Manufacturing Advantage: Why High Performance Work Systems Pay Off

Much of the hoopla surrounding quality circles, teams, and high-performance work systems has been based on anecdotes and very thin evidence. It has not been established that those employee involvement strategies amount to anything more than another series of management fads or ruses designed to get more out of workers without giving them anything in return. This revelatory book, written by some of the skeptics, lays some of the suspicion to rest.
Based on their visits to 44 plants and surveys of more than 4,000 employees, Eileen Appelbaum, Thomas Bailey, Peter Berg, and Arne L. Kalleberg concluded that companies are indeed more successful when managers share knowledge and power with workers and when workers assume increased responsibility and discretion.
The study of steel, apparel, and medical electronics and imaging plants revealed much. In self-directed teams, workers were able to eliminate bottlenecks and coordinate the work process. In task forces created to improve quality, they communicated with individuals outside their own work groups and were able to solve problems. Expensive equipment in steel mills operated with fewer interruptions, turnaround and labor costs were cut in apparel factories, and costly inventories of components and medical equipment were reduced.
And what did the employees think? The worker survey showed that jobs in participatory work systems often provide more challenging tasks and more opportunities for creativity. Employees in apparel had higher hourly earnings; those in steel had both higher hourly earnings and higher job satisfaction. Workers in more participatory settings were no more likely than others to report heavy workloads or excessive demands on their time. They were, however, less likely to report involuntary overtime or conflict with co-workers, and were more likely to be satisfied with their surroundings. 
Manufacturing Advantage provides the best assessment available of the effectiveness of high-performance work systems. Freestanding chapters near the end of the book provide full documentation of research data without interrupting the narrative flow.

Business & Money

Bailey, Thomas

Kalleberg, Arne L.

Berg, Peter

Appelbaum, Eileen

Economics

ILR PRESS

Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy

Unfinished Business documents the history and impact of California’s paid family leave program, the first of its kind in the United States, which began in 2004. Drawing on original data from fieldwork and surveys of employers, workers, and the larger California adult population, Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum analyze in detail the effect of the state’s landmark paid family leave on employers and workers. They also explore the implications of California’s decade-long experience with paid family leave for the nation, which is engaged in ongoing debate about work-family policies. 
Unfinished Business exposes the process by which California workers and their allies built a coalition to win passage of paid family leave in the state legislature, and lays out the lessons for advocates in other states and localities, as well as the nation. Because paid leave enjoys extensive popular support across the political spectrum, campaigns for such laws have an excellent chance of success if some basic preconditions are met.
Do paid family leave and similar programs impose significant costs and burdens on employers? Business interests argue that they do and routinely oppose any and all legislative initiatives in this area. Once the program took effect in California, this book shows, large majorities of employers themselves reported that its impact on productivity, profitability, and performance was negligible or positive. 
Milkman and Appelbaum demonstrate that the California program is well managed and easy to access, but that awareness of its existence remains limited. Moreover, those who need the program’s benefits most urgently―low-wage workers, young workers, immigrants, and disadvantaged minorities―are least likely to know about it. As a result, the long-standing pattern of inequality in access to paid leave has remained largely intact.

Milkman, Ruth

Unfinished Business documents the history and impact of California's paid family leave program, the first of its kind in the United States, which began in 2004. Drawing on original data from fieldwork and surveys of employers, workers, and the larger California adult population, Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum analyze in detail the effect of the state’s landmark paid family leave on employers and workers. They also explore the implications of California’s decade-long experience with paid family leave for the nation, which is engaged in ongoing debate about work-family policies.Milkman and Appelbaum recount the process by which California workers and their allies built a coalition to win passage of paid family leave in the state legislature, and lay out the lessons for advocates in other states and localities, as well as the nation. Because paid leave enjoys extensive popular support across the political spectrum, campaigns for such laws have an excellent chance of success if some basic preconditions are met. Do paid family leave and similar programs impose significant costs and burdens on employers? Business interests argue that they do and routinely oppose any and all legislative initiatives in this area. Once the program took effect in California, this book shows, large majorities of employers themselves reported that its impact on productivity, profitability, and performance was negligible or positive.Unfinished Business demonstrates that the California program is well managed and easy to access, but that awareness of its existence remains limited. Moreover, those who need the program’s benefits most urgently―low-wage workers, young workers, immigrants, and disadvantaged minorities―are least likely to know about it. As a result, the long-standing pattern of inequality in access to paid leave has remained largely intact.

