The purpose of this research is to review the perceptions of 359 front‐line management personnel as to why their organizations fail to achieve desired results and to draw lessons for organizational practice on how to prevent failure and improve organizational performance. Managers from 30 organizations were asked to rate the impact that 25 different performance factors have on their ability to get desired results. The results of the study identified a variety of people and leadership factors as the primary causes of poor performance, while factors such as technology, finances, and government regulations ranked significantly lower in the rankings.

Explains the development of employee empowerment from its beginnings as American academic research to its successful adaptation by the Japanese management and later US management. In its present state employee empowerment or participation flourishes in many different methods of management and takes many different forms in its practice. Examines contingent factors affecting implementation of participative management practices and points out the various dilemmas to avoid.

This article describes a systematic process initiated by Parke‐Davis Pharmaceutical Research and Development to increase the leadership capabilities of its scientific management staff. Our approach to helping scientists step up to the challenging responsibility of leading others was built around four powerful ideas: imagination, leadership, application, and community. A process of university based executive education programs and follow‐up sessions was initiated to help managers shift their perspective from following the science to leading other scientists. Achievement of this objective was accomplished by developing a partnership with the University of Michigan Executive Education Center.

Unemployment can be viewed as a “living death” because the majority of unemployed persons participating in this study went through five stages that parallel the five stages through which a terminally ill patient passes. Stress caused by unemployment resulted in a loss of income and a loss of the individual's self‐image.