This research describes a proposed study of 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 pos sible 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.
The scientific study into productivity improvement dates at least back to the pioneering work of Frederick Taylor in the second decade of this century (Sisk, 1987, p. 302). His scien tific management began the development of the empirical founda tions for the analysis of employee productivity. Later, in the 1930s, studies by Elton Mayo led to the discovery of what was termed the Hawthorne Effect, which led to the development of the human relations approach to management (Sisk, 1987, p. 305). The human relations approach postulates that treating employees less as if they are automatons will lead to improved productivity.
A concern with organizational performance (productivity) is one of the more significant of the many problems which con front managers in organizations in both the public and the private sectors (Drucker, 1980, p. 11). The costs to an organization of sub standard performance involve (1) profit deterioration (private sector), or budget overruns (public sector), (2) the diversion of financial and human resources from productive to diagnostic and corrective activities, and (3) the introduction of discontinuity into organizational operations (Peters and Waterman, 1982, p. 88). II. RESEARCH PROBLEM
The problem of productivity improvement is particularly acute for public sector organizations, where it is often argued that the inherently les...