After the emergence of social life, human divided their responsibilities according to their expertise. This happened out of instinct, not due to any theory of “division of labor”. This automatic division of labor created an environment which enabled the development of Business activities.
Traditionally, society was production centric. Customers has less room to express their desire. Even, they couldn’t even think of it as they were satisfied with what their providers provide. At that time, Producers were important elements of the total business or production process.
More precisely, it was technically sound peoples who were the most important and respected persons in the society. This status was very usual as society depends on them for goods. There were scarcity of such people in every society at that time. People did not know about other “Karigors” residing in other society. Because communication at that time was not easy, neither physical not any other format.
There are some other charactersistics of such society.
- This society was production centric
- Service was neither available nor introduced at that time
- Production was the major problem, not the sales.
- Education or technical ability was not easy to gain. usually, such expertise was flowed into family members downward.
- Competition was absent
Then….
Society went to drastic changes due to development of communication – Both physical and electronic media. Communication brings globalization and competition. Consumers started getting products that were not produced in their locality. Education became wide-spread and easy-to-access. Increased competition shifts the power from producers’ hand to consumers’ hand. Thus a consumer-oriented society was developed. This society is characterized by intense and disruptive changes, changes demanded from consumers. Increased demand and competition forced the producers to emphasis on service, because product quality was almost same and the differentiation strategy was to introduce service.
In a service based economy, like now-a-days, those previously respected technical persons were neglected comparatively. More respected and salary started to flow to service producers. Thats why, now a industry worker gets less than a worker sitting infront of computer. The worker is making the core product and the knowledge worker is making power point slides. Somebody may argue the need of ppt slides in the process of production. But this is not a question of production, this is a question of marketing. This is the age of winning customers’ pocket share, not an age where customers run for limited supply of products.
Two different questions arise at this stage. One from Ethical dimension, another from trend dimension.
- Which one demands more emphasis – to produce goods or to produce slides to sell goods?
- Initially floor workers got the highest return, now the knowledge workers. Whose next?