D. Finegold, A. Levenson, and M. Van Buren explain that the rapid growth of the temporary staffing industry in the 1990s poses a paradox to researchers interested in the labor market for low-skilled workers.
Working Papers
Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
Available Content
Designing Work for Knowledge-Based Competition
Susan Mohrman proposes a framework for the design of work in the knowledge enterprise-firms that compete based on their knowledge leadership and knowledge management capabilities.
When Two (or More) Heads are Better than One: The Promise and Pitfalls of Shared Leadership
Shared leadership is a topic that is largely ignored in the research literature. Despite this, J. O’Toole, J. Galbraith, and E. Lawler believe the topic warrants additional theoretical and empirical attention.
Contextual Determinants of Organizational Ambidexterity
Cristina B. Gibson and Julian Birkinshaw empirically investigate predictors and consequences of organisational ambidexterity, defined as the capacity to simultaneously achieve alignment and adaptability.
Seven Challenges to Virtual Team Performance: Lessons from Sabre, Inc.
Bradley L. Kirkman, Benson Rosen, Cristina B. Gibson, Paul E. Tesluk, and Simon O. McPherson share that advances in communications and information technology create new opportunities for organizations to build and manage virtual teams.
The Effect of Individual Perceptions of Deadlines on Team Performance
The focus of this paper by Mary J. Waller, Jeffrey M. Conte, Cristina B. Gibson, and Mason A. Carpenter concerns perceptions of deadlines among team members, and how these perceptions influence team performance under deadline conditions.
ROI and Strategy for Teams and Collaborative Work Systems
Alec Levenson share that return on investment (ROI) has long been used to evaluate capital spending projects. The underlying principle is straightforward and compelling: use a uniform financial metric for projects and outcomes that otherwise would be difficult to compare.
Getting Rid of the Bottom 10%, Sounds Good But…
Ed Lawler explains that successfully removing poor performers requires, first and foremost, the ability to identify who they are. Only if this can be done effectively does it makes sense to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of actually forcing them out of the organization.
The Organizational Level of Analysis: Consulting to the Implementation of New Organizational Designs
Sue Mohrman discusses how during a two-year period, a European electronics firm, Global Solutions, acquired four foreign subsidiaries to bolster its strategy of becoming a global leader selling systems to large global customers.
Investing in Workers’ Basic Skills: Lessons from Company-Funded Workplace-Based Programs
This monograph by Alec Levenson is written for those interested in promoting company-funded workplace basic skills programs.
The Employment Outcomes and Advancement of Temporary Workers
Alec Levenson and David Finegold discuss how most research on temporary jobs focuses either on companies’ motivations for using temps or point-in-time comparisons of temp and non-temp jobs. Both types of approach seek to shed insights into the opportunities available to those who work as temps.
Pay Strategies for the New Economy: Lessons from the Dot-com Era
Ed Lawler discusses how the 1990’s saw the rise of the dot-coms. They soared to amazing stock market evaluations that defied the laws of economic gravity.