Thomas A. Kochan – författare

Authored by a well-respected team in labor relations, "An Introduction to Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations, 4/e" covers key topics in industrial relations and collective bargaining using a unique conceptual framework based on the three levels of industrial relations activity (strategic, functional, and workplace). Two extensive, class-tested mock-bargaining exercises are included. International and comparative labor relations are both integrated throughout and receive full chapter treatment. No other textbook provides such a thorough treatment of international/global issues. Numerous examples are provided in the text and in boxes that include coverage on recent strikes, collective bargaining negotiations, and other contemporary collective bargaining events. The authors relate in a direct and clear fashion how concepts can be used to help understand current events.

This is a contributed book on how organizations can and should adapt to global markets in a world economy. Its central argument is that merely changing parts of an organization will not be successful and that systemic changes across whole organizations will be required.

This book examines how organizations can, and should, transform their practices to compete in a world economy. Research results from a multi-disciplinary team of MIT researchers, along with the experiences and insights of a select group of industry practitioners, are integrated into a model that stresses the need for systemic and transformative rather than piecemeal or incremental changes in organization practices and public policy. This integration of research and experience results in an argument for a new organizational learning model--one capable of gaining advantage from employee diversity, cooperation across organizational boundaries, strategic restructuring, and advanced technology. The book begins with a foreword by Lester C. Thurow.

"This book has two main strengths. First, its approach gives a sense of the texture and variety of the implementation of lean production, the forces that shape it in practice, and the alternatives that may be available. Second, the book's international focus provides a wealth of fascinating material concerning the influence of national conditions on the shaping of production practices."—Harley Shaiken, author of Work Transformed: Automation and Labor in the Computer AgeNearly every country that produces cars views the automobile industry as strategically important because of its direct economic significance and because it serves as a bellwether for innovation in employment conditions. In this book, industrial relations experts from eleven countries consider the state of the industry worldwide. They are particularly interested in assessing whether the loudly heralded model of lean production initiated by Toyota has become pervasive.The contributors focus on employment practices: the way work is organized, how workers and managers interact, the way worker representatives respond to lean production strategies, and the nature of the adaptation and innovation process itself.

The last two decades of the twentieth century were a tumultuous time of innovation for business and labor. Perhaps the boldest and most far-reaching experiment in industry was the creation of the Saturn Corporation. Working together as partners, the UAW and General Motors built a new small car in Spring Hill, Tennessee, with American suppliers and American workers. Saturn's locally designed manufacturing system featured self-directed teams and the integration of union representatives into management's strategic and operational decision-making processes. Saul A. Rubinstein and Thomas A. Kochan have followed the Saturn story since its beginning in 1983. Through surveys as well as hundreds of interviews with company managers, union representatives, and employees, and with leaders of GM and the UAW, they trace the history of, and the lessons to be learned from, this "Different Kind of Company." The Saturn experiment embodied a new concept of labor-management relations, management, and organizational governance. Has it been a success or a failure? Is it relevant in the current industrial environment? What effect has it had on GM and the UAW? The authors resist overly simplistic conclusions; Saturn's strengths and limitations must be fairly assessed before the company's experience can provide lessons on the future of unions, labor-management relations, work organization, and corporate governance.

Major changes within and between organizations are now generally negotiated by the parties that have a stake in the consequences of the changes. This was not always so. In 1965, with A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, Richard Walton and Robert McKersie laid the analytical foundation for much of the innovation in the practice of negotiation that has occurred over the last thirty-nine years. Since that time, however, the field has undergone significant changes, and Walton and McKersie's ideas have been applied to a wide variety of situations beyond labor negotiations.Negotiations and Change represents the next generation of thinking. Experts on negotiations, management, and organizational behavior take stock of what has been learned since 1965. They extend and apply the concepts of Walton and McKersie and of other leaders in the study of negotiations to a broad range of business, professional, and personal concerns: workplace teams, conflict management systems, corporate governance, and environmental disputes. While building on those foundations, the essays demonstrate the continued robustness and relevance of Walton and McKersie's behavioral theory by suggesting ways it could be used to improve the management of change. Returning to its roots, the volume concludes with a retrospective by Richard Walton and Robert McKersie.

