Video Library

Toni is a waitress at a local diner. In a very colorful way, she describes her career, her work, how she manages her customers, what high performance means, etc. We have used this video to illustrate the issues of work attitude, work motivation and performance, and job analysis. This video was created to promote discussion of a job everyone understands.

View Teaching Notes on the Waitress.

Ted is a steelworker in a company which is now in bankruptcy. He talks about his maintenance work as a mechanic, the good times, the current bad economic situation for steelworkers, his views on the union and company, and a picture of the future. We have used this video in discussions of work attitude, motivation, stereotypes, downsizing, and retrenchment. This video was created to capture factory work, union and management issues, and depressed economic circumstances. His story is very moving.

View Teaching Notes on the Steelworker.

Nicholas is a master stone carver. He restores the carvings on old buildings (i.e., Westminster Abbey) and creates artistic carvings on new buildings. Nicholas captures in a very insightful way the meaning of stone carving, restoration, and artistic work. We have used this video in discussions of work attitudes, motivation and learning, occupational and career development. This video was created to capture a very old occupation which requires creative talents and specialized skills. The stone carvings are quite beautiful.

View Teaching Notes on the Stone Carver.

Cheryl is an Intensive Care Unit neonatal nurse. She begins by describing her work, the changing role of nurses in a hospital (to more responsibility and authority), her relationship to the patient, competition with doctors, etc. We have used this video in discussion of work attitudes, motivation, high performance, and job analysis and design. This video was created to capture a traditional job coupled with new technology, a strong theme of intrinsic motivation, and a shift in the authority and responsibility of work.

View Teaching Notes on the ICU Nurse.

Richard Cyert was the President of Carnegie Mellon University for 17 years. He has been one of the keys agents in the university restructuring and development in the last several decades. This video is about organizational change; it focuses on the initiation of the Andrew System -- one of the earliest computer network environments in organizations. President Cyert talks about initiation of change, effectiveness, and the CMU-industry joint venture that created Andrew.

View Teaching Notes on the University President.

George and Carl Johnson (father and son) are Maine lobstermen. This is a fascinating video about decision making. Before we shot it, we thought it would be more about their work and attitudes. To our surprise, it concerns their strategic decisions about work. Some of the topics include decision making under uncertainty, reactions of competitors, changing decision rules, and transferring tacit occupational knowledge. This video was shot on their boat off coast of Maine.

View Teaching Notes on the Lobstermen

In Lobstermen II, the focus is on the recent purchase and implementation of a GPS (Global Positioning System). This technology makes it possible for the lobstermen to find and keep track of their traps. The new technology provides a set of unanticipated benefits.

The unanticipated benefits are the technology creates a form of organizational memory and learning. It permits new forms of knowledge transfer.

View Teaching Notes on the Lobstermen II.

Managing in China captures the perspectives of Chinese managers on the challenges in managing this country. Topics range from the rapid changes underway in China to the different forms of organizations (state enterprises, multinationals), and advice to American managers in China. This video has been used to illustrate cultural and national differences, organizational practices (e.g.reward systems) in different countries, and management challenges in operating in different cultures.

View Teaching Notes on Managing in China

This video portrays the challenge of doing business in the U.S. from the perspective of a Mexican company that owns plants in both Mexico and the U.S. and is involved in joint ventures in both countries. Among the many timely issues addressed in this video are cross-national and cultural differences, building trust, and the similarities and differences between Mexican and U.S. factory workers.

View Teaching Notes on the Doing Business in the U.S. and Mexico.

The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is a new form of knowledge group responsible for responding to and preventing attacks on the internet. This video has been used to illustrate topics such as improving group process, group effectiveness, and factors contributing to group effectiveness. CERT represents the new forms of work groups in the future.

View Teaching Notes on the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT)

Cuarteto Latinoamericano is an internationally recognized string quartet, producing music through concerts all over the world. This type of work team raises interesting discussions about meaning of effectiveness and the factors that contribute to effectiveness. Moreover, a team producing music spends much more time practicing versus performing. What are the lessons from effective music teams that might help us to understand other work teams?

View Teaching Notes on Chamber Music Quartet

This video is part of our module on groups and parallels the Chamber Music Quartet. We built this video using the same topics such as the meaning of effectiveness and factors that lead to effectiveness, but the setting is in Singapore and the instruments and music are Chinese in origin.

View Teaching Notes on Chinese String Quartet.

Rowing is the ultimate team sport. This video captures the Cornell women's crew rowing team and explores critical issues such as the factors that lead to team effectiveness, the meaning of effectiveness, the relationship between practice and performance, and numerous other issues relevant to understanding groups.

View Teaching Notes on Rowing in an 8.

This video captures many of the issues in a plant closing or a major downsizing. We explore through a psychological contract lens, workers’ expectations, the process used to close down the facility and the impact of this process on workers and their expectations. The setting is a high performance Nabisco facility in Pittsburgh.

View Teaching Notes on Plant Closing.

This video captures the reopening of the Nabisco facility that was featured in our plant closing video. The key theme in this video is the role of multiple constituencies (government, quasi government authorities, NGOs, labor and management, plus other private sector entities) in reopening a plant and insuring some level of economic viability of a region.

Four short portraits of migrant workers from El Salvadore, Haiti, Mexico and the Virgin Islands capture the physical and psychological difficulties in their lives. The video could be used in discussions of motivation, marginal workers, and ethical responsibilities to workers.

A rabbi who restores the Torah, which contains the basic teachings of the Jewish people, describes in an insightful way the nature of his work and its meaning. In exploring this job, which has been going on for thousands of years, we gain different insights into work attitudes and motivation, how one learns this set of activities, the meaning of high performance, and how it is assessed. This video is a nice companion to the Stone Carver, who restores ancient churches.

This video is the first in a three-part series on creating complex organizational change. Professor Rousseau addresses how to prepare for organizational change (first phase) and the initial step in actual implementation (second phase). This video could be used in a course on management or change, or it could be used by students after a course is over in order to review basic concepts about change.

This is the second video in the series on managing complex organizational change. Professor Rousseau explores the problems of managing the transition from the old state to the new organizational environment. Critical ideas, processes, and examples are explored. This video examines the challenge of change in managing the transition from the old state to the new state.

This documentary is about a fundamental aspect of daily life – our work. The setting is in India. We explore a form of work on the streets of Bombay that has existed for more than 100 years. Each day, some 100,000 lunches get delivered by 4,000 Dabbawallas (box persons) at high levels of reliability. This delivery system functions without any of the trappings of modern day work, such as technology, business procedures and practices, and so on. Our focus is on: (a) what people in more-developed countries can learn from workers in less-developed countries, (b) the reliance upon human and social ingenuity for organizing rather than relying on external mechanisms such as technology, and (c) according respect for the seldom-heard voices of disadvantaged populations in India.

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Escola de Samba is a documentary creating Brazilian carnival through the eyes of one Escola de Samba. For 10 months, we followed one samba school as they selected a theme, the music, and the costumes to create carnival, to be the very best in the Brazilian carnival.

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