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The disappointing results achieved by reengineering,
total quality management, and team-based empowerment programs
dictate that a quantum change is needed in the way organizations
are designed and managed. This groundbreaking book by organizational
change experts Ronald Purser and Steven Cabana reveals how
innovative companies are unleashing huge productivity gains
by transforming the work of teams, designing them into a
fully self-managing organization. Purser and Cabana show
how authorizing employees to design, control, and coordinate
their own work and workplace has enabled some firms to reduce
manufacturing cycle times by 50 percent, cut costs in half,
and most important, share knowledge more widely in the organization.
The authors demonstrate through in-depth
case studies how democratic decision-making works today
in such pioneering companies as Microsoft, Motorola, Lockheed
Martin, American Express, Charles Schwab, Sequa Chemicals,
Syncrude Canada, and Celgard. They provide detailed instruction
in the core principles and methods of self-management, showing
why employee participation is key to strategy creation and
corporate redesign, and how relocating the responsibility
for value-added work into the hands of the people who actually
touch the product or provide the service eradicates the
need for external supervision and costly bureaucratic overhead.
Self-management is the wave of the future
not only because it improves economic performance, but also
because it puts dignity, care, and meaning back into work.
A step-by-step blueprint for designing and developing a
self-managing organization, Purser and Cabana's findings
are required reading for every forward-thinking manager.
Ronald E. Purser is Associate Professor
in the College of Business at San Francisco State University
and Saybrook Graduate School. He has consulted to many leading
U.S. corporations, such as Exxon Chemicals, General Electric,
Polaroid, Procter & Gamble, Storage Technology, United
Airlines, and Xerox.
Steven Cabana is the founder and Managing
Director of Whole Systems Associates, a rapidly growing
management consulting firm in Boston. His clients include
such firms as BankBoston, Boston Medical Center, Merck,
Syncrude, and United Technologies.
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