Knowledge that Transforms

In 1991, Dannon employees had the choice to stay with their current health care plan or switch to a new plan which offered a lower premium and less hospital cost coverage that better fit the needs of most employees. Both plans were the same in all other respects. Only 25% of employees chose the new lower-premium plan over the old plan. This article reports a collaborative effort between The Dannon Company and Cornell University's Center for Advanced HR Studies to identify the patterns of employee choices, and the effects of those choices on the actual costs that employees incurred. The actual decisions of 287 Dannon employees were examined, and the out-of-pocket costs that they actually incurred in the two years after the plan was introduced were calculated.

Never before has there been so much organizational restructuring, in spite of consistently mixed results. This article argues that the reason organizational restructuring so often fails to increase productivity and profit is that it is not guided by business strategy. While most managers agree that structure should follow strategy, few have a process for moving from strategy to restructuring at the business level where most restructuring occurs. A number of businesses, however, have based restructuring decisions on a clear and well-understood strategy. This article describes what is common to the processes these businesses have followed. Human resource managers, whose role and competence should include the alignment of change processes with business needs, have often abdicated responsibility for ensuring that restructuring efforts are strategic and are competently implemented.

This study investigates the factors which influence employees' choices among different health insurance options under a flexible benefits plan. Employee-specific selection and demographic data provided by the former National Cash Register (NCR), were used to analyze the effects of employee and plan characteristics on choice of health care plan. Results suggest that employees' health plan choices are influenced by premium, deductible, and coinsurance amounts, and by employees' age, gender, salary, and marital status. The results are considered within an expected utility maximization model. Implications for the design of flex plans as well as future research and theory are discussed.

This study investigates four alternative theoretical explanations for the gap in salaries between dual-earner and traditional male managers. The sample was 348 married male managers with children at home. They were employed by twenty Fortune 500 organizations. The data show that when controlling for work force experience and industry differences, salaries of the dual-earner male managers increased an average of 59% over five years, while the salaries of traditional managers increased by 70%. This gap could not be accounted for by differences between the groups in human capital or conformance to social norms related to the family. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the validity of signals of hours in the office and wife as resource.

Communicating organizational change is a difficult task. Many attempts at change end in failure, and many times the failure is due primarily to poor communication and lack of acceptance of the change by employees. This article examines (1) the process of communicating for change, (2) some major reasons for communication failure, and (3) a variety of successful techniques used in organizations. Empirical evidence about communicating for change is also incorporated. Finally, guidelines for managers, with particular relevance for human resource managers, to follow in effectively communicating for major changes are presented.

When the CEO for one of the country's large telecommunications companies selected Bonnie C. Hathcock as chief human resources officer almost six years ago, she had not spent day one in a personnel or human resources assignment. At that time, her career spanned 15 years and included a decade in sales and marketing with a Fortune 50 corporation and two training and development assignments with large multinationals. Now after 20 years of corporate life, Bonnie says, “I love this dynamic profession and have discovered my perfect fit in corporate America.” Bonnie and her team of human resource professionals at Siemens Rolm Communications Inc. in California's Silicon Valley, have launched a progressive human resource strategy and a creative organizational design. In this article, Bonnie shares her approach to 21st century human resources that is newbreed, strategic, and refreshingly unconventional.

This study investigates the factors which influence employees' choices among different health insurance options under a flexible benefits plan. Employee-specific selection and demographic data provided by the former National Cash Register (NCR), were used to analyze the effects of employee and plan characteristics on choice of health care plan. Results suggest that employees' health plan choices are influenced by premium, deductible, and coinsurance amounts, and by employees' age, gender, salary, and marital status. The results are considered within an expected utility maximization model. Implications for the design of flex plans as well as future research and theory are discussed.