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This article describes the processes, problems, and results of a Writers' Workshop over its two year period. The main purpose of the Writers' Workshop was to work with authors in order to help them develop their ideas in the form of articles publishable in a top academic journal. The main results are the five articles contained in this Special Issue. This paper also includes the authors' personal evaluation of the Writers' Workshop and a thumbnail summary of each article.

This article outlines how behavioural science and psychological theories can be put to practical use in managerial problem‐solving situations. It follows on from Larry Pate's article in Management Decision, Vol. 25 No. 6.

This research attempted to determine the power of an organization development (OD) program to reduce absenteeism and turnover rates among hourly employees of a medium‐sized Mid‐western life insurance company in the USA. Forty‐six months of archival records were examined within time series and interrupted time series designs (with and without non‐equivalent control groups). Comparisons were also made against annual industry averages for companies within the same size and geographical region categories as the study organization. None of the six hypotheses relating OD to reduced employee absenteeism and turnover was supported, suggesting that the claims of OD supporters may be exaggerated.

Organization training and development specialists have generally viewed themselves as somewhere along a segmented continuum. At one end were trainers in management development and at the other end were organization development practitioners. In some cases, these two development processes were integrated; however, more often than not, those involved found themselves in somewhat different camps, each operating in relative isolation. During the last decade, a relatively new dimension generally known as “organizational transformation” has been added to this continuum. The “organizational transformation” process represents a “new” phase of intervention styles because the underlying logic of the process compels the trainer or consultant to utilize very different paradigms regarding the global realities of organizations. There is an evolving development continuum incorporating highly compatible and indeed potentially synergistic MD‐OD‐TRANS processes. Provides a preliminary framework for understanding the differences between the three dimensions and proposes that all must be utilized and integrated if the current and future needs of organizational participants are to be met.

In a recent issue of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Blake strongly criticised an article on organisational change by Blumberg and Wiener for the authors' failure thoroughly to review the literature and for missing important material relevant to their study. In response, Blumberg simply stated that they were not aware of the material, because it had appeared in a relatively obscure journal. Indeed, a later writer (Zurcher) criticised one of Blake's papers on the same grounds, and then suggested that an event such as this might easily happen to any of us. Despite their apparent conflict, each of these individuals did agree, of course, that a thorough review of the literature on any given topic is necessary to good research and reporting. Our purpose here is not to pour salt on wounds, but rather to illustrate our raison d'être for presenting the material below.

In language that the practising manager can use, findings from several years of important research on managerial decision making are summarised. Four major traps of faulty decision making are identified and managers are shown how to avoid these traps and to improve their decision‐making skills.

This article introduces the contributions made by a leading management scholar (Lou Pondy) and discusses ways he responded as a mentor to the questionings of his many students.