February 21, 2024 • 32 mins
Uncover the transformative power of high involvement management as we dissect its role in shaping dynamic workplaces. Engaging employees has become an art, and with Dr. Alex Bryson at the helm of our discussion, we promise to illuminate how selective hiring, comprehensive training, and fostering autonomy can significantly impact both company performance and employee satisfaction. Yet, there's more than meets the eye in this intricate dance of management practices; we tackle the variables and complexities that make it a nuanced challenge, resisting the lure of one-size-fits-all solutions.
Witness the delicate interplay of ethical and philosophical considerations in managerial decisions, where the quest for productivity meets the guardianship of employee well-being. Through the lens of real-world implications, we navigate the conundrum of optimizing profits while cherishing the happiness of the teams we lead. With vivid insights into the paradoxical nature of management practices, Dr. Bryson helps us reflect on daily leadership choices that inherently define what is right and just within the sphere of organizational management. Join us for a compelling conversation that promises to elevate your understanding of the workplace and equip you with nuanced perspectives for your management toolkit.
Dr. Alex Bryson [Guest] is Professor of Quantitative Social Science at UCL’s Social Research Institute, and a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and WISERD. He is Chief Editor of Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society and an editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A and the Journal of Participation and Employee Ownership.
Travis C. Mallett [Host], received the Masters of Liberal Arts (ALM) in Management from Harvard University Extension School, where he has also earned Professional Graduate Certificates in both Organizational Behavior and Strategic Management. Travis previously received undergraduate degrees in Electrical Engineering, General Mathematics, and Music from Washington State University. He also served as an Engineering Manager at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, where he led a team responsible for developing and maintaining SEL's highest-selling product line. An innovative force in engineering, Travis holds numerous patents and has authored papers and books across diverse subjects. His passion for continuous learning and organizational excellence propels him to explore and illuminate the intricacies of management theories. Through his podcast, "The Management Theory Toolbox", he offers valuable insights on effective leadership, business innovation, and strategic methodologies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're living in a world where there are various
options available to profitmaximizing employers as to
whether or not they wish toinvest in the well-being of
their workers.
The question is which sort ofemployer are you?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome back to the Management Theory Toolbox.
I'm your host, Travis Mallett,and I'm thrilled to have you
join me on this journey ofcontinuous learning and growth
as we navigate the dynamic worldof management.
This isn't your typicalmanagement podcast.
Yes, there are plenty ofresources out there that will
give you the ABCs of how to runa meeting, hire someone or even
(00:41):
how to fake a sick day withoutgetting caught, but here at the
Management Theory Toolbox, we'reinterested in the why behind it
all, the discoveries ofbehavioral science, psychology,
business and economics that willopen our eyes to what's
happening behind the scenes.
(01:08):
Over the past several episodes,we've been building a way of
thinking about organizationsthat has culminated in the idea
of high involvement management,as discussed in episode 7,.
The central tenet of highinvolvement management requires
that the senior, middle andlower level managers all
recognize human capital as theorganization's most important
(01:31):
resource, and we identified fivespecific management practices
which comprise a highinvolvement management style
Selective hiring, extensivetraining, decision making power,
information sharing andcollaboration.
So that's it.
We've uncovered the secrets tomanagement.
I can see the headlines now.
(01:53):
How to Pulse your Company withthese five secret ingredients
for instant business success?
Elevate your enterprise withthese five spectacular shortcuts
to business stardom or unlocksuccess.
Five miracle moves to transformyour business overnight.
Is high involvement managementreally the only thing we need to
(02:15):
know?
Of course not.
If you've been following alongin this series, you know that
here at the Management TheoryToolbox, we don't believe there
is a single unified theory ofmanagement or even a so-called
correct answer to thesecomplicated issues, and we
aren't even looking for one.
Our suspicions are immediatelyraised anytime someone suggests
(02:36):
that management problems can besolved with a few simple tips
and tricks.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Management is more complicated than you think.
You only see a tenth of what istrue.
There are a million littlestrings attached to every choice
you make.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Management is too complex, there are too many
variables and if you're thinkingthose high involvement
management practices sound anawful lot like those tips and
tricks that I said you wouldn'tfind in this show, you're
absolutely right, and that's whywe're going to dive under the
surface, where we'll find thatthere are still unanswered
questions and ambiguous findings.
(03:15):
But before we get to that,let's start with some of the
evidence for the effectivenessof high involvement management.
Several years ago, Dr AllisonConrad of the Ivy Business
School wrote a nice articlewhich summarizes some of the
research supporting theeffectiveness of high
involvement management, and I'lllink that into the show notes.
Overall, the evidence for itseffectiveness seems fairly
(03:37):
robust.
In one study, traditionalproduction systems across three
industries were compared withflexible systems involving teams
, training and incentive paysystems all elements of high
involvement management.
Not only did the manufacturingplants using high involvement
management show superiorperformance, but the workers had
(03:59):
more positive attitudes andtrust towards the organization.
Other studies involvingemployees in the insurance
industry found that whenemployees felt they had the
power to make decisions,sufficient knowledge and
information to do their jobeffectively and rewards tied to
performance, firms saw not onlyhigher employee retention but
(04:21):
overall superior financialperformance for the entire firm.
Again, high involvementmanagement practices seem to
prove effective.
Now that all sounds prettystraightforward but, as I
mentioned, if we dive under thesurface, we'll find that even
these seemingly clear examplescontain complexities that need
consideration.
And here to help us unravelthese issues.
(04:44):
No, that's not right.
We're actually going to bemaking things more tangled, not
unraveling them.
And here to help us see howunravelable unraveling a bowl
ununravelable there we go.
And here to help us see howununravellable these issues are
(05:09):
is Dr Alex Bryson.
Hi, Alex, and welcome to theshow.
Hi Travis, good to be here,Great.
So before we get started, canyou go ahead and introduce
yourself and tell us a bit aboutyour background and your work?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, I'm a professor at University College London in
Quantitative Social Science.
I tend to crunch large-scaledata sets on employers and
workers to establish what'sgoing on in the workplace,
what's going on in the labourmarket, and that's what I teach
my students as well.
