Switching Loyalties

Switching Loyalties
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I noticed a change in loyalties in corporations around the world.

Go to developing nations. Organizational loyalty plays a serious role in hiring, promoting and retention. In Mexico it is called amor a la camizeta , loyalty to the corporate shirt.

In those countries management hires either close friends or family members to top management positions.

The loyalty one feels towards one’s family or friends is transferred now to the company where the family or the friends reside.

That kind of loyalty is crumbling in the developed world. People do not have the loyalty to the company or to the founder of the company or its manager. Their royalties to the company are slim if they exist at all. People switch companies in a heart beat and there is no remorse by the person switching nor there is hard feelings of the company that lost them.

I attribute the phenomena to the increased level of specialization and professionalization.

I believe it started with the IT people. Professional IT people, trained in computers or information systems, their loyalty is to their field of specialization, not to the company that employs them. If another company offers them an opportunity for professional growth or better salary they switch companies in no time.

Same is with lawyers. And same is with faculty members in the academia.

This phenomena of switching loyalty from the company where one is employed to the field of specialization, is spreading because specialization, professionalization is spreading too. How about Health Safety and Environment people. And Human Resources specialists or Supply Chain professionals?

There are very few generalists left. Everyone is looking for a certificate that makes him somehow stand in the crowd.

The more specialized we become, the more disintegrated the company can become unless those professionals are organically integrated with the company. Unless they love the people they work with, and/ or are enthused by the mission the organization follows.

Companies can not rely anymore on the old family like connection and affiliation to get loyalty from their employees. It is a new world and old glue does not work anymore. A new one is emerging.

Just thinking,

Ichak Kalderon Adizes

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