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Paul Adler
Harold Quinton Chair in Business Policy and Professor of Management and Organization

USC Marshall School of Business
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0808

Phone: 
213-740-0748
padler@marshall.usc.edu
Education: 
PhD, University of Picardie; DEA, EHESS
Personal Website: 
http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~padler

Overview

Paul Adler's research and teaching focus on strategy and organization design in professional, R&D, engineering, healthcare, and manufacturing businesses. His recent work has focused on environmental and social challenges to business. He has published widely in academic and managerial journals, and served on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, Organization Science, and California Management Review, among others. Before joining USC in 1991, he held appointments at Columbia University, Harvard Business School, and Stanford University. He currently serves as Vice-President of the Academy of Management.

Research

The diffusion of innovation among professionals: The case of clinical guidelines • 2012
The Mutations of Professional Responsibility: Toward Collaborative Community • 2012
The Ambivalence of Bureaucracy: From Weber via Gouldner to Marx • 2012
Combining creativity and control: Understanding individual motivation in large-scale collaborative creativity • 2011
Marx's philosophy and organization studies • 2011
Political Economy • 2011
Building a collaborative enterprise • 2011
The Oxford Handbook of Sociology, Social Theory, and Organization Studies: Contemporary Currents • 2011
The bureaucratization of innovation: A marxist analysis • 2010
(Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Organization Studies: Classical Foundations • 2009
A science which forgets its founders is lost • 2009
Healing Together: The Labor-Management Partnership at Kaiser Permanente • 2009
Marx and organization studies today • 2009
Perspectives on the productivity dilemma • 2009
Community, Market, and Hierarchy in the Evolving Organization of Professional Work: The Case of medicine • 2008
Critical Management Studies • 2008
Professional work: The emergence of collaborative community • 2008
Technological determinism • 2008
The potential and precariousness of partnership: The case of the Kaiser Permanente Labor Management Partnership • 2008
The Future of Critical Management Studies: A Paleo-Marxist Critique of Labour Process Theory • 2007
The role of affect in creative projects and exploratory search • 2007
Beyond Hacker Idiocy: A New Community in Software Development • 2006
The Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the Knowledge Economy • 2006
The Kaiser Permante Labor Management Partnership, 2002-2004 • 2006
Towards Collaborative Community • 2006
From Labor Process to Activity Theory • 2006
The Evolving Object of Software Development • 2005
Developing a Field with More Soul: Standpoint Theory and Public Policy Research for Management Scholars • 2005
Enabling Process Discipline: Lessons on Implementing the Capability Maturity Model for Software • 2005
Skill Trends Under Capitalism and the Socialisation of Production • 2004
Introduction to the Forum on Hospital Management • 2003
Making the HR Outsourcing Decision • 2003
Towards Collaborative Interdependence: A Century of Change in the Organization of Work • 2003
Performance Improvement Capability: Keys to Accelerating Improvement to Hospitals • 2003
Corporate scandals: It's time for reflection in business schools • 2002
Critical in the name of whom and what? • 2002
Market, Hierarchy, and Trust: The Knowledge Economy and the Future of Capitalism • 2002
Social capital: Prospects for a new concept • 2002
Market, Hierarchy, and Trust: The Knowledge Economy and the Future of Capitalism • 2001
Social Capital: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly • 2000
Who Needs MBAs in HR? USC's Strategic Human Resource Management MBA Concentration • 1999
(Eds.), Remade in America: Transplanting and Transforming Japanese Management Systems • 1999
Bringing Japanese Management Systems to the U.S.: Transplantation or Transformation? • 1999
Building Better Bureaucracies • 1999
Hybridization of Human Resource Management at two Toyota Transplants • 1999
Teams at NUMMI • 1999
The Emancipatory Significance of Taylorism • 1999
Flexibility Versus Efficiency? A Case Study of Model Changeovers in the Toyota Production System • 1999
Lean Production and Worker Health: A Discussion • 1998
Stability and Change at NUMMI • 1998
Work Organization: From Taylorism to Teamwork • 1997
