The paper describes how leaders behave and react in unprecedented times when a professional service firm has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Firsthand data were gathered through interviews, observations, and participation based on direct interaction with leaders and employees. The concept of leadership anatomy is used to describe, discuss, and critique leadership behavior. It signifies the different parts of a human body equipped with sensory ability. The study reveals that in times of crisis, leaders tend to draw on the core of who they are through compassion rather than conventional wisdom in decision making and problem solving. The search for what truly matters helps leaders to reinterpret the ethos of the firm and what they stand for as leaders in their sensemaking of chaos. A deeper reflection of their personal values and beliefs gives them the courage to acknowledge their vulnerability and start seeing the value in others.

Up to now managers could find little evidence to support the idea that the organization's culture has an impact on its bottom-line performance. To remedy this, Denison draws on survey and performance data from 34 large corporations to show that those that have participative cultures experience better performance than those that do not. This difference in performance appears to have widened over the five years that these firms were studied. The results also hold up when the performance measures for each firm (return on investment and return on sales) are compared with those of their competitors. Denison suggests that this comparative approach to the study of organizational culture provides a way to capture the impact that culture has on organizational performance. This strategy, he argues, also provides a way of diagnosing organizations and measuring the ways in which human resources management, organizational culture, and management practices do, in fact, contribute to the success of business organizations.

Blake and Mouton use an actual case of a successful merger to show how their Interface Conflict-Solving Model, based on behavioral science principles, can be used to achieve integration. The authors outline the history of the two organizations, give illustrations of the kinds of changes that were necessary to more from the actual state of affairs within each organization to the conditions needed for synergy, and explain how the merging organizations collaborated to develop a model for the interface. The merger is evaluated from the perspective of what happened during the two years following the merger. Blake and Mouton also elaborate on the dynamics of group behavior that they took into consideration in designing the Interface Conflict-Solving Model: the effects of group members' shared history; the natural tensions that typically exist between groups that have a functional relationship and misperceptions and distortions that arise as a result of these tensions; and win-lose competitiveness instead of a win-win mentality as a shared expectation. Finally, the authors show how shared participation can overcome inappropriate and debilitating competition.

For decades, leaders and scholars have been advocating change efforts to improve work-life relationships. Yet most initiatives have lacked rigor and not been developed using scientific principles. This has created an evidence gap for employer support of work and personal life as a win-win for productivity and employees' well-being. This paper examines the approach used by the U.S. Work Family Health Network (WFRN) to develop an innovative workplace intervention to improve employee and family health. The change initiative was designed to reduce organizationally based work-family conflict in two contrasting contexts representative of major segments of today's U.S. workforce: health care employees and informational technology professionals. The WFRN Intervention (called STAR) had three theoretically based change elements. They were: 1) increase job control over work time and schedule; 2) increase supervisor social support for family and job effectiveness; and 3) improve organizational culture and job design processes to foster results orientation. Seven practical lessons for developing work-life interventions emerged from this groundbreaking endeavor.

Building on research and writing in the fields of career management and mentor relationships, Baird and Kram analyze the superior-subordinate relationship as an exchange to which each party brings different needs and resources. They point out that this relationship can be productive and satisfying--both for the parties concerned and for the organization--when the needs of one party match the resources of the other. The article includes a checklist for analyzing how the superior-subordinate relationship operates as an exchange and how the resources of the parties mesh or fail to mesh. They do on to show how the superior-subordinate relationship and the needs of the parties change as each moves through individual career and life cycles. What was once a productive relationship may, in time, become unproductive, or vice versa. In any event, its dynamic nature requires that it be managed. Baird and Kram suggest five steps for managing the relationship as it moves through these changes: (1) Recognizing that the relationship is an exchange; (2) identifying clearly one's own as well as the other party's needs; (3) understanding how the subordinate's and boss's needs fit together and recognizing that the relationship is likely to change; (4) understanding the constraints under which the boss operates; (5) establishing a feedback and evaluation process for continuously assessing the relationship.

