Redesigning the Firm

Redesigning the Firm PDF Author: Edward H. Bowman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195087100
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Examines the best way to organize a firm

Redesigning the Firm

Redesigning the Firm PDF Author: Edward H. Bowman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195087100
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Examines the best way to organize a firm

The Nature of Business

The Nature of Business PDF Author: Giles Hutchins
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 0865717370
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
The business of biomimicry—companies the way nature intended.

Redesigning the Firm

Redesigning the Firm PDF Author: Edward H. Bowman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198024789
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
The rapidly changing nature of the modern industrial world has helped spark a radical rethinking of the design of corporations, changes no less revolutionary than the wave of innovations associated with the names of Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford at the dawn of this century. In Redesigning the Firm, nineteen experts from one of the nation's premier business schools, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, take an informed look based on their own research at various aspects of this revolution, offering managers a host of insights and powerful tools for orchestrating change in their firm. Redesigning the Firm illuminates many of the challenges that confront the executive, approaching the issue from a wide variety of perspectives. The book considers, for instance, whether the firm's stockholders, directors, and managers should reevaluate how they distribute power and share information, and it explores why external board members often fail to exercise a strong voice in governance. It looks at the changing boundary of the firm, as partnerships and alliances have become more important, examining this new development in three types of market: emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, markets where economies of scale provide a critical advantage, and dynamic markets where speed is essential. It examines the use of suppliers in Japanese, American, and European firms, and finds the former to be more efficient. Some of the essays are quite eye-opening. For instance, one chapter demonstrates that firms can increase product variety at no extra cost, revealing how a study of the automotive industry shows that investing in training, in flexible manufacturing processes, and in better operations management will increase variety without compromising productivity or lowering quality. And one chapter sounds a strong note of dissent, contending that the design of organizations matters little to a global competitor--what matters is how managers think about the world, and how the operating procedures they use guide decision-making and behavior. In the final section, editors Bowman and Kogut reflect on two outstanding issues concerning the design of the firm: how much of what managers used to believe was critical to their success can they place outside their ownership boundaries; and how to deal with the complex challenges that modular design presents. The editors apply their conclusions to the Wharton School itself, making the book particularly valuable for anyone concerned with the quality and future of business education in America. Here then is the best thinking by leading experts in corporate design, who examine the best ways to generate speed, variety, and flexibility, to expand the firm over time and over national boundaries, and to prepare a corporation for the next century.

Redesigning Work

Redesigning Work PDF Author: Lynda Gratton
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262544989
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
How do we make the most of the greatest global shift in the world of work for a century and radically redesign the way we work—forever? Professor Lynda Gratton is the global thought-leader on the future of work. Drawing on thirty years of research into the technological, demographic, cultural, and societal trends that are shaping work and building on what we learned through our experiences of the pandemic, Gratton presents her innovative four-step framework for redesigning work that will help you: Understand your people and what drives performance Reimagine creative new ways to work Model and test these approaches within your organization Act and create to ensure your redesign has lasting benefits Gratton presents real-world case studies that show companies grappling with work challenges. These include the global bank HSBC, which built a multidisciplinary team to understand the employee experience; the Japanese technology company Fujitsu, which reimagined three kinds of “perfect” offices; and the Australian telecommunications company Telstra, which established new roles to coordinate work across the organization. Whether you’re working in a small team or running a multinational, Redesigning Work is the definitive book on how to transform your organization and make hybrid working work for you.

The Modern Firm

The Modern Firm PDF Author: John Roberts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198293755
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Business firms around the world are experimenting with new organizational designs, changing their formal architectures, their routines and processes, and their corporate cultures as they seek to improve their current performance and their growth prospects. In the process they are changing the scope of their business operations, redrawing their organization charts, redefining the allocation of decision-making authority and responsibility, revamping the mechanisms for motivating and rewarding people, reconsidering which activities to conduct in-house and which to out-source, redesigning their information systems, and seeking to alter the shared beliefs, values and norms that their people hold. In this book, John Roberts argues that there are predictable, necessary relationships among these changes that will improve performance and growth. The organizations that are successful will establish patterns of fit among the elements of their organizational designs, their competitive strategies and the external environment in which they operate and will go about this in a holistic manner. The Modern Firm develops powerful conceptual frameworks for analyzing the interrelations between organizational design features, competitive strategy and the business environment. Written in a non-technical language, the book is nevertheless based on rigorous modeling and draws on numerous examples from eighteenth century fur trading companies to such modern firms such as BP and Nokia. Finally the book explores why these developments are happening now, pointing to the increase in global competition and changes in technology. Written by one of the world's leading economists and experts on business strategy and organization, The Modern Firm provides new insights into the changes going on in business today and will be of interest to academics, students and managers alike.

