Integrated Management Systems: A Practical Approach to Transforming Organizations Hardcover - 1999

From the rear cover

In 1993, the world-renowned Center for Quality of Management embarked on a profoundly important six-year study of how organizations improve throughout America. The results will permanently alter thinking about what constitutes organizational excellence. Contrary to expectations, the authors found that successful systems of management differed radically. The Ritz-Carlton Hotels, for instance, couldn't apply the prescriptions that worked so well at Teradyne, the world's leading maker of semiconductor test devices. And at a spectacularly successful public school district, the system differed even more. Yet at the core of each was something universal and unbelievably powerful: Each organization had developed its own particular way of executing the scientific method. Each had found its own ways of gathering data, developing theories, testing the theories, and finally documenting and sharing results. Each organization's scientific method was unique, much as the methods of each successful discipline within the sciences are unique. But less successful organizations had nothing comparable. For the first time, readers go behind the scenes at Teradyne, Hewlett-Packard, Eastman Chemical, Ritz-Carlton, Intermountain Health Care, the U.S. Navy, and Synetics, among others, to observe firsthand how they achieved their well-known successes. In Integrated Management Systems, authors Lee, Shiba, and Wood-all noted experts in integrated management and learning systems-explore the lessons learned from the CQM study. They explain how managers can create their own integrated management systems. They reveal the weaknesses that prevent effective integrated management systems from emerging in America. And they describe key ideas and tools managers can use in developing their own systems. Integrated Management Systems will be a source of inspiration and ideas for all kinds of managers and planners in for-profit and nonprofit organizations alike.

From the jacket flap

In 1993, the world-renowned Center for Quality of Management embarked on a profoundly important six-year study of how organizations improve throughout America. The results will permanently alter thinking about what constitutes organizational excellence. Contrary to expectations, the authors found that successful systems of management differed radically. The Ritz-Carlton Hotels, for instance, couldn't apply the prescriptions that worked so well at Teradyne, the world's leading maker of semiconductor test devices. And at a spectacularly successful public school district, the system differed even more. Yet at the core of each was something universal and unbelievably powerful: Each organization had developed its own particular way of executing the scientific method. Each had found its own ways of gathering data, developing theories, testing the theories, and finally documenting and sharing results. Each organization's scientific method was unique, much as the methods of each successful discipline within the sciences are unique. But less successful organizations had nothing comparable. For the first time, readers go behind the scenes at Teradyne, Hewlett-Packard, Eastman Chemical, Ritz-Carlton, Intermountain Health Care, the U.S. Navy, and Synetics, among others, to observe firsthand how they achieved their well-known successes. In Integrated Management Systems, authors Lee, Shiba, and Wood-all noted experts in integrated management and learning systems-explore the lessons learned from the CQM study. They explain how managers can create their own integrated management systems. They reveal the weaknesses that prevent effective integrated management systems from emerging in America. And they describe key ideas and tools managers can use in developing their own systems. Integrated Management Systems will be a source of inspiration and ideas for all kinds of managers and planners in for-profit and nonprofit organizations alike.