Search results

The introduction of the industrial robot into the American workplace has been received with mixed results. Management, whose decision introduced the new technology, invariably views the robot's presence as a cure for many of the organization's production and competitive problems. Conversely, management's panacea is more often viewed as a pyorrhea by the firm's workers. To the production workers, the presence of the industrial robot is perceived as a threat to their jobs and is, therefore, treated with suspicion and resistance. In some extreme instances, disgruntled employees have even resorted to sabotage.

The purpose of this paper is to make a specific attempt of historicizing outstanding academic leadership in the field of management history.

By using the biographical method and applying it to the material contained in Hodgetts's video interview of Wren and Bedeian's autobiography, the authors examine how outstanding management laureates, Wren and Bedeian, look back on their own lives and the people who influenced them.

The intellectual and institutional origins of their life stories are traced and the factors in Wren's and Bedeian's lives that might explain their pathways to becoming the US outstanding management historians as the Academy of Management Fellows are assessed.

The paper highlights the most outstanding achievements of the past in a manner that might be valuable when addressing the present day concerns about outstanding teaching and research in the field of management history.

The unique contribution of this study is its focus on showing how the manner in which outstanding management historians narrate the past may explain their present‐day achievements, and thus help readers understand that very past.

This paper examines the applicable scope of United States employment discrimination law to “American” employers of U.S. citizens abroad. Through an analysis of the extraterritorial dimension of American anti‐bias, it is demonstrated that over time, it has become accepted that the full‐range of U.S. anti‐bias law applies transnationally. However, just who is considered an “American” firm is an open‐ended question under the Mas Marques test codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The implications of this ambiguity could well lead to potential legal conflicts in the area of employment discrimination for a multitude of firms worldwide who may not consider themselves presently to be bound by United States employment law.

The purpose of this paper is to reacquaint us with Chester Barnard's seminal treatise on status systems in organizations – the conceptualization that he labeled as a “missing scroll” of The Functions of the Executive.

The paper analyzes this “missing scroll” to draw the parallels and distinctions between Barnard's and the contemporary views of status systems in organization.

The paper outlines how this forgotten piece can inform and enrich the current understanding of the role of status in organization theory.

This paper draws practical parallels and distinctions between Barnard's and the contemporary views of status systems in organization and management literature.

This paper corrects the omission from The Functions of the Executive showing that Barnard was the first to recognize status systems as systematic in organizations.

Professor Anita Hill's testimony in October of 1991 at the Senate confirmation hearings for then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas brought more attention to the issue of sexual harassment than in any other year since the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published its definitional guidelines in 1980. Recent events such as the Navy's Tailhook incident and current sexual harassment claims filed against several U.S. Congressmen have heightened awareness of the magnitude of the sexual harassment problem.

In the last three years, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 246,575 charges of workplace discrimination, of which 43,437 alleged sexual harassment. In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two landmark decisions governing how U.S. courts analyze sexual harassment cases. Since those cases, U.S. courts have been faced with a new conundrum: is a constructive discharge a “tangible employment action” that gives rise to automatic employer liability? Although the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals have split on the issue, the trend appears to be in favor of imposing automatic liability, effectively denying employers a defense in cases in which the alleged victim often failed to report harassing conduct. This article argues that classifying a “constructive discharge” as a “tangible employment action” will, in most circumstances, violate the Supreme Court’s admonition that “no award against a liable employer should reward a plaintiff for what her own efforts could have avoided”.

The need to maintain up-to-date technological skills despite an aging workforce makes it imperative that organizations increasingly focus on retraining older employees. This article develops an adult career model based on the acquisition of technological skills and gradual skill obsolescence. The model suggests the importance of retraining and provides practical implications to the development of retraining programs. Suggestions for future research are also offered.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories: