This purpose of this study is to examine productivity in the United States Postal Service (USPS). Several years ago, the USPS was converted from a governmental department to a quasi public corporation. As a quasi public corporation, the USPS is charged with the responsibility to fund itself to the maximum extent possible through the conduct of its own operations, thereby reducing the need for funding the USPS through the federal budget (National Academy of Public Administration, 1982, p. 5). Productivity improvement, thus, became a major goal of the USPS.
Unfortunately, the USPS has not made as much progress as desired over the past dozen years in the area of productivity improvement (USPS on track, 1993, p. 10). The new chief executive at the USPS, Bill Cockburn (1993, pp. 44 47), however, states that the implementation of team organization, employee empowerment, and other human resource initiatives will enable the USPS to attain productivity related goals in the last half of the 1990s.
Unfortunately, at the operational level, the USPS continues to be plagued by managers who are not sympathetic to change. These lower level managers are a threat to the ultimate success of the drive to improve productivity at the USPS.
Setting, History, and Background of the Problem
The USPS Postal Service Center located in Bentonville, Arkansas is the setting for this study. Marginal morale, poor
organization, and outmoded decision making practices lower the productivity of this organization. Local management has been apathetic toward suggested change.
The problem of productivity improvement is particularly acute for public sector organizations where it is often argued that the inherently less efficient character of such organizations (in comparison with private sector organizations) dictate against the attainment of meaningful productivity improvements (Atkinson and Halvorsen, 1986, pp. 281 294). This charge has been level...