Edward Lawler III and Susan A. Mohrman argue that corporations are undergoing dramatic changes that have significant implications for how their human resources are managed and for how the human resource function is best organized and managed.
Research and Insights Archive
Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
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The Era of Human Capital Has Finally Arrived
Edward Lawler III explains that because of the growth in knowledge and the ways it is used by organizations, the very nature of individual work has changed. Increasingly, work in developed countries is knowledge work in which people manage information, deal in abstract concepts, and are valued for their ability to think, analyze and problem solve.
Global Organizational Networks: Emergence and Future Prospects
Janet Fulk discusses how the closing years of the 20th century brought a burst of theory, research, analysis and social commentary that established the network as the most important emergent organizational structure and the preeminent metaphor sense-making by academics and practitioners alike.
Seize the Day: Organizational Studies Can and Should Make a Difference
Susan Mohrman explains that the organizational sciences have an unprecedented opportunity to generate information that is useful to organizations and can make a difference in how organizations evolve and in the quality of life of people.
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.
Our Past, Present, and Future in Teams: The Role of Human Resource Professionals in Managing Team Performance Across Cultures
Cristina B. Gibson and Bradley L. Kirkman discuss how the majority of Fortune 1000 employees have been affected by the widespread proliferation of work teams.
Tomorrow’s Organization: Crafting Winning Capabilities in a Dynamic World
Based on eighteen years of in-depth research, this powerful new book by Albers Mohrman, Jay R. Galbraith , and Edward E. Lawler III describes the building blocks for creating tomorrow’s dynamic organizations and provides hands-on guidance for implementing change.
Transforming the Human Resources Function
Sue Mohrman and Ed Lawler state that the emergence of the global economy, overcapacity in many industries, monumental improvements in the power of computer and telecommunications tools, and the emergence of the knowledge economy are among the forces that are resulting in fundamental change in the design of organizations.
Total Quality management and Employee Involvement: Similarities, Differences and Future Directions
The similarities and differences between total quality management and employee involvement are examined in this paper by Edward Lawler III.
Our Federalist Future: The Leadership Imperative
James O’Toole and Warren Bennis ask “Are large organizations inherently superior because they possess greater resources to protect the interests of their constituencies against the vagaries of powerful external forces, or are small-scale organizations superior because they are more sensitive to their constituents’, needs (and more adaptable to changing conditions)?”
Total Quality-Oriented Human Resource Management
D. Bowen and E. Lawler III argue that human resources holds the key to sustained quality improvement. Consequently, the HRM department can potentially play a critical role in an organization’s TQM effort.
The Business Unit of the Future
Jay R. Galbraith states that the business unit is a basic building block of the corporation’s structure. Collections of businesses make up the corporation’s portfolio.