3605 Posts Found

Popular wisdom suggests that fewer than 20% of all change initiatives are really successful. More alarming still for top managers, a survey of 1087 corporate directors, reported in BusinessWeek in 2005, found that 31% of CEOs fired by their boards were removed because they mismanaged change; more than any other cause. Why is this happening—and why do we need another book purporting to have “the … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: David M. Herold, Donald B. Fedor | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Formalizing a company’s ad hoc peer groups can spur collaboration and unlock value.

Content: Article | Authors: Eric Matson, Leigh M. Weiss, Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

We don’t see the world directly. We perceive it through frameworks of ideas and beliefs, which act as filters on what we perceive and how we perceive it. Some of these ideas enter our consciousness so deeply that we’re not even aware of them. They strike us as simple common sense. They often show up, though, in the metaphors and images we use to think … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ken Robinson, Ph.D. | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Perception, Personality / Behavior

It’s one of the thorniest management problems around: dealing with unmotivated, low-performing employees. It’s easy to point the finger of blame at them. But in most companies, it’s the reward system, not the workforce, that’s causing poor attitudes and performance: many reward systems actually discourage desired behaviors while rewarding the very actions that drive executives crazy.

In Reward Systems: Does Yours Deliver? Steve Kerr describes the … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Steve Kerr | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Problem ­solving invites reason, compromise, and, ultimately, mutual respect; ­identity ­building invites posturing, passion, and, ultimately, intolerance.

Content: Quotation | Author: Gil Troy | Source: The Wilson Quarterly | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Problems / Solutions

Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Dan Ariely | Subjects: Management, Marketing / Sales, Organizational Behavior

A carefully constructed change agent program is essential to any successful operational transformation.

Content: Article | Authors: Arnaud Despierre, Gautam Kumra, Philippe Arrata | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

The conventional wisdom about “natural” talent is a myth. The real path to great performance is a matter of choice.

Content: Article | Author: Geoffrey Colvin | Source: FORTUNE | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Incentives are good in principle, but did Bear Stearns get competent risk management in return for the $4.4 billion bonus pool it distributed in 2006? Does any organization have to give its CEO a $40 million bonus to secure his services? If you pay people enough money to make any future payment beside the point, don’t be surprised when they take vast long-term risks for … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Richard Rumelt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Accountability, Human Resources, Management, Motivation

During structural breaks in hard times, cutting costs isn’t enough. Things have to be done differently, and on two levels: reducing the complexity of corporate structures and transforming business models. At the corporate level, the first commandment is to simplify and simplify again. Since companies must become more modular and diverse, eliminate coordinating committees, review boards, and other mechanisms connecting businesses, products, or geographies. The … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Richard Rumelt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Reorganization

Harvard Business School professors Lawrence and Nohria here present a sociobiological theory of motivation, claiming that humans possess four basic drives to acquire, to bond, to learn, and to defend. What makes their theory novel is the way they apply it to the workplace. The authors use historical case studies to show that successful organizations are those that give their employees opportunities to fulfill all … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: Nitin Nohria, Paul Lawrence | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Herodotus, the Greek historian, reported that the ancient Persians always made important decisions twice—first when they were drunk, and then again when they were sober. Only if the Persians reached the same decision, drunk and sober, would they act on that decision.

In addition to using what might be called a second-chance meeting to review important decisions in an unbiased light, businesses should also take advantage … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Chunka Mui, Paul B. Carroll | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Greet­ings are the means by which individuals enter into social arrangements and relationships; the ways greetings are given, received, and reciprocated provide a means of reading status, power, group identity, and disposition toward cooperation or hostility.

Content: Quotation | Source: The Wilson Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Sandra Dawson addresses the changing role of women in business over the last 40 years.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Mary C. Meaney, Sandra Dawson | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: People, Women in Business

We need to think about failure in a more fine-grained way. Failures in organizations fall into three quite different types: unsuccessful trials, system breakdowns, and process deviations. All must be analyzed and dealt with, but the first category, which offers the richest potential for creative learning, involves overcoming deeply ingrained norms that stigmatize failure and thereby inhibit experimentation.

Content: Quotation | Author: Amy Edmondson | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Success / Failure

Jim March, professor emeritus at Stanford University…pointed out that our understanding of how to manage creativity is impeded by the lack of a theory of novelty, and proposed the beginnings of one. Three conditions seemed to him to be necessary for novelty—slack, hubris, and optimism—which suggest mechanisms that organizations could employ. Slack in an organizational setting means sufficient time and resources for exploration. Increasing hubris … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jim March, Mukti Khaire, Teresa M. Amabile | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Creativity, Innovation, Organizational Behavior

If companies genuinely want to move from knowing to doing, they need to build a forgiveness framework – a tolerance for error and failure — into their culture. A company that wants you to come up with a smart idea, implement that idea quickly, and learn in the process has to be willing to cut you some slack.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior, Success / Failure

At least as far back as Agamemnon and Achilles on the beaches of Troy, relationships have had the power to create or to destroy enormous amounts of capital—human, social, intellectual, and economic. Yet few among us can say anything even remotely systematic about how relationships work, develop, or change. […] If relationships can have such a decisive impact on the success, even survival, of leaders … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Diana McLain Smith | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Here’s a piece of advice: Don’t read this story if you have just had a fight with your spouse or a co-worker. You will probably ignore it, despite its grounding in solid academic research. At least that’s what Maurice Schweitzer, a Wharton professor of operations and information management, would suggest. In a recent co-authored paper, he shows that emotions not only influence people’s receptiveness to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Maurice Schweitzer | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Organizational Behavior

If Murphy’s Law is to be believed, we should be doing a lot more to prevent mistakes from happening in the first place, especially when such errors can potentially turn into disasters. Take Chernobyl or the more recent NASA Columbia catastrophe, events that will long be remembered, but for the wrong reasons.

At an organizational level, errors are usually less dramatic, but undesirable nonetheless.

Dave Hofmann, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Dave Hofmann | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior