No Easy Roads to Employee Involvement

Executive Overview The article presents an examination of a study conducted by Sharon Parker, Toby Wall, and Paul Jackson on how employees develop into strategic actors. The researchers investigated whether simply training employees in new manufacturing techniques such as total quality management (TQM) or just-in-time (JIT) would enable organizations to meet their strategic goals, or whether additional individual and organizational change might also be required. The research examines the relationship between strategic orientation, role orientation, and job autonomy. They also examined the relationship between strategic orientation and role orientation in a second study at a facility that had implemented TQM and JIT initiatives and had trained employees in these techniques.