On today's subject, managementpractices, I've been working on
(05:43):
that for 20, 30 years, you'regreat Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So in recent episodes we've been talking about the
concept of high involvementmanagement and we're wondering
about evidence for whether it'san effective constellation of
management techniques.
Before we dive into that, canyou give us a quick explanation
of what exactly is highinvolvement management?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yep, these are practices that are intended to
get workers more involved intheir jobs, and that involvement
can take various forms.
One that psychologists talkabout is being in the flow,
which is essentially beingheavily invested in real time in
the job that you're performing.
(06:25):
A second component is withregards to decision making.
So you can imagine that firmscan design in or design out the
extent to which you makedecisions in your job, when you
turn up what you do, the flow oftasks, who you interact with,
and so on.
(06:45):
You can imagine at one end ofthe spectrum you're basically a
call-king machine.
At the other end of the spectrumyou're given a great deal of
responsibility for that decisionmaking.
You're involved in everythingthat's going on.
A third component is work ofvoice, involvement in the
governance of the workplace, notjust at the job level but at
(07:07):
the organisational level.
And the fourth component, I'dargue, is financial
participation, involvement inthe sense that you have a real
stake in the firm.
Of course all of us do in termsof the wage that we receive,
but that's heightened when youhave something like share
ownership or something like that.
That gives you additionalinvolvement in what the firm is
(07:30):
doing.
But in most of thehigh-involvement management
literature.
They're primarily focused onthis issue of decision making at
the job level.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Now your research also indicates that there's a
relationship betweenhigh-involvement management and
employee well-being.
Can you tell us a bit about howa high-involvement management
affects employee well-being?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Absolutely so.
Before I talk about that, bearin mind, in the management
literature there are really twoworlds.
World number one is a world inwhich management practices are a
technology that firms deploy toelicit greater productivity
from their workers, and thatthey can do so without any
(08:11):
regard to well-being.
How so Well, by creatingincentives, by monitoring their
labour inputs or outputs, bygetting them to work to specific
targets, and there's a greatdeal of evidence to suggest that
this does actually increaseproductivity.
In a world in which we might noteven have any interest
whatsoever in the well-being ofworkers, however, there is
(08:35):
another part of the managementliterature that says hold on a
minute.
We think that most of thesepractices operate through worker
well-being.
How can they do that?
Well, these involvementpractices can actually lead to
improvements in organisationalcommitment and job satisfaction,
because they engage you in yourjob more fully than a standard
(08:59):
job, and they can do that byincreasing the degree to which
you have control over your job,the degree to which there's
mental stimulation in your job,the degree to which there are
social interactions with othersin the workplace which you
actually value as an individual.
So those are all the goodthings, and they could
(09:20):
conceivably result in improvedproductivity.
Not necessarily, it has to besaid, could be a scenario in
which an employer is givinghigher responsibility and
autonomy to a worker who isactually rubbish at their job,
at which point that's a disaster.
But if you get the job matchright that is, the link between
(09:41):
who you employ and the job thatyou want them to do as an
employer then this well-beingcan be one conduit by which the
management practices can elicitincreased productivity on the
part of the worker, eitherbecause they're working more
smartly, more efficiently ormore avidly because they've got
greater organizationalcommitments or job satisfaction.
(10:03):
There is, however, a counterargument, and that is that some
workers see this increase intheir involvement as tantamount
to work intensification.
That is something that theymight not like, because it
implies greater effort andthey're not being paid for it.
(10:23):
So there is a conceivablescenario in which this labor
intensification process leads todisengagement or conflict, as
workers feel a lot is beingdemanded of them and they're
getting little in return.
So that's why it's aninteresting and fruitful area
for empirical investigation.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Now I'm curious if the management practices don't
take into account theindividual's characteristics
like you brought up the exampleof the employee who may not be
skilled in particular tasks orparticular job If the management
practices are not taking intoaccount their development level
or their stress levels,identifying the individual
motivations, can we really saythat those are high-involved
(11:08):
management practices?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Well, you make a very reasonable point.
My own view would be that anyfirm that was interested in
deploying these practices shoulddo a couple of things.
Number one they should spend agreat deal of time thinking
about recruitment and retentionof workers.
So they should be screeningworkers to establish what type
(11:31):
of worker.
If workers are heterogeneouswith respect to their tastes for
high involvement, then it'svery much incumbent upon the
employer to make sure they getthe right sorts of workers in in
the first place.
So that means spending time andeffort on the hiring process
Critically, in fact, we knowfrom the literature is that
people who aren't well suited tothese practices tend to quit.
(11:53):
They go back to jobs where highinvolvement is not part of the
job package.
So that tends to happen.
Naturally there'sself-selection out, but the
employee needs to think hardabout hiring.
Secondly, as you quite rightlysay, travis, there can be
scenarios in which these highinvolvement management practices
come across as very high interms of labor intensification,
(12:18):
and there's a literature on this.
There's a theory and there'sempirical evidence to suggest
management must deploysupportive mechanisms.
This is about training, this isabout supervisory support and
peer support to allow the workerto deal with those high levels
of demand that are being made insuch a way as to maximize
(12:42):
productivity and minimizejob-related stress.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Interestingly, you've also found that high
involvement management mayactually lead to an increase in
short-term absences.
Is that possibly due to theincreased productivity, the
increased efforts, or are thereother reasons?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, so that's right .
In a study for Finland, in fact, we identified the fact that
the introduction of these highinvolvement management practices
led to an increase in thetaking of short-term absences,
but no impact on the taking oflong-term absences, and there
are a couple of reasons for that.
(13:20):
First of all, in the presenceof high involvement management,
workers are often capable ofmultitasking across different
jobs.
As such, they can besubstitutes for one another in
the labor process.
That basically means that if,in a high involvement world,
short-term stresses and demandsare such that you feel the need
(13:43):
to take yourself out of theworkplace for a day or two, that
will come at a minimal cost tothe employer because they can
redeploy the other workers toperform those tasks.
That doesn't normally happen inthe absence of high involvement
management, where there arefewer workers who can substitute
for you in your absence.
The reason that theseshort-term absences do not
(14:08):
result in long-term absences isbecause those short-term
absences are people rechargingtheir batteries in order to
avoid long-term absences.
And, bear in mind, it's notclear what an optimal level of
absence taking would be from aprofit maximizing firm.
