Career Anchors Reimagined, 5th Edition

1Reflections on the Changing Workplace

Dr. Seuss:

“…You can get so confused

that you'll start in to race

down long wiggled roads at a break‐necking pace

and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…”

We believe that the biggest changes that have resulted from the pandemic and other events of the last several years affect both the content of our work and the context of our relationships at work and at home. In this chapter, we highlight in abbreviated form some of what we consider to be major changes and trends influencing our work life over that last decade or so.

The list of transformations in the nature of work is long and likely to continue to grow longer as we move further into the 21st century. Debates proliferate as well about these changes, oscillating between the angst associated with job losses and exploitative digital sweatshops as contrasted with the promise of increased flexibility and the shaping of new, more creative jobs. The list of changes—before the Covid‐19 pandemic accelerated the rate of change—includes, for example, the development of new forms or organization such as telework and virtual teams; the growth of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation; the proliferation of freelancing and contracting; the remaking of the traditional corporation and the slow demise of the bureaucratic or psychological contract in which employees traded off labor for employment security; and the ...