By one analysis, a 12 percent annual increase in data processing budgets for U.S. corporations has yielded annual productivity gains of less than 2 percent. Why? This timely book provides some insights by exploring the linkages among individual, group, and organizational productivity. The authors examine how to translate workers' productivity increases into gains for the entire organization, and discuss why huge investments in automation and other innovations have failed to boost productivity. Leading experts explore how processes such as problem solving prompt changes in productivity and how inertia and other characteristics of organizations stall productivity. The book examines problems in productivity measurement and presents solutions. Also examined in this useful book are linkage issues in the fields of software engineering and computer-aided design and why organizational downsizing has not resulted in commensurate productivity gains. Important theoretical and practical implications contribute to this volume's usefulness to business and technology managers, human resources specialists, policymakers, and researchers.
After attending 24 schools throughout the US, Doug Harris left home (a trailer house) at age 13 to further his education. Later, between receiving his BS at Iowa State in 1952 and his PhD from Purdue in 1959, he was a gunnery officer aboard a destroyer in the Western Pacific, completed underwater demolition team training, was operations officer of UDT (SEAL) Team 11 in Asia, worked in marketing for Procter and Gamble, and spent four months touring Europe in an Austin-Healey. He is currently Chairman and Principal Scientist of Anacapa Sciences, Inc., a company he helped form in 1969 to improve human performance in complex systems and organizations.
His publications include the books Human Factors in Quality Assurance (Wiley 1969), Organizational Linkages; Understanding the Productivity Paradox (National Academy Press, 1994) and Stories & Sketches (Outskirts Press, 2010).
He has been drawing since Age 7, publishing in newspapers and magazines since a teenager. Recently, his paintings and drawings have been featured at one-person shows in Santa Barbara, California at the Townley Gallery (2004), Sojourner Restaurant (2005), and the Faulkner East Gallery (2006 and 2008). The show of his pen-and-ink sketches, Sketches from A to Z, is scheduled in 2011 at the Faulkner West Gallery.