We do anticipate that long-termabsences are really problematic
(14:30):
because it's very difficult toget a substitute worker in to
cover for long-term absencesShort-term absences.
If the workers are operating ina highly productive world and
are avoiding long-term absenceby taking more short-term
absences, that could be profitmaximizing.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Speaking of profit maximizing, you also mentioned
that half of your workers,although they might be more
productive, might run into theissue where employers are not
necessarily invested inmaximizing their well-being
because the return on investmentis unclear or ambiguous and
there might be high costsassociated with some management
restructuring to make thathappen.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
You're absolutely right.
So the first point there is isthere a relationship between the
well-being of workers and theirproductivity?
And the answer is that is yes.
We found this in twoexperimental studies one by
Andrew Oswald, done many yearsago, appeared in the Journal of
Labor Economics, where theyrandomly assigned happiness
(15:31):
believe it or not and found thatpeople were more productive
when they were randomly assignedinto the happy group, and a
second paper that's come outvery recently in Management
Science, which instruments forhappiness using the weather
outside, shows that workers whoare happier are more productive
(15:51):
in a call centre setting.
And we've also had someobservational studies, including
panel studies trackingindividuals and firms over time,
that show increases inproductivity over a
five-six-year period when thereis an increase in happiness
within that workplace.
So all of that is pretty clear.
(16:11):
The question is for a givenemployer whether they're going
to spend the time and effortthat's required to make workers
happier if, for example, theyhave cheaper management options
available to them that perhapsdeliver similar or better
productivity without regard totheir workers' well-being, and
(16:33):
that is actually distinctlypossible.
They might go down the route,which is more about incentives,
monitoring, records, which iswell-established in the
literature, the work of NickBloom and John Van Riener, for
example, clearly illustrates,there are productivity returns
to engaging in those sorts ofmanagement practices without any
(16:56):
regard to worker well-being.
Essentially, we're living in aworld where there are various
options available toprofit-maximising employers as
to how they deploy managementpractices, what management
practices they deploy andwhether or not they wish to
invest in the well-being oftheir workers.
The question is which sort ofemployer are you?
(17:19):
So within the literature, thereare some people who argue that
certain management practices areuniversally applicable across
all types of firms.
In other words, if you do moreof these things, productivity
will follow.
There are others who sayactually no.
What set of managementpractices are going to work for
you as a firm are very muchcontingent upon the sorts of
(17:42):
workers you wish to attract, thenature of the market that
you're operating and the goodsand services that you are
producing, and so I thinkemployers need to spend some
time thinking about that,reflecting a lot upon the nature
of the literature.
Of course, oftentimes theydon't do that.
My own view is, generallyspeaking, firms are going to
(18:03):
benefit most from investments inworker well-being where they're
employing highly skilled labourwhich is difficult to replace.
So it's no surprise to discoverthat many of the high-tech
firms Google, apple, microsoftare the sorts of firms that at
least present themselves asfirms that are investing in the
(18:26):
well-being of their workers.
That's because they wantlong-term contract with those
workers and quits are costlywhen labour turnover is less
costly to the firm.
It's not so clear to me thatinvesting in the well-being of
workers is profit maximising.
So you have a world where thereare multiple equilibria.
(18:47):
There are different things thatan employer could do in order to
maximise profits.
Of course, really interestingly, if you think of a Venn diagram
, there might be a group offirms that are close to the
middle.
They could flip-flop one way orthe other, and I think that's
where policy could come in totry and create incentives, to
try and generate what is, afterall, a really important public
(19:08):
good from a governmental andsocietal perspective, namely the
health and well-being ofworkers.
Because, of course, if workersare not healthy, if their
well-being is poor, there's anegative externality for the
rest of society in terms ofhealth costs and so on.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
So to make sure I'm understanding this, you had
mentioned previously that someworkers will self-select
themselves out of ahigh-involvement management
workforce.
So, bringing that to whatyou're saying now, it's possible
that you could have a firmwhere everybody has been
selected.
Their temperament is to dislikehigh-involvement management
practices.
Yet that firm can be just asproductive, if not more so, than
(19:48):
another firm where everybody isaligned with high-involvement
management practices.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
It's certainly conceivable, both in theory and
in the empirical literature.
As I've already intimated,there is a literature out there
about the importance ofmanagement practices, but not
necessarily the high-involvementflavor.
Rather, this literature stemsfrom what economists call a key
(20:13):
principal agent problem.
So where the principal is theowner of the firm and we as the
workers, the agents, thecontract is open, and it's very
hard to contract in a clean,simple way.
For effort Problem is shirkingthe idea that, okay, you've
employed me, but maybe I'll goand make a coffee now.
(20:34):
Maybe I won't be working, butmaybe I'll play on my game or
check my latest football scoreor something like that, online
before getting on to the nexttask.
Now employers might worry aboutthat if they're saying hold on,
I'm employing you to do X, yand Z, but you're doing X and Y
and A and B.
In that world you've got tocreate incentives for workers to
(20:57):
do what you expected them to dowhen you contracted with them
in the first place.
And if you're really concerned,you might start to try and
heavily monitor their effort.
Now.
That will work for some typesof worker workers who perhaps
don't really want to spend a lotof time and effort investing in
(21:20):
firms, specific human capitalin order to have decision-making
responsibilities in their firm.
They might just want to turn upfor work, do the job they're
told to do, take their paypacket and go home.
There'll be other types ofworkers who'd find that
monitoring highly intrusive ormight actually adversely respond
(21:42):
to pecuniary incentives, forexample, if they believe that
they're involved in a job whereintrinsic job satisfaction is
key, which is often the casewith white collar occupations,
which is why you rarely seefinancial incentives in terms of
bonuses and the like deployedfor teachers, nurses and so on.
(22:03):
But what do you see instead?
You see career incentivesmoving up a ladder over a long
period of time, supportstructures in place, such as
training, which are all gearedtowards trying to encourage
workers to get involved in theirjobs, to offer perhaps
additional effort, and so, inthe theory, would be a sort of
(22:23):
gift exchange.
