Working Papers

Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations

Agility’s Dirty Little Secret

Christopher G. Worley (CEO), Thomas Williams (PwC Strategy), and Edward E. Lawler III (CEO)
The Agility Pyramid describes how the four agility routines and management processes work together to keep an organization’s capabilities effective and refreshed.

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Human Resource Slack, Human Capital Risk, and Firm Performance: Should Firms Grow Employees Faster Than Sales?

Varkey Titus Jr. (University of Nebraska) and Theresa M. Welbourne (CEO) utilize a sample of firms that are at a critical moment of growth: after going public. Analysis of 1,437 firm-year observations comprised of 330 initial public offerings (IPO) tracked over the course of five years indicates that the relationship between HR slack and profitability is curvilinear (inverted-U shape).

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Employee Resource Groups: An Introduction, Review and Research Agenda

Employee resource groups (ERGs) are within-organization groups, staffed by employee volunteers, which have evolved since their inception in the 1960s. In this paper, Theresa M. Welbourne (CEO), Skylar Rolf (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), and Steven Schlachter (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) provide an introduction to ERGs, review the literature that exists to date, and provide ideas for a research agenda.

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Building Human Capital Advantage in Initial Public Offerings (IPOs): The Effect on Long-Term Firm Survival and Performance

Using survey data collected from the firms’ leadership teams in the beginning of the year following their IPO, Theresa M. Welbourne (CEO) and Kyle Gibson (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) test the effects of their approaches to human capital on long-term (10-year) firm survival and performance.

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Can Technology Save Performance Management?

Gerald E. Ledford, Jr. (CEO) and Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) explain how performance management, long the most unpopular HR process, has received increased criticism in recent years.

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Organization Agility and Talent Management

This article by Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) and Christopher G. Worley (CEO) uses case studies on Netflix and oDesk to show that organizations can create an agile workforce by adopting a set of talent management practices that encourage employees to learn and develop, and by reducing the transaction costs associated with changing the skill sets in their workforce.

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Eliminating Performance Appraisals

Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) asks the question “Should organizations stop doing performance appraisals?” The argument in favor of eliminating them is that they frequently do more damage than good.

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Individualizing Organizations: What it takes

Forty years ago, Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) wrote an article arguing that organizations could be more effective and provide a better quality of life for their employees if they would individualize their relationship with their employees.

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Executive Team Member Needed

Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) shares how in order to survive, organizations have had to keep pace with the changes that have occurred. In the future they will have to keep up with an increasingly rapid rate of change in order to survive.

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Talent Analytics Measurement and Reporting: Building a Decision Science or Merely Tracking Activity?

John W. Boudreau (CEO) and Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) ask the question “Is the use and effectiveness of talent and HR reporting progressing from a focus on cost-efficiency and process-effectiveness, and toward a balanced combination that includes them, but extends to strategic measures than enhance talent and business decisions?”

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Research Update: Pay for Skills, Knowledge, and Competencies

Gerald E. Ledford, Jr. and Charles Rivers write that research interest in pay for skills, knowledge, and competencies (SKC) has continued over the past three decades.

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Using Motivation Theory to Improve Gamification

Gerald E. Ledford, Jr. (CEO) and Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) explore the topic of gamification. Today, the purposeful use of games in work settings is growing rapidly. Organizations are rapidly embracing the systematic use of “gamification,” which brings game-like elements to core managerial processes.

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