Operation Research course

INTRODUCTION This chapter is about performance management. Performance relates to the measurable outcomes or results achieved by an organization. Management relates to the actions or activities an organization deploys to improve its desired outcomes. This chapter focuses on three major themes: 1. Key ideas organizations have found helpful in dealing with powerful and fundamental forces of change at work in the world 2. How goal setting and metrics can improve performance at the individual, team, working-group and organizational-unit levels 3. How the formal and informal aspects of an organization each contribute to managing perform- ance in a world of change We have grounded this chapter in our own extensive experience as well as the writings of leading commentators. Our objective is to provide readers with a blend of best practices. In particular, we seek to avoid—and advise readers to avoid—selecting any single approach to performance manage- ment as ‘‘the best and on...

TEAM-DESIGN Historical Background The major approaches to job design, as discussed in Section 2, typically focus on designing jobs for individual workers; however, it is also possible to design jobs around work teams. In designing jobs for teams, one assigns a task or set of tasks to a group of workers rather than an individual and considers the group to be the unit of performance. Objectives and rewards focus on group, not individual, behavior. Depending on the nature of the tasks, a team’s workers may be performing the same tasks simultaneously or they may break tasks into subtasks to be performed by individuals within the team. Subtasks could be assigned on the basis of expertise or interest, or team members might rotate from one subtask to another to provide job variety and increase the breadth of skills and flexibility in the workforce. Some tasks, because of their size or complexity or for other reasons, seem to fit naturally into a team job design, whereas others may seem to...

LEADERSHIP OUTCOMES My message was, and will always be, ‘‘There are no limits to the maximum.’’ —T., an exemplary infantry platoon commander in the Israel Defense Forces  ‘‘Transformational leaders encourage follower to both develop and perform at levels above what they may have felt was possible, or beyond their own personal expectations’’ (Bass and Avolio 1990, p. 234, emphasis in original). Thus, achieving certain levels of performance as well as development become a targeted outcome. The linkages between transformational leadership, employee develop- ment, and performance are presented in Figure 4. Performance Numerous studies have examined the relationships between various components of the full range leadership model and performance outcomes. Overall, these studies confirmed the positive impact of transformational leadership on perceived effectiveness as well as on hard measures of performance. The most commonly studied perceived outcomes were perceived effective...

IMPLEMENTATION ADVICE FOR JOB AND TEAM DESIGN When to Consider Design and Redesign of Work There are at least eight situations when design or redesign of work should be considered. 1. When starting up or building a new plant or work unit. This is the most obvious application of job design. 2. During innovation or technological change. Continual innovation and technological change are important for survival in most organizations. These changes in procedures and equipment mean there are changes in job design. This is not unique to manufacturing jobs. The introduction of electronic equipment is changing many office jobs. Proper consideration of job design is needed to ensure that the innovations are successful. 3. When markets, products, or strategies change. Modern consumer and industrial markets change rapidly. To keep up with changing demands, organizations must often change marketing strat- egies and product line mixes. Such changes can affect many jobs throughout an organiza...

INTRODUCTION Most definitions of leadership reflect the assumption that it involves a social influence process whereby intentional influence is exerted by one person over other people to structure the activities and relationships in a group or organization (Yukl 1998). Leadership occurs when one group member modifies the motivation and competencies of others in the group (Bass 1990). Work motivation is the willingness of an individual to invest energy in productive activity. Thus, leadership and moti- vation are interwoven, inseparable concepts; a core outcome of effective leadership is a higher will- ingness on the part of the employees to invest energy in performing their tasks. A new genre of leadership and motivation theories has been shown to affect organizational effectiveness in ways that are quantitatively greater than, and qualitatively different from, the effects specified by previous theories (House and Shamir 1993; for a meta-analytic review see Lowe et al. 1996). These theorie...

TRANSPORTING GOODS Cost, Time, and Quality Optimization in Transportation In the transportation of goods, we often develop models that minimize total cost while maintaining acceptable levels of service. This cost may be a combination of the cost of operating a vehicle (fuel, maintenance, depreciation, etc.), the labor cost of the operator of the vehicle (driver, pilot, etc.), and possibly other fixed costs. In the transportation of small packages or less-than-truckload shipments, sorting cost is also considered, representing the cost of sorting and handling the packages to con- solidate shipments. Cost may be considered indirectly, as in the case of minimizing empty vehicles or maximizing the load factor. The time needed for transporting goods is another very important factor. Instead of minimizing general cost, transportation time may be minimized directly when time constraints are very tight or when the computation of cost is dominated by the labor cost. Whether the transportati...