As corporations shipped manufacturing jobs overseas and domestic wages stagnated, the job security and benefits of the Fordism era eroded. Since the 1970s, real wages—the value of dollars paid to workers after being adjusted for inflation—have barely budged. “With dollar-compensation no longer the overwhelmingly most important factor in job motivation,” William Batten, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, said in a 1979 lecture at the Wharton School, “management must develop a better understanding of the more elusive, less tangible factors that add up to job satisfaction.” In other
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