Going thin on top: work intensification and the neglect of personal support of senior managers

an article by David Meacheam (University of New South Wales at The Australian Defence Force Academy, Australia) published in International Journal of Work Innovation Volume 1 Number 1 (2012)

Abstract

As organisations from the early 1990s flattened, senior managers have to a large degree been asked to cope with much less by way of personal support for the execution of their duties. Personal assistants are increasingly rare, senior managers are commonly expected to perform quite menial tasks (typing and filing) that have little overall impact on their work effectiveness, and the private lives of these senior managers becomes impoverished as a result.

A series of organisational failures arising from this refusal by many organisations (government, private sector and church-based) are critically assessed. The moral implications of the failure by many organisations to support senior managers are examined, and an effort is made to generate a debate in support of this often well paid, but poorly supported part of the modern workforce.

Full text (PDF 6pp)

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