Building the Flexible Firm

Building the Flexible Firm PDF Author: Henk W. Volberda
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191645044
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
How do firms cope with changing environments? Is flexibility really the solution? How can we measure a firm's flexibility? Can a more flexible firm be created? Based on an Igor Ansoff Award-winning study and now available for the first time in paperback, Henk Volberda's Building the Flexible Firm shows how flexibility has become the new strategic challenge for contemporary firms. Although traditional organizational forms have worked well in the relatively stable environments of the past, the globalization of markets, rapid technological change, shortening product life cycles, and increasing aggressiveness of competitors have radically altered the ground rules for competing in the 1990s and beyond. Increased competition forces firms to move more quickly and boldly than before, and to experiment in ways that do not conform to traditional administrative theory. This book offers a wealth of insights into the way firms can increase their flexibility. It is based on extensive interviews with practitioners and supported by many longitudinal case studies on flexibility improvement within large corporations. The author provides a strategic framework which explains what types of flexibility are effective under different organizational conditions and environmental characteristics. He also demonstrates an integrated method for diagnosing a firm's flexibility and for guiding the transition to greater flexibility and responsiveness.

Building the Flexible Firm

Building the Flexible Firm PDF Author: Henk W. Volberda
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191645044
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
How do firms cope with changing environments? Is flexibility really the solution? How can we measure a firm's flexibility? Can a more flexible firm be created? Based on an Igor Ansoff Award-winning study and now available for the first time in paperback, Henk Volberda's Building the Flexible Firm shows how flexibility has become the new strategic challenge for contemporary firms. Although traditional organizational forms have worked well in the relatively stable environments of the past, the globalization of markets, rapid technological change, shortening product life cycles, and increasing aggressiveness of competitors have radically altered the ground rules for competing in the 1990s and beyond. Increased competition forces firms to move more quickly and boldly than before, and to experiment in ways that do not conform to traditional administrative theory. This book offers a wealth of insights into the way firms can increase their flexibility. It is based on extensive interviews with practitioners and supported by many longitudinal case studies on flexibility improvement within large corporations. The author provides a strategic framework which explains what types of flexibility are effective under different organizational conditions and environmental characteristics. He also demonstrates an integrated method for diagnosing a firm's flexibility and for guiding the transition to greater flexibility and responsiveness.

The Flexible Firm

The Flexible Firm PDF Author: Julian Birkinshaw
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191584061
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The pace of change in the business world is becoming faster. This book provides a detailed account of the network-like organization forms that some firms are adopting to make themselves more flexible and responsive to changing technologies and customer demands. As these organizations become more pervasive, the winners will be those firms that develop the specific capabilities that are needed to thrive in a networked world. Paradoxically, such capabilities are developed not only at the firm level, but also in the relationships the firm has with its external network and in the operating units within the firm. This perspective has implications for the 'resource-based view of the firm' in the field of strategic management, suggesting that the development of capabilities is a more complex and multi-level process than was traditionally thought. This book brings together eleven chapters, each focusing on a particular aspect of capability development in the networked firm. It is based on research in five big Swedish firms (Ericsson, Volvo, Skandia, Pharmacia & Upjohn, SE Banken) as well as a number of other well-known firms such as HP and ABB. The book will be essential reading for advanced students in strategy and international business wanting to keep abreast of current thinking and company practices.

Building the Flexible Firm

Building the Flexible Firm PDF Author: Henk Wijtze Volberda
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Competition
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description


Developments in Information & Knowledge Management for Business Applications

Developments in Information & Knowledge Management for Business Applications PDF Author: Natalia Kryvinska
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030621510
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
This book provides solutions to manage information competently in order to increase its business usage. The information/knowledge business is a highly-dynamic evolving industry, and the novel methodologies and practices for the business information processing, as well as application of mathematical models to the business analytics and efficient management, are the most essential for the decision-making and further development of this field. Consequently, in this series subline first volume, the authors study challenges and opportunities, as well as embrace different aspects of business information processing for an efficient enterprise management. The authors cover also methods and techniques, as well as strategies for the efficient business information processing for management. Besides, the authors analyse strategies for lowering business information/data loss, while improving customer satisfaction and maintenance levels. The major goal is to analyse the key aspects of managerial implications on the informational business on the continuous basis.

