The book is a revealing study of the underlying values that guided a revolutionary transformation in labor relations at Ford Motor Company.
Bill Ford, Executive Chairman, The Ford Motor Company
This book traces a thirty-year process through which the UAW and Ford have been able to achieve transformational results. It demonstrates the power of collective bargaining as an engine for innovation, as well as the importance of the workforce in driving continuous improvement. The union, working with management, provides a leading model for how to value work and deliver results.
Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO
This book accurately presents the Ford-UAW transformation and identifies guiding principles that can apply in other settings. In any organization, it is about working together, with relentless implementation of a compelling vision and a comprehensive strategy. The culmination of our transformational work with the UAW has resulted in a profitable company that has invested billions in capital expansion, creating thousands of new jobs and delivering profitable growth for all.
Alan Mulally, former CEO of the Ford Motor Company
I believe and hope that union and management people will read this book and learn from it. Everyone has to look seriously at the recent and longer history of Ford and the UAW. I am very bullish on the American auto industry. As this book indicates, the key is shared growth for all. The book is excellent and will serve to help everyone in the future.
Dick Gephardt, former U.S. Representative from Missouri
No other history of a labor management relationship matches the richness, analytical focus, and contribution provided by the trio of management, labor, and scholar/consultant authors of Inside the Ford-UAW Transformation. By focusing on the 'pivotal events' over a thirty-year period, Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Brooks, and Mulloy provide a depth of understanding that could only come from being directly involved. The lessons they outline from Ford and the UAW's successes and failures over these years should be of great help to future agents of change in navigating through similar challenges and opportunities.
Thomas A. Kochan, George M. Bunker Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management and Co-Director, MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research
The Ford-UAW transformation is in my view the most ambitious and successful transformation of a large U.S. industrial corporation. Especially exceptional is the authors' extraordinary detailed account of the change effort, which employs many innovative and instructive concepts. It is a must-read for managers, union officials, and empowered employees who are or want to be involved in similar efforts, as well as for students of social change in general.
Richard E. Walton, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration (emeritus), Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University
