DOES ORGANIZATION MATTER? A STUDY OF PHYSICIANS' IDEAL ORGANIZATION

It is a known phenomenon that it is difficult to make organizational changes within professional organizations. One recurring observation and experience from health care studies is that it is difficult to discuss the last organizational change with professionals because the most recent change is always perceived as the worst. In order to avoid this routine response, the authors of this article asked 56 senior physicians from the Swedish health care sector what their ideal organization looks like. The authors note that there is a strong institutionalized idea among the physicians of how health care should be organized. The image is not particularly complicated: the organization should be based on the meeting between doctor and patient. One conclusion in the article is that professionals dislike change, but nevertheless, they still want it. Actual change is not the problem – only changes that are not in compliance with the professionals' opinions of organization and management.     

Learning across the life cycle: Experimentation and performance among the hollywood studio heads

Guided by notions from the literature on organizational learning, this paper investigates how product line experimentation and organizational performance change across the careers of top managers. Its subjects are the studio heads who ran all the major Hollywood film studios from 1936 to 1965. The study found first, that product line experimentation declines over the course of executive tenures; second, that there is an inverse U‐shaped relationship between top executive tenure and an organization's financial performance; and third, that product line experimentation is more likely to benefit financial performance late in top executives' tenures. These findings are consistent with a three‐stage ‘executive life cycle’. During the early years of their tenures, top managers experiment intensively with their product lines to learn about their business; later on their accumulated knowledge allows them to reduce experimentation and increase performance; finally, in their last years, executives reduce experimentation still further, and performance declines. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Canadian and American Reactions to Drug and Alcohol Testing Programs in the Workplace

We investigated U.S. and Canadian reactions to workplace drug and alcohol testing programs. Canadian truck drivers (n = 183) deemed drug and alcohol testing policies less fair, and were less accepting of these policies, than their American counterparts (n = 153). We also compared the perspectives of recipients versus third-party observers with regard to their reactions to a drug testing program. Unlike the pattern observed among American observers, the responses by Canadian observers were highly similar to those of the recipients. Canadian observers were more inclined to file a formal protest regarding the implementation of a drug and alcohol testing program than were U.S. observers. The results also showed that procedural and interactional justice principles contributed to the program's fairness, acceptance, and lower levels of protest intentions in both Canada and the United States. We propose that scholars and practitioners can gain a better understanding of multinational reactions to drug and alcohol testing by considering not only cultural but also historical, social, political, and other environmental factors that can shape reactions to personnel practices.     

The relevance of democracy to organizational management

The relationship between democratic ideals and organizational structuring and functioning receives attention in this article. After a brief historical consideration of liberal democracy in the United States, we analyze social, managerial, ethical, and economic issues defining the relevance of democracy to organizational management. These issues lead to a presentation of specific purposes that particular mechanisms of organizational democracy can serve. Because of other scholarly attention to participative management and employee ownership, hierarchical constraints receive emphasis here.     

Individual rights and organizational theory

Rights are very important concepts in everyday life. And they are especially important to participants in organizations. Yet, our theories of organization and management have largely ignored rights — stressing, instead, other concepts, such as goals, roles, etc. This article describes the historical significance of rights and their relevance in understanding social behavior. The advantages of a right-based organizational theory (versus traditional goal-based theories) are discussed.This article draws on the author's forthcoming book,A Social-Contract Theory of Organizations (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).     

Legalistic organizational responses to catastrophic illness: The effect of stigmatization on reactions to HIV/AIDS

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has focused increased attention on catastrophic illnesses in the workplace, and because of the stigmas associated with HIV/AIDS, it raises three primary concerns for organizations: (1) organizational avoidance of legal sanctions and litigation; (2) the maintenance of organizational legitimacy; and (3) organizational protection of employee rights. Although many organizations adopt legalistic responses to cope with these concerns, the analysis presented in this article suggests that while legalistic approaches function well to protect organizational interests in terms of both legal liability and legitimacy, the are only partially able to protect employee rights. Drawing upon the limited literature on HIV/AIDS in the workplace, this article presents an agenda for future research on organizational responses to HIV/AIDS.     

虚拟经营——21世纪的制胜之道

文章对虚拟经营进行了详细的说明,介绍了虚拟经营的5种形式,论述了转向虚拟经营的可行性,同时提出了虚拟经营已经成为一种新型的企业运转和管理的模式。随着计算机技术的不断发展,虚拟经营将在现代社会中演绎更重要的角色。     

差异化人才管理对员工创新绩效的“双刃剑”效应

基于调节焦点理论和公平启发理论,运用结构方程模型考量差异化人才管理对员工创新绩效的影响机制。结果显示：促进定向工作重塑在差异化人才管理与员工创新绩效之间起正向中介作用,防御定向工作重塑在二者间起负向中介作用;组织公平感正向调节差异化人才管理与促进定向工作重塑之间的关系,负向调节差异化人才管理与防御定向工作重塑之间的关系;组织公平感增强促进定向工作重塑的正向中介作用,削弱防御定向工作重塑的负向中介作用。     

制约我国科技创新的环境因素研究

走科技创新之路是我国今后中长期的战略决策.然而,目前我国科技创新的硬环境和软环境基础相对都比较薄弱.基于全国科技工作者的调查数据,我们分析了目前影响我国科技工作创新的主要环境因素.结果表明:创新管理体制和运行机制、国家资金支持力度、组织制度和创新氛围以及我国传统文化因素等是制约科技创新的主要因素.在讨论的基础上提出了相应的对策.     

学习型组织--西方学者研究综述

文章对西方学者有关学习型组织的研究进行了总结 ,以便于学者的进一步研究及其在管理实践中的应用 ,内容主要包括学习型组织的界定、个体学习与组织学习以及创建有效的学习型组织等问题