Organizational restructuring

While management skills can improve service systems, a manager is better off if he or she first has a clear understanding of the operating characteristics that set one service system apart from another. This author offers one view of services, which, if followed, results in a “rational approach to the rationalization” of services. His view, […]

Beneath the general principles, attitudes, and ideals of “human relations” lie the actual tactics and day-to-day techniques by which executives achieve, maintain, and exercise power. In the current enthusiasm for “democratizing” business procedures, these hard, practical devices tend to be overlooked. Yet they exist just the same—and, in many ways, do not depart substantially from […]

A look at what's changing and what it means.

And it's hurting the companies they work for.

Big companies formerly took a reputational hit when they laid off massive numbers of workers. But according to E. Geoffrey Love and Matthew Kraatz, of the University of Illinois, U.S. business culture norms gradually changed from 1985 to 1994 as new ideas about boosting shareholder value took hold in executive suites and boardrooms. At the […]

In a postindustrial economy is the value chain obsolete?

What do IBM, Texas Instruments, Owens Corning, and Duke Power have in common? They’re all redesigning their organizations around their core processes—and reaping enormous benefits as a result.

With his talk of “the shrinking half-life of ideas,” “virtual team networks,” and “breakthrough thinking,” John Browne sounds more like a Silicon Valley CEO than the head of the giant British Petroleum Company. Then again, BP—with its flat organization, entrepreneurial business units, web of alliances, and surging profits—is starting to look and act like a […]

The vice president of services of a large durables manufacturing company recently faced a dilemma. Her request for a stand-alone word processor to solve operating problems in her fastest-growing sales office had been denied. It had seemed a trivial request; yet having to do without the word processor would cause delays, and she thought that […]

What could be harder than turning around a seemingly wildly successful company by imposing a centralized framework on a heretofore radically decentralized,...

When retailers' sales slip, the biggest opportunity to boost profits comes from improving execution. To do that, research shows, managers may actually...

Continuous improvement at Toyota Motor Company is now a business legend. For three decades, Toyota enlisted its employees in a relentless drive to find faster, more efficient methods to develop and make low-cost, defect-free cars. The results were stupendous. Toyota became the benchmark in the automobile industry for quality and low cost. The same, however, […]

The typical large business 20 years hence will have fewer than half the levels of management of its counterpart today, and no more than a third the managers. In its structure, and in its management problems and concerns, it will bear little resemblance to the typical manufacturing company, circa 1950, which our textbooks still consider […]

We’re in a knowledge economy, but our managerial and governance systems are stuck in the industrial era. It’s time for a whole new model.

Early lessons from pilot programs.

Even the best-designed systems can’t overcome faulty relationships.

Even successful corporations have to shake things up to stay ahead of the competition.

Metaphors can be powerful tools for leading teams through the uncertainty of change.

In appraising performance, designing pay systems, and in organizing and planning work, managers make assessments about the size and importance of jobs. Whether the assessments are accurate deeply affects how well the organization runs. But what do we mean when we say that one job is bigger than another? Bigger in what sense? One way […]

There is such a thing as an organization that’s too responsive.