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This article illustrates how the State of Michigan transformed human resources in state government by developing HR leaders for the future. A transformational plan was developed in March 2000 to enhance the effectiveness of HR programs and services, foster a consultative approach to delivering HR programs and services, develop human resources as a strategic business partner and change agent with agency management, and create the capacity to incorporate HR best practices into state HR systems. This article also provides the HR vision for change, the training design to transform HR into a business partner and change agent, and the methodology and data that support this transformational plan. An innovative multiyear project-based learning design, featuring teams from state agencies, used workshop content to leverage system change across state departments. Finally, this article documents the change projects designed and implemented by agency teams, reports participants' reactions, communicates skill-set and mindset enhancements, and presents ideas for future diffusion.

A 6-year study tracked the effects of a group-level absence control program within a Midwestern urban bus company. By modeling employee time-use options systemically, effects were examined graphically with daily precision. Short-term nonlegitimate absence decreased and time worked increased, but unintended substitution effects occurred as employees discovered legitimate ways to exploit absence and time scheduled off. Propositions for future research and methodological insights are noted.

Time-serial statistics show the daily impact of organization development (OD) on five systemically interdependent employee time use variables across the first 2 years of an absence control intervention. Tume worked, time scheduled off, short-term excused absence, long-term excused absence, and short-term nonexcused absence all showed interdependent daily changes in annual time use as OD techniques were aggressively and widely introduced, later overtaken by events and severely restricted, and eventually replaced with a mechanistic policy-based absence control system. OD induced strong and constructive increases in work and decreases in excused forms of nonwork while it continued to operate, but those changes eroded quickly under competing pressures once investment in OD was curtailed. After the OD impetus toward self-control was replaced with a mechanistic management model, unexcused absence began to drop, but time use began shifting into excused nonwork activities. This trend eventually caused significant erosion of the gains in time worked.