A Diagnostic Tool for Identifying Disharmonies Within Corporate Innovation Networks

In an article in the previous issue of JPIM , Vasudevan Ramanujam and Gerhard Mensch introduced the concept of mismatches in the perceptions and priorities of various functional specialists, staff and line managers, and senior managers. These mismatches highlight lack of agreement among key participants in the innovation management process within a given company and indicate problems that could hinder performance of the whole management interaction system. Here Mensch and Ramanujam explore the use of a new managerial instrument that can help technology driven companies that are caught in a stalemate in technology. The technique is designed to improve new product development and commercialization of new technology by diagnosing discrepancies in awareness, sense of urgency, and opinions on technological choices which may exist within the organization.     

On Work and Authority: Issues in Job Enlargement, Job Enrichment, Worker Participation and Shared Authority

Abstract . Continued debate over the nature of work is adding to an existing vast literature in labor economics, business and personnel administration, industrial sociology and social psychology. Both theory and experience indicate that the authoritarian workplace results in social costs through reduced labor productivity and increased worker dissatisfaction. But progress toward shared authority and worker participation in the administration of the production process promises to be slow. Management generally preserves a legitimized authority, defending it with the misplaced rationale of elitism, i.e., the presumed functional superiority of managers. Unions will not press for shared authority, for to do so would undermine their basic and formal function of organizational restraint of managerial authority. Thus, while management and union logically protect their traditional roles, the worker and society are denied the potential benefits of basic changes in work and authority.     

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