【第54回】“FREE AGENT NATION”, D H. Pink, BUSINESS PLUS, 2002

Before a few decades ago, in USA, each job was majored by employees. But nowadays, the arthor says that job diversity became essential. Why has the style of jobs changed ? The arthor implied that the reason is job security has evaporated.

The style of job has changed. And it has also changed surrounding it,  including loyalty. We tend to think that the power of loyalty became weak. But the arthor does emphasis on the suggestion that the loyalty is still alive and well in Free Agent Nation. However, the feature of it has changed, from vertical loyalty to horizontal one. In this book, one of the independent contractors says that “Working solo” is not “working alone”.

The second change is the strength of relationships. The arthor compares the traditional organization and free agent organization. In traditional organizations, there were many strong ties between employees in one company. But in free agent organizations, there are weak ties. So now we have to make our weak ties stronger than before. If we do so, the chances of our career will become larger. If we don’t do, the future will be dark.

The third change is related to adult learning. The arthor cites the article of Wall Street Journal. It says “the number of students age 35 and older will exceed those 18 and 19 within a few years”. So we are facing so called “life long learning”. 

The change of our learning style will change our life career. This is the fourth change. The arthor call this new life career “Lego career”. To adjust this new situation, we wil build and rebuild our own experiences and knowledges.

This book was written in 2002, the speed of change became higher I think. And though this book was written in USA, the movement also changed our Japanese society. There are many ICs in our country, and the number of IC will increase. So the impact of this book still strong, and it might be stronger than 2002 in Japan.