This volume contributes to a growing consensus about effective workplace practices. The collection combines detailed studies of single industries (automobile assembly, apparel, and machine tools) with cross-industry studies of financial performance. Compared to most past investigations, the research here has better measures of both workplace practices and organizational performance. The contributors find that systems of innovative human resource management practices can have large effects on business performance. Success does not come from any single innovation, but from a coherent system encompassing pay, training, and employee involvement.

The history of how a deceptively ordinary piece of office furniture transformed our relationship with information The ubiquity of the filing cabinet in the twentieth-century office space, along with its noticeable absence of style, has obscured its transformative role in the histories of both information technology and work. In the first in-depth history of this neglected artifact, Craig Robertson explores how the filing cabinet profoundly shaped the way that information and data have been sorted, stored, retrieved, and used. Invented in the 1890s, the filing cabinet was a result of the nineteenth-century faith in efficiency. Previously, paper records were arranged haphazardly: bound into books, stacked in piles, curled into slots, or impaled on spindles. The filing cabinet organized loose papers in tabbed folders that could be sorted alphanumerically, radically changing how people accessed, circulated, and structured information. Robertson's unconventional history of the origins of the information age posits the filing cabinet as an information storage container, an "automatic memory" machine that contributed to a new type of information labor privileging manual dexterity over mental deliberation. Gendered assumptions about women's nimble fingers helped to naturalize the changes that brought women into the workforce as low-level clerical workers. The filing cabinet emerges from this unexpected account as a sophisticated piece of information technology and a site of gendered labor that with its folders, files, and tabs continues to shape how we interact with information and data in today's digital world.

Imagine designing the best company on earth to work for ...What would that company be like? How would you build and sustain it? As a leader, you need to know. In the past, businesses made people conform to the organization's needs. But the old paradigm has shifted. Now leaders must transform their organizations so that they attract the right people, keep them, and inspire them to do their best work. How do you create a culture people want to belong to? In this powerful and necessary follow-up to the classic Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?, leadership and organizational sages Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones identify and illuminate the six key organizational attributes to do just that. In separate chapters, they delve deeply into each one: 1. Let people be themselves 2. Practice radical honesty 3. Magnify people's strengths 4. Stand for authenticity (more than shareholder value) 5. Make work meaningful 6. Make simple rules With vivid stories and examples from global companies, the authors illustrate the kind of strong, attractive workplace culture that leads to sustained high performance. They also provide ways of assessing how your company is doing and describe the tensions and trade-offs that leaders must manage as they transform their organizations. Why Should Anyone Work Here? is the question all contemporary organizational leaders must constantly ask themselves if they want to survive and thrive in the new world. This book will help them answer that question.

Here's a remarkable sourcebook that places at your fingertips 236 tested model letters-- virtually every work-related letter you'll ever need-- to parents, students, faculty, and community leaders. Each letter is ideal for its particular purpose and each is ready to use at once or quickly adapt, saving you hours of valuable time and effort.

You will find letters covering every conceivable aspect of your job-- everything from recommending a student to responding to criticism, from expressing appreciation or sympathy to replying to a request...applying for a position...opposing a decision...or making a complaint.

For ease of use, all 236 letters are conveniently organized into 10 fast-access sections:

Effective recommendations: 20 recommendation letters (positive and negative) for school and college entrance, awards, special programs, jobs, and more

Dealing with illness and death: 22 letters of sympathy, condolence, and understanding for everything from the illness of a teacher to the death of a student's parent

Dealing with student behavior: 21 letters addressing good and bad student behavior-- covering various infractions, warnings, suspension, and expulsion.

Meaningful evaluations: 22 positive and negative evaluations of students, teachers, administrators, programs, events, schools, texts and learning materials.

Writing for the community: 21 letters supporting or opposing proposed legislation, policies, or decisions; responding to criticism; replying to invitations or requests.

Handling complaints: 24 letters to get results from your complaints about services, delays, defects, and decisions-- and to answer complaints from others

Dealing with themedia: 21 letters involving the media, both or and con-- from requests for coverage or TV time to responses to negative articles and guidelines for media on campus.

Handling job-related issues: 20 letters related to your job and the hobs of others, from announcing your availability for a position to notification of retirement.

Expressing thanks & appreciation: 31 letters that show appreciation for awards, gifts, support, volunteer, help, and acts of generosity and kindness.

Special letters for everyday events: 34 letters that deal in a special way with day-to-day happenings: acceptances, confirmations, explanations, apologies, requests, and more.

The Educator's Lifetime Encyclopedia of Letters virtually writes your toughest letters for you! It is a resource every educator can use and refer to again and again, for letters that are ready-to-go "as is" or easy to adapt for nearly any specific work-related purpose.