We'll offer you this long-termcontracts with career
progression, training,responsibility, good job quality
as indicated by job control,perhaps a voice in the workplace
, in the expectation that you,as the worker, will reciprocate
with effort over and above thatwhich is standardly laid out in
(22:46):
a contract.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Now, in recent decades, high involvement
management seems to have becomea hot topic in the field of
management theory, perhapsbecause of the rise of these
large tech firms, as youmentioned earlier.
How do you see the role of suchmanagement practices evolving
in the future?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Well, that's a really , really great question because
you're straight into the issueof the diffusion of management
practices.
So if we start from the premisethat high involvement
management is the frontier, it'sthe optimal device by which to
manage your workers, then youanticipate, if information is
(23:28):
free flowing across firms, thatother firms start to recognize
the value of these practices andadopt them as well.
And yet across most of theliterature there is uneven
adoption.
These practices are not ascommon as you might think if you
were just reading the pages ofbusiness magazines.
(23:50):
There are many firms that makeprofits that do not undertake
these management practices Noweither.
They are operatingsub-optimally.
Perhaps, for example, aneconomist would say they are
operating in markets that areless than fully competitive.
On the other hand, it could bethat whatever they are doing is
(24:11):
optimal from a profit-makingperspective and in fact, for
various firm-specific reasons,it will be highly costly for
them to create the managementpractices that lead to
improvements in workerwell-being, and it's for that
reason that we don't see them Atthe moment.
The literature is somewhatuncertain about this.
(24:34):
There is evidence that certainof these incentives, monitoring
and targeting devices the moreof it that you do, the more you
see increases in productivity,almost linear returns, which is
very unusual in this literature.
You would anticipatediminishing returns after a
certain point.
So there is some credibleevidence to suggest that
(24:57):
actually many firms areoperating at a suboptimal level
in terms of the managementpractices that they are
deploying, notwithstanding thefact that they perhaps are being
profitable, to a point.
That raises, then, the keyquestion what is the barrier to
diffusion?
Ordinarily, one would thinkstraight away about information
(25:18):
and information flows and infact, in some comparative work
I've been involved in, what weshow is that these management
practices are much morediffusive the French case than
they are in the British case,and there are reasons for this.
One of them is the debt andstrength of employer networks in
France as compared to the UKcase.
(25:39):
In the UK case there's muchmore atomistic competition, as
between firms.
They do not share informationabout what's optimal in terms of
management practices, whereasin France, as a tradition, there
are structures in place wherethat information is shared, and
it could well be that there areinformation deficits facing
(26:00):
employers that need them todeploy suboptimal practices, and
we might anticipate that policyinterventions to create better
information flows, as betweenemployers, might lead to
increased diffusion of thesepractices.
Of course, there's one possiblecounter to that, which could be
that many firms are just in adifferent space, that these
(26:23):
practices are not universallyapplicable and indeed are
contingent upon the environmentin which the firms operate.
At the moment, we don't have aliterature that speaks to these
issues.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Thank you, this was definitely fascinating.
Before we sign off, can youtell our listeners how they can
find you in your work?
Yes, so if they?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
just Google Alex Bryson, ucl, they will get me,
because there aren't very manyAlex Bryson's in the world, I'm
glad to say, and I have awebsite at UCL that shows all my
research.
Or they can just directly emailme at abrison at uclacuk.
Always glad to hear from peopleand I'd be delighted to respond
(27:05):
directly to any questions thatthey have.
Thanks for having me, travis.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Great.
Thank you.
That was really interesting howworker well-being is often tied
to improved performance, but onthe other hand, some employees
may not want the higherintensity work environment
associated with high involvementmanagement practices.
So is focusing on well-beingfor all employees actually the
(27:31):
right thing to do?
Or perhaps someone might arguethe disregarding individual
preferences like that isactually not cultivating the
well-being of an employee.
As long as our definition ofwell-being includes tailoring to
the preferences of employees,then we could still say that
high-involvement managementpractices are superior.
(27:52):
But wait, I'm sure we all knowsomeone who seems to shirk their
responsibilities at work.
Should managers really beexpected to cater to the
preferences of an employeemotivated by shirking their
responsibilities?
A wise sage might smilinglypoint out that true well-being
comes from growth and thatmaking our employees
(28:14):
uncomfortable as we enhancetheir skills, autonomy and
decision-making power is aprerequisite to cultivating
their well-being in the long run.
That if people aren't beingchallenged by their jobs, if
there aren't difficulties alongthe way, then they won't be
satisfied and find meaning in it.
At the heart of these issueslies the philosophical concern
(28:38):
of balancing ethicalconsiderations in organizational
decision-making, and thisfundamental concern intertwines
the valuation of human capital,the complexity of
high-involvement management andthe ethical implications of
balancing employee well-beingwith organizational goals.
The issue reflects thephilosophical struggle to define
(29:01):
what is right or just in thecontext of organizational
management.
It challenges leaders toconsider not just the
philosophical or productivityoutcomes of their management
practices, but also the ethicaldimensions of their decisions,
particularly how they affecthuman well-being and dignity.
Now, if you're expecting tofind the answers to these
(29:24):
complicated issues in a shortpodcast episode on management
that you came across on theInternet, then you probably
haven't been paying attention.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Everything is more complicated than you think.
You only see a tenth of what istrue.
There are a million littlestrings attached to every choice
you make.
You can destroy your life everytime you choose, but maybe you
won't know for 20 years and youmay never, ever trace it to its
source, and you only get onechance to play it out.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
That clip is from the 2008 postmodern psychological
drama Sinecta Key, new York,where a funeral preacher reminds
everyone that the choices wemake can have profound impacts
that we may never fully unravel.
Of course, there's no way we'llbe able to resolve these issues
.
I'm not even convinced thatit's possible to articulate a
clear problem statement thattakes into account all the
(30:19):
related issues, and although wemay never be able to completely
detangle these issues, to usethe words of Harvard professor
Michael Sandel, we live out someanswer to these questions every
day.
Each day, like it or not, weare picking one of these paths.
When we link employee rewardsto performance metrics, which is
(30:40):
typically a high involvementmanagement approach, we may be
choosing to value efficiency inhigh performance over employee
well-being, leading to acompetitive environment,
potentially fostering stress andundermining collaboration.
When we choose to approve ordeny an employee's leave request
, we may be choosing to valueone employee's well-being over a
(31:01):
team's workload, or vice versa.
