Expectations of Employment

Obligations & the Means of Achievement

When a person contracts to work for an organization (i.e. becomes an employee), that contract leads to mutual but differing expectations on each side. These expectations have the force of obligations.

The most generally applicable expectations emerge primarily from the desire of any employer to benefit from the use of all available «means of achievement». Taken together these expectations-cum-obligations form a new THEE pattern, a structural hierarchy.

While this section stands on its own, some familiarity with the framework-steps to reach this point will ensure that you know where you are. So you may wish to check out…

Decision-making is the uniquely human way that action can be both deliberate and guided towards a desired result as situations evolve. So the fundamental features of achievement are to be derived from the THEE approaches to decision and action (PH'1).

It will be useful to have some sense of both this originating framework and its derivations. Hyperlinks below connect in each case to summaries.

The ways of deciding enable you to become familiar with the full range of incompatible methods for taking action (PH'1).

Strengthening the management culture (PH'1C) explains how distinctive sets of values (= modes of achieving) intrinsic to each decision approach accumulate. Most importantly, the Spiral trajectory requires a re-ordering of the decision-approaches.

The map of how achievement for organizations (PH'1CK) is ensured uses this new Spiral order as a hierarchy. The result is a Tree showing how distinct decision-based value-sets interact with each other. A closely related Tree-application can be developed to show how an employee can and should achieve.

Employees & Management in Organizations

Numerous obligations and expectations exist in organizations because any and all achievement depends on individual employees. Even those in management are employees. The framework to be developed here covers all the «means of achievement» and the resulting «obligations and expectations» intrinsic to employment work. Naturally, management and employees are affected differently: even if they are often the same person.

To see the complete structural hierarchy framework in graphic form in advance, click here.

Starting Assumptions

  • Organizations are created to achieve something in accord with their mission.
  • This requires people to decide to do things, so people are employed to achieve for the employing organization.
  • As a result, both the employing organization and its employees must knowingly resort to a variety of means to deliver achievement.
  • An Organization needs to use many of its employees to unambiguously represent its corporate values and goals: they are referred to as «management».
  • Getting the interaction between each employee and the management right is the key to success for both parties.

All the various activities and interactions in employment work emerge, as a matter of obligation, from one momentous act: entering a contract of employment.

Originally posted: 20-Oct-2011