Turbulence
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers
Edward S. Greenberg, Leon Grunberg, Sarah Moore, and Patricia B. Sikora
View Inside
Format: PaperPrice: $35.00
This timely book investigates the experiences of employees at all levels of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) during a ten-year period of dramatic organizational change. As Boeing transformed itself, workers and managers contended with repeated downsizing, shifting corporate culture, new roles for women, outsourcing, mergers, lean production, and rampant technological change. Drawing on a unique blend of quantitative and qualitative research, the authors consider how management strategies affected the well-being of Boeing employees, as well as their attitudes toward their jobs and their company. Boeing employees’ experience holds vital lessons for other employees, the leaders of other firms determined to thrive in today’s era of inescapable and growing global competition, as well as public officials concerned about the well-being of American workers and companies.
"Turbulence is not only a masterful, detailed study of ten years of dramatic organizational change at Boeing. It is also a story of how American managers and workers can cope with the fierce pressures of global economic competition, seeking both high productivity and a decent workplace."—Benjamin I. Page, Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making, Northwestern University
“Turbulence traces the history of corporate restructuring and its consequences through the experience of an iconic US company. A fascinating read."—Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor Professor of Management; Director, Center for Human Resources at The Wharton School and Professor of Education, University of Pennsylvania
"The mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis is admirable and well done, a credit to the authors. The power of the work comes from an unusual, perhaps unique, empirical data-base looking at what actually happens to employees living through massive corporate change."—Jim Collins, author of Built to Last, Good to Great, and How the Mighty Fall
"Not the usual 'sanitized' business school case study, Turbulence makes visible the contradictory forces at play as an iconic company lurches through wrenching change. Much of the story is told through the voices of employees and front line managers, giving the reader an insider's view of what corporate transformation can mean for people. The book is excellent for teachers who want to bring the subject of organizational change vividly and powerfully to life for their students."—Linda Smircich, Professor of Organization Studies, Isenberg School of Management University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Publication Date: September 6, 2011
31 b/w illus.
