Knowledge that Transforms

Recent research on six current topics in industrial and labor relations is reviewed: (a) the decline in union membership in the United States, (b) concession bargaining, (c) unions and employee participation programs, (d) the effect of unions on productivity and profits, (e) dispute resolution, and (f) international industrial relations. For each topic, major research findings are summarized and evaluated along with suggestions forfuture research. The article concludes by considering future scenarios for the U.S. labor movement.

This research examined the subsequent longterm investment consequences of the adoption of antitakeover charter amendments by U.S. industrial manufacturing firms. Longterm investment a major determinant offuture economic growth and business competitiveness was assessed by analyzing research and development and capital investment intensity levels. In a matchedpair design, analyses were conducted on two separate samples of companies to assess the relationship between antitakeover amendment adoption and future oriented re source allocation decisions. Results fail to indicate the existence of a general main effect of antitakeover amendments on longterm investment for either sample offirms.

In their thoughtful critique, Professors Dess and Rasheed raise several important issues about the conceptualization and measurement of the organizational environment in general and our work in particular In this rejoinder, we discuss afundamental difference between their position and ours regarding the place of theoretical constructs and observable dimensions in conceptualizing and measuring the environment. We also take issue with several of Dess and Rasheed's specific criticisms of our work.

Quality circle advocates suggest a wide array of positive results when this participation technique is used. This study explores the importance of company, employee group (circle or non-circle), and time as well as their interactions. Assessment of circle performance was measured by employee attitudes, actual performance, and facilitator perception. This study did not support small group behavior and group dynamics research, as well as quality circle case study reports, that suggest attitudes will improve when quality circles are formed and will remain improved over time. Actual performance indicated cost savings and perceived circle success in three of the four circles, even though neither attitudes nor quality significantly improved over time.

This article explores the literature in graphic information presentation and managerial decision making. The literature suggests that task must be controlled in experimental design. The results of an experiment undertaken to determine the effects of collecting numeric versus graphic responses onforecasting accuracy are discussed. Results of the study show forecasts were significantly more accurate when subjects responded graphically than when they responded numerically. The difference in accuracy was found to be unassociated with preference for the two response approaches and to be independent of graph-reading ability. Based on the experimenteal results, it appears that more accurate subjective visual forecasts can, on average, be obtained by collecting the forecasts in graphical format. Therefore, when in comparisons of performance based on graphical versus tabular information, the way in which the response is elicited must be considered along with otherfactors that affect performance and preference for presentation style. This finding has implications for the design of graphical interfaces for managerial decision support systems.

The current research literature on strategy formation processes (formulation and implementation) in health care organizations is reviewed. A new, integrated model of the linkages between strategy formation process and content is developed based on the general strategic management literature. This framework is applied systematically to the health care organizational literature. Issues of control, collectivity, change, choice and thinking are examined in detail as they apply to strategy formation processes in health care organizations.

This article reviews and critiques Sharfnan and Dean's (1991) approach to the conceptualization and measurement of organizational environments. We raise three major issues that need to be addressed in order to enhance the reliability and validity of their environmental measures. These are concerns about the dimensionality of environmental constructs, problems associated with the measurement of environmental variables, and limitations regarding the predictive validity of the study.

Although issues of timing in interfirm rivalry are critical to strategic managers, rarely have they received scholarly attention. A model of competitive response timing is here proposed that contains three basic elements: competitive actions, responses, and response timing. The article discusses howfirms enhance performance by undertaking actions and responses; the speed with which one firm responds to another s action is explained by communication-information theory. Specifically, the speed with which afirm responds to a competitor's action is posited to be afunction of (a) characteristics of the actot; (b) characteristics of the action, (c) how the action is communicated, (d) the competitive environment, and (e) the characteristics of the potential respondingfirm. Hypotheses regarding the determinants of competitive response timing are developedfrom communication-information theory.