3590 Posts Found

A new book on workplace tensions among four generations — veterans, boomers, Xers, and nