The Center for Workplace Transformation

Mission:

The Center for Workplace Transformation advances the knowledge and practice of the widespread move from bureaucratic hierarchies to team-based, flexible work systems that can leverage resources across boundaries. It does this by:

1.	Building collaborative research networks and projects;

2.	involving companies, unions, and other organizations in learning dialogues in which they can reflect on their experiences;

3.	providing education and consultation to organizations making this transition; and

4.	publicizing the case for organizational change and building a network of support.

Through these activities the Center fosters the development of organizations that are both effective and responsive to human needs.

Research and publications:

Recently completed:

1.	A book on the structure of collaborative enterprises, forthcoming from Yale University Press in the Spring of 2007.

A project on “collaborative community” has explored the problem of the creation and maintenance of trust in complex knowledge-focused organizations. This brought together sociologists and political scientists with business researchers and practitioners for a series of discussions that built a common theoretical framework and a set of linked empirical studies. The outcome was published in 2006 as The Firm as a Collaborative Community (Oxford University Press).

3.	Research on accountability in complex team-based organizations, based on interviews and observations in seven companies; the results are the basis of a PhD dissertation by Carlos Martin.

Current:

We have begun research testing the idea that teamwork in medical care can make a significant difference in patient outcomes. We are in an early phase of fieldwork in acute cardiac care units which will observe interactions among the different providers, from nurses to nutritionists to doctors, and explore their effects.

5.	We are conducting a study on the value base of collaborative systems; an initial publication is a case study for Harvard Business School on the values transformation process at IBM. Research is ongoing at other companies.

6.	The next major project will be on stakeholder processes and industrial democracy, which will bring together a group in a process similar to that for the collaborative community effort.