This JOB conference provides many opportunities for stimulating and spirited exchanges on a number of topics related to organizational behavior. It is no secret that we are living in a very different world than we were merely a decade ago. The two de®ning themes of the 1990s ± globalization and technological advancement ± have literally changed the face of business. If you owned a small antique shop in 1989, for example, your biggest competitor would likely have been the antique dealer a mile down the road or across town. Today, thanks to the Internet, your shop's competitors would be based around the world.
Competitiveness is an area of particular interest to me. As chairman of the board of directors of the American Society for Competitiveness, I recently spoke at the organization's international meeting in Atlanta. In that address, I focused on Japan and Germany. These are two countries that literally rose from the ashes of World War II to become our ®ercest competitors ± the second and third most economically powerful nations in the world. And while they are currently facing enormous economic challenges, they still dish out pretty tough competition in the world marketplace. And as they get back on their feet, as I predict they will, Japan and Germany will become even stronger economic rivals.
Those issues are competitiveness on a macro level. This conference, however, focuses on competitiveness on a smaller playing ®eld ± organization to organization. In the context of this gathering ± designed to discuss issues relating to organizational behavior and human resources ± it is appropriate to talk a bit about how competitiveness affects individuals and groups within organizations.
Worldwide, organizations are very much concerned with how they can enhance industrial competitiveness, and employee ef®ciency is a key issue. Technology has provided some wonderful tools to ensure that workers are as ef®cient and effective as possible: e-mail, voice mail, Internet access, cell phones, pagers, laptop computers, fax machines, palm-sized electronic planners and an array of other gadgets.
Whether all this technology truly makes for more effective workers is debatable. Economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill noted well over a hundred years ago: `It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.' What we do know, however, is that individuals can no longer get away for a few minutes. Here, on the threshold of the 21st century, wherever you are, someone will ®nd you. And that person will have a question or a problem or a brewing crisis. The result is heightened stress in the workplace ± literally techno-stress brought about by the very tools that were designed to make our lives easier.
As you know, it does not take long to learn to depend on this technological wizardry. So, there is the added stress that arises when suddenly the cell phone isn't working properly, the fax machine is out of