As Dr Bryson said in ourinterview, the question is what
kind of employer are you?
And that's what I want to leaveyou with this week.
Maybe take some time this weekto reflect on a particular
action that you recently took atwork.
Try tracing out some of theinterrelated threads, bringing
(31:21):
some awareness to how thataction may ripple throughout the
organizational web and how thataction reflects, or may be in
conflict with your personalvalues.
Trying to develop an awarenessof the interrelated issues,
understanding that thesepractices are not just simple
tips and tricks that can beapplied without thinking about
(31:42):
it and that may just result in abetter outcome for you, your
employees and your stakeholders.
So with that, thank you fortuning in to the Management
Theory Toolbox.
I'm your host, travis Mallett,and it's been a pleasure to
(32:03):
learn and dissect these issueswith you.
Stay tuned for our next episodewhere we'll embark on our first
major topic of organizationalbehavior, learning and
perception.
In the meantime, keep learning,keep exploring and keep adding
to your management toolbox.
We're living in a world where there are various
options available to profitmaximizing employers as to
whether or not they wish toinvest in the well-being of
their workers.
The question is which sort ofemployer are you?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome back to the Management Theory Toolbox.
I'm your host, Travis Mallett,and I'm thrilled to have you
join me on this journey ofcontinuous learning and growth
as we navigate the dynamic worldof management.
This isn't your typicalmanagement podcast.
Yes, there are plenty ofresources out there that will
give you the ABCs of how to runa meeting, hire someone or even
(00:41):
how to fake a sick day withoutgetting caught, but here at the
Management Theory Toolbox, we'reinterested in the why behind it
all, the discoveries ofbehavioral science, psychology,
business and economics that willopen our eyes to what's
happening behind the scenes.
(01:08):
Over the past several episodes,we've been building a way of
thinking about organizationsthat has culminated in the idea
of high involvement management,as discussed in episode 7,.
The central tenet of highinvolvement management requires
that the senior, middle andlower level managers all
recognize human capital as theorganization's most important
(01:31):
resource, and we identified fivespecific management practices
which comprise a highinvolvement management style
Selective hiring, extensivetraining, decision making power,
information sharing andcollaboration.
So that's it.
We've uncovered the secrets tomanagement.
I can see the headlines now.
(01:53):
How to Pulse your Company withthese five secret ingredients
for instant business success?
Elevate your enterprise withthese five spectacular shortcuts
to business stardom or unlocksuccess.
Five miracle moves to transformyour business overnight.
Is high involvement managementreally the only thing we need to
(02:15):
know?
Of course not.
If you've been following alongin this series, you know that
here at the Management TheoryToolbox, we don't believe there
is a single unified theory ofmanagement or even a so-called
correct answer to thesecomplicated issues, and we
aren't even looking for one.
Our suspicions are immediatelyraised anytime someone suggests
(02:36):
that management problems can besolved with a few simple tips
and tricks.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Management is more complicated than you think.
You only see a tenth of what istrue.
There are a million littlestrings attached to every choice
you make.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Management is too complex, there are too many
variables and if you're thinkingthose high involvement
management practices sound anawful lot like those tips and
tricks that I said you wouldn'tfind in this show, you're
absolutely right, and that's whywe're going to dive under the
surface, where we'll find thatthere are still unanswered
questions and ambiguous findings.
(03:15):
But before we get to that,let's start with some of the
evidence for the effectivenessof high involvement management.
Several years ago, Dr AllisonConrad of the Ivy Business
School wrote a nice articlewhich summarizes some of the
research supporting theeffectiveness of high
involvement management, and I'lllink that into the show notes.
Overall, the evidence for itseffectiveness seems fairly
(03:37):
robust.
In one study, traditionalproduction systems across three
industries were compared withflexible systems involving teams
, training and incentive paysystems all elements of high
involvement management.
Not only did the manufacturingplants using high involvement
management show superiorperformance, but the workers had
(03:59):
more positive attitudes andtrust towards the organization.
Other studies involvingemployees in the insurance
industry found that whenemployees felt they had the
power to make decisions,sufficient knowledge and
information to do their jobeffectively and rewards tied to
performance, firms saw not onlyhigher employee retention but
(04:21):
overall superior financialperformance for the entire firm.
Again, high involvementmanagement practices seem to
prove effective.
Now that all sounds prettystraightforward but, as I
mentioned, if we dive under thesurface, we'll find that even
these seemingly clear examplescontain complexities that need
consideration.
And here to help us unravelthese issues.
(04:44):
No, that's not right.
We're actually going to bemaking things more tangled, not
unraveling them.
And here to help us see howunravelable unraveling a bowl
ununravelable there we go.
And here to help us see howununravellable these issues are
(05:09):
is Dr Alex Bryson.
Hi, Alex, and welcome to theshow.
Hi Travis, good to be here,Great.
So before we get started, canyou go ahead and introduce
yourself and tell us a bit aboutyour background and your work?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, I'm a professor at University College London in
Quantitative Social Science.
I tend to crunch large-scaledata sets on employers and
workers to establish what'sgoing on in the workplace,
what's going on in the labourmarket, and that's what I teach
my students as well.
On today's subject, managementpractices, I've been working on
(05:43):
that for 20, 30 years, you'regreat Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So in recent episodes we've been talking about the
concept of high involvementmanagement and we're wondering
about evidence for whether it'san effective constellation of
management techniques.
Before we dive into that, canyou give us a quick explanation
of what exactly is highinvolvement management?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yep, these are practices that are intended to
get workers more involved intheir jobs, and that involvement
can take various forms.
One that psychologists talkabout is being in the flow,
which is essentially beingheavily invested in real time in
the job that you're performing.
(06:25):
A second component is withregards to decision making.
So you can imagine that firmscan design in or design out the
extent to which you makedecisions in your job, when you
turn up what you do, the flow oftasks, who you interact with,
and so on.
(06:45):
You can imagine at one end ofthe spectrum you're basically a
call-king machine.
At the other end of the spectrumyou're given a great deal of
responsibility for that decisionmaking.
You're involved in everythingthat's going on.
A third component is work ofvoice, involvement in the
governance of the workplace, notjust at the job level but at
(07:07):
the organisational level.