Winning the Talent Wars: How to Build a Lean, Flexible, High-Performance Workplace

Winning the Talent Wars: How to Build a Lean, Flexible, High-Performance Workplace PDF Author: Bruce Tulgan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324051140
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
"Bruce Tulgan is the new Tom Peters." —Howard Jenkins, chairman and CEO, Publix Super Markets, Inc. Battered by waves of downsizing since the 1980s, talented men and women no longer seek job security from one company. This is the true hallmark of the new economy—not fleeting dot-coms and IPOs, but a fast-moving, free-agent workforce with the flexibility to jolt productivity. Managers, meanwhile, must grab hold of this shifting group of talent and squeeze more work out of them than ever before, particularly in a tight economy. The trouble is, their traditional source of power over employees—the corporate ladder—is dead and gone. Using richly detailed, never-before-published accounts, Bruce Tulgan reveals how America's most influential corporations, including Cisco, Dell, Microsoft, General Motors, J.P. Morgan, and J.C. Penney, are replacing obsolete recruitment and retention efforts with breakthrough solutions. "Tulgan's smart, crisp, light-handed prose makes his radical notions sound downright commonsensical," says Fortune magazine. Those radical ideas are the secret weapon of today's most successful, creative managers.

Systemic Flexibility and Business Agility

Systemic Flexibility and Business Agility PDF Author: Sushil
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 8132221516
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
This book provides a conceptual framework for systemic flexibility and business agility, drawing on a basis of research/case applications in various types of flexibility and agility in business. The selected papers address a variety of issues concerning the theme of systemic flexibility and business agility and are organized into following five parts: (i) Systemic and Strategic Flexibility; (ii) Information and Business Agility; (iii) Flexibility, Innovation and Business Excellence; (iv) Flexibility in Value and Supply Chains; and(v) Financial Flexibility and Mergers & Acquisitions. Flexibility and agility in business are emerging as key dimensions of business excellence that encompass the requirements of both choice and speed. The two concepts, flexibility and agility, have been used in multiple ways and often interchangeably, both in literature and in practice. The growing need for flexibility/agility in business can be seen from reactive as well as proactive perspectives. A business enterprise is expected to possess reactive flexibility/ agility (as adaptability and responsiveness) in order to cope with the changing and uncertain business environment. It may also endeavor to intentionally generate flexibility/agility as a strategic change in a variety of ways, such as leadership change, reengineering, innovation in products and processes, use of information and communication technology, and learning orientation.

Building High-Tech Clusters

Building High-Tech Clusters PDF Author: Timothy Bresnahan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521827225
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Richards; 7.

Flexible Work Organizations

Flexible Work Organizations PDF Author: Sushil
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 8132228340
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This book focuses on the challenges of capacity building for flexible work organizations in Asia, and demonstrates how business enterprises practice reactive flexible capacity (in the form of adaptiveness and responsiveness) to cope with changing and uncertain business environments. The book provides examples of how this can be achieved by means of various organizational change initiatives, leadership strategies, re-engineering, innovation in products and processes, the use of information and communication technology, reshaping learning orientations, and more. As these topics are supported by research and case studies situated in different sectors and countries across Asia, the book will provide a useful resource for a broad readership including: management students and researchers, practicing business managers, consultants, and professional institutions.

Integrated Performance Management

Integrated Performance Management PDF Author: Kurt Verweire
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9781412901550
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Linking various disciplines and management functions, Integrated Performance Management provides the reader with a concrete framework to manage organizations successfully. The authors do not isolate a single strategy to manage performance. Instead, the book focuses on a range of strategies providing the reader with an introduction to each one. The concepts under analysis were developed through intense dialogue with business managers. While maintaining academic rigour, Integrated Performance Management presents ideas that students will find relevant outside of the classroom. Postgraduate and MBA students in a range of areas including strategy, accounting, finance, operations management, marketing, leadership and human resource management will find this book useful.

New Organizational Forms, Controls, and Institutions

New Organizational Forms, Controls, and Institutions PDF Author: Maria Carmela Annosi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331954750X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
This book highlights the growing number of ‘post-bureaucratic’ firms that are abandoning hierarchical organizational forms in favor of self-managing teams. Addressing the need to outperform, these new organization types foresee the benefits of an organic structure with new and more indirect forms of control, and aim to coordinate the activities of highly-skilled workers without relying on a bureaucratic superstructure. The chapters explore the tensions that exist between external and internal institutional forces. As new forms of control strategies emerge, mostly value-based, this book accounts for the cognitive categories, conventions, rules and logic that should be integrated and combined with traditional forms of managerial controls in order to enable co-existence with established bureaucratic frameworks. This book will be of interest to academics in the fields of organizational behavior and innovation management, and also practitioners and managers aiming to shift from a traditional hierarchical structure to post-bureaucratic forms.