All Teams are not Created Equal

How Employee Empowerment Really Works

The authors of this book provide a comprehensive diagnosis of the increasing number of problems afflicting the performance of business and other institutions. These problems are defined as `people problems' - springing from the behaviour of those who manage as much as those who do the work. The traditional solutions - coercion, percentage staff reductions across the board, sharing of information, the `quick fix' - are examined and found wanting.

Ketchum and Trist look beyond `people problems' to the organization of work, and concentrate on the mismatch between the characteristics of people and the organizational characteristics of workplaces. From this point they propose their own model of organizational change, backed up by a wealth of case studies from their personal experience, to create the workplace in which on the job behaviour is cooperative and effective at all levels - the team which is created more than equal.