And the fourth component, I'dargue, is financial
participation, involvement inthe sense that you have a real
stake in the firm.
Of course all of us do in termsof the wage that we receive,
but that's heightened when youhave something like share
ownership or something like that.
That gives you additionalinvolvement in what the firm is
(07:30):
doing.
But in most of thehigh-involvement management
literature.
They're primarily focused onthis issue of decision making at
the job level.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Now your research also indicates that there's a
relationship betweenhigh-involvement management and
employee well-being.
Can you tell us a bit about howa high-involvement management
affects employee well-being?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Absolutely so.
Before I talk about that, bearin mind, in the management
literature there are really twoworlds.
World number one is a world inwhich management practices are a
technology that firms deploy toelicit greater productivity
from their workers, and thatthey can do so without any
(08:11):
regard to well-being.
How so Well, by creatingincentives, by monitoring their
labour inputs or outputs, bygetting them to work to specific
targets, and there's a greatdeal of evidence to suggest that
this does actually increaseproductivity.
In a world in which we might noteven have any interest
whatsoever in the well-being ofworkers, however, there is
(08:35):
another part of the managementliterature that says hold on a
minute.
We think that most of thesepractices operate through worker
well-being.
How can they do that?
Well, these involvementpractices can actually lead to
improvements in organisationalcommitment and job satisfaction,
because they engage you in yourjob more fully than a standard
(08:59):
job, and they can do that byincreasing the degree to which
you have control over your job,the degree to which there's
mental stimulation in your job,the degree to which there are
social interactions with othersin the workplace which you
actually value as an individual.
So those are all the goodthings, and they could
(09:20):
conceivably result in improvedproductivity.
Not necessarily, it has to besaid, could be a scenario in
which an employer is givinghigher responsibility and
autonomy to a worker who isactually rubbish at their job,
at which point that's a disaster.
But if you get the job matchright that is, the link between
(09:41):
who you employ and the job thatyou want them to do as an
employer then this well-beingcan be one conduit by which the
management practices can elicitincreased productivity on the
part of the worker, eitherbecause they're working more
smartly, more efficiently ormore avidly because they've got
greater organizationalcommitments or job satisfaction.
(10:03):
There is, however, a counterargument, and that is that some
workers see this increase intheir involvement as tantamount
to work intensification.
That is something that theymight not like, because it
implies greater effort andthey're not being paid for it.
(10:23):
So there is a conceivablescenario in which this labor
intensification process leads todisengagement or conflict, as
workers feel a lot is beingdemanded of them and they're
getting little in return.
So that's why it's aninteresting and fruitful area
for empirical investigation.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Now I'm curious if the management practices don't
take into account theindividual's characteristics
like you brought up the exampleof the employee who may not be
skilled in particular tasks orparticular job If the management
practices are not taking intoaccount their development level
or their stress levels,identifying the individual
motivations, can we really saythat those are high-involved
(11:08):
management practices?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Well, you make a very reasonable point.
My own view would be that anyfirm that was interested in
deploying these practices shoulddo a couple of things.
Number one they should spend agreat deal of time thinking
about recruitment and retentionof workers.
So they should be screeningworkers to establish what type
(11:31):
of worker.
If workers are heterogeneouswith respect to their tastes for
high involvement, then it'svery much incumbent upon the
employer to make sure they getthe right sorts of workers in in
the first place.
So that means spending time andeffort on the hiring process
Critically, in fact, we knowfrom the literature is that
people who aren't well suited tothese practices tend to quit.
(11:53):
They go back to jobs where highinvolvement is not part of the
job package.
So that tends to happen.
Naturally there'sself-selection out, but the
employee needs to think hardabout hiring.
Secondly, as you quite rightlysay, travis, there can be
scenarios in which these highinvolvement management practices
come across as very high interms of labor intensification,
(12:18):
and there's a literature on this.
There's a theory and there'sempirical evidence to suggest
management must deploysupportive mechanisms.
This is about training, this isabout supervisory support and
peer support to allow the workerto deal with those high levels
of demand that are being made insuch a way as to maximize
(12:42):
productivity and minimizejob-related stress.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Interestingly, you've also found that high
involvement management mayactually lead to an increase in
short-term absences.
Is that possibly due to theincreased productivity, the
increased efforts, or are thereother reasons?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, so that's right .
In a study for Finland, in fact, we identified the fact that
the introduction of these highinvolvement management practices
led to an increase in thetaking of short-term absences,
but no impact on the taking oflong-term absences, and there
are a couple of reasons for that.
(13:20):
First of all, in the presenceof high involvement management,
workers are often capable ofmultitasking across different
jobs.
As such, they can besubstitutes for one another in
the labor process.
That basically means that if,in a high involvement world,
short-term stresses and demandsare such that you feel the need
(13:43):
to take yourself out of theworkplace for a day or two, that
will come at a minimal cost tothe employer because they can
redeploy the other workers toperform those tasks.
That doesn't normally happen inthe absence of high involvement
management, where there arefewer workers who can substitute
for you in your absence.
The reason that theseshort-term absences do not
(14:08):
result in long-term absences isbecause those short-term
absences are people rechargingtheir batteries in order to
avoid long-term absences.
And, bear in mind, it's notclear what an optimal level of
absence taking would be from aprofit maximizing firm.
We do anticipate that long-termabsences are really problematic
(14:30):
because it's very difficult toget a substitute worker in to
cover for long-term absencesShort-term absences.
If the workers are operating ina highly productive world and
are avoiding long-term absenceby taking more short-term
absences, that could be profitmaximizing.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Speaking of profit maximizing, you also mentioned
that half of your workers,although they might be more
productive, might run into theissue where employers are not
necessarily invested inmaximizing their well-being
because the return on investmentis unclear or ambiguous and
there might be high costsassociated with some management
restructuring to make thathappen.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
You're absolutely right.
So the first point there is isthere a relationship between the
well-being of workers and theirproductivity?
And the answer is that is yes.
We found this in twoexperimental studies one by
Andrew Oswald, done many yearsago, appeared in the Journal of
Labor Economics, where theyrandomly assigned happiness
(15:31):
believe it or not and found thatpeople were more productive
when they were randomly assignedinto the happy group, and a
second paper that's come outvery recently in Management
Science, which instruments forhappiness using the weather
outside, shows that workers whoare happier are more productive
(15:51):
in a call centre setting.
