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One of the world's leading business and finance experts surveys the emerging interdependencies of global trade and economics.

In this book, the authors present case studies of organizational change at leading companies. Essays by the authors introduce each section and look at the cases as instructive models for how to institute change in the corporation - or in some situations - how not to. In the first section, on "emergent change", studies of Apple Computer, Sears and Bendix, among others, illustrate environmental and cyclical change. The second section on "forced change" draws on the examples of Safeway, AT & T, the Western-Delta takeover, downsizing at Xerox and restructuring at Lucky Stores, to show how companies change under intense pressure. The third section, on "engineered" change, shows the effect of "changemasters" on the evolution of Kodak, British Air, and General Electric, and the role of unions at General Motors and Eastern Airlines. The book concludes with the prospects for the future of deliberate change.

This paper makes the case for an absence of sex differences in work behavior, arguing instead that work attitudes and work behavior are a function of location in organizational structures. The structures of opportunity (e. g., mobility prospects) and power (e. g., influence upward), along with the proportional representation of a person's social type, define and shape the ways that organization members respond to their jobs and to each other. In hierarchical systems like large corporations, the relative disadvantage of many women with respect to opportunity and power results in behaviors and attitudes (such as limited aspirations, concern with co-worker friendships, or controlling leadership styles) that are also true of men in similarly disadvantaged positions. The structure of power in organizations, rather than inherent sexual attitudes, can also explain why women sometimes appear to be less preferred as leaders. It is concluded that it is not the nature of women but hierarchical arrangements that must be changed if we are to promote equity in the workplace. This paper proposes that structural conditions, particularly those stemming from the nature of hierarchy, shape apparent "sex differences" in the workplace and in organizations. Findings about behavior of and toward women in organizations can be explained by a number of structural variables that also can account for the behavior of and toward men in similar situations. This conclusion has been reached after field work in two corporations, interviews with "token" women in professional and management positions and secretaries and secretarial supervisors, and an extensive review of the social psychological and sociological literatures on work orientations and leadership behavior. Underlying this analysis is a conception of an organization as a total system. Occupations, work behavior, and work relations are too often studied as if they exist in a vacuum-each occupation or office or departmental unit considered as an isolated entity-and not within complex systems that define the position of interacting parties with respect to larger distributions of opportunity, power, and numerical ratios of social types. The hierarchical systems in which most work relations occur define which people are mobile, which will advance, which positions lead to other positions, and how many opportunities for growth and change occur along a particular chain of positions. Organizational systems also define a network of power relations outside of the authority vested in formal positions; the power network defines which people can be influential beyond the boundaries of their positions. Finally, the distribution of social types and social characteristics among personnel in different positions (and especially such ascribed characteristics as age, race, and sex) define whether people of a given type are relatively rare or relatively common.

There are two reasons that current corporate efforts to achieve employee "participation" often seem fragile and temporary: unrealistic expectations about the appropriate use of participation and a failure to manage participation efforts for maximum success. Participation is most appropriate when, for example, expertise is diffused, issues are controversial, problems cut across existing roles, or the development of people is desired; autonomy and individual responsibility may be more appropriate under the opposite conditions. Kanter discusses six sets of dilemmas that must be resolved to ensure that participating teams work effectively for the organization: dilemmas around initiation, structure, issue choice, teamwork, links between teams and their environment, and evaluation/continuation. Kanter concludes that participation works best when it is well managed. Participation is best viewed not as a permanent "program" or a "formula" but as temporary episodes of high involvement alternating with a more routine everyday structure.

Disciplinary boundaries are often drawn and maintained so that professional territory can be protected; this is a generally deplorable mode of scholarship. Yet, as I approached the problem of producing a commentary useful for social historians, I found myself asking the question: What is left for a sociologist to contribute as a sociologist? The historians represented in this volume (and the one sociologist, Furstenberg, who has temporarily joined them) show an appreciation for social theory, an ability to use sociological methods of both quantitative and qualitative analysis, and add to that their own competence in grounding their work in the particulars of time and place. So what is there left to do that is uniquely sociological? The answer lies, I propose, in the task of sytemization-identifying variables and issues that lend themselves to comparative analysis across times and places. Such variables can be used to examine the differing ways families interact with their social and economic context as we...

This paper is an attempt to review recent literature on traditional and contemporary life-styles in the light of the cultural differentiation of tastes and preferences. We start with the assumption that tastes are neither completely determined by economic status, as was implied by Marx, nor totally individualized. Tastes are determined in part by relative position in the markets for wealth and prestige, in part by individual choice informed by education and experience, and in part by voluntarily chosen, collectively held standards that determine life-styles. Life-style differentia­ tion takes place both inside and outside the markets for wealth and prestige and hence crosscuts them.l In this paper we discuss both c1assical life-styles generated by socioeconomic stratification and alternative life-styles generated as spontaneous attempts to reach consensus on standards of value in the absence of compelling traditional market constraints. Empirically, tastes are revealed in economic consumption patterns; political be­ liefs; and moral, ethical, and aesthetic standards. The collectively held standards that actually differentiate among life-styles vary from time to time and from place to place. In the past decade American society has witnessed a proliferation of alternative life-styles. Preferences for two-career families over one-career families, ethnic reidentification over assimilation, homosexual relationships over heterosex­ ual relationships, communal living over family living, and immediate gratification over deferred gratification, among many others, have been responsible for the emer­ gence of distinctive life"styles. Many ofthese may be of purely ethnographic interest, while others will probably have measurable effects on such economic and social indicators as energy consumption, purchase of housing and durable goods, fertility, saving and borrowing patterns, and marriage and divorce.

This paper defines commitment and proposes three types, continuance, cohesion, and control commitment, which bind personality systems to areas of social systems, linking cognitive, cathectic, and evaluative orientations to roles, relationships, and norms, respectively. Two processes underlie the development of each of the three types of commitment: sacrifice and investment support continuance; renunciation and communion support cohesion; and mortification and surrender support control. On the basis of these processes, a large number of commitment mechanisms, or commitment-producing organizational strategies, are set forth. Use of these strategies generally distinguishes successful (enduring) and unsuccessful (shortlived) nineteenth century American utopian communities. OMMITMENT is a consideration which arises at the intersection of organiza

This paper proposes a relationship between the structure of education and the major institutional forms of a society. It posits that in a society characterized by a predominance of bureaucratic organizations the criteria for health and maturity in a popular psychological perspective (neo-Freudian ideology) may correspond with the demands of bureaucracy; that the practices of one nursery school in implementing this ideology create bureaucracy-like experiences for the children in it; and that the behavior of the children in tte school reflects their experience of a phenomenologically bureaucratic world. These propositions are based on participant-observation in an American nursery school.