Quality circles may be regarded as a form of organizational intervention strategy to enhance productivity and product quality through employee participation. Operationally, small groups of individual employees voluntarily meet regularly to (1) identify problems relating to productivity and product quality, (2) discuss them, (3) identify and…

Management must maintain a continuity of communication, with particular emphasis on the importance of the individual and his/her relationships to the overall picture. (Author)

Analyzes the implications of recent court decisions concerning faculty/institution relations on retrenchment, layoff and termination. (Editor/PG)

This study was designed to determine the effect of informal "meet and discuss" procedures on the parties involved in public school district collective bargaining. The authors investigated the relationships between employee organization and employer attitudes, the effectiveness of informal bargaining procedures, and the level of…

Since there is talk about managing academic departments, using the jargon of the industrial community, higher education professionals might do well to investigate the techniques that industrial managers use to evaluate their own personnel. Three management principles used in personnel evaluation can be isolated: (1) regularity of evaluations; (2)…

A survey was designed to investigate the impact of faculty unionism, militancy, and collective bargaining on the traditional patterns, relationships, and academic governance in the public colleges and universities in the state. There appears to be a diversity of opinion concerning the causes and impact of these faculty activities. A majority of…

The paper examines the potential usefulness of two concepts (autonomy and negotiation) which have been developed to analyze "informal behavior", in the context of two everyday features of life in an electrical components workshop: continuing argument about the use of radios and the larger issue of the negotiation of time. (Author/AJ)

In order to assess the impact of collective bargaining, mandated in California by the 1976 Rodda Act (Senate Bill 160), on Santa Ana College (SAC), college administrators were interviewed as to the characteristics, problems, and successful practices associated with the collective bargaining process and their recommendations. Contracts and the…

A project was conducted to develop three prototype comprehensive career planning programs and to offer those prototypes as models that could be used by both educators and personnel directors who are interested in helping employed women improve their occupational status. A national survey of programs in operation in community and junior colleges…

To determine the effectiveness of upward communication programs within nonindustrial companies in the United States, a study was devised that examined the ways in which top management and employees communicate. Of the 130 respondents to a survey of 300 top nonindustrial companies, 62 companies acknowledged that they maintained some type of upward…

Ongoing research programs conducted at General Motors Institute are motivated by the practical objective of improving the company's organizational effectiveness. Computer technology is being used whenever possible; for example, a technique developed by Herman Chernoff was used to process data from a survey of employee attitudes into 18 different…

This legal memorandum provides an overview of the growing body of legislation and litigation concerning reduction in force (RIF). The focus of the article is the suspension or dismissal of teachers for reasons unrelated to their competence or behavior. Cases concerning other professional personnel such as principals, or other staffing strategies…

A special report of the National Commission for Manpower Policy, this working paper analyzes the demographic trends, labor-market experience, and special problems of older workers. Its chief purpose is to bring into focus the major policy choices involved in increasing the labor-market opportunities of older persons who are able and willing to…

The major premise underlying this presentation is that every employee has a right to economic democracy, that is, participation in those affairs that impact on his or her life. It is first argued that there is a dialectical relation between the educational system and the world of work. In this dialectic the educational system both reinforces and…

Prospects for local purchase of plants, resulting in community-employee-owned firms (CEFs), as an alternative to shutdowns, are examined in this three-part study. Part 1 considers the nature of plants in terms of industry-community relationships and the effects of a closing. Part 2 evaluates, through a cost-benefit approach, the strategy involved…