TEXAS CENTER Goals |
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Primary Mission Of The Texas Center The Texas Center for Innovative Organizations ( Texas Center) is a nonprofit, multidisciplinary Texas Tech University action research center housed in the Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration. The purpose of the Texas Center is to strengthen the private and public enterprise systems of the State of Texas, the Southwest, and the United States by creating, identifying, and supporting programs which improve organizational effectiveness, enhance employees' quality of work life, and create transfer of knowledge and learning within and across organizations. The Center has three primary objectives: (1) to help enhance the level of organizational innovation and, therefore, job security; (2) to help raise employees' quality of work life; and (3) to assist organizations to create and transfer knowledge and learning. These objectives are met by assisting both starting and existing organizations within the Texas, the Southwest and the United States to improve their effectiveness, and their transfer of knowledge among their employees. Accordingly, these organizations, along with the people and their governments, can be made healthier and more prosperous. Currently, the Texas Center is actively engaged in numerous new plant or site designs and redesigns of existing facilities in union and nonunion sites throughout the United States and Canada. The Texas Center, one of the founding members of the United States National Productivity Network (NPN), is distinctive in emphasizing multiple objectives related to the public university-based, educational and research character of Texas Tech University. One objective is an emphasis on documented public reports that stress learning from successes and failures in performance improvement and work innovation in the private and public sectors. The second objective is an emphasis upon organizational diagnosis and change by developing guidelines and tools for improved professional practices by managers, administrators, labor leaders, policy makers, and external consultants in the area of organizational improvement and work innovation. Nature And Work Of The Texas Center Established in 1979, the Texas Center has a formal charter and an independent Advisory Board composed of representatives from management, labor, state government, professional associations, and institutions of higher education to provide input and direction. Since 1980, the Center's funded research projects have totaled $6.8 million. Eighty percent of the Center's budget comes from grants and contracts; 10% from product sales; and 10% from foundations. Current year funding is in excess of $450,000. Forty-five percent of expenditures occur in the area of management-related continuous improvement work; 35% in the socio-technical analysis area; and 20% in the transfer of technology and work innovations. Activities in these areas are broken down in terms of expenditures according to the following percentages: 40% for action-research; 30% for technical assistance; 15% for education; and 15% for publication. Sixty percent of the Center's expenditures are spent providing continuous improvement and high performance system services to the manufacturing sector; 25% to the service sector; 5% to academic clients; 5% to unions; and 5% to state and federal government.
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