Advances in Developing Human Resources_Sage Free Online to 31 Oct09

Here in France one cannot avoid being moved by unusually high levels of work-related suicides. The current record is apparently held by France Telecom following previously notorious results at Renault-Techno Centre and Peugot Car manufacturers. Sage free access gives acces to many peer reviewed journals on management... more than I can ever hope to read. But on my first glance at Advances in Developing Human Resources let me bring your attention to the importance of the back to basics approach, freely available paper by Richard A. Swanson, intitled "The Foundations of Performance
Improvement and Implications
for Practice" written in 1999.
cf. link

Abstract:
The Problem and the Solution . A problem faced by almost all organizations,
and by those who work in them, is in meeting the constant demand for high
performance The demand for high performance affects everything, from assunng
sustainable financial growth of the organization to satisfying the next customer
standing at the front counter But without a holistic mental model of performance
and the theoretical elements that drive it, practitioners are left with the task of
dissecting and interpreting each situation they face Or even worse, they simply
charge ahead in a trial-and-error mode Performance improvement theory results
in powerful and practical principles and models to help practitioners identify and
solve performance problems.

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