Ian Mitroff and Susan A. Mohrman state that during the late 1970s, when chronic inflation eroded the dollar’s value in international trade, American goods became artificially attractive to foreign buyers-and American manufacturers were lulled into an artificial sense of security about their ability to compete.
Research and Insights Archive
Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
Available Content
The Whole System is Broke and is in Desperate Need of Fixing: Notes on the Second Industrial Revolution
Ian Mitroff and Susan A. Mohrman argue that earlier conditions which made for the overwhelming success of the U.S. and Western democracies have abruptly ceased to exist.
Union Management Cooperation: A Case Study in Ambivalence
This paper by Susan A. Mohrman presents the consultant’s perspective on a union/management quality of worklife project.
Self-Designing Organizations: Towards Implementing Quality-of-Work-Life Innovations
This chapter by Tom Cummings and Susan A. Mohrman develops a strategy for implementing innovations requiring fundamental organizational change.
Unions and the New Management
Edward E. Lawler III and Susan A. Mohrman consider the reasons for the decline of the union movement. It is concluded that unless unions change in important ways they will continue to decline.
Quality of Work Life and Employee Involvement
Susan A. Mohrman, G. Ledford, Jr., Edward E. Lawler III, and A. Mohrman, Jr. state that involvement approaches to the organization of human resources has implications for most human resource systems, including the design of jobs, selection, training, appraisal, rewards and the conduct of labor relations.
Assessing Innovative Organizational Design: The Case for A Feedback/Adaptation Model
Organizational change projects entail dynamic complex processes through which organizations and their members learn new ways to function. This paper by T. Cummings and Susan A. Mohrman assesses the appropriateness of traditional evaluation models for the assessment of these projects.
Quality Circles in a Metropolitan Police Department
This paper by S. Hocevar and Susan A. Mohrman describes the background and status of a quality circles program in one division of a large metropolitan police department.
The Design of Employee Participation Groups: Guidelines Based on Empirical Research
This paper by Susan A. Mohrman and G. Ledford, Jr. explores the importance of various design features in employee participation programs.
Parallel Participation Structures: The Case of Quality Circles
This paper by Susan A. Mohrman and Edward E. Lawler III examines the typical life cycle of one kind of parallel organization, the Quality Circle. It makes the point that such structures tend to be unstable precisely because they are parallel.
Doing Research: The Case of Organizational Design
T. Cummings, Susan A. Mohrman, A. Mohrman, Jr., and G. Ledford, Jr. present a framework for understanding
a research approach with organizations that are designing and redesigning themselves to adapt to rapid and fundamental societal changes.
Quality Circles — A Self-Destruct Approach?
Edward E. Lawler III and Susan A. Mohrman review the stages of quality circle development and enumerate threats to their continued existence.