The Quality of Work Life Movement

In 1973, the United Automobile Workers sent a letter to its members at a Harman International auto parts plant in Bolivar, TN, describing the simple, but perhaps revolutionary, idea behind an experiment being conducted there. The letter stated: “We are at that point in time where workers should have more to say about their job and how it should be run. They should participate in a meaningful way in making decisions about the job and the work place— decisions which in the past were made pretty much exclusively by management.”

You can download excellent powerpoint slides on HR management, business strategy and personal development HERE.

When the workers in the Harman experiment were, in fact, given more of a say, they began to fashion new ways of doing things at the plant. They formed cooperative work teams, assigned responsibilities and controlled their own time and scheduling. As ob¬servers described it, people became more involved and interested in their jobs. Continue reading

Innovation and Productivity : Lessons from Texas Instruments

No U.S. company is working harder than Texas Instruments, Inc., to foster innovation and to boost productivity, a crucial factor in an era of seemingly endemic inflation. And they’re pretty successful at it. Some observers point to TI as the prototype of what a U.S. company must be to compete in the surging, worldwide electronics market of the 1980s. Others suggest that only TI—of the major U.S. consumer electronics corporations— can compete effectively with the Japanese. How successful is TI? Continue reading

HR Management and Employee Productivity

You can download excellent powerpoint slides on HR management, business strategy and personal development HERE.

Productivity is today’s latest and greatest “we-view-with-alarm” editorial topic. Reading the acres of recent editorial comments, expert testimony, congressional statements, and man-on-the-street opinions leads us to a pair of disquieting conclusions. First, no one really knows what productivity is, at least not in any technical, measurable sense. Second, regardless of what it is, everyone with a cause to champion or a course of action to sell believes that he or she knows the cure for the American economy’s abysmal productivity growth. Continue reading