Our task is to adopt a multidisciplinary view
of trust within and between firms, in an effort to
synthesize and give insight into a fundamental
construct of organizational science. We seek to
identify the shared understandings of trust
across disciplines, while recognizing that the
divergent meanings scholars bring to the study
of trust also can add value.

Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View Of Trust

Recent ethnographic studies of workplace practices indicate that the ways people actually work usually differ fundamentally from the ways organizations describe that work in manuals, training programs, organizational charts, and job descriptions. Nevertheless, organizations tend to rely on the latter in their attempts to understand and improve work practice. We examine one such study. We then relate its conclusions to compatible investigations of learning and of innovation to argue that conventional descriptions of jobs mask not only the ways people work, but also significant learning and innovation generated in the informal communities-of-practice in which they work. By reassessing work, learning, and innovation in the context of actual communities and actual practices, we suggest that the connections between these three become apparent. With a unified view of working, learning, and innovating, it should be possible to reconceive of and redesign organizations to improve all three.

/pdf/organizational-learning-and-communities-of-practice-toward-a-5d5ay5q3oh.pdf

Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation

This paper presents a model of team learning and tests it in a multimethod field study. It introduces the construct of team psychological safety—a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking—and models the effects of team psychological safety and team efficacy together on learning and performance in organizational work teams. Results of a study of 51 work teams in a manufacturing company, measuring antecedent, process, and outcome variables, show that team psychological safety is associated with learning behavior, but team efficacy is not, when controlling for team psychological safety. As predicted, learning behavior mediates between team psychological safety and team performance. The results support an integrative perspective in which both team structures, such as context support and team leader coaching, and shared beliefs shape team outcomes.

/pdf/psychological-safety-and-learning-behavior-in-work-teams-igq2jhsmtc.pdf

Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams

The ability to transfer best practices internally is critical to a firtn's ability to build competitive advantage through the appropriation of rents from scarce internal knowledge. Just as a firm's distinctive competencies tnight be dificult for other firms to imitate, its best prczctices could be dfficult to imitate internnlly. Yet, little systematic attention has been pcrid to such internal stickiness. The author analyzes itlterrzal stickiness of knowledge transfer crnd tests the resulting model using canonical correlation analysis of a data set consisting of 271 observations of 122 best-practice transfers in eight companies. Contrary to corzverztiorzrzl wisdom that blames primarily motivational factors, the study findings show the major barriers to internal knowledge transfer to be knowledge-related factors such as the recipient's lack oj absorptive capacity, causal anzbiguity, and an arciuous relationship between the source and the recipient. The identification and transfer of best practices cally are hindered less by confidentiality and legal is emerging as one of the most important and obstacles than external transfers, they could be widespread practical management issues of the faster and initially less complicated, all other latter half of the 1990s. Armed with meaningful, things being equal. For those reasons, in an era detailed performance data, firms that use fact- when continuous organizational learning and based management methods such as TQM, bench- relentless performance improvement are needed to marking, and process reengineering can regularly remain competitive, companies must increasingly compare the performance of their units along resort to the internal transfer of capabilitie~.~ operational dimensions. Sparse but unequivocal Yet, experience shows that transferring capaevidence suggests that such comparisons often bilities within a firm is far from easy. General reveal surprising performance differences between Motors had great difficulty in transferring manuunits, indicating a need to improve knowledge facturing practices between divisions (Kerwin and utilization within the firm (e.g., Chew, Bresnahan, Woodruff, 1992: 74) and IBM had limited suc

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/smj.4250171105

Exploring internal stickiness: Impediments to the transfer of best practice within the firm

The Social Psychology of Organizations.

Research on the Social Impaots of Robotics: Issues and Some Evidence

Since its inception, the Scanlon Plan has attracted considerable attention. The current national concern with productivity has renewed interest in the Plan as a way to improve productivity levels as well as the quality of work. The attractive features of the Plan include a phi1osopy based on cooperative labor-management relationships, a structure for increasing productivity, and an opportunity for increased need satisfaction for all employees. Despite the many benefits attributed to the Plan, it is the position of this paper that: (1) there have been few well designed studies that can assess the multiple impacts of the Plan, and (2) there has been little theoretical elaboration of models that would aid in predicting , the impact of the Plan in different types of organizations over time. The lack of systematic research and theorizing is not mer'e1y of academic interest; it also has real practical implications.

The Scanlon Plan: A Need for Conceptual and Empirical Models

: This paper describes a new conceptual framework of organizational effectiveness. The framework has three distinctive features: (1) it provides a definition of organizational effectiveness built around the concepts of outcomes, constraints and referents; (2) it delineates three subsystems on which effectiveness can be assessed as well as relevant determinants; and (3) it develops the notion of internal and external constituencies which affect the definition of effectiveness. (Author)

Toward a Framework of Organizational Effectiveness

: This is a final report of a project designed to identify factors which contribute to the persistence of organizational change projects in order to improve productivity and quality of working life.

Change In Organizations. Chapter 1. Studies of Change in Organizations.

: Since the early 1970's there has been a proliferation of quality of working life (QWL) projects. These projects attempt to bring about fundamental changes in organizational and labor-management relationships. Basically, they illustrate the new ways to restructure work in order to improve the organizational effectiveness. This paper reviews QWL efforts in the 1970's and suggests possible characteristics of QWL projects in the 1980's. (Author)

Paul S. Goodman

Papers

Research on the Social Impaots of Robotics: Issues and Some Evidence

The Scanlon Plan: A Need for Conceptual and Empirical Models

Toward a Framework of Organizational Effectiveness

Change In Organizations. Chapter 1. Studies of Change in Organizations.

Quality of Work Projects in the 1980's.