Ergonomics, Employee Involvement, and the Toyota Production System: A Case Study of NUMMI'S 1993 Model Introduction • 1997
Review of: Laurie Graham: On the Line at Subaru-Isuzu: The Japanese Model and the American Worker, and Terry L. Besser, Team Toyota: Transplanting the Toyota Culture to the Camry Plant in Kentucky • 1997
United States: Variations on a Theme • 1997
Getting the Most out of Your Product Development Process • 1996
Two Types of Bureaucracy: Enabling and Coercive • 1996
The Technological base of the Company • 1996
A Portrait of the Relationship between Mechanization and Work in the U.S. Economy in 1980 • 1995
Interdepartmental Interdependence and Coordination: The Case of the Design/Manufacturing Interface • 1995
From Project to Process Management: An Empirically-Based Framework for Analyzing Product Development Time • 1995
Democratic Taylorism: The Toyota Production System at NUMMI • 1995
Designed for Learning : A Tale of Two Auto Plants • 1995
From Project to Process Management in Engineering: Managerial and Methodological Challenges • 1995
From Project to Process Management: An Empirically-Based Framework for Analyzing Product Development Time • 1995
NUMMI: A Case Study • 1995
The Dynamic Relationship Between Tacit and Codified Knowledge: Comment on Nonaka • 1995
Antecedents to Intergroup Conflict in Multifunctional Product Development Teams: A Conceptual Model • 1994
Review of: C. Berggren: Alternatives to Lean Production: Work Organization in the Swedish Auto Industry • 1994
Workers' Responses to New Wave Manufacturing • 1994
Rejoinder to Berggren's critique • 1994
Designed for Learning: A Tale of Two Auto Plants • 1993
Materialism and Idealism in Organizational Theory • 1993
The Learning Bureaucracy: New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. • 1993
Time-and-Motion Regained • 1993
(Ed.), Technology and the Future of Work • 1992
(Eds.), Usability: Turning Technologies into Tools • 1992
Managing DFM: Learning to Coordinate Product and Process Design • 1992
The Chief Technology Officer: A New Role for New Challenges • 1992
Strategic Management for Technical Functions • 1992
Workers and Flexible Manufacturing Systems: Three Installations Compared • 1991
Behind the learning curve: The learning process • 1991
Capitalizing on New Manufacturing Technologies: Current Problems and Emergent Trends in US Industry, in National Academy of Engineering and the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education • 1991
Workers' Assessments of Three Flexible Manufacturing Systems • 1991
Adapting Your Technological Base: The Organizational Challenge • 1990
Marx, Machines and Skill • 1990
Shared Learning • 1990
Managing High-Tech Processes: The Challenge of CAD/CAM • 1990
The Chief Technology Officer • 1990
The Skill Requirements of CAD/CAM • 1990
The Role of the Chief Technology Officer • 1990
Product Development Know-How: Trading Tactics for Strategy • 1989
When Knowledge is the Critical Resource, Knowledge Management is the Critical Task. • 1989
Automation and Skill: Three Generations of Research on the Machine-Tool Case • 1989
CAD/CAM: Managerial Challenges and Research Issues • 1989
Contributing author: Challenges and Opportunities for Manufacturing Engineers • 1989
Socio-dets and Techno-dets: Determinants of Diffusion and Implementation Patterns of Automated Machine Tools • 1989
Technology Strategy: A Guide to the Literatures • 1989
Automation and Work (in French) • 1988
The Forest and the Trees: A Response to the Comments by Alain d'Iribarne (in French) • 1988
Automation Skill and the Future of Capitalism • 1988
Managing Flexible Automation • 1988
A Plant Productivity Measure for High-Tech Manufacturing • 1987
Review of: P. Whalley: The Social Production of Technical Work and R. Sussman, Mechanics of the Middle Class • 1987
Effective Implementation of Integrated CAD/CAM: A Model • 1987
Review of: P. Blackburn, R. Coombs, K. Green: Technology, Economic Growth and the Labor Process. • 1987
Automation and Skill: New Directions • 1987
Contributing author: Management of Technology: The Hidden Competitive Advantage. • 1987
Skill Formation in U.S. Accounting Firms • 1987
New Technologies, New Skills • 1986
Rethinking the Skill Requirements of New Technologies • 1986
Review of: L. Hirschhorn: Beyond Mechanization • 1986
History vs. Segmentation: On Recent Labor Market Research (in Italian) • 1985
Thirty Years of Automation and Operating Costs in French Banking ( in French) • 1983
The Productivity Puzzle': Numbers Alone Won't Solve It • 1982
From clans to collaboration: Collaborative community as the basis of organizational ambidexterity