Value-based leaders believe in democratic workplaces in which employees participate in decisions.

By all indications, American business leaders are more adept at creating business strategies than they are skilled at human capital management. American entrepreneurs are world-beaters when it comes to creating new businesses, and corporate managers are adept at using the latest marketing, financial, and technological practices.

Ed Lawler and I document that the key to creating good, productive jobs in all industries is to organize work processes and systems in ways that allow employees to contribute significant amounts of "added value" to the products they make and services they provide. When mangers give employees the organizational structure, resources, and authority needed for them to contribute their ideas and efforts, American workers, like those at Harley-Davidson, almost always prove capable of effectively competing against their overseas counterparts.

If America is to compete effectively in world markets, its corporate leaders must strategically position their companies in the right businesses, and then manage their workforces in the right ways. However, the nation has a shortage of business leaders who understand the importance of utilizing human capital to gain competitive advantage, let alone the know-how to do so. In the future, that shortcoming promises to be exacerbated because few business schools today teach aspiring executives how to create the kind of high-involvement organizations.

Managers who assume that higher profits drive better working conditions may have their logic backwards. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our research identified companies in virtually every industry that are profitable because they provide good jobs.

Value-based leaders believe in democratic workplaces in which employees participate in decisions.

Motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson is a prime example of an American company that uses employment conditions to boost productivity. Current CEO James Ziemer - who started with the company while in high school has negotiated imaginative contracts with the unions representing Harley's workers, agreeing to keep production in the U.S. in exchange for constantly reducing total labor costs through automating tasks and changing work rules. Because Harley regularly reassigns workers whose tasks have been automated to other parts of the company.