The Firm as a Collaborative Community. Reconstructing Trust in the Knowledge Economy.

Community within and between firms--the fabric of trust so essential to contemporary business--has long been based on loyalty. Yet this has been eroded by three decades of economic turbulence, downsizing, and restructuring. This volume explores the changing nature of community in modern corporations, and where this leaves the role of trust.

Charles Heckscher is a professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. His research focuses on organization change and its consequences for employees and unions, and on the possibilities for more collaborative and democratic forms of work. His books include The New Unionism, The Post-Bureaucratic Organization (Sage, 1994), White-Collar Blues (Basic Books, 1995), and Agents of Change (OUP, 2003). As Director of the Center for Workplace Transformation he is leading research into the development of collaboration in local unions and corporations. Before coming to Rutgers he worked for the Communications Workers' union and taught Human Resources Management at the Harvard Business School. Paul Adler is Professor of Management and Organization at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. Educated in Australia and France, he came to the US in 1981. Before joining USC in 1991, he was affiliated with the Brookings Institution, Columbia University, the Harvard Business School, and Stanford's School of Engineering. His research and teaching focus on organization theory and design. He has published widely in academic and managerial journals both in the U.S. and overseas. He has also published three edited volumes: Technology and the Future of Work; Usability: Turning Technologies into Tools; and Remade in America: Transplanting and Transforming Japanese Management Systems, all with Oxford University Press.