Step by Step to College and Career Success or Changing Organizations

Step by Step to College and Career Success (Thomson Advanatage Books Series)

Author: John N Gardner

This compact, user-friendly text guides the student through the essential strategic information that will help them find success in their college experience. Linking college study skills and career skills, the student will see the relevance between college success and career success. This book will help students navigate the simple steps to college success.

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Changing Organizations: Practicing Action Training and Research

Author: Sherman Wyman

The "Action Training and Research" method of organizational development, pioneered by Neely Gardner in the 1960s, has become a classic methodology in public administration, despite the fact that Gardner's work was never published in book form. Raymon R. Bruce and Sherman M. Wyman have presented the power of Gardner's work in a form that speaks to the context of modern practice and scholarly thought. Gardner's methodology addresses how to change hierarchically structured public organizations whose management is rigidly vested in the status quo. He saw participative management as the key to achieving democratic organizations, reflecting the democratic values and norms of our society. He felt the devolution of management power in the organization enables the people doing the work of the organization to innovate and adapt to their "customer's" changing needs. It is, after all, those who are producing the goods and delivering the services that are best able to play a substantial and non-hypocritical role in the decisions concerning those goods and services, with the result that the most efficient and economic outcome will occur over time. The Action Training and Research approach focuses not so much on how to change organizations, but how to develop organizations that constantly change themselves. In this approach, each employee is a trainer and an agent of change. Remarkably, many of Gardner's principles are current todayùparticipative management, self-managed work groups and employees, outcome budgets, empowering the employee, and viewing the citizen as customer/owner. All provide a tool for organizational development in today's public and private organizations. This volumewill serve as a valuable guide to managers and consultants practicing organizational change in private and public sectors, at home or abroad. It will serve as an excellent resource to all students of action research methods.

Booknews

Applying Neely Gardner's 12-stage Action Training and Research Approach, Bruce (Office of Comprehensive Planning, Fairfax County, Virginia) and Wyman (Center for Economic Development Research and Service, U. of Texas, Arlington) aim to develop organizations that reengineer themselves on an ongoing basis<-->rather than offering the traditional external focus on how to change them. Re-cycling is the last AT&R stage. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Preface
Pt. I	History and Theory of Action Training and Research	1
Ch. 1	Background on Development	3
Ch. 2	Action Research in the Study of Organization and Management	9
Ch. 3	The Action Training and Research Cycle for Changing Organizations	20
Pt. II	AT&R as a Method for Developing Changing Organizations: A Guide for Practitioners and Participants	35
Ch. 4	AT&R Stage 1: Orientation	37
Ch. 5	AT&R Stage 2: Contract Setting	63
Ch. 6	AT&R Stage 3: Reconnaissance, Exploring the Issues	98
Ch. 7	AT&R Stage 4: Identifying Problems and Opportunities	112
Ch. 8	AT&R Stage 5: Aspirations	127
Ch. 9	AT&R Stage 6: Action Options	144
Ch. 10	AT&R Stage 7: Experimentation	168
Ch. 11	AT&R Stage 8: Experiment Results Analysis	189
Ch. 12	AT&R Stage 9: Program Design	205
Ch. 13	AT&R Stage 10: Implementation	219
Ch. 14	AT&R Stage 11: Program Evaluation	239
Ch. 15	AT&R Stage 12: Re-Cycle	249
	References	258
	Index	263
	About the Authors	273