3590 Posts Found

When large companies are organized in the traditional division structure, strategic decisions too often fall to managers under pressure to meet budgetary demands. Success in one unit masks underperformance in others, while ventures that promise strong future growth go underfunded because they don’t contribute to short-term bottom-line numbers.

One way to shake things up is to review the strategy and performance-management processes and to make decisions … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Felix Wenger, Massimo Giordano | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

Phenomenon: Keirsey and Bates’s Please Understand Me, first published in 1978, sold nearly 2 million copies in its first 20 years, becoming a perennial best seller all over the world. Advertised only by word of mouth, the book became a favorite training and counseling guide in many institutions — government, church, business — and colleges across the nation adopted it as an auxiliary text in … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: David Keirsey | Subject: Organizational Behavior

One of the root problems with business schools is that too many are infected with assumptions that reinforce and bring out the worst in human-beings. In particular, the logic and discipline of economics usually rules the roost at business schools.

Editor’s Note: The comments add as much or more value as the article itself.

Content: Article | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: Economics, Ethics

Without a clear vision, an organization be-comes a self-serving bureaucracy. The top managers begin to think “the sheep are there for the benefit of the shepherd.” All the money, recognition, power, and status move up the hierarchy, away from the people closest to the customers, and leadership begins to serve the leaders and not the organization’s larger purpose and goals.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jesse Stoner, Kenneth H. Blanchard | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Organizational Behavior

A conversation with Dan Ariely.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Dan Ariely, Jon Warshawsky | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Organizational Behavior

We don’t have direct knowledge of the physical world; we only have knowledge of our ideas of it. This may seem like just an interesting curiosity until we realize that the world we know is not an objective record of the one that exists outside of us, but the version of it we create according to whatever else is going on in our minds at … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Charles Jacobs | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Aine Donovan discusses the responsibility of schools to teach ethics.

Editor’s Note: the main article isn’t that enlightening, but some of the numerous comments posted are.

Content: Article | Author: Aine Donovan | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subject: Ethics

Everyone wants to make it to the top in their chosen career, but not everybody achieves that goal. This article takes an in-depth look at the different stages an executive must go through to become a CEO or to earn whatever other job title is used to describe the person at the apex of a business organization.

Content: Article | Authors: Guido Stein, José Ramón Pin | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior

Organizations, like individuals, need to be in flow to operate smoothly. An organization achieves this state of equilibrium through its management layers. In other words, an organization can approach the flow zone when the positions in its hierarchy have clear, accountable tasks that are aligned to its mission and that match the skills and reach of the people at each level. Or as University of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Brian Dive, Judith McMorland | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

If a job has its own discrete decision-making responsibilities, different from those in positions above and below, then the individual in that job feels accountable. He or she has a clear understanding of who the boss is, what the boss expects, why the boss needs particular results, when those deliverables are needed, how those deliverables fit with the organization’s goals, and how to accomplish them. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Brian Dive | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

In an accountable organization, a leader makes only those decisions that cannot be made by his or her direct reports — because they do not have the knowledge, skill, or experience to do so. Each layer includes only those who have the extra capability needed to deal with decisions of greater complexity than those at the level below can master.

Content: Quotation | Author: Brian Dive | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Most arguments, misunderstandings, confusion, and aggressive behavior are triggered by negative words, phrases, and attitudes. In situations of confrontation and controversy, at least one side of the argument needs the negativity of the other to continue operating effectively and pushing the argument forward. Eliminate that negative energy, and progress can actually be made, or a more peaceful resolution can be sought.

Content: Quotation | Author: James E. Lukaszewski | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Communication

It’s crucial to understand just how powerful this concept [focusing on outcomes] is. Fundamentally, it recognizes that everyone owns yesterday, last week, last month, and last year, from their own point of reference. That ownership is permanent. Even given a limitless amount of discussion, the past will remain as it was, owned by those who were there.

But no one owns the future—the next 15 minutes, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James E. Lukaszewski | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Communication, Negotiation

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Content: Quotation | Author: Martin Luther King Jr. | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Management guru Bob Sutton, citing research by Gary Latham, has found a simple solution for stopping employee theft.

Content: Article | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Modern society is plagued by fragmentation. The various sectors of our communities–businesses, schools, social service organizations, churches, government–do not work together. They exist in their own worlds. As do so many individual citizens, who long for connection but end up marginalized, their gifts overlooked, their potential contributions lost. This disconnection and detachment makes it hard if not impossible to envision a common future and work … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Peter Block | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales, Organizational Behavior

This content is restricted to site members. Please log in or register

There is a stream of research — which economists routinely ignore, reject, or are unable to process — that shows self-interest is not hardwired but is in fact a social norm that gets stronger or weaker depending on the assumptions that people hold about their own behavior and those around them.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: Economics, Organizational Behavior

MBA students need more than professed values. They need to know that the world is morally complex and morally dangerous. They need to know that bad deeds can come from good values. They need to know that valuing integrity enough to keep one’s hands off other people’s money is only the beginning, not the end of business ethics.

There are many ethical questions in business life … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James Hoopes | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: Ethics, MBA Related

Research by a number of leading thinkers in the social sciences, such as Danah Zohar, has shown that when managers and employees are asked what motivates them the most in their work they are equally split among fve forms of impact—impact on society (for instance, building the community and stewarding resources), impact on the customer (for example, providing superior service), impact on the company and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Carolyn Aiken, Scott Keller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior