Explores workplace learning as a means of enhancing both work performance and the quality of working life. Identifies characteristics of high performance work organizations, considers the implementation of high performance work practices and investigates how far these practices are embedded in different countries. Examines ways in which public policy can be used to encourage organizations to make more effective use of the skills of their employees.

This book asks the crucial question: When does high performance supervision become abusive supervision? As more organizations push to adopt high performance work practices (HPWP), the onus increasingly falls on supervisors to do whatever it takes to maximize the productivity of their work teams. In this rigorous, research-based volume, international contributors offer insight into how and when seemingly-beneficial workplace practices cross the line from motivation to abuse. By reviewing critical issues in both high performance work practices and abusive supervision, it illuminates the crossover between these two modes of work, and forges a path for future scholarship.

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.

This document surveys the research on the effectiveness of 'high performance work practices'... [which] are designed to provide employees with skills, incentives, information, and decision-making responsibility that improve business performance and facilitate innovation.

The most thorough, valid set of findings on global manufacturing and winning practices worldwide This eye-opening resource sets a new standard for how manufacturing practices are viewed in today's business world. The results of an extensive research project spanning 164 factories in the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom determine the best path to high performance manufacturing. This is one of the first books to offer comparisons of manufacturing in these five countries, addressing their current issues and providing insights that affect manufacturing worldwide. Researchers from such universities as the London Business School, Wake Forest University, Yokohama University, and the University of Minnesota detail how manufacturing leaders are raising the bar on practices in product development, organizational alignment, quality management, and more. Covering the vital areas of machinery, electronics, and auto components, they examine the most effective methods and techniques across a host of functions within manufacturing-looking at how everything from new technology and information systems to human resource practices and manufacturing strategy should be introduced into a plant environment to achieve high performance manufacturing. Using data from companies such as Texas Instruments, Honda, Sony, Prince, John Deere, and Caterpillar, High Performance Manufacturing takes a comprehensive view by showing how to select and integrate the practices that best fit a plant's particular situation-the most critical and difficult task to achieve in practice. With its strong research base and high caliber of contributors, this unique volume will inspire managers of any country or industry to set their own path to high performance manufacturing.

Industrial Applications of High-Performance Computing: Best Global Practices offers a global overview of high-performance computing (HPC) for industrial applications, along with a discussion of software challenges, business models, access models (e.g., cloud computing), public-private partnerships, simulation and modeling, visualization, big data a

Discusses trends toward "lean production" and some obstacles to its acceptance.

This book asks the crucial question: When does high performance supervision become abusive supervision? As more organizations push to adopt high performance work practices (HPWP), the onus increasingly falls on supervisors to do whatever it takes to maximize the productivity of their work teams. In this rigorous, research-based volume, international contributors offer insight into how and when seemingly-beneficial workplace practices cross the line from motivation to abuse. By reviewing critical issues in both high performance work practices and abusive supervision, it illuminates the crossover between these two modes of work, and forges a path for future scholarship.