[ Excerpt] There is unprecedented recognition among top managers throughout the world that people make the difference. Reading the professional business press, one would think that the battle for measuring the impact of human resources has already been won. Emerging flexible organizations are seen as requiring increased attention to vision, style, cooperation and teamwork (Ghoshal & Mintzberg, 1994; Halal, 1993). Business writers tout the essential role of world-class training that values people skills and fosters entrepreneurship (Dumaine, 1995; Rau, 1994). We even see the latest pair of best-selling authors, Michael Hammer and James Champy chiding managers that the biggest lie told by most organizations is that \u27people are our most important assets \u27, and calling for dramatically increased investments in people (Lancaster, 1995). It is also apparent that some of the most admired managers say managing people as their most important role. Jack Welch, of General Electric Corporation is quoted as saying Anybody who gets this [CEO] job has got to believe in the gut that people are the key to everything (Tichy, 1993). There is also growing evidence that organizational success is correlated with the existence of combinations of high-performance work designs and highperformance human resource practices (MacDuffie, 1995; Arthur, 1994; Huselid, in press)
