Employees

Employee Commitment Without Long-Term Security: The New Social Contract of Work For most of the 20th century, “employee commitment” was implicitly traded for structural stability. In exchange for organizational loyalty, firms offered long-term contracts, predictable upward promotions, and secure pensions. That paternalistic model is now structurally eroding—not gradually, but through a fast-moving combination of platformization, […]

Employee Expectations in a Post-Stability Era The last decade has eroded the comforts of traditional career stability. From pandemic-era disruptions to geopolitical uncertainty and rapid technological transformation, employee expectations have shifted in ways that challenge conventional management thinking. Far from the predictable employer–employee contract of the early 2000s, today’s workforce demands purpose, flexibility, well-being, and

Employees as Stakeholders, Not Resources For decades, the prevailing paradigm in corporate economics — epitomized by Milton Friedman’s shareholder primacy doctrine — held that a company’s sole social responsibility was to maximize profits for its shareholders. Under this model, employees were often treated as inputs or “resources” to be managed and optimized like capital equipment.