Principles and Practices of Organizational Performance Excellence

Principles and Practices of Organizational Performance Excellence
Author: Thomas J. Cartin
Publisher: Quality Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 1999-06-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0873898826

Many organizations have realized bona fide reward payoffs using a systematic continuous approach to quality and quality improvement. Divided into two sections, this book begins with an easy overview of quality fundamentals and productivity followed by a more detailed explanation of the key quality improvement tools and techniques. Chapter topics include the evolution of quality, management by commitment and leadership, customer satisfaction, organization planning, partnerships and strategic alliances, need for a systems approach in process improvement, quality costs, current engineering, and much more. Includes many examples and study questions to make it useful as a business reference or text. Principles and Practices of Organizational Performance is the evolution of the author's best-selling book, Principles and Practices of TQM, certain portions of which have been included in this book. Selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine, 1999.Benefits: Discusses international quality standards(ISO). Provides an overview of the essentials in quality improvement awards - both national and international.liIncludes a glossary of terms that aid in communicating the language of improvement. Contents: Productivity Fundamentals, Management and Organization Change, Customer Satisfaction and Focus, Employee Empowerment, Quality Planning and Deployment, Quality Systems and Improvement, The New Quality Assurance, Supplier Quality Management, Quality Costs-Old and New, Tools for Continuous Improvement, Quality Standards and Awards, Quality Function Deployment, Design of Experiments

Organizational Participation

Organizational Participation
Author: Frank Heller
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 1998-07-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0191660086

Team-working, partnership, quality circles, works councils, industrial democracy, empowerment - are they distinct and innovative arrangements or is it a case of new wine in old bottles? In the post war period we have seen numerous forms of organizational participation sometimes as experiments, sometimes as negotiated expediency, and sometimes as hype. Different ideas have emerged from different parts of the world, in different industries, at different times with different objectives. In this book four experienced international analysts take the longer view and look at the changing forms of - and changing debates around - orgnaizational participation. The review an extensive literature of experiments and practical experiences through a critical evaluation of the available data to reach balanced conclusions about the importance and utility of this concept for organizations now and in the future.

Organization Theory and Governance for the 21st Century

Organization Theory and Governance for the 21st Century
Author: Sandi Parkes Pershing
Publisher: CQ Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-08-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1483310647

Applying organization theory to public and governance organizations, Organization Theory and Governance for the 21st Century presents readers with a conscious and thoughtful awareness of the history and evolving nature of organizations. Authors Sandra Parkes Pershing and Eric Austin address emerging theories rarely touched upon in competing titles, and take a deeper look into assumed theories to give the student a chance to critically consider the consequences these embedded assumptions have for organizational practice. By providing a consistent theoretical grounding and a clear focus on post-traditionalist thinking, the book gives students the background they need to analyze organizational settings and take effective action in the unique setting of contemporary governance.

Frameworks for Modeling Cognition and Decisions in Institutional Environments

Frameworks for Modeling Cognition and Decisions in Institutional Environments
Author: Joan-Josep Vallbé
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2014-10-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9401794278

This book deals with the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications of bounded rationality in the operation of institutions. It focuses on decisions made under uncertainty, and presents a reliable strategy of knowledge acquisition for the design and implementation of decision-support systems. Based on the distinction between the inner and outer environment of decisions, the book explores both the cognitive mechanisms at work when actors decide, and the institutional mechanisms existing among and within organizations that make decisions fairly predictable. While a great deal of work has been done on how organizations act as patterns of events for (boundedly) rational decisions, less effort has been devoted to study under which circumstances organizations cease to act as such reliable mechanisms. Through an empirical strategy on open-ended response data from a survey among junior judges, the work pursues two main goals. The first one is to explore the limits of “institutional rationality” of the Spanish lower courts on-call service, an optimal scenario to observe decision-making under uncertainty. The second aim is to achieve a better understanding of the kind of uncertainty under which inexperienced decision-makers work. This entails exploring the demands imposed by problems and the knowledge needed to deal with them, making this book also a study on expertise achievement in institutional environments. This book combines standard multivariate statistical methods with machine learning techniques such as multidimensional scaling and topic models, treating text as data. Doing so, the book contributes to the collaboration between empirical social scientific approaches and the community of scientists that provide the set of tools and methods to make sense of the fastest growing resource of our time: data.

Labor and the Environmental Movement

Labor and the Environmental Movement
Author: Brian K. Obach
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2004-02-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780262263993

Relations between organized labor and environmental groups are typically characterized as adversarial, most often because of the specter of job loss invoked by industries facing environmental regulation. But, as Brian Obach shows, the two largest and most powerful social movements in the United States actually share a great deal of common ground. Unions and environmentalists have worked together on a number of issues, including workplace health and safety, environmental restoration, and globalization (as in the surprising solidarity of "Teamsters and Turtles" in the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle). Labor and the Environmental Movement examines why, when, and how labor unions and environmental organizations either cooperate or come into conflict. By exploring the interorganizational dynamics that are crucial to cooperative efforts and presenting detailed studies of labor-environmental group coalition building from around the country (examining in detail examples from Maine, New Jersey, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin), it provides insight into how these movements can be brought together to promote a just and sustainable society. Obach gives a brief history of relations between organized labor and environmental groups in the United States, explores how organizational learning can increase organizations' ability to work with others, and examines the crucial role played by "coalition brokers" who maintain links to both movements. He challenges research that attempts to explain inter-movement conflict on the basis of cultural distinctions between blue-collar workers and middle-class environmentalists, providing evidence of legal and structural constraints that better explain the organizational differences class-culture and new-social-movement theorists identify. The final chapter includes a model of the crucial determinants of cooperation and conflict that can serve as the basis for further study of inter-movement relations.