Problem Of Low Productivity Research Articles

Why executives won't talk with their people

Three years ago Robert Saltonstall, Jr., Associate Vice President for Operations at Harvard University, faced an increasingly common problem in business and institutions today when he severed 68 long-service, wage employees to solve a problem of low productivity in a particular trade group. He did this using relatively conventional and creative techniques. But now three years later, he asked Nona Lyons of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who is researching the ethical dimensions of executives' decisions, to assist him in evaluating how these employees felt about the process. The employees' loyalty in spite of everything has caused Saltonstall to rethink the ethics of both his decision and its execution. In this article Saltonstall asks and answers many of the questions executives face when challenged to handle work reduction decisions in a more ethical way. And Lyons assists him with commentary on some of the current research on moral decision-making which will help executives to understand why they find some of their decisions to be moral dilemmas. The article challenges executives to think about reorganization decisions in a participative way and suggests seven central issues executives should consider before commencing a participative approach. The article reaches no specific conclusion, but introduces some new ways to think about lay-off decisions and their ethical implications for those affected.

Variation in Work Improvement Potential for Small/Medium Contractors

The results of a study of small- to medium-sized construction firms designed to determine their perceptions concerning construction productivity is presented. The functions that were viewed as having high potential for productivity improvement include supervision (73%), labor contracts (62%), labor relations (68%), planning (53%), scheduling (53%), and communications (55%). The findings also suggest that between 1981 and 1986 the problem of low productivity has been substantially reduced for small/medium contractors. In addition, a decrease in the productivity improvement potential of OSHA was detected.

Tropical Pasture Technology for Marginal Lands of Tropical America

CIAT's Tropical Pastures Program is concerned with solving the problems of low productivity in acid, marginal, and frontier lands by developing new, low-input technology based on adapted germplasm. Its tropical pasture germplasm collection is the world's largest for acid soils in tropical humid and sub-humid areas.

China's foodgrains: Production and performance, 1949?1981

Taking advantage of the increased flow of economic data from Mainland China, this article reviews the development of the foodgrain sector over the period 1949–81. Rice, wheat and maize are the dominant crops, they currently occupy 70% of the total foodgrain acreage and provide 80% of production. China's doubling of foodgrain production over the past 30 years (1952–81) has been achieved through a substantial intensification and modernisation of the agricultural sector. Faced with the major constraint of a very limited supply of arable land, production increases have had to come from increasing yields rather than from expanding acreage. While the productivity of land has increased significantly, the productivity of labour appears to have stagnated or declined from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. Nevertheless, increased grain production, allied to a successful food distribution system, has given China the ability to feed 22% of the world's population from only 7% of the world's arable land. In an endeavour to overcome the problems of low productivity and low rural incomes, a major shift in Government policy has taken place in the post-Mao era. Increased material incentives, increased autonomy, increased grain imports and the abandonment of collective agriculture in favour of family farming, have greatly improved production, productivity, profitability and consumption in rural China.

Housing Rehabilitation as an Urban Policy Alternative

Economic and social changes in central cities have made physical decay widespread, and housing rehabilitation has become an increasingly important strategy for reversing this decay. The principal factor which affects the design and impact of housing rehabilitation programs is the income group at which they are targeted. Programs directed at the housing poor face a series of problems related to the lack of resources of these groups, while the principal problem of programs aimed at middle-income groups is reversing the pattern of neighborhood disinvestment. All types of rehabilitation programs share problems of low productivity due to the complexity of the rehabilitation process and to the overall lack of resources committed to them. As a part of a larger community development process, housing rehabilitation programs must embrace and reconcile the sometimes conflicting goals of maximum physical revitalization and the provision of improved housing services for the poor. This does not require radical new programs but rather a sophisticated mix of existing approaches coupled with the funding commitments necessary to execute them. The current trend towards fiscal retrenchment will seriously interfere with further efforts to utilize housing rehabilitation as an effective tool for revitalization.

Control of the work process: the workers' viewpoint.

Recent studies of job satisfaction, working conditions, and changes in the content of work indicate that problems of low productivity and dissatisfaction may be related to changes in the organization of work which have reduced the amount of autonomy and control which workers have over the labor process. At the same time, elements in the labor movement, which has traditionally focused almost exclusively on obtaining higher wages and greater benefits for union members, now seem to be directing their attention to issues of workplace democracy and worker control over the production process and company policies. The research reported here investigates the determinants of worker autonomy and of workers' desire for increased worker control over the workplace. This article describes what are viewed as the main hypotheses suggested by earlier research and reports the findings and new hypotheses derived from a preliminary analysis of data from the ISR National 1977 Quality of Employment Survey and pilot in-depth interviews with sixteen Baltimore workers.

Implementing an Added Value Payment Scheme

The concept of added value has recently re‐emerged after many years of neglect and is currently recognised by many businessmen and consultants as making a valuable contribution to the debate on the problem of low productivity in Britain.

The implementation of new technology: A question of attitudes

Few of us are unaware of the problem of low productivity in the UK. It is difficult to escape the many various diagnoses and solutions expounded by politicians, economists, management and unions alike. There seems to be little doubt that to improve our productivity and competitiveness is the fundamental economic question of the day. Yet, knowing this, and all that it implies for the sort of life we are all seeking, we seem to have lost the will to make it happen. Why is this so? After all, we enjoy certain advantages which some of our international competitors do not, e.g. plentiful energy supplies and a well‐educated workforce with proven inventive ability. Yet, overall, we are suffering from a psychological malaise which is proving just as abrasive and possibly even more damaging than the current economic recession. Until recently, the chemical industry in the UK was judged to be one of the strongest. Indeed, the profitability and prospects of ICI were, and still are, looked upon as indicators of the nation's economic health. Now even this industry is running into problems. However, the UK chemical industry is not alone as two of our major competitors, America and Japan, are in a similar situation. In all three countries, the rate of productivity improvement is slowing down, but the UK is in danger of falling further behind. The problem is not primarily one of invention, where the UK has shown it can hold its own, but in getting the fruits of invention applied — the innovation process — effectively and on time. It appears that the implementation of new technology is easier in the USA and Japan than in the UK. A study by Professor Frank Bradbury and myself indicates that part of the answer appears to lie in the differences in the attitudes of employees in the UK, USA and Japan to the implementation of new technology. Even more striking are the differences in management attitudes as shown in our interviews with them.

BACKGROUND TO THE PROBLEM OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NORTHERN GHANA

Northern Ghana is Ghana's problem region. It is a large area accounting for about half the total land surface of Ghana, yet it is the least developed part of the country. It would be futile to seek to explain the lack of economic development in the region mainly with reference to the problems of the savanna environment, which indeed are no more serious than in many other parts of West Africa where there has been greater economic development. The reason must be sought primarily in the strategy adopted for economic development, which at first failed to identify the fundamental problems of low productivity in food farming and high transport costs. Later, the solution of the transport problem was made conditional upon the success of the measures adopted for increasing agricultural productivity; yet these measures proved to be partially unrealistic since they ignored long-established local values and preferences.