Our Goal
The goal of the Center for Organization and Human Resource Effectiveness (COHRE) is
to blend academic with high-level management perspectives in the pursuit of superior
knowledge and practice concerning problems of organization and human resources management.
COHRE is jointly sponsored by the Institute of Industrial Relations and the Haas
School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Our Vision
A rapidly changing world requires continuous innovation in managing people and
organizations. COHRE brings together the knowledge and experience of both
academics and business leaders to help companies meet that challenge.
Because people are a company's most important asset, COHRE scans the economic
environment to identify critical factors of global change that affect the ability to
recruit, retain, and develop employees. By convening forums for discussion and
analysis with faculty from many disciplines and executives from leading companies,
COHRE helps to make sense out of the complexity that businesses face and to formulate
more effective managerial responses. In addition, by conducting carefully designed,
cutting-edge research, COHRE is able to generate and disseminate new knowledge that
organizations can use to shape innovative human resource policies and strategies.
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Why We Exist
There is wide recognition that competitive success in
the global economy demands agile and innovative organizations staffed with creative,
skilled and versatile people. Indeed, a well-trained, well-rewarded, and well-managed
workforce is one of few hard assets in a world where constant change depreciates all
other investments. Yet in most organizations, progress in human resource practice
and organizational design have not kept pace with the proliferation of trends and
challenges reflected in such buzzwords as "reengineering," "diversity management,"
"globalization," and the "information superhighway." As one of the world’s premier
universities, Berkeley has long been on the leading edge of organizational theory and
research and in the development of management leadership and the design of high-
performance organizations. COHRE is a timely response to the current need for
collaboration between the academic world and the world of private and public
executive leadership.
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What We Do
COHRE’s mission is the creation and dissemination of knowledge on high-level organization and management problems. On the creation side, it works to secure support from participating corporations for faculty and student research on issues of interest both to academics and practitioners. Topics range from such nuts-and-bolts human resource problems as training and pay systems to the broad strategic issues of globalization, organization design, and corporate knowledge management.
On the dissemination side, COHRE shares knowledge with its corporate sponsors chiefly through conferences featuring prominent academic and management speakers and break-out sessions where executives and faculty work together to hash out issues and work toward policy solutions. The ideas and questions arising from these sessions in turn supply faculty and students with new topics for research.
Beyond its flagship conferences, COHRE is developing a series of discussion and policy papers and a digital library on organization and human resource best practice. Many of these materials will be accessible on-line (e.g., downloadable from a COHRE web page) by faculty and corporate participants.
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Who We Are
COHRE is housed jointly within the Haas School of Business and the Institute of Industrial Relations,
and its members reflect the diversity of disciplines and business experience needed to create a truly
world-class "think tank." The University of California at Berkeley has experiences a long history of
collaboration across disciplines, which has resulted in many important discoveries. Continuing in this
tradition, world-renowned scholars from a variety of academic fields such as engineering, political
science, economics, business, education, psychology, and computer science contribute to COHRE as
presenters and participants in conferences, as authors of articles and reports, and as leaders of cutting-edge
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Ray Miles, Director of COHRE (left), exchanges
management tips with corporate leaders.
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experts from around the world
assist in conferences and research projects. COHRE also has formed partnerships with several technology
centers and professional organizations including the Fisher Center for Management and Information
Technology, Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Management of Technology Program, Center
for Labor Research and Education, and Center for Risk Mitigation. Additionally, COHRE has formed
partnerships with related centers and organizations outside the university.
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