The emergence of COVID-19 has presented employees and employers new challenges as many employees and managers were forced to work in a remote environment for the first time. For many reasons, managing virtual teams is different than managing employees in a traditional face-to-face office environment. Although many managers have been learning how to lead their virtual teams over the last several months, we offer five steps for leaders to follow for how to maximize the effectiveness of a remote workplace. By taking specific actions and ensuring the organization has a culture to support their virtual workforce, leaders can improve the performance output and engagement of their teams. The five steps are: first establish and explain the new reality; second, establish and maintain a culture of trust; third, upgrade leadership communication tools and techniques to better inform virtual employees; fourth, encourage shared leadership among team members; and fifth, to create and periodically perform alignment audits to ensure virtual employees are aligned with the organization's cultural values including its commitment to mission. All these steps start with the realization that managing a team is going to be different when the members are dispersed, and new leadership strategies, communication routines and tools are required.

To find the key to the success of Japanese economic performance since World War II, Marsland and Beer explore five main "environmental" factors used by Japanese firms to build a successful human resources management approach: Japanese social values, the structure of private enterprise, the structure of labor markets, the historic development of the Japanese employment system, and the structure of Japanese management. This discussion shows that post-war Japanese management, faced with rapid change, introduced new concepts and techniques that reinforced and maintained certain social values and traditions that fit well with human resources management objectives. This skillful blend of new ideas with traditional values enabled the Japanese to achieve superior economic performance.

The values that quality of work life (QWL) has brought to the workplace are in danger of being lost, say authors Nadler and Lawler; to avert this danger, they debunk several "definitions" of the concept that miss the point, give it a precise definition, and spell out ways to use it successfully. They delineate six factors that they believe separate more successful from less successful QWL efforts. The first success factor is a perception of need--that is, in successful efforts organization members actually perceive a problem. Second, the problem is salient to the organization. Third, a structure for participation is created. Fourth, rewards are provided both for the processes and for the outcomes of QWL activities. Fifth, multiple levels of management are involved. And, finally, QWL involves all organization members in a way that avoids "we-they" rivalries. With these factors in mind, the authors conclude that three major components of QWL efforts must be managed well if they are to succeed: (1) development of projects at different levels; (2) changes in management systems and structure; and (3) changes in senior management behavior--that is, if the QWL effort is to be credible to organization members, there must be some specific, tangible QWL activity in which senior managers participate.

We examine the survey responses of 278 individuals who transitioned from the workplace to working from home (WFH) as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic to understand how individuals' attainment of productivity in work and meaning in life are affected by WFH. We also assess their perceived stress and health challenges experienced since WFH. On average, workers perceive that productivity and meaning changed in opposite directions with the shift to WFH-productivity increased while the meaning derived from daily activities decreased. Stress was reduced while health problems increased. By investigating these changes, we identify important common sources of support and friction associated with remote work that affect multiple dimensions of work and life. For example, personal fortitude is an important source of support, and the intrusion of work into life is an important friction. Our findings lead to concrete recommendations for both organizational leaders and workers in setting key priorities for supporting remote work.

Sashkin presents a model of participative management and contends that when value biases are absent and the need for skillful application and management are taken into account, participative management is effective. When properly implemented, participative management fulfills three basic human work needs--the need for autonomy or control over one's behavior, the need for completion or achievement of a whole task, and the need for interpersonal contact in the context of work. Failure to fulfill these needs can have serious consequences: Employees may be harmed both psychologically and physically. Thus organizations may be killing their employees--but not with kindness. Sashkin argues that it is unethical to manage in any way but participatively if one adheres to the fundamental values of Western civilization. Thus participative management is an ethical imperative. With this in mind, he provides some action guidelines for managers, organizations, and management educators.

