Drawing on theoretical insights from research on social comparison processes, this article explores how managers can use performance feedback to sustain employees’ motivation and performance in organizations. Using a field experiment at a Japanese bank, we investigate the effects of valence...

The ongoing fragmentation of work has resulted in a narrowing of tasks into smaller pieces that can be sent outside the organization and, in many instances, around the world. This trend is shifting the boundaries of organizations and leading to increased outsourcing. Though the consolidation of...

While the concepts of lean production are frequently applied in service organizations there is little work that rigorously has examined implementing lean production in contexts other than manufacturing as well as lean production's impact on performance in these settings. In this paper we set out...

Much of the literature on team learning views experience as a unidimensional concept captured by the cumulative production volume of, or the number of projects completed by, a team. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that teams are stable in their membership and internal organization....

In order to deliver high quality, reliable, and consistent services safely, organizations develop professional standards. Despite the communication and reinforcement of these standards, they are often not followed consistently. Although previous research suggests that high job demands are...

Background: Traffic represents a key operational input, especially in healthcare, as many aspects of medicine cannot happen from a distance. Though serious consequences follow delayed or omitted care, with the emergence of Covid-19 in March of 2020, traffic to many healthcare clinics fell...

As the nature of work has become more service-oriented, knowledge-intensive, and rapidly changing, people—be they workers or customers—have become more central to operational processes and have impacted operational outcomes in novel and perhaps more fundamental ways. Research in...

Process improvement methods –such as Lean, Six Sigma and Agile– have been widely studied, and we know what tools work, and where. Yet our longitudinal study of 204 improvement projects shows that one year into a successful implementation about half of all projects backslide. After two years,...

Worker attrition is a costly and operationally disruptive challenge throughout the world. Although large bodies of research have documented drivers of attrition and its operational consequences, managers still lack an integrated approach to understanding attrition and making decisions to address...