Faculty & Staff Directory
Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld
Dean and Professor, School of Labor & Employment Relations
On LER:
LER provides leadership at state, national and international levels in addressing the challenges of labor and employment relations. The Master's Degree program combines world-class learning and career opportunitites with strong community support - this is a great place to launch a career in human resources, labor relations, worker representation, and related domains. The Doctoral program allows for advanced study at the frontiers of new learning in the field. The Labor Education and Human Resource continuing education programs advance life-long learning across front line workers, labor leaders, human resource professionals, managers and others - an essential part of the University's land-grant mission. The University of Illinois provides a fantastic context, including faculty connections to Economics, Psychology, Management, Law, Engineering and other fields. It is a great privilege and honor to serve as Dean of this program.
Teaching Philosophy:
Learning and creation of knowldege are very special processes - helping people connect ideas in new, more constructive ways is one of the most rewarding things we can do. I work hard to match the teaching methods to the material and the audience - with highly interactive methods in the teaching of negotiations, for example, and more of a self-directed, coaching approach to the teaching of doctoral students.
Research Identity:
I am honored to have edited a new, annotated edition of the Douglas McGregor's 1960 management classic, The Human Side of Enterprise (McGraw-Hill, 2006). Co-authored books include: Valuable Disconnects in Organizational Learning Systems (with Kevin Ford, Oxford University Press, 2005), Lean Enterprise Value (with a team of 13 MIT colleagues, Palgrave, 2002), Knowledge-Driven Work (with a team of 14 MSU colleagues, Oxford University Press, 1998) Strategic Negotiations (with Richard Walton and Robert McKersie, Harvard Business School Press, 1994), and additional books on workplace training and negotiations. Over eighty articles, book chapters and policy monographs address new work systems, labor-management relations, negotiations, conflict resolution, organizational learning and change, public policy, economic development, and engineering systems.
Policy and Practice:
Combining leading-edge research with applications to policy and practice has always been a hallmark of our field. I have been honored to provide policy support to local, state, federal and international organizations, including the U.S. Department of Labor, the Federal Mediation and Concilliation Service, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Commission on the Future of the Aerospace Industry, the Federal Aviation Authority, NASA, the South African Commision on Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, the Bermuda Ministry of Labour, The Cluster Conocimiento in Spain, the International Labour Organization, the OECD, and others. I have helped to lead large-scale change initiatives, multi-stakeholder alignments, complex negotiations and training interventions in a broad cross-section of organizations in Australia, Bermuda, Canada, Denmark, England, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Spain, South Africa, and the United States.
See Professor Cutcher-Gershenfeld's areas of expertise.
To reach Professor Cutcher-Gershenfeld:
143 LER Building, 504 E. Armory Avenue,
Champaign, IL 61820
(217)333-1480; (217)244-9290 fax
email: joelcg@illinois.edu