In good company: how social capital makes organizations work
Material type:
TextPublication details: Boston Harvard Business School Press 2001 Description: xiii, 214 pISBN: 9780875849133Subject(s): Organizational behavior | Quality of work life | Corporate culture | Social capital (Sociology)DDC classification: 302.35 Summary: Description
Like other companies with high social capital, United Parcel Service makes a wide range of investments in this area. The company prefers to hire people who fit the culture, who share its core values of hard work, cooperation, and commitment, over those who may be more experienced but lack these valued traits. The belief in commitment has been so strong that the company only recently relaxed a rule that forbid rehiring anyone who had left the company. Orientation programs, taught by UPS employees, not outside trainers, emphasize values and norms along with skills and procedures. The still strong promote-from-within policy, virtually universal stock ownership, and distributed decision-making contribute to a sense of participation and membership. An annual employee relations index both tracks employee opinions on issues including fairness of opportunity and trust and signals the firm's commitment to those values.
The firm keeps its traditions, aims, and values alive in "legacy books" that recount the experiences and thoughts of its early leaders and a policy book, originally published in the 1920s. UPS's annual meetings of top managers include a "Jim Casey Night," when the founder's ideas are recalled and discussed in the context of contemporary issues. And people at UPS frequently tell one another stories about the company's past and present. Although large and dispersed and dedicated to efficiency, UPS remains largely a face-to-face, "conversational" organization, held together by personal contact. Its electronic systems track pickups and deliveries and carry other company data, but people get together to make important decisions, build relationships, and communicate about issues and concerns. One senior manager says, "We are not a memo kind of company." The district safety officer at the Watertown, Massachusetts Center, though he normally works regular daytime hours, personally attends the monthly Worker Safety Committee held at 3:45 AM during the package-sorters shift. CEO Jim Kelly told one of the authors, "I don't even know the phone numbers of the people on our management committee because I never pick up the phone if they're in the office. We just walk into each other's offices when we need to talk."
| Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
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Book
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Indian Institute of Management LRC General Stacks | Human Resource and Organization Behvaiour | 302.35 COH (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 001089 |
Description
Like other companies with high social capital, United Parcel Service makes a wide range of investments in this area. The company prefers to hire people who fit the culture, who share its core values of hard work, cooperation, and commitment, over those who may be more experienced but lack these valued traits. The belief in commitment has been so strong that the company only recently relaxed a rule that forbid rehiring anyone who had left the company. Orientation programs, taught by UPS employees, not outside trainers, emphasize values and norms along with skills and procedures. The still strong promote-from-within policy, virtually universal stock ownership, and distributed decision-making contribute to a sense of participation and membership. An annual employee relations index both tracks employee opinions on issues including fairness of opportunity and trust and signals the firm's commitment to those values.
The firm keeps its traditions, aims, and values alive in "legacy books" that recount the experiences and thoughts of its early leaders and a policy book, originally published in the 1920s. UPS's annual meetings of top managers include a "Jim Casey Night," when the founder's ideas are recalled and discussed in the context of contemporary issues. And people at UPS frequently tell one another stories about the company's past and present. Although large and dispersed and dedicated to efficiency, UPS remains largely a face-to-face, "conversational" organization, held together by personal contact. Its electronic systems track pickups and deliveries and carry other company data, but people get together to make important decisions, build relationships, and communicate about issues and concerns. One senior manager says, "We are not a memo kind of company." The district safety officer at the Watertown, Massachusetts Center, though he normally works regular daytime hours, personally attends the monthly Worker Safety Committee held at 3:45 AM during the package-sorters shift. CEO Jim Kelly told one of the authors, "I don't even know the phone numbers of the people on our management committee because I never pick up the phone if they're in the office. We just walk into each other's offices when we need to talk."
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