The voice of employees telling a 10 year story of organizational change

Turbulence: Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers

 Ed Greenberg (CU-Boulder), Leon Grunberg (University of Puget Sound), Sarah Moore (University of Puget Sound) and Patricia B. Sikora (Sikora Associates, LLC)

available October 2010 - Yale University Press

 What people are saying about Turbulence:

"The mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis is admirable and well done, a credit to the authors. The power of the work comes from an unusual, perhaps unique, empirical data-base looking at what actually happens to employees living through massive corporate change." - Jim Collins, author of Built to Last, Good to Great, and How the Mighty Fall

"Turbulence is not only a masterful, detailed study of ten years of dramatic organizational change at Boeing. It is also a story of how American managers and workers can cope with the fierce pressures of global economic competition, seeking both high productivity and a decent workplace." —Benjamin I. Page, Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making, Northwestern University

"It’s a short read, blessedly free of academic jargon – and critically important... the lessons are applicable to virtually every workplace, even those a fraction of the size of Boeing and even for those who regard Boeing at its most turbulent as still being a comparative paradise whose employees ought to be happy with the pay, benefits and conditions that far outstrip what most American workers experience."  --Tacoma News Tribune, 10/10/10

Turbulence describes the reality for so many people living through the myriad of changes in corporate America over the last two decades. As described by Yale:

This timely book investigates the experiences of employees at all levels of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) during a ten-year period of dramatic organizational change. As Boeing transformed itself, workers and managers contended with repeated downsizing, shifting corporate culture, new roles for women, outsourcing, mergers, lean production, and rampant technological change. Drawing on a unique blend of quantitative and qualitative research, the authors consider how management strategies affected the well-being of Boeing employees, as well as their attitudes toward their jobs and their company. Boeing employees’ experience holds vital lessons for other employees, the leaders of other firms determined to thrive in today’s era of inescapable and growing global competition, as well as public officials concerned about the well-being of American workers and companies.

Please contact Dr. Patricia Sikora (patsik@aol.com) 

for more information on the study and our findings.

Also, see www.teamturbulence.com for more about the authors

and next steps for "Team Turbulence"

If you are interested in academic publications, presentations, and working papers associated with this research, please go to http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/PEC/workplacechange/publications/impacts/