Work Without Jobs

"A practical guide for business leaders to rethink work so that it is organized around "tasks" more than "jobs.""--

Ravin Jesuthasan, a recognized futurist and authority on the future of work, human capital, and automation, is Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s steering committee on work and employment. John W. Boudreau conducts breakthrough research on human capital, talent, and sustainable competitive advantage. He is Emeritus Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Jesuthasan and Boudreau are coauthors of Transformative HR: How Great Companies Use Evidence-Based Change for Sustainable Advantage, Lead the Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment, and Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work.

Series Foreword vii Introduction: Work without Jobs Is the New Work Operating System ix 1 Work as Deconstructed Job Elements versus Stable Jobs 1 2 Work Automation Deconstructed: Not Replacing Jobs with Automation but Optimizing Task-Level Combinations of Humans and Automation 15 3 Work Arrangements beyond Employment: A Democratized Work Ecosystem beyond the Fixed Traditional Organizational Boundary 29 4 Deconstructed Workers: Seeing the Whole Person through Skills/Capabilities versus Simply "Jobholders" 51 5 Perpetually Reinventing Deconstructed Work 69 6 Management, Leadership, and Deconstructed Work Coordination: Collaborative Hubs, Teams, Projects, and Agile Work Innovation versus Hierarchy, Structure, Jobs, and Stable Authority 83 7 The New Work Operating System beyond the Organization 107 Conclusions and Next Steps 135 Acknowledgments 155 Notes 157 Index 171