Private equity firms have long been at the center of public debates on the impact of the financial sector on Main Street companies. Are these firms financial innovators that save failing businesses or financial predators that bankrupt otherwise healthy companies and destroy jobs? The first comprehensive examination of this topic, Private Equity at Work provides a detailed yet accessible guide to this controversial business model. Economist Eileen Appelbaum and Professor Rosemary Batt carefully evaluate the evidence—including original case studies and interviews, legal documents, bankruptcy proceedings, media coverage, and existing academic scholarship—to demonstrate the effects of private equity on American businesses and workers. They document that while private equity firms have had positive effects on the operations and growth of small and mid-sized companies and in turning around failing companies, the interventions of private equity more often than not lead to significant negative consequences for many businesses and workers. Prior research on private equity has focused almost exclusively on the financial performance of private equity funds and the returns to their investors. Private Equity at Work provides a new roadmap to the largely hidden internal operations of these firms, showing how their business strategies disproportionately benefit the partners in private equity firms at the expense of other stakeholders and taxpayers. In the 1980s, leveraged buyouts by private equity firms saw high returns and were widely considered the solution to corporate wastefulness and mismanagement. And since 2000, nearly 11,500 companies—representing almost 8 million employees—have been purchased by private equity firms. As their role in the economy has increased, they have come under fire from labor unions and community advocates who argue that the proliferation of leveraged buyouts destroys jobs, causes wages to stagnate, saddles otherwise healthy companies with debt, and leads to subsidies from taxpayers. Appelbaum and Batt show that private equity firms’ financial strategies are designed to extract maximum value from the companies they buy and sell, often to the detriment of those companies and their employees and suppliers. Their risky decisions include buying companies and extracting dividends by loading them with high levels of debt and selling assets. These actions often lead to financial distress and a disproportionate focus on cost-cutting, outsourcing, and wage and benefit losses for workers, especially if they are unionized. Because the law views private equity firms as investors rather than employers, private equity owners are not held accountable for their actions in ways that public corporations are. And their actions are not transparent because private equity owned companies are not regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thus, any debts or costs of bankruptcy incurred fall on businesses owned by private equity and their workers, not the private equity firms that govern them. For employees this often means loss of jobs, health and pension benefits, and retirement income. Appelbaum and Batt conclude with a set of policy recommendations intended to curb the negative effects of private equity while preserving its constructive role in the economy. These include policies to improve transparency and accountability, as well as changes that would reduce the excessive use of financial engineering strategies by firms. A groundbreaking analysis of a hotly contested business model, Private Equity at Work provides an unprecedented analysis of the little-understood inner workings of private equity and of the effects of leveraged buyouts on American companies and workers. This important new work will be a valuable resource for scholars, policymakers, and the informed public alike.

Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street

Batt, Rosemary

Russell Sage Foundation

Despite formidable obstacles, a small but growing number of U.S. companies rccognize that today's domestic and international markets require them to transform their production process. On the basis of more than ten years of survey data and the evidence of case studies, Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt analyze the experiences of these companies. Their findings reveal two distinct and coherent models of the new American workplace. One is an American version of team production, which combines the principles of sociotechnical systems with those of quality engineering and which decentralizes the management of work flow and decision making. The other is an American version of lean production, which relies more heavily on managerial and technical expertise, and on centralized coordination and decision making. The authors explain the organizational models from which high-performance firms in the United States have borrowed and outline the policies required to promote more widespread workplace change. They contend that U.S. firms can, in fact, compete successfully, while providing their workers with increased job security, livable wages, and enhanced job satisfaction. Certain to appeal to both union and business leaders, this volume also offers crucial insights to policy makers and to scholars of the new American workplace.

The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States

Business Culture

Despite formidable obstacles, a small but growing number of U.S. companies rccognize that today's domestic and international markets require them to transform their production process. On the basis of more than ten years of survey data and the evidence of case studies, Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt analyze the experiences of these companies. Their findings reveal two distinct and coherent models of the new American workplace. One is an American version of team production, which combines the principles of sociotechnical systems with those of quality engineering and which decentralizes the management of work flow and decision making. The other is an American version of lean production, which relies more heavily on managerial and technical expertise, and on centralized coordination and decision making. The authors explain the organizational models from which high-performance firms in the United States have borrowed and outline the policies required to promote more widespread workplace change. They contend that U.S. firms can, in fact, compete successfully, while providing their workers with increased job security, livable wages, and enhanced job satisfaction. Certain to appeal to both union and business leaders, this volume also offers crucial insights to policy makers and to scholars of the new American workplace.

Macroeconomics and the financial system

American Institute for Property and Liability Underwriters

Changes in what researchers have called the "fundamental arithmetic of the family" - the ratio of jobs, including management of the home, to adults in the household - are creating stresses that affect both family life and workers' performance. One result has been an increase in work-family conflict. Workplaces are changing in response to this new arithmetic, yet, while there are exemplary companies, for the most part work is still governed by practices suited to a mainly male, full-time employee with a wife to attend to the home job. This collection of essays, from a symposium sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Department of Labor, brings together key experts from the research, labor, and business communities to discuss the latest findings and trends in the area of work and family life.

Balancing Acts: Easing the Burdens and Improving the Options for Working Families

Parenting & Relationships

Economic Policy Inst

Shared Work - Valued Care: New Norms for Organizing Market Work and Unpaid Care Work

Economic Policy Institute

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Appelbaum, Eileen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Appelbaum, Eileen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Appelbaum, Eileen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Manufacturing Advantage: Why High Performance Work Systems Pay Off

Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy

Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy

Manufacturing Advantage: Why High Performance Work Systems Pay Off

Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street

The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States

The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States

Macroeconomics and the financial system

Balancing Acts: Easing the Burdens and Improving the Options for Working Families

Shared Work - Valued Care: New Norms for Organizing Market Work and Unpaid Care Work