News on 30 October 2000

At the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) National Conference on Friday, Charles Handy stated that the growth of larger companies and merger deals is creating new opportunities for smaller ones.

Charles Handy

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 drew a parallel between larger companies and elephants and smaller companies and fleas and said technology favours the fleas as much as the elephants because small is becoming not only beautiful but economical.

For example community power stations are on the cards, providing local electricity more cheaply than the giants. Suppliers are easier to find, market data is at your finger-tips, parts of the workforce can be elsewhere, lowering the cost of premises, and much of the trading and business deals can happen on-line.

Handy also argues that with the coming of the fleas business can be fun again. The new trend is already showing up in the statistics. Only 40% of the workforce is now on the indefinite period contracts that go with a so-called permanent, or `proper', job. The rest are self employed, temporary or part-time fleas, whether by choice or force of circumstances. It isn't all good news for them. Fleas are subject to nature's law of abundance - many are born because many die, but enough survive to keep things going.

"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?".

Jessica Jarlvi