NUMMI

THE ‘LEARNING BUREAUCRACY’:
NEW UNITED MOTOR MANUFACTURING,
INC.

By
Paul S. Adler
Downloaded from http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~padler/

THE ‘LEARNING BUREAUCRACY’:
NEW UNITED MOTOR MANUFACTURING, INC. by Paul S. Adler
School of Business Administration
University of Southern California
Los Angeles 90089-1421
Tel: [phone]

DRAFT 3.1
April 1992
Forthcoming in Barry M. Staw and Larry L. Cummings (eds.) Research in
Organizational Behavior, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Acknowledgements:
The research on which this study is based would not have been possible without the generous cooperation of managers, workers and union officials at NUMMI. Gary
Robinson helped transcribe taped interviews with them and discern the key points.
This article has benefitted from the comments of several NUMMI people and from the responses of many friends and colleagues: Chris Argyris, Joel Beinin, Christian
Berggren, Bob Brenner, Clair Brown, El Buffa, Bob Cole, John Ettlie, Steve Frenkel,
Don Gerwin, Meg Graham, Jan Hopland, Sandy Jacoby, Ed Lawler, Ann Majchrzak,
Ruth Milkman, Michael Reich, Dick Scott, Bill Simon, David Stern, Steve
Wheelwright, Bob Sutton, Lowell Turner, and Stephen Wood. My thinking has also been stimulated by the reaction of colleagues to presentations at the USC, Harvard
Business School, NYU, UCLA, and UC Berkeley. My thanks to all these people, many of whom still disagree.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 3
RESEARCH METHODS.......................................................................................... 6
NUMMI: AN OVERVIEW ...................................................................................... 8
A brief history ............................................................................................... 8
Strategy, structure, policies, and culture

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