Search results

Frigoscandia, whose latest cold store at Portbury (Bristol) came on stream earlier this year, completing its basic distribution network, is a significant computer user. Frigoscandia writes all its own programs, operates the Iceline system for CWS, and feels it is equipped to face a future in which the volume of frozen food sales is likely to rise steadily. Mike Parker describes how the system has been built up, with a central computer at Hoddesdon, together with smaller computers based at the cold stores.

Managers and leaders are faced with organizational decisions that impact policies and procedures every day. Managers and leaders in this post‐Enron era are required to make decisions that support the fair and ethical treatment of employees, and act in ways that are perceived as ethical and responsible. There is a pressing need to develop strategies for increasing organizational justice and promoting responsible decision‐making.

We begin with a discussion of leadership, emphasizing the difference between transactional and transformational leadership. We then go on to describe different decision‐making styles that have been validated by research and put into practice in many organizations. Next we examine the nature of organizational justice and how attention to justice issues has both theoretical and practical significance. Following these discussions, we present an integrative model of leadership, decision‐making, and justice.

We demonstrate, with real‐world examples and practical scenarios, how this model can be used to create a “great” company or “best” organization.

Although many of the suggestions and recommendations are based on the best evidence to date, future studies should focus on the connections between traditional measures of effectiveness (e.g. profit, productivity, competitiveness) and the qualities of leadership, decision processes, and justice addressed in this paper.

This article describes strategies for improving morale, exercising strong leadership, making critical decisions, increasing performance, and promoting a positive corporate image.

The paper presents a new look at the relationships among leadership, decision‐making and justice. The article has value to business, corporate, and agency leaders who desire improvements to their organizations using a strategy that focuses on sound judgment and a just and responsible outcome.

Total quality management (TQM) is usually presented as a proven “win‐win” solution to the problems of private and public sector organizations. However, actual TQM programmes (under a variety of names) have a poor track record in their own terms and a strong faddish appearance. Despite the record and the sharp disagreements among quality gurus, unions are frequently presented with finished programmes requiring major union and employee concessions. Further, despite TQM’s claimed concern for the welfare, dignity, and creative input of employees, the reality of TQM is a model which places most employees last. Beneath the rhetoric of many TQM programmes is a system of management control and unappealing work organization best described as “Management‐by‐stress”. Unions need to understand the basic TQM themes, examine their impact on employees and their unions, and propose alternatives which start with basic social needs.

Increased worker autonomy and participation are being proclaimed as the foundation for economic competitiveness in the 1990s (Reich, 1991). Management has been generally favorable towards such strategies and surveys of workers also indicate widespread support (Hackman, 1990). However, trade unionists fear that these new organizations of work are, at least in part, being sponsored by management in an attempt to undermine unions and manipulate workers (Grenier, 1988; Parker, 1985). More cautious forms of this argument propose that participation schemes are initiated to extract from workers the important “working knowledge” (Kusterer, 1978) and “tricks of the trade” (Thomas, 1991; Hodson, 1991) that are often workers' resource in bargaining with management over wages and conditions. Participation schemes may also lead to the unraveling of “informal agreements” between workers and front line supervisors concerning work effort and work procedures that both labor and management would prefer to keep hidden (Thomas, 1991:8).

The future beckons… a new millennium…

This paper examines the changes currently occurring at a BAe plant. Recently they have seen a shift of emphasis on the production of military aircraft, away from their main customer — the British Ministry of Defence — towards export markets with greater emphasis also being put on subcontract work carried out for other BAe Divisions. Especially within the context of industrial recession, severely aggravated by international decline in military spending with the end of the cold war, and a perceived threat from Asian producers — some of whom are currently key customers — they have moved into introducing a range of new organisational and management strategies which could amount to an attempt at ‘Japanization’. Employees, especially at management level, talk of ‘initiative shock’ while attempting to cope with the current introduction of Activity Based Costing (ABC), Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), JIT, the replacement of existing standards with ISO 9000, new computer systems and attempts at standardising procedures across the Division, Management and Supervisors being forced into applying for restructured jobs after taking psychometric tests, as well as recent redundancies which will mean a loss of about ten percent of staff.

Labor management cooperation, and the adoption of high-performance work systems (HPWS), are central topics in recent industrial relations research, with much emphasis given to “best-practice” success stories. This paper uses a case study analysis, relying on conventional, and oral history interviews, to explore why managers, union leaders, and workers in two Maine paper mills rejected the cooperation and the HPWS model. It explores how local history and culture, regional factors like the dramatic International Paper (IP) strike in Jay, Maine, instability in industry labor relations, management turnover, and instability in corporate governance contributed to these two mills’ rejection of Scott Paper Corporation's “Jointness” initiative during the period from 1988 to 1995. The study argues that intra-management divisions blocked cooperation on the management side, and that the Jay strike created a “movement culture” among Maine's paper workers, who developed a class-conscious critique of HPWS as a tactic in class warfare being perpetrated by paper corporations.

Hadfields Industrial Coatings recently held their first sales conference since signing a five‐year technical licensing agreement with Ripolin‐Duco of France.