iles and McCloskey, 1993, pp. 40-45). A concern with organizational performance, thus, is one of the more significant of the problems that confront organizational managers in the last decade of the twentieth century (Hakim, 1993, pp. 46-49). The costs to an organization of sub-standard performance involve profit deterioration, the diversion of financial and human resources from production to diagnostic and corrective actions, and the introduction of discontinuity into organizational activities, just to enumerate a few (De Long and Summers, 1992, pp. 5-29).
Lagging productivity growth affects the ability of firms to compete effectively in both domestic and international markets. How best to attain productivity improvement, however, is an issue of both concern and dispute. With respect to human resource inputs, one concern is the management style, or leadership, that is likely to yield the most productive outcomes. Most contemporary theorists tend to favor a participative style, although there are dissenters from this position, and there are numerous examples of highly productive organizations where the management style is not highly participative in character. Participation in the context of organizational management means permitting organizational members other than senior managers make some of the important organizational decisions (Barner, 1994, pp. 33-36).
Among electrical contractors operating in the Anchorage, Alaska area, the mean life of a firm is under five years, although many successful electrical contracting firms have been in business continuously for more than 20 years. The relatively short life of so many of these firms is costly to the Anchorage economy and to the electrical contracting industry in the area, in addition to the personal and financial losses incurred by the owners, families, and employees of failed firms. The determination of why some firms succeed while others fail, therefore, is an important...