We are all increasingly familiar with modern business terms such as total quality management, just-in-time production, e-business, lean manufacturing and teleworking. But what really lies behind these terms and what effect do these and other new practices have on productivity and performance and, crucially, what is their social and psychological impact?

Written by leading authors from around the world, The New Workplace provides an up-to-date assessment of research into the human effects of new working practices, including team-working, call centres, virtual organizations and supply chain partnering. The impact on productivity and performance is considered in detail in a later section, while the final sections give guidance on a range of methods and tools for evaluating the social and psychological effects, as well as looking to the future. The practical focus means that The New Workplace can be used to help with the design and implementation of new working practices, ensuring that best results are achieved.

Indispensable for students and scholars of organizational psychology, The New Workplace will also be useful for consultants, as well as human resource managers and others charged with the management of new working practices.

Sewing Hope offers the first account of a bold challenge to apparel-industry sweatshops. The Alta Gracia factory in the Dominican Republic is the anti-sweatshop. It boasts a living wage three times the legal minimum, high health and safety standards, and a legitimate union-all verified by an independent monitor. It is the only apparel factory in the global south to meet these criteria. The Alta Gracia business model represents an alternative to the industry's "race to the bottom" with its inherent poverty wages and unsafe factory conditions. Workers' stories reveal how adding $0.90 to a sweatshirt's production price can change lives: from getting a life-saving operation to reuniting families; from obtaining first-ever bank loans to getting running water; from purchasing children's school uniforms to taking night classes. Sewing Hope invites readers into the apparel industry's sweatshops and the Alta Gracia factory. Learn how the anti-sweatshop started, how it overcame challenges, and how the impact of its business model could transform the global industry.

"Maybe you think you know about time management. Unless you’ve read Kerry Gleeson’s High-Tech PEP, you don’t. This book contains a key. It unexpectedly opens up a whole world—where suddenly you can think clearly and accomplish things you never thought possible." —Duncan Maxwell Anderson Senior Editor, Success magazine "With simple, straightforward tips, [Gleeson] explains how to exploit technology as a personal information management tool.… This book offers concrete suggestions for getting our information lives in order. As Gleeson says, ‘Do it now!’" —Dr. Franklin Becker, Professor and Director International Workplace Studies Program, Cornell University and Partner, @Work Consulting Group LLC "As a result of PEP, I was able to reduce my workweek hours from 70 to 40, and still achieve the same results.… I have been very pleased." —Dr. Richard Bax, Head of Clinical Research SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals "Productivity through the effective use of technology and work process improvement is the key to success in the corporate world globally. PEP is the enabler." —Ed Carr, Senior Vice President of Administration Steelcase, Inc. Make Electronic Gadgets Dance to your Tune—Do More Work in Less Time. Adapted from Kerry Gleeson’s internationally acclaimed Personal Efficiency Program (PEP), The High-Tech Personal Efficiency Program shows you how to apply the low-tech principles of PEP to your high-tech environment—e-mail, groupware, the World Wide Web, cell phones, beepers, and more. The easy-to-learn system Gleeson describes has already enabled hundreds of thousands of businesspeople worldwide to reduce job stress, increase productivity, and find more time to smell the roses. Why not you?

The international bestseller on escaping the 9-5 and finding a new way of living Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan - there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, this book is the blueprint. This step-by-step guide to living the life you want reveals: * How Tim went from $40,000 dollars per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per MONTH and 4 hours per week * How to outsource your life and do whatever you want * How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours * How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent 'mini-retirements' This edition also includes: * More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled their income, overcome common sticking points and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point * Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating email and negotiating with bosses and clients * How lifestyle design principles can be used to live ambitiously in unpredictable economic times * The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either.

Your roadmap for the new world of work
Today's deluge of organizational change needn't leave employer and employee at odds. Free Agents presents a win-win scenario for both. Here, individuals learn how to take charge of their lives and careers, to separate themselves from their jobs and redefine themselves in terms of the new marketplace. Organizations discover a process for aligning the needs of these empowered professionals with the needs of the organization. It helps them to improve their competitive advantage, create and sustain a Free Agent community, and establish an environment where everyone is committed to excellence. An upbeat alternative to marketplace malaise.

Psychological Management of Individual Performance contains a unique combination of contributions from academics and practitioners for each topic.

Leading international authors come together in this integrative and comprehensive handbook, to combine academic research findings and to provide detailed practice-relevant information, on subjects such as performance concepts, work design, cognitive ability and personality as predictors of performance, performance appraisal and potential analysis, goal setting, training, mentoring, reward systems, strategic HRM as well as broader issues such as well-being and organizational culture.

