Talk Is the First Return

Abstract

Most of the gainsharing literature was written about factories. The mill in Chapter 2, the Scanlon plant in Chapter 5, the hundred and twelve Improshare firms: these are places where output can be counted in cases, tonnes or defects per thousand, and where an idea about a sealing jaw can be traced to a line on a chart. A reader who runs a clinic, a law office, a software team, a call centre or a logistics desk is entitled to ask whether any of it applies to work whose product is a service, a decision or a conversation. There is a small body of careful research that answers the question, and it comes from service firms. This chapter reads three studies from it. Two of them come from one research programme, conducted by Susan Hanlon and Robert Taylor, later joined by David Meyer, in a firm in the priority package delivery industry. The third, by Theresa Welbourne and Claudia Ferrante, comes from a firm offering customs brokerage and freight-forwarding services. None of the three is large.