Redesigning Leadership

Redesigning Leadership PDF Author: John Maeda
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026229494X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 95

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Book Description
Lessons for a new generation of leaders on teamwork, meetings, conversations, free food, social media, apologizing, and other topics. When designer and computer scientist John Maeda was tapped to be president of the celebrated Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, he had to learn how to be a leader quickly. He had to transform himself from a tenured professor—with a love of argument for argument's sake and the freedom to experiment—into the head of a hierarchical organization. The professor is free to speak his mind against “the man.” The college president is “the man.” Maeda has had to teach himself, through trial and error, about leadership. In Redesigning Leadership, he shares his learning process. Maeda, writing as an artist and designer, a technologist, and a professor, discusses intuition and risk-taking, “transparency,” and all the things that a conversation can do that an email can't. In his transition from MIT to RISD he finds that the most effective way to pull people together is not social networking but free food. Leading a team? The best way for a leader to leverage the collective power of a team is to reveal his or her own humanity. Asked if he has stopped designing, Maeda replied (via Twitter) “I'm designing how to talk about/with/for our #RISD community.” Maeda's creative nature makes him a different sort of leader—one who prizes experimentation, honest critique, and learning as you go. With Redesigning Leadership, he uses his experience to reveal a new model of leadership for the next generation of leaders.

Improving Engineering Design

Improving Engineering Design PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309044782
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Effective design and manufacturing, both of which are necessary to produce high-quality products, are closely related. However, effective design is a prerequisite for effective manufacturing. This new book explores the status of engineering design practice, education, and research in the United States and recommends ways to improve design to increase U.S. industry's competitiveness in world markets.

Redesigning Asian Business

Redesigning Asian Business PDF Author: Frank-Jürgen Richter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313006830
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
With much of the Asian Miracle destroyed and much of the Western world's awe for Asian ways of management dissipated, organizations there are changing with such speed that most of our knowledge about them is quickly outdated. Richter takes stock of East Asian management practices, as they are perceived so far, and he discusses the strategies that others propose to help Asian management redesign itself for the future—including a long-term agenda for change based on the cultural heritage of Confucianism. He analyzes the cultural underpinnings of Asian management practices, evaluates the influence of the Asian economic crisis on them, and discusses their potential for guiding Asian firms to a sustainable competitive advantage. He then provides examples of how Asian firms shape up their organizations and describes a short-term agenda to fix the weaknesses in Asian management, at least temporarily. Throughout, Richter avoids talk about strategic management as merely a theory: he adopts a broader definition that includes a value system to guide East Asian firms as they re-emerge and redevelop. The result is a challenging, intensely pragmatic analysis for decision-makers at all levels, in all countries and cultures, and it is a new stone in the foundation of academic research and thought. Richter opens with a discussion of the legacy of Confucianism and its impact on Asian management practices. He then proposes three intrinsic characteristics of Asian management: networks, trust, and collectivism. He gives a history of the Asian economic crisis, highlighting the failures of Asia's economic development and the flaws that appeared in its management practices. The third section of the book evaluates management practices that have emerged since then, and how they are perceived so far. Then, in the concluding section, he presents a new perspective on Asian management, short-term goals (fixing current management weaknesses), and long-term goals (incorporating its long abiding strengths). Throughout, Richter draws on the management theory enunciated by Hofstede and includes examples and case studies of recent developments across the region, and he also includes his own theories as well as those of others. Mr. Richter's book will be a welcome addition to the literature on business and the culture of Asia.

Enhancing Organizational Performance

Enhancing Organizational Performance PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309175828
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Total quality management (TQM), reengineering, the workplace of the twenty-first centuryâ€"the 1990s have brought a sense of urgency to organizations to change or face stagnation and decline, according to Enhancing Organizational Performance. Organizations are adopting popular management techniques, some scientific, some faddish, often without introducing them properly or adequately measuring the outcome. Enhancing Organizational Performance reviews the most popular current approaches to organizational changeâ€"total quality management, reengineering, and downsizingâ€"in terms of how they affect organizations and people, how performance improvements can be measured, and what questions remain to be answered by researchers. The committee explores how theory, doctrine, accepted wisdom, and personal experience have all served as sources for organization design. Alternative organization structures such as teams, specialist networks, associations, and virtual organizations are examined. Enhancing Organizational Performance looks at the influence of the organization's norms, values, and beliefsâ€"its cultureâ€"on people and their performance, identifying cultural "levers" available to organization leaders. And what is leadership? The committee sorts through a wealth of research to identify behaviors and skills related to leadership effectiveness. The volume examines techniques for developing these skills and suggests new competencies that will become required with globalization and other trends. Mergers, networks, alliances, coalitionsâ€"organizations are increasingly turning to new intra- and inter-organizational structures. Enhancing Organizational Performance discusses how organizations cooperate to maximize outcomes. The committee explores the changing missions of the U.S. Army as a case study that has relevance to any organization. Noting that a musical greeting card contains more computing power than existed in the entire world before 1950, the committee addresses the impact of new technologies on performance. With examples, insights, and practical criteria, Enhancing Organizational Performance clarifies the nature of organizations and the prospects for performance improvement. This book will be important to corporate leaders, executives, and managers; faculty and students in organizational performance and the social sciences; business journalists; researchers; and interested individuals.

Designing the Design Firm

Designing the Design Firm PDF Author: James O. Jonassen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984613649
Category : Architectural design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description