E. Lawler, D. Finegold, G. Benson, and J. Conger discuss how many of the changes that are occurring in the business environment have significant implications for Corporate Boards. Together they are redefining the roles and activities of boards.
Research and Insights Archive
Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
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What Makes Corporate Boards Effective
E. Lawler, D. Finegold, G. Benson, and J. Conger explain that several powerful forces are currently redefining the roles and activities of boardrooms, and they are not likely to diminish but rather to accelerate.
Individualizing the Organization: Past, Present and Future
E. Lawler and D. Finegold discuss that one approach to attracting, retaining, and motivating employees is to individualize the relationship they have with an organization.
Creating Self-Sustaining, High Skill Ecosystems
David Finegold discusses how most managers’ decisions to adopt a low-skill form of work organization, even if it hurt the performance of the British economy as a whole, could be seen as a rational response to the institutional conditions – e.g. short-term financial markets, an adversarial industrial relations system, a low supply of skills in the labour market – in which they operated.
Factors Affecting the Organizational Commitment of Technical Knowledge Workers: Generation X, Baby Boomers, and Beyond
D. Finegold, S. Mohrman, and G. Spreitzer discuss how gaining the commitment of knowledge workers will be one of the central management challenges in the new millennium.
The Search for Flexibility: Skills and Workplace Innovation in the German Pump Industry
David Finegold and Karin Wagner find that the existence of a highly skilled workforce may deter the adoption of multifunctional work teams, but that countervailing strengths of the German skill-creation system can potentially help firms develop a new, distinctive German production model.
CEO Performance Appraisal
J. Conger, D. Finegold, and E. Lawler III explain that supervisors appraise their subordinates at virtually all levels in most organizations. But, who appraises the CEO?
Productivity, Machinery, and Skills in the United States and Western Europe: Food Processing
Geoff Mason and David Finegold state that as the much-discussed US ‘productivity slowdown’ during the 1970’s recedes into the distance, several recent studies have shown that average labor productivity levels in US manufacturing and in the economy as a whole remain the highest in the world.
Board Effectiveness: Principles and Practices
E. Lawler III, J. Conger, and D. Finegold look at the key activities of the board and then briefly consider what makes groups effective.
Adding Value in Banking: An Innovative Human Resource Strategy
Brent Keltner and David Finegold state that raising levels of human capital investment to improve the quality of service delivery can be done but it requires restructuring recruiting and training practices in light of institutional constraints.
Institutional Effects on Skill Creation: A Comparison of Management Development in the U.S. and Germany
David Finegold and Brent Keltner explain that changes in requirements for competitive success in the global economy have led political economists to devote greater attention to shifts in corporate strategy and differences in education and training, primarily for production workers, across the industrialized countries.