The Empowered Manager, 2nd Edition

IntroductionWhy Empowerment Now and Again

The first version of this book was written in 1987.

It was a time of crisis for U.S. industry. In the early 1980s, Ford Motor Company set an all-time record for losses by a major U.S. corporation. Harley-Davidson was three months from bankruptcy. The Japanese were producing quality products; the United States was not. It was a time of recession, financial crises, and growing unemployment.

One response to these difficulties was to focus on improving the quality of U.S. products and services. The quality movement accelerated and one dimension of that wave was that organizations began to look to their employees to improve the products and services. Quality control had traditionally been a staff function, meaning third parties examined the output of line workers to make sure they achieved quality standards.

A shift in thinking was needed. The shift––initiated by experts like Edwards Deming, Tom Peters, the Association for Quality and Participation, and many more––put quality in the hands of the workers. This gave rise to Quality Circles, Employee Involvement, Participative Management, Team Building, and Sociotechnical Systems. These approaches had one thing in common: They believed that the lower level employees, with some support from above, had the ability to right the ship. The idea of engaging line people close to the work was the centerpiece of the economic recovery. It worked. U.S. companies emerged from their low point and, as iconic ...