I decided to read this article first as it is my first presentation. Here is a in-depth summary of what I learned (non-presentation articles I will try to summarize in one to two paragraphs):

Drs. Pfeffer and Vega begin by stating the view that there is a direct correlation between high economic returns and high involvement management practices, that is, those practices in which employees are highly engaged by their organization’s management. In terms of my company, it is generally referred to as only “engagement”.

Since Dr. Pfeffer has done extensive work in evidence-based management (EBM), it is no surprise that the first subsection of the article, “Show Me the Evidence” relates hard facts to support the article’s theory. The first examples is Apple Computers (“The Apple Story”), in which Apple seriously downgrades its workforce numbers to try to regain their market leadership in the personal computer industry. Instead of increasing their profitability by decreasing labor costs, Apple made its employees insecure about their futures and became less engaged. In turn, this lead to nearly irreparable damage (which has turned around since the time of this article, which was adapted from Dr. Pfeffer’s 1998 book The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First through new products such as the iPod and deals with Intel to produce processors for their PCs) to the company’s image in the minds of its employees. A study done of the five-year survival rates of initial public offerings shows that companies who “put people first” have a 7.05% decrease in turnover, a $27,044 greater return on sales per employee, $18.461 more in market value per employee, and $3,814 more in profits per employee. More research presented in the article shows that the five-year survival rate of another study of companies in non-financial sectors cited employees as an important