This handbook is a valuable resource for researchers, academics and advanced students in psychology and related fields; as well as consultants, practitioners and professionals in HR, who want to contribute to the enhancement and maintenance of high individual performance.

Guidelines for Improving Your Return on Investments
Learn how to lower financial risk with these strategies for benefits-based information technology (IT) investment planning. The authors provide a centralized framework for establishing IT requirements and making sound IT investment decisions. The book also leads you in identifying objectives and focusing on the middle steps
of IT planning--from formulating investment guidelines to determining return on investment expectations. With case studies and a useful glossary, this easy-to-understand tool is ideal for the expert and novice alike.

Companies across all industries are engaging in digital transformation to harness the power of advanced information technologies. Building on interviews and diverse case studies, this book provides an in-depth look at how data and algorithms are reshaping management practices, organizational structures, corporate culture, and work roles. Henri Schildt develops a broad framework for understanding digitalization not as a technological change but as a new normative mind-set, here called 'the data imperative'. It describes the new managerial ideals that compel companies to pursue digital omniscience and omnipotence-abilities to represent and understand the world through real-time data flow and to control customer experiences, physical equipment, and workers with software. The efforts to complement and replace human expertise with data and smart algorithms are associated with shifts in strategic priorities, adoption of powerful modular architectures, new organizational structures, and the introduction of artificial intelligence into diverse work roles. Surveying the developments in management and the workplace, this book offers an integrative and balanced account of the on-going changes that will continue to affect everyone from executives and professionals to front-line workers.

The Courageous Messenger is for anyone who wants to voice a concern or offer an idea to improve things - but hesitates out of a concern for risks and repercussions. Kathleen Ryan, Daniel Oestreich, and George Orr have written a practical, easy-to-read book on the principles, strategies, and skills for becoming an effective and courageous messenger in the workplace. This hands-on guidebook provides a step-by-step assessment of the benefits, risks, and motivations for communicating difficult news to bosses, peers, and employees. The authors use model conversations and detailed examples of workplace situations to guide you through each step of the process, including preparing for and opening the conversation, expressing yourself with clarity and tact, working through difficult or emotional moments, developing solid agreements on outcomes of the conversation, and ensuring successful follow-through.

Whether you're working at home, on the road, or in any other nontraditional work arrangement, here's what you'll need to set up, survive, and thrive in the virtual office. Alice Bredin, the leading authority on the virtual office, gives you expert advice on:

• Getting there—choosing the right business idea, negotiating for telecommuting, and selling your family on your new workstyle
• Organizing yourself—structuring your environment, setting up a virtual office in your home or car, dealing with a satellite office situation, choosing and finding the best technology
• Maintaining your virtual office—staying in the loop when you're not in an office, keeping in touch when you're on the road, generating business, finding free publicity, adopting the habits of highly successful virtual office workers, maintaining contact with the office or customers, communicating effectively via technology
• Surviving—creating and maintaining work/life balance, working at home with kids, avoiding overwork, making sure your accomplishments are recognized, learning to take vacations, staying away from the fridge, being a good boss to yourself

Whether you are contemplating this new work arrangement, actively in transition, or firmly entrenched in this workplace revolution, this comprehensive guide is your key to success in your new working environment.

'The lessons and practices here will shift a sense of chaos to one of clarity and a mindset of fear to one of hope' Margaret Heffernan, bestselling author of Wilful Blindness ___________________________________________________________________________________ How often do you interrupt? How often do people interrupt you? Can you remember the last time someone listened to you all the way through your thinking? In a time when communication is more challenging than ever and relationships need to be nurtured, listening to one another could not be more important. In her new book, Nancy Kline, bestselling author of Time To Think, suggests that for us to radically improve our communication we should make the propmise 'I won't interrupt you'. This promise matters because when we interrupt each other, we interrupt our thinking, and that interrupts the quality of everything we do. By making this promise to our colleagues and loved ones we can deepen our relationships, increase our productivity, and enjoy deeper, richer conversations. It may, in fact, be the most important promise we ever make. Nancy has spent the last three decades researching independent thought and the barriers that prevent us from thinking for ourselves. In this book she tells us the truth about the damage that interruption can cause, she shares case studies and stories from her work with clients, as well as simple ways we can improve our communication, and change our lives. ___________________________________________________________________________________ 'This generous, useful and important book is a delight to read and will fundamentally change the way you interact with people' - Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler, authors of The Communication Book 'This timely and persuasive book shows us that the foundation for independent thinking is the promise to actually listen, without interruption, to what others have to say' Cal Newport, bestselling author of Digital Minimalism

