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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
This project was supported by the Army Research Institute. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Enhancing organizational performance / Daniel Druckman, Jerome E Singer, and Harold Van Cott, editors.
p. cm.
"Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council."
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-309-05397-8
1. Organizational effectiveness. 2. Organizational change. 3. United States. Army—Management. I. Druckman, Daniel, 1939-. II. Singer, Jerome E. III. Van Cott, Harold P. IV. National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance.
HD58.9E54 1997
658.4'063—dc21 97-1782
CIP
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Committee On Techniques For The Enhancement of Human Performance
Jerome E. Singer (Chair),
Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland
Janice M. Beyer,
Department of Management, University of Texas, Austin
Nicole W. Biggart,
Department of Management and Sociology, University of California, Davis
W. Warner Burke,
Department of Organization and Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University
Kim S. Cameron,
Department of Management, Brigham Young University
David L. DeVries,
Kaplan DeVries, Inc., Greensboro, North Carolina
Paul F. Diehl,
Department of Political Science, University of Illinois, Urbana
George P. Huber,
Department of Management, University of Texas, Austin
Robert L. Kahn,
Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
James A. Wall, Jr.,
Department of Management, University of Missouri, Columbia
Brig. General John M. Wattendorf (retired),
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership, United States Military Academy, West Point, New York
Brig. General Myrna H. Williamson (retired),
A&E Electronics, Arlington, Virginia
Gary Yukl,
Department of Management, State University of New York, Albany
Daniel Druckman, Study Director
Harold Van Cott, Consultant
Cindy Prince, Senior Project Assistant
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Preface
In 1985, the Army Research Institute (ARI) asked the National Academy of Sciences to explore the utility and effectiveness of various techniques to enhance human performance. The Academy, through the National Research Council, established the Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance. The committee, composed primarily of psychologists, first examined and then evaluated commercial and proprietary techniques then being considered by the Army; later the committee broadened its inquiry to study a variety of related issues, including team learning, simulation training, and skills practice, among other topics.
This is the fourth report of the committee. Over the decade since it was established, the membership has evolved so that the fields of expertise covered are no longer almost exclusively in psychology, but include experts whose knowledge is suited to the particular tasks at hand, at the same time providing continuity from study to study.
This change in committee composition is relevant to this study, which examines the organizational context of individual and group performance. Accordingly, the membership draws less on the contributions of scientists in cognitive psychology, experimental social psychology, neuroscience, and motor performance and more on the scholarship of people engaged in organizational theory, industrial management, and business consulting. Our Army sponsor explicitly requested that we not produce a report directed exclusively toward military organization but rather to summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the best evidence for current organizational practices. The committee has stayed within those general guidelines, but to help ensure
the relevance of our conclusions to the sponsor, several of our members are specialists in military leadership and organization.
The committee organized for its task by establishing a set of subcommittees, each directed toward a particular topic from the agenda to be addressed. The subcommittees worked well as units, not only executing their assignments in a timely fashion but also communicating their products to the others and responding well and promptly to suggestions for revisions and changes needed to produce the developing final report. Moreover, many members had skills and knowledge appropriate to more than one topic, making them important resource persons for other subcommittees.
Just as the committee's focus on organizations instead of individuals made its membership more diverse than that of previous phases, so, too, the nature of the evidence was different in emphasis than that surveyed in previous reports. The topics of the earlier reports were amenable to laboratory study and were supported by the kind of experimental data that permit the drawing of relatively clear and persuasive conclusions. In contrast, the organizational literature we examined dealt in large part with field studies and observational materials. Many aspects of management, leadership, and culture do not have a broad and extensive research database that would permit the drawing of definitive conclusions. In fact, for several interesting points, no data at all were available. Of necessity, the inferences and conclusions made here are the result of careful deliberation and the reasoned consensus of the members as they considered evidence that was not as strong or as firm as we would have liked. The members' mutual respect and collegial exchange of ideas and concerns made it easier to distinguish between firm and ambiguous conclusions.
No committee works alone; many people aided our efforts by giving generously of their time and knowledge. Appendix B contains a list of the organizations, places, and people visited and consulted by the committee, the subcommittees, individual members and staff. Several of those who aided us in the project are deserving of special mention. Edgar Johnson, director of the Army Research Institute, and Michael Drilling, chief of the Research and Advanced Concepts office at AIR, made contacts for us, helped to set up meetings, answered a variety of questions, and all in all were a model of what every committee would wish its sponsor to be. Mary E. Zeolite gave excellent service in reviewing the practitioner literature on organizational culture. William E. Spiegel made a significant contribution to the work on interorganizational relations.
Most of our appreciation goes to the incomparable professional staff. Cindy Prince kept us on an even keel with superb meeting arrangements and the shepherding of the manuscript, parts of which kept arriving from different locations at different times from different people, and all of which was in constant revision. Thanks also to Mary DeLorey for her assistance
in piecing together the various parts of the manuscript under time pressure and to Elsa Riemer for her assistance in preparing the final versions of the manuscript. Harold Van Cott served unstintingly as a consultant to the committee; his contributions and advice are reflected throughout the document.
A special debt of gratitude is extended to Christine McShane, editor par excellence of this report. She helped us to unify our styles, excise our infelicities of language, and give more shapely coherence to the whole report. In addition, she undertook the awesome task of producing a revised document that was responsive to our concerns about communicating the work to a wide audience of readers with diverse interests in the general topic. Whatever success we may have had in achieving this goal is due in large part to her effort.
Jerome E. Singer, Chair
Daniel Druckman, Study Director
Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance
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