3590 Posts Found

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

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

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

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

A new Harvard Business School working paper looks inside the communications “black box” of a large company to understand who talks to whom, and finds the corporate silo as impenetrable as ever. Q&A with professor Toby E. Stuart.

Content: Article | Authors: Sarah Jane Gilbert, Toby E. Stuart | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The environment has taken center stage recently in the media. Perhaps “environment” should be the word at the center of leadership conversations as well. Consciously or unconsciously, leaders cultivate the environment in their workplaces. Some are lush climates where leaders flourish and thrive, while others are toxic environments where leaders either leave or wither from the pollution. This article poses five questions about the environment … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: John Maxwell | Source: The Mindful Network | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

The environment has taken center stage recently in the media. Perhaps “environment” should be the word at the center of leadership conversations as well. Consciously or unconsciously, leaders cultivate the environment in their workplaces. Some are lush climates where leaders flourish and thrive, while others are toxic environments where leaders either leave or wither from the pollution. This article poses five questions about the environment … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: John Maxwell | Source: The Mindful Network | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Forget all you know about workplace interplay. Today’s younger generations have rewritten the rules of the game.

Editor’s Note: a lot of what’s written in this article didn’t ring true to me and seemed pure conjecture and a bit cynical but I’m a bit removed from this particular topic so maybe you’ll find it more accurate?

Content: Article | Author: Marilyn Moats Kennedy | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Demographics, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Many factors drive a company’s performance, not the least of which are entrepreneurial creativity and managerial effectiveness. In two papers recently presented at the fifth annual Atlanta Competitive Advantage Conference (ACAC) at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, U.S. and Australian faculty presented their research on the effects of group mood and managerial mental models on creative and structural dynamics, offering strategies for enhanced business success. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Emory | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered seriously looks strange; what looks strange is thought improbable; what is improbable need not be considered seriously.

Content: Quotation | Author: Thomas C. Schelling | Source: Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Foreword) | Subjects: Decision Making, Planning, Risk Management, Strategy

In 2006, things were not so great for Vodafone Spain. Its technology area was falling behind the rest of the company. Jaime Bustillo (CTO, Vodafone Spain), Pedro Diaz (HR Director, Vodafone Spain) and Luis Huete of IESE detail the immediate and necessary steps that Vodafone Spain’s technology area had to take to instate “The Ultimate Cultural Change,” which, by the first quarter of 2008, resulted … [ Read more ]

Content: Case Study | Authors: Jaime Bustillo, Luis Huete, Pedro Díaz | Source: IESE Business School | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Vodafone

Companies are vulnerable to misconceptions, biases, and plain old lies. But not hopelessly vulnerable.

Content: Article | Authors: Dan P. Lovallo, Olivier Sibony | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Strategy

There is little evidence that the ability of today’s organizations to accurately understand the world and predict the future has increased one iota. Massive spending on these [information] systems has not prevented corporations from wandering off the beaten strategic path, or being ambushed by new competitors and changing markets, and I would argue that the reason for this is a natural tension between the pursuits … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Roger L. Martin | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

[Philip Zimbardo’s] observations belie the standard explanation offered by business leaders when people in their organizations are caught misbehaving: Hey, there are a few bad apples in any barrel. Zimbardo argues that, in fact, ethical problems in organizations originate with the “barrel makers” — the leaders who, wittingly or not, create and maintain the systems within which participants are encouraged to do wrong. Hence, instead … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James O’Toole | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Ethics, Organizational Behavior

Abundance has satisfied, and even over-satisfied, the material needs of millions—boosting the significance of beauty and emotion and accelerating individuals’ search for meaning.

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Pink | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales, Personality / Behavior

From the time our ancestors lived in caves to that day in the late ’80s when Chrysler sanctioned unofficial “tech clubs” to promote the flow of information between teams working on different vehicle platforms, bands of like-minded individuals had been gathering in a wide variety of settings to recount their experiences and share their expertise. Few paid much attention until a number of possible benefits … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, William Snyder | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Much quantitative data—what we now think of as hard, concrete facts—are really quite soft and abstract.

Think about it. We come up with a question—say, how’s morale? We create abstract categories related to that question, categories like trust, confidence, or autonomy; we use these categories to formulate statements in some kind of survey; we give the survey to lots of people; we ask them to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Diana McLain Smith | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Market Research, Miscellaneous, Organizational Behavior

If there’s anything we’re wired to do, it’s learn. That means even folks arguably difficult by nature can become less so—at least most of them. It also means we shouldn’t assume, as we almost always do, that someone’s incapable of change just because our efforts to make them change fail. The biggest reason people don’t realize their full potential for change is that we focus … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Diana McLain Smith | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

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