The past 30 years have seen a revolution in the concept of work. This revolution is centered in the United States, and has earned very little comment in the academy outside of business schools despite its broad and deep impact on hundreds of millions. Indeed, it is one of the most profound changes in human organization in modern times.

Let's call the result of this revolution "The New Workplace." There are a number of characteristics that define it:

~ A focus on productivity rather than wages. Managers have come to learn that wages are immaterial in and of themselves. They are like a partial baseball score: Cubs 4. They only tell half the story, and you can't tell the outcome without knowing the other half. There's a big difference between Cubs 4, Red Sox 2 and Cubs 4 Astros 8.

The key is productivity (or its inverse, unit labor cost). If worker 1 is paid $20/hour and produces 100 widgets, while worker 2 is paid $10/hour and produces 20 widgets, the intelligent manager will prefer worker 1, even though his wages are higher.

What this means, from a manager standpoint, is that you can afford to pay more for better people. What it means, from a worker standpoint, is that if you produce more your manager can afford to pay you more. The key is to work together to find the best way to drive productivity higher. Higher productivity leads to higher wealth for all involved, so long as the benefits are shared.

~ A focus on flexibility rather than capacity. The old model for organizations was command-and-control. Managers told workers what to do, and they did it. And if workers didn't like it, there was nothing they could do about it. Simple, right?

Problem is that this is a very static view of the world. In reality, technology is constantly changing - and always has been. The flexible organization can adapt to change much more quickly, and can be more profitable in the long run, even if it lacks the capacity to compete on unit cost with a larger player.

~ A focus on pay for performance rather than zero-sum negotiation. Profit sharing, gainsharing, stock options, and piecework have all grown in comparison to the old unionized compensation structures. Rather than taking the state of the industry as a given and negotiating to get as much of the economic rents as possible (the archetype of this approach being collective bargaining), employees are given incentives to perform that are aligned with those of shareholders. Human capital and financial capital work together to create value, and then divide the benefits between customers and themselves.

~ A focus on individual rather than collective benefit programs. This is perhaps the most profound change of all. In the past 20+ years, Defined Contribution pension plans (e.g. 401(k) programs) have grown dominant, while Defined Benefit plans (e.g. old-style pensions) have withered away.

This change has had two astonishing impacts. First, it has allowed talented employees to leave for more attractive opportunities and take their pension with them. This has, in turn, contributed to a better allocation of human capital across the economy - people work where they can add the most value - while simultaneously removing the "golden handcuffs" that often kept unhappy employees stuck in unproductive jobs for decades, all because they couldn't afford to leave their pension behind.

Second, it has put increasing pressure on managers to be responsive to their employees, or the employees will simply quit and go to work for a more empathetic and responsive employer. This change has, in turn, caused a dramatic increase in manager effectiveness, with all of the corollary benefits.

~ A focus on intelligence rather than compliance. The flexible organization demands employees who think. It is impossible to be effective in a flexible organization if you people who are unwilling to think and act independently.

Taken together, these and other supporting trends have transformed work. They have made it more productive, more value-creating, more satisfying (both intellectually and morally), and more fun.

In fact, these factors are self-reinforcing: an intelligent organization is a more flexible organization, which is a more profitable organization, which is a higher-paying organization, which is an organization that provides better benefits and management, which attracts more talent to increase the intelligence of the organization, and so on. A very virtuous circle.

And yet Catholic social teaching has been stuck, for the most part, in the old model. For instance, it is remarkable how much effort has been expended by Catholic thinkers and writers on union issues. Now, I am fairly pro-union, but the reality is that the industrial organization model that gave rise to the need for and power of the unions is no longer relevant. The concept of a handful of powerful companies controlling the economics of an industry, and therefore the need for employees to organization in order to better negotiate for their portion of the rents, well, it's so old-fashioned it's almost quaint.

The reality is that all industries compete for people, not just a few companies. People can pick up and move to another city at the drop of a hat. People switch jobs an average of every four years. Employers that underpay employees end up with very high turnover, and that drives up unit labor costs at a rapid clip.

So the market has been a much more effective means of managing wages than collective bargaining ever was. It creates a more productive allocation of human resources, which leads to higher productivity, which leads to higher wealth. That is why union membership has steadily eroded, not because of any political hostility. In the absence of a monopoly (e.g. government), a union is far more expensive and far less effective than employees voting with their feet.

And, yet, Catholic social teaching clearly favors a "negotiated" approach to human resource allocation, rather than a "market" approach. In one case, the jobs and companies are fixed, and any economic rents created a split on a negotiated basis. In the other case, prices attract labor and capital to companies, and the entrepreneur attempts to keep the two working together in order to satisfy the need of a customer.

The irony is that The New Workplace can be seen as built on a foundation that is entirely consistent with Catholic values. It puts the human person at the center of the process. It focuses on unleashing human creativity. It puts others (i.e. the customer) ahead of self (i.e. employees or owners). It is a system built on human liberty and human dignity.

It is time for us to bring Catholic social teaching on organizations into synch with the real world experience of millions who work because the want to, not because they have to; because they are enriched by work, by because it makes them rich; and because it fulfills their destiny, not because it fills their pantry.

In The New Workplace, you don't have a job; you have a vocation.