At the recent Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) National Conference in the UK, Charles Handy, author of The Age of Unreason, asserted that the increasing number of larger companies and merger deals is bringing about new opportunities for smaller companies. He said: “As the large companies get bigger, they become more cumbersome and less agile. By contrast, small companies and individuals are flexible and more economical and are therefore more creative with new ideas and pioneering innovations. How best to combine the two cultures is fast becoming one of the challenges facing HR and personnel. Larger companies’ traditional methods of human resource management will hamper the development and success of small companies. New technology is enabling smaller companies to be quicker off the mark, or so it seems at the moment.” Handy gave the example of community power stations, which provide electricity locally at a lower price than the giants. He argues that smaller companies can locate suppliers more easily, readily access market data, and transact business deals on-line. He pointed to the large number of self-employed workers as part of this trend.
Handy likened the larger companies to elephants, and the smaller ones to fleas, saying that with the coming of the fleas, business can be fun again. “The culture of the flea and the elephant is fast becoming one of the preoccupations of management, although they call it more mundanely ‘the management of innovation’,” said Handy. “It is a challenge directly relevant to the world of Human Resources and Personnel—terms which, incidentally, belong to the culture of the elephants and are anathema to the fleas. Which raises the other really fundamental question—are the Personnel Professionals elephants or fleas, or do they have to walk and talk with both?”
Based on a report from i-FM