"And you thought the passengers were mad. Airline employees are fed up, too-with pay cuts, increased workloads and management's miserly ways, which leave workers to explain to often-enraged passengers why flying has become such a miserable experience."—New York Times, December 22, 2007When both an industry's workers and its customers report high and rising frustration with the way they are being treated, something is fundamentally wrong. In response to these conditions, many of the world's airlines have made ever-deeper cuts in services and their workforces. Is it too much to expect airlines, or any other enterprise, to provide a fair return to investors, high-quality reliable service to their customers, and good jobs for their employees?Measured against these three expectations, the airline industry is failing. In the first five years of the twenty-first century alone, U.S. airlines lost a total of $30 billion while shedding 100,000 jobs, forcing the remaining workers to give up over $15 billion in wages and benefits. Combined with plummeting employee morale, shortages of air traffic controllers, and increased congestion and flight delays, a total collapse of the industry may be coming. Is this state of affairs inevitable? Or is it possible to design a more sustainable, less volatile industry that better balances the objectives of customers, investors, employees, and the wider society? Does deregulation imply total abrogation of government's responsibility to oversee an industry showing the clear signs of deterioration and increasing risk of a pending crisis?Greg J. Bamber, Jody Hoffer Gittell, Thomas A. Kochan, and Andrew von Nordenflycht explore such questions in a well-informed and engaging way, using a mix of quantitative evidence and qualitative studies of airlines from North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Up in the Air provides clear and realistic strategies for achieving a better, more equitable balance among the interests of customers, employees, and shareholders. Specifically, the authors recommend that firms learn from the innovations of companies like Southwest and Continental Airlines in order to build a positive workplace culture that fosters coordination and commitment to high-quality service, labor relations policies that avoid long drawn-out conflicts in negotiating new agreements, and business strategies that can sustain investor, employee, and customer support through the ups and downs of business cycles.

Kaiser Permanente is the largest managed care organization in the country. It also happens to have the largest and most complex labor-management partnership ever created in the United States. This book tells the story of that partnership-how it started, how it grew, who made it happen, and the lessons to be learned from its successes and complications. With twenty-seven unions and an organization as complex as 8.6-million-member Kaiser Permanente, establishing the partnership was not a simple task and maintaining it has proven to be extraordinarily challenging.Thomas A. Kochan, Adrienne E. Eaton, Robert B. McKersie, and Paul S. Adler are among a team of researchers who have been tracking the evolution of the partnership between Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions ever since 2001. They review the history of health care labor relations and present a profile of Kaiser Permanente as it has developed over the years. They then delve into the partnership, discussing its achievements and struggles, including the negotiation of the most innovative collective bargaining agreements in the history of American labor relations. They conclude with an assessment of the Kaiser partnership's effect on the larger health care system and its implications for labor-management relations in other industries.

Compelled by the extent to which globalization has changed the nature of labor relations, Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, and Alexander J. S. Colvin give us the first textbook to focus on the workplace outcomes of the production of goods and services in emerging countries. In Labor Relations in a Globalizing World they draw lessons from the United States and other advanced industrial countries to provide a menu of options for management, labor, and government leaders in emerging countries. They include discussions based in countries such as China, Brazil, India, and South Africa which, given the advanced levels of economic development they have already achieved, are often described as "transitional," because the labor relations practices and procedures used in those countries are still in a state of flux. Katz, Kochan, and Colvin analyze how labor relations functions in emerging countries in a manner that is useful to practitioners, policymakers, and academics. They take account of the fact that labor relations are much more politicized in emerging countries than in advanced industrialized countries. They also address the traditional role played by state-dominated unions in emerging countries and the recent increased importance of independent unions that have emerged as alternatives. These independent unions tend to promote firm- or workplace-level collective bargaining in contrast to the more traditional top-down systems. Katz, Kochan, and Colvin explain how multinational corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and other groups that act across national borders increasingly influence work and employment outcomes.

Kaiser Permanente is the largest managed care organization in the country. It also happens to have the largest and most complex labor-management partnership ever created in the United States. This book tells the story of that partnership-how it started, how it grew, who made it happen, and the lessons to be learned from its successes and complications. With twenty-seven unions and an organization as complex as 8.6-million-member Kaiser Permanente, establishing the partnership was not a simple task and maintaining it has proven to be extraordinarily challenging.Thomas A. Kochan, Adrienne E. Eaton, Robert B. McKersie, and Paul S. Adler are among a team of researchers who have been tracking the evolution of the partnership between Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions ever since 2001. They review the history of health care labor relations and present a profile of Kaiser Permanente as it has developed over the years. They then delve into the partnership, discussing its achievements and struggles, including the negotiation of the most innovative collective bargaining agreements in the history of American labor relations. They conclude with an assessment of the Kaiser partnership's effect on the larger health care system and its implications for labor-management relations in other industries.

