobile. Think Tank 30, the Club of Rome’s hotbed of young talent, provides the well-educated elite of this generation with a forum to discuss global issues. One of its members has just returned from the US, one from Mali, and two have just come back from London. Recently, one member of the club went on a world trip and organized video conferences with schools in 25 countries. “Maybe only five or ten percent of this generation lead a truly global life, yet this has an exemplary effect on the rest of the generation,” says youth researcher Klaus Hurrelmann. “Flexibility, mobility, and globality are their Trinity,” writes Der Spiegel.
Moreover, this generation increasingly searches for meaningful ways of earning money. They long to leave dreary work routines and the practical constraints that still shaped their parents’ everyday life behind. Granted, every young generation wants to lead a more exciting life than the previous one, but the current generation is probably the first one ever that has sufficient social and technological means to put this aim into practice. Plus, there is no way back to the old certainties anyway.
That’s why they want to have their say when it comes to defining their jobs. According to a study conducted in 2004 by the German Internationales Institut für Empirische Sozialökonomie (International Institute for Empirical Social Economics), 71 percent of participants want to actively contribute to shaping processes. Two out of three employees want to develop their skills on a permanent basis and receive career support. The 2009 Arbeitsmarktklima-Index (Human Resources Climate Survey) showed that working satisfaction increases with the tasks that employees are allowed to fulfill.
Yet it is exactly this need of employees – to contribute something, to be creative, and to prevent their suggestions from being talked to death by supervisors and boards – that many companies do not meet yet. In its “Gute Arbeit” (“Good Work”) survey, the Confederation of German Trade Unions asked 8,000 employees for their opinion, covering all regions, income groups, industries, company sizes, and types of employment according to their respective share in overall employment. The majority of participants considered their professional development and education opportunities, as well as the possibilities available to them to be creative, to exert influence, and to shape processes, to be “mediocre.”
A Labor Expert’s View
Werner Eichhorst, Deputy Director of Labor Policy at the Bonn-based Institute for the Study of Labor, frequently receives invitations from the German Government to come to Berlin – usually when politicians don’t know how to proceed further anymore. He often appears on TV as well. In short: Eichorst is a classic expert in politics. Today, even people like him have a Facebook account. His profile says that the 40-year-old likes Erik Satie, Bill Murray, Gerhard Richter, books by Montaigne, and the film “Amélie.” Thus, Eichhorst is a pretty modern academic, and that’s why I wanted to get his perspective on the Meconomy subject:
Mr. Eichhorst, the crisis is on the wane, but it has left a deep-seated fear: Many old certainties and institutions have been rocked to their foundations. Do we have