And we've also had someobservational studies, including
panel studies trackingindividuals and firms over time,
that show increases inproductivity over a
five-six-year period when thereis an increase in happiness
within that workplace.
So all of that is pretty clear.
(16:11):
The question is for a givenemployer whether they're going
to spend the time and effortthat's required to make workers
happier if, for example, theyhave cheaper management options
available to them that perhapsdeliver similar or better
productivity without regard totheir workers' well-being, and
(16:33):
that is actually distinctlypossible.
They might go down the route,which is more about incentives,
monitoring, records, which iswell-established in the
literature, the work of NickBloom and John Van Riener, for
example, clearly illustrates,there are productivity returns
to engaging in those sorts ofmanagement practices without any
(16:56):
regard to worker well-being.
Essentially, we're living in aworld where there are various
options available toprofit-maximising employers as
to how they deploy managementpractices, what management
practices they deploy andwhether or not they wish to
invest in the well-being oftheir workers.
The question is which sort ofemployer are you?
(17:19):
So within the literature, thereare some people who argue that
certain management practices areuniversally applicable across
all types of firms.
In other words, if you do moreof these things, productivity
will follow.
There are others who sayactually no.
What set of managementpractices are going to work for
you as a firm are very muchcontingent upon the sorts of
(17:42):
workers you wish to attract, thenature of the market that
you're operating and the goodsand services that you are
producing, and so I thinkemployers need to spend some
time thinking about that,reflecting a lot upon the nature
of the literature.
Of course, oftentimes theydon't do that.
My own view is, generallyspeaking, firms are going to
(18:03):
benefit most from investments inworker well-being where they're
employing highly skilled labourwhich is difficult to replace.
So it's no surprise to discoverthat many of the high-tech
firms Google, apple, microsoftare the sorts of firms that at
least present themselves asfirms that are investing in the
(18:26):
well-being of their workers.
That's because they wantlong-term contract with those
workers and quits are costlywhen labour turnover is less
costly to the firm.
It's not so clear to me thatinvesting in the well-being of
workers is profit maximising.
So you have a world where thereare multiple equilibria.
(18:47):
There are different things thatan employer could do in order to
maximise profits.
Of course, really interestingly, if you think of a Venn diagram
, there might be a group offirms that are close to the
middle.
They could flip-flop one way orthe other, and I think that's
where policy could come in totry and create incentives, to
try and generate what is, afterall, a really important public
(19:08):
good from a governmental andsocietal perspective, namely the
health and well-being ofworkers.
Because, of course, if workersare not healthy, if their
well-being is poor, there's anegative externality for the
rest of society in terms ofhealth costs and so on.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
So to make sure I'm understanding this, you had
mentioned previously that someworkers will self-select
themselves out of ahigh-involvement management
workforce.
So, bringing that to whatyou're saying now, it's possible
that you could have a firmwhere everybody has been
selected.
Their temperament is to dislikehigh-involvement management
practices.
Yet that firm can be just asproductive, if not more so, than
(19:48):
another firm where everybody isaligned with high-involvement
management practices.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
It's certainly conceivable, both in theory and
in the empirical literature.
As I've already intimated,there is a literature out there
about the importance ofmanagement practices, but not
necessarily the high-involvementflavor.
Rather, this literature stemsfrom what economists call a key
(20:13):
principal agent problem.
So where the principal is theowner of the firm and we as the
workers, the agents, thecontract is open, and it's very
hard to contract in a clean,simple way.
For effort Problem is shirkingthe idea that, okay, you've
employed me, but maybe I'll goand make a coffee now.
(20:34):
Maybe I won't be working, butmaybe I'll play on my game or
check my latest football scoreor something like that, online
before getting on to the nexttask.
Now employers might worry aboutthat if they're saying hold on,
I'm employing you to do X, yand Z, but you're doing X and Y
and A and B.
In that world you've got tocreate incentives for workers to
(20:57):
do what you expected them to dowhen you contracted with them
in the first place.
And if you're really concerned,you might start to try and
heavily monitor their effort.
Now.
That will work for some typesof worker workers who perhaps
don't really want to spend a lotof time and effort investing in
(21:20):
firms, specific human capitalin order to have decision-making
responsibilities in their firm.
They might just want to turn upfor work, do the job they're
told to do, take their paypacket and go home.
There'll be other types ofworkers who'd find that
monitoring highly intrusive ormight actually adversely respond
(21:42):
to pecuniary incentives, forexample, if they believe that
they're involved in a job whereintrinsic job satisfaction is
key, which is often the casewith white collar occupations,
which is why you rarely seefinancial incentives in terms of
bonuses and the like deployedfor teachers, nurses and so on.
(22:03):
But what do you see instead?
You see career incentivesmoving up a ladder over a long
period of time, supportstructures in place, such as
training, which are all gearedtowards trying to encourage
workers to get involved in theirjobs, to offer perhaps
additional effort, and so, inthe theory, would be a sort of
(22:23):
gift exchange.
We'll offer you this long-termcontracts with career
progression, training,responsibility, good job quality
as indicated by job control,perhaps a voice in the workplace
, in the expectation that you,as the worker, will reciprocate
with effort over and above thatwhich is standardly laid out in
(22:46):
a contract.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Now, in recent decades, high involvement
management seems to have becomea hot topic in the field of
management theory, perhapsbecause of the rise of these
large tech firms, as youmentioned earlier.
How do you see the role of suchmanagement practices evolving
in the future?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Well, that's a really , really great question because
you're straight into the issueof the diffusion of management
practices.
So if we start from the premisethat high involvement
management is the frontier, it'sthe optimal device by which to
manage your workers, then youanticipate, if information is
(23:28):
free flowing across firms, thatother firms start to recognize
the value of these practices andadopt them as well.
And yet across most of theliterature there is uneven
adoption.
These practices are not ascommon as you might think if you
were just reading the pages ofbusiness magazines.
(23:50):
There are many firms that makeprofits that do not undertake
these management practices Noweither.
They are operatingsub-optimally.
Perhaps, for example, aneconomist would say they are
operating in markets that areless than fully competitive.