Drawing on cultural anthropology, Sathe develops a way of thinking about corporate culture that makes the concept analytically useful for dealing with managerial problems. He shows that by distinguishing between culture and behavior, and examining both simultaneously, it is possible to see more clearly why culture can be both an asset and a liability, and why it has such a subtle but powerful influence on organizational life. Not all cultures are equally powerful, however; Sathe presents some approaches for diagnosing a culture and understanding its strengths along with some implications for managerial action. Noting that a "perfect" culture-person fit is difficult to engineer, he makes suggestions for avoiding such mismatches and for better managing the culture shocks that inevitably hit the newcomer to an organization. He then turns to the question of how culture/person misfits may be understood and managed and what it takes to successfully deviate from the organization's culture when one is required to do so.

The principal value of studying the Japanese managerial system, according to Zussman, lies not in the prospect of copying it or of finding secrets for success, but in our ability to identify the relationship between the material resource position of an economy and the managerial systems that will be most effective in it. Zussman briefly discusses the historical development of the Japanese response to their resource-poor homeland and the principles they identified for success through the utilization of human resources--the one resource they had in abundance. He also cites the United States's historical response to its resource position as a source of our present economic difficulties. He contends that the structural changes required to cure our economic woes include eliminating the "entitlement" culture, developing better processes for employee selection, utilizing nonmonetary rewards, and adopting different criteria for selection and promotion of managers.

A controller has two apparently contradictory responsibilities: (1) the management service responsibility of ensuring that specialist knowledge and expertise get proper consideration when business decisions and actions are taken, and (2) the custodial and monitoring responsibility of ensuring the accuracy of financial reporting and the integrity of internal control. The apparent contradiction is that the first responsibility requires active involvement in management while the second calls for a sense of independence from affiliated management. Sathe stresses that "strong" controllers overcome this dilemma by developing certain interpersonal skills. Such "strong" controllers thus have access to sensitive information and deliberations in progress--an access that permits them to take before-the-fact actions that stop ill-conceived, ill-advised, or illegal decisions before they are taken. A controller who is not actively involved in decision making is not privy to such information and can exert only after-the-fact or reactive control. However, the costs of operating with a strong controller must be weighed against the potential benefits and compared with the benefits of alternate approaches.

The turbulent economic, political, and cultural forces of the 1980s have made the management of strategic change increasingly a way of life for organizations. To manage such change, managers will have to confront basic questions about the organization's technical, political, and cultural foundations. The technical questions include: What business(es) should we be in? How should we be organized to accomplish our strategy? What kinds of people do we need, and how will they be acquired, developed, and rewarded? The political questions include: Who gets to influence the mission and strategy of the organization? Who gets promoted to what key positions? The cultural questions: What values and beliefs are necessary to support the organization's strategy? What subcultures are desirable, and should there be an overarching corporate culture? The author suggests that the answers for an individual organization should cluster to form three strands of a strategic rope--that is, they must be interwoven and mutually supportive for the organization to be effective. He sees human resources management as the focal point of much of strategic change likely to occur in organizations during the 1980s.

Expectations for where and when work should take place changed radically for workers through the COVID-19 global pandemic. Now that COVID-19 no longer poses a significant safety threat for the typical worker, executives at many organizations are now expecting their employees to return to the office. The issues seem to revolve around perceived barriers to culture, collaboration, and innovation when employees are not present together in the office. Yet, many employees strongly resist a return to the office. They have experienced well-being, productivity, and autonomy benefits from a remote and hybrid work arrangement. Rigid return to office rules feel outdated, manipulative, and controlling to many employees. In the current article we explore expert opinion on the issues of culture, collaboration, and innovation. Specifically, we ask whether a return to office will improve these aspects of organizational functioning and we outline evidence that leads us to provide an answer these questions. Executives and managers may find these expert opinions useful in their consideration of workplace policies and guidelines for the use of remote, hybrid, and in office work arrangements in their organizations.