David E. Bowen and Chistopher A. Wadley discuss how employee benefit plans, which can add 50% to payroll and be neither understood nor appreciated by employees, can be a source of costly headaches for a firm.
Research and Insights Archive
Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
Available Content
Service in Manufacturing: Some Strategic and Theoretical Implications
In this paper by David E. Bowen, Caren J. Siehl, and Benjamin Schneider, approaches to enhancing the competitiveness of domestic manufacturing operations are re-conceptualized as ways of restructuring production operations to include attributes of service operations.
Changing Organizations: Strategic Choices
Key strategic choices in the design of change efforts are considered by Edward E. Lawler III. It is concluded that change efforts should be designed to incorporate such feature as informed consent, reinvention, a combination of bottoms up and top down change, organization wide installation and motivation based on a positive view of the change to be installed.
Human Resource Management: Meeting the New Challenges
The challenges which face the human resources function are reviewed by Edward E. Lawler III. It is argued that human resources departments need to improve their information systems, provide expert resources help, set and implement strategy, and manage the organization’s culture.
Compiled Opinion Editorials
A compiled set of opinion editorials by Edward E. Lawler III and Warren Bennis is presented.
Impediments to the Sino-U.S. Joint Venture Process
Mary Ann Von Glinow and Mary B. Teagarden state that joint ventures between the United States and China have increased dramatically since normalization of relationships resulting in China’s Open Door Policy.
Pay for Performance: A Strategic Analysis
Edward E. Lawler III argues that the idea of paying for performance is so widely accepted that almost every organization says that it does it.
Managing Cultural Differences in Mergers and Acquisitions: The Role of the Human Resource Function
C. Siehl, G. Ledford, Jr., R. Silverman, and P. Fay explain that no comprehensive data exist about the percentage of mergers and acquisitions that end in failure, but nearly all observers agree that the percentage is disturbingly high.
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.
Emerging Models of Consultancy
In this exploratory paper, Craig C. Lundberg and Michael Finney attempt to explicate what currently appears to be the range and function of emerging consultancy models, that is, to order and describe the major contemporary consultancy models in terms of consultant roles.
Strategies for Managing On-Site Customers in Service Organizations
David E. Bowen describes strategies that managers in the service sector can use to respond effectively to customer presence within their organizations.
Moving from Production to Service in Human Resources Management
This article by Dave Bowen and Larry E. Greiner contends that the effectiveness of Human Resources (HR) staff groups responsible for personnel in organizations is limited because these groups often perform their role with a production orientation rather than a service orientation.