Productive Workplaces Revisited Dignity, Meaning, and Community in the 21st Century

Author: Marvin R. Weisbord
Publisher: Pfeiffer
ISBN: 9780787971175
Published In: February 2004
Format: Hardback , 544 pages
Jurisdiction: International ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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In Productive Workplaces Revisited, Marvin Weisbord takes the next step in exploring effective strategies for improving workplace productivity through dignity, meaning, and community. Remarkably, in this new edition the author revisits the case studies from the first edition, Productive Workplaces, to show the long-term effects of OD interventions -- twenty-plus years after the fact and provides invaluable insights for practitioner and student alike. In five new chapters, Weisbord reinterprets his systems work in health care and steel-making, describes how “future search,” his method for “getting everybody improving whole systems,” has crossed cultures on five continents, and summarizes his learning from following up cases decades later. This edition also presents in-depth case studies of organizations that have used these techniques to increase output, cut costs, create strategic plans, manage conflict between functions, and more.

Reviews

“Marvin Weisbord is a trusted guide leading us to the questions, beliefs, and practices that help us be real contributors in these difficult times.”
—Margaret Wheatley, author, Leadership and the New Science

“This is an adventure story—the story of Marv Weisbord’s courageous search for ways to help managers and employees cooperate to create more productive and humane workplaces.”
—Paul Lawrence, Donham Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

"Those who remain true to the values presented in this book will not only be more effective in their work, but more ethical as well.”
—Ken Hultman, author, Making Change Irresistible and Balancing Individual and Organizational Values

“This book now falls into the category of a classic, a staple for those striving to understand the fundamental reasons for successful organizations . . . This is a readable book, free of ‘glitz’ and ‘flavors of the month. 217;”
—Robert Dilworth, associate professor of human resource management, Virginia Commonwealth University

Acknowledgments.

About the Author.

*Introduction: How to Get the Most from Productive Workplaces Revisited.

*1. A Personal Prologue: Discovering Theories X and Y.

Part One: The Search for Productive Workplaces.

2. Scientific Management Revisited: A Tale of Two Taylors.

3. The Consulting Engineer: Taylor Invents a New Profession.

4. Lewin: The Practical Theorist.

5. The Learning Organization: Lewin’s Legacy to Management.

6. McGregor and the Roots of Organization Development.

7. The Human Side of Enterprise Revisited: A New Look at Theories X and Y.

8. Undoing Taylorism: Emery, Trist, and the Sociotechnical Revolution.

*9. Open Systems and the New Paradigm: How Emery and Trist Redefined the Workplace.

Part Two: Transforming Theory into Practice and Practice into Theory.

*10. Adding Action to Research: Lewin’s Practice Theory Road Map.

*11. Methods of Diagnosis and Action: Taking Snapshots and Making Movies.

*12. Rethinking Organizational Improvement: New Perspectives on Consultation.

*13. Improving Whole Systems: Alternatives to the Report-in-the-Drawer Phenomenon.

*14. Management Training in Academic Medicine.

*15. Productivity After Taylor: Systems Learning Replaces Expert Analysis.

Part Three: Learning and Applying New Practice Theories.

16. Managing and Consulting in the 21st Century.

17. Transforming Teamwork: Working Relationships in a Fast-Changing World.

18. Designing Work: Structure and Process for Learning and Self-Control.

*19. Managing and Consulting Beyond the Design Limits: Changing Everything at Once.

*20. Future Search: Evolving a Whole Systems Improvement Strategy.

*21. Improving Whole Systems Worldwide.

*22. How There and Then Looks from Here and Now: Ten Cases Revisited.

*Epilogue: Still Caught Between Paradigms: Where Do We Go from Here?

References.

Index.

* Indicates new chapters or includes updates written for this edition.

Marvin Weisbord is an internationally-known consultant and writer and a co-founder of Future Search Network, a non-profit organization that involves people worldwide in voluntary social, technological, and economic change. He is the author of Productive Workplaces, Organizational Diagnosis, Discovering Common Ground, and coauthor of Future Search: An Action Guide.