Society needs whistleblowers, yet to speak up and expose wrongdoing often results in professional and personal ruin. Kate Kenny draws on the stories of whistleblowers to explain why this is, and what must be done to protect those who have the courage to expose the truth. Despite their substantial contribution to society, whistleblowers are considered martyrs more than heroes. When people expose serious wrongdoing in their organizations, they are often punished or ignored. Many end up isolated by colleagues, their professional careers destroyed. The financial industry, rife with scandals, is the focus of Kate Kenny's penetrating global study. Introducing whistleblowers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Ireland working at companies like Wachovia, Halifax Bank of Scotland, and Countrywide-Bank of America, Whistleblowing suggests practices that would make it less perilous to hold the powerful to account and would leave us all better off. Kenny interviewed the men and women who reported unethical and illegal conduct at major corporations in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis. Many were compliance officers working in influential organizations that claimed to follow the rules. Using the concept of affective recognition to explain how the norms at work powerfully influence our understandings of right and wrong, she reframes whistleblowing as a collective phenomenon, not just a personal choice but a vital public service.

"Strategy and Business" 2012 Organizational Culture Book of the YearThis third edition of the classic resource, "Productive Workplaces" is smart, well-written and well-researched, thoughtful, somewhat provocative, and a one-of-a-kind review of the integration of economics, technology, and people. It covers such topics as: the work on self as integral to organizational change; the revision of Lewinian concepts for a new era; and the history behind "getting everybody improving whole systems" as a response to fast change and increasing diversity (not the same as using any particular method). The themes, case studies (many revisited), and models are as relevant as ever.

Offers invaluable and accessible guidance for designing workspaces in order to increase productivity and efficiency and reduce operating costs. After reviewing an existing situation, the author presents a variety of approaches that include instruction and direction to enact changes. Identifies specific deterrents in the workplace, providing new techniques and other methods to solve them. Details the Shumake Beta Module, created by the author, which supports maximum productivity by an individual worker at any company's level. All the material in the text has been successfully tested.

From old-fashioned bricks-and-mortars to cutting-edge startups, businesses are moving into uncharted territory as they determine how to move from an analog past to a digital future effectively. How can you make sure not to leave human instinct behind? Businesses are leaving behind traditional meetings in favor of virtual ones, transitioning from surveys and studies to analytics and algorithms. The startling and often unacknowledged truth is that?the promise of digital transformation can only be realized when we find a way to balance it with the promise of people.?In the end, it's the people that matter, and companies must never forget the soul that drives them. In Restoring the Soul of Business, business leader Rishad Tobaccowala?teaches you to: Understand how to unleash the significant benefit that can be realized by combining emotion and data, human and machine, analog and digital. Spot the warning signs of data-blinded companies: cold cultures with little human interaction, poor innovation stemming from discouraged employees who don't contribute ideas, and poor customer service due to automated, robotic processes. Explore how organizations of various sizes and from different industries have successfully reoriented their thinking on how to fuse technology and humanity. Gain skills to become an expert in connections critical to growth and success, including the connection between being creative and using technology. Everyone working in an organization will find penetrating observations and guidance about how and why establishing the proper balance between human intuition and creativity and data-driven insights can lead to increased revenue, profitability, retention-and even joy-in their careers and business. Restoring the Soul of Business provides practical tools and techniques that every organization can and should implement, and challenges you to move forward with the kind of balance that capitalizes transformation and produces one great success after another.

Life isn’t about “finding” fulfillment and success – it’s about creating it. Why then has creativity been given a back seat in our culture? No longer.

Creativity is a force inside every person that, when unleashed, transforms our lives and delivers vitality to everything we do. Establishing a creative practice is therefore our most valuable and urgent task - as important to our well-being as exercise or nutrition. The good news? Renowned artist, author, and CreativeLive founder, Chase Jarvis, reminds us that creativity isn't a skill—it's a habit available to everyone: beginners and lifelong creators, entrepreneurs to executives, astronauts to zookeepers, and everyone in between. Through small, daily actions we can supercharge our innate creativity and rediscover our personal power in life.

Whether your ambition is a creative career, completing a creative project, or simply cultivating a creative mindset, Creative Calling will unlock your potential via Jarvis’s memorable “IDEA” system:

• Imagine your big dream, whatever you want to create—or become—in this world.
• Design a daily practice that supports that dream—and a life of expression and transformation.
• Execute on your ambitious plans and make your vision real.
• Amplify your impact through a supportive community you’ll learn to grow and nurture.