CANON REVISION:
HISTORY, THEORY, PRACTICE
Alan Liu, UC Santa Barbara
English 265
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES TO SYLLABUS

"Team Concept"

Team concept refers to the practice and ideology of "team work" in the postindustrial "flexible," "flat," "just in time," "continuous quality improvement," "lifelong learning," "reengineered," "downsized" corporation. It will be useful in this course to reflect on the concept (together with all its "flat," "flexible," and other correlatives) in critical conjunction to the issues of academic canon revision. For an introduction to the "team" or the new corporatism generally, consult the following works:

• Influential General Works on the New Corporatism (most of which include discussion of teams)
  1. Boyett, Joseph H., and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000: The Revolution Reshaping American Business (New York: Plume / Penguin, 1992)
  2. Davidow, William H., and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation: Structuring and Revitalizing the Corporation for the 21st Century (New York: HarperBusiness, 1992)
  3. Hammer, Michael, and James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (New York: HarperBusiness, 1993)
  4. Tapscott, Don, The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996)
  5. Tomasko, Robert M., Downsizing: Reshaping the Corporation for the Future, rev. ed. (New York: American Management Assoc., 1990)

• Works on the Team Concept
  1. Katzenbach, Jon R., and Douglas K. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization (New York: HarperBusiness, 1994) [first pub. 1993]
  2. Mohrman, Susan Albers, Susan G. Cohen, and Allan M. Mohrman, Jr., Designing Team-Based Organizations: New Forms for Knowledge Work (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1995)
  3. Gardenswartz, Lee, and Anita Rowe, Diverse Teams at Work: Capitalizing on the Power of Diversity (Burr Ridge, Illinois: Irwin, 1994)
  4. Parker, Mike, and Jane Slaughter, Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept (Detroit: Labor Notes / South End Press, 1988)

One of the aspects of postindustrialism that is most relevant to the topics of canon revision is the 1990's movement known as "diversity management." See the following works:

• Johnston, William B., and Arnold H. Packer, Workplace 2000: Work and Workers for the 21st Century, prepared for the U. S. Department of Labor (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hudson Institute, June 1987)
• Carnevale, Anthony Patrick, and Susan Carol Stone, The American Mosaic: An In-Depth Report on the Future of Diversity at Work (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995)
• Gardenswartz, Lee, and Anita Rowe, Managing Diversity: A Complete Desk Reference and Planning Guide (Burr Ridge, Illinois: Irwin, 1993)
• Harris, Philip R., and Robert T. Moran, Managing Cultural Differences: Leadership Strategies for a New World of Business, 4th ed. (Houston, Texas: Gulf Publishing, 1996)
• Jamieson, David, and Julie O'Mara, Managing Workforce 2000: Gaining the Diversity Advantage (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991)
• Loden, Marilyn, and Judy B. Rosener, Workforce America! Managing Employee Diversity as a Vital Resource (Homewood, Illinois: Business One Irwin, 1991)
• Thomas, Jr., R. Roosevelt, Beyond Race and Gender: Unleashing the Power of Your Total Work Force by Managing Diversity (New York: AMACOM, 1991)

Also see Joel Kotkin, Tribes: How Race, Religion, and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy (New York: Random House, 1992) for a historical approach to the relation between ethnicity and the new corporate world order.

For a glimpse at the effort to apply corporatist methods directly to higher education, search the archives of the American Assoc. for Higher Education's CQI-L (Continuous Quality Improvement) discussion list (e.g., enter the word "team" in the lower slot on the search page)