Compelled by the extent to which globalization has changed the nature of labor relations, Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, and Alexander J. S. Colvin give us the first textbook to focus on the workplace outcomes of the production of goods and services in emerging countries. In Labor Relations in a Globalizing World they draw lessons from the United States and other advanced industrial countries to provide a menu of options for management, labor, and government leaders in emerging countries. They include discussions based in countries such as China, Brazil, India, and South Africa which, given the advanced levels of economic development they have already achieved, are often described as "transitional," because the labor relations practices and procedures used in those countries are still in a state of flux. Katz, Kochan, and Colvin analyze how labor relations functions in emerging countries in a manner that is useful to practitioners, policymakers, and academics. They take account of the fact that labor relations are much more politicized in emerging countries than in advanced industrialized countries. They also address the traditional role played by state-dominated unions in emerging countries and the recent increased importance of independent unions that have emerged as alternatives. These independent unions tend to promote firm- or workplace-level collective bargaining in contrast to the more traditional top-down systems. Katz, Kochan, and Colvin explain how multinational corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and other groups that act across national borders increasingly influence work and employment outcomes.

"This book has two main strengths. First, its approach gives a sense of the texture and variety of the implementation of lean production, the forces that shape it in practice, and the alternatives that may be available. Second, the book's international focus provides a wealth of fascinating material concerning the influence of national conditions on the shaping of production practices."—Harley Shaiken, author of Work Transformed: Automation and Labor in the Computer AgeNearly every country that produces cars views the automobile industry as strategically important because of its direct economic significance and because it serves as a bellwether for innovation in employment conditions. In this book, industrial relations experts from eleven countries consider the state of the industry worldwide. They are particularly interested in assessing whether the loudly heralded model of lean production initiated by Toyota has become pervasive.The contributors focus on employment practices: the way work is organized, how workers and managers interact, the way worker representatives respond to lean production strategies, and the nature of the adaptation and innovation process itself.

Human capital and organizational capital are increasingly important as a source of value in many firms. But even as this is happening, organizational forms and employment relationships appear to be changing in ways that reduce loyalty and commitment and encourage mobility on the part of employees. Are these changes consistent in ways that contradict traditional theory and wisdom, or is the corporate sector getting a temporary boost in earnings by restructuring and cutting payrolls; but failing to make necessary new investments in human capital?The essays in this book provide intriguing new evidence on these questions. The contributors quantify the degree to which job stability is declining, and the costs of job loss to long-term workers; provide historical perspective on today's workplace changes; explore the reasons why work is being reorganized and decisionmaking tasks are being pushed downward; examine the rationale for and effect of equity-based compensation systems, both in old industries and in the newest high-tech sectors; and assess the ""state of the art"" of measuring and accounting for investments in human capital.This book is the result of a joint Brookings-MIT conference. In addition to the editors, authors include Eileen Appelbaum, Laurie Bassi, Avner Ben-Ner, Peter Berg, Joseph Blasi, Timothy Bresnahan, Eric Brynjolfsson, Allen Burns, Peter Cappelli, Greg Dow, Lorin Hitt, Douglas Kruse, Baruch Lev, Julia Liebeskind, Jonathon Low, Daniel McMurrer, Louis Putterman, Charles Schultze, and Anthony Siesfeld.

Human capital and organizational capital are increasingly important as a source of value in many firms. But even as this is happening, organizational forms and employment relationships appear to be changing in ways that reduce loyalty and commitment and encourage mobility on the part of employees. Are these changes consistent in ways that contradict traditional theory and wisdom, or is the corporate sector getting a temporary boost in earnings by restructuring and cutting payrolls; but failing to make necessary new investments in human capital?The essays in this book provide intriguing new evidence on these questions. The contributors quantify the degree to which job stability is declining, and the costs of job loss to long-term workers; provide historical perspective on today's workplace changes; explore the reasons why work is being reorganized and decisionmaking tasks are being pushed downward; examine the rationale for and effect of equity-based compensation systems, both in old industries and in the newest high-tech sectors; and assess the ""state of the art"" of measuring and accounting for investments in human capital.This book is the result of a joint Brookings-MIT conference. In addition to the editors, authors include Eileen Appelbaum, Laurie Bassi, Avner Ben-Ner, Peter Berg, Joseph Blasi, Timothy Bresnahan, Eric Brynjolfsson, Allen Burns, Peter Cappelli, Greg Dow, Lorin Hitt, Douglas Kruse, Baruch Lev, Julia Liebeskind, Jonathon Low, Daniel McMurrer, Louis Putterman, Charles Schultze, and Anthony Siesfeld.

Originally published in 1986, The Transformation of American Industrial Relations became an immediate classic, creating a new conceptual framework for understanding contemporary insutrial relations in the United States. In their introduction to the new edition, the authors assess the evolution of industrial relations and human resource practives, focusing particularly on the policy impoications of recent changes. They discuss the diverse forms of work restructuring in the American economy, the reasons why the diffusion of participatory work reorganization has been so modest, work practices among sophisticated nonunion employers, union membership declines, and public policy debates.