On the other hand, it could bethat whatever they are doing is
(24:11):
optimal from a profit-makingperspective and in fact, for
various firm-specific reasons,it will be highly costly for
them to create the managementpractices that lead to
improvements in workerwell-being, and it's for that
reason that we don't see them Atthe moment.
The literature is somewhatuncertain about this.
(24:34):
There is evidence that certainof these incentives, monitoring
and targeting devices the moreof it that you do, the more you
see increases in productivity,almost linear returns, which is
very unusual in this literature.
You would anticipatediminishing returns after a
certain point.
So there is some credibleevidence to suggest that
(24:57):
actually many firms areoperating at a suboptimal level
in terms of the managementpractices that they are
deploying, notwithstanding thefact that they perhaps are being
profitable, to a point.
That raises, then, the keyquestion what is the barrier to
diffusion?
Ordinarily, one would thinkstraight away about information
(25:18):
and information flows and infact, in some comparative work
I've been involved in, what weshow is that these management
practices are much morediffusive the French case than
they are in the British case,and there are reasons for this.
One of them is the debt andstrength of employer networks in
France as compared to the UKcase.
(25:39):
In the UK case there's muchmore atomistic competition, as
between firms.
They do not share informationabout what's optimal in terms of
management practices, whereasin France, as a tradition, there
are structures in place wherethat information is shared, and
it could well be that there areinformation deficits facing
(26:00):
employers that need them todeploy suboptimal practices, and
we might anticipate that policyinterventions to create better
information flows, as betweenemployers, might lead to
increased diffusion of thesepractices.
Of course, there's one possiblecounter to that, which could be
that many firms are just in adifferent space, that these
(26:23):
practices are not universallyapplicable and indeed are
contingent upon the environmentin which the firms operate.
At the moment, we don't have aliterature that speaks to these
issues.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Thank you, this was definitely fascinating.
Before we sign off, can youtell our listeners how they can
find you in your work?
Yes, so if they?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
just Google Alex Bryson, ucl, they will get me,
because there aren't very manyAlex Bryson's in the world, I'm
glad to say, and I have awebsite at UCL that shows all my
research.
Or they can just directly emailme at abrison at uclacuk.
Always glad to hear from peopleand I'd be delighted to respond
(27:05):
directly to any questions thatthey have.
Thanks for having me, travis.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Great.
Thank you.
That was really interesting howworker well-being is often tied
to improved performance, but onthe other hand, some employees
may not want the higherintensity work environment
associated with high involvementmanagement practices.
So is focusing on well-beingfor all employees actually the
(27:31):
right thing to do?
Or perhaps someone might arguethe disregarding individual
preferences like that isactually not cultivating the
well-being of an employee.
As long as our definition ofwell-being includes tailoring to
the preferences of employees,then we could still say that
high-involvement managementpractices are superior.
(27:52):
But wait, I'm sure we all knowsomeone who seems to shirk their
responsibilities at work.
Should managers really beexpected to cater to the
preferences of an employeemotivated by shirking their
responsibilities?
A wise sage might smilinglypoint out that true well-being
comes from growth and thatmaking our employees
(28:14):
uncomfortable as we enhancetheir skills, autonomy and
decision-making power is aprerequisite to cultivating
their well-being in the long run.
That if people aren't beingchallenged by their jobs, if
there aren't difficulties alongthe way, then they won't be
satisfied and find meaning in it.
At the heart of these issueslies the philosophical concern
(28:38):
of balancing ethicalconsiderations in organizational
decision-making, and thisfundamental concern intertwines
the valuation of human capital,the complexity of
high-involvement management andthe ethical implications of
balancing employee well-beingwith organizational goals.
The issue reflects thephilosophical struggle to define
(29:01):
what is right or just in thecontext of organizational
management.
It challenges leaders toconsider not just the
philosophical or productivityoutcomes of their management
practices, but also the ethicaldimensions of their decisions,
particularly how they affecthuman well-being and dignity.
Now, if you're expecting tofind the answers to these
(29:24):
complicated issues in a shortpodcast episode on management
that you came across on theInternet, then you probably
haven't been paying attention.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Everything is more complicated than you think.
You only see a tenth of what istrue.
There are a million littlestrings attached to every choice
you make.
You can destroy your life everytime you choose, but maybe you
won't know for 20 years and youmay never, ever trace it to its
source, and you only get onechance to play it out.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
That clip is from the 2008 postmodern psychological
drama Sinecta Key, new York,where a funeral preacher reminds
everyone that the choices wemake can have profound impacts
that we may never fully unravel.
Of course, there's no way we'llbe able to resolve these issues
.
I'm not even convinced thatit's possible to articulate a
clear problem statement thattakes into account all the
(30:19):
related issues, and although wemay never be able to completely
detangle these issues, to usethe words of Harvard professor
Michael Sandel, we live out someanswer to these questions every
day.
Each day, like it or not, weare picking one of these paths.
When we link employee rewardsto performance metrics, which is
(30:40):
typically a high involvementmanagement approach, we may be
choosing to value efficiency inhigh performance over employee
well-being, leading to acompetitive environment,
potentially fostering stress andundermining collaboration.
When we choose to approve ordeny an employee's leave request
, we may be choosing to valueone employee's well-being over a
(31:01):
team's workload, or vice versa.
As Dr Bryson said in ourinterview, the question is what
kind of employer are you?
And that's what I want to leaveyou with this week.
Maybe take some time this weekto reflect on a particular
action that you recently took atwork.
Try tracing out some of theinterrelated threads, bringing
(31:21):
some awareness to how thataction may ripple throughout the
organizational web and how thataction reflects, or may be in
conflict with your personalvalues.
Trying to develop an awarenessof the interrelated issues,
understanding that thesepractices are not just simple
tips and tricks that can beapplied without thinking about
(31:42):
it and that may just result in abetter outcome for you, your
employees and your stakeholders.
So with that, thank you fortuning in to the Management
Theory Toolbox.
I'm your host, travis Mallett,and it's been a pleasure to
(32:03):
learn and dissect these issueswith you.
Stay tuned for our next episodewhere we'll embark on our first
major topic of organizationalbehavior, learning and
perception.
In the meantime, keep learning,keep exploring and keep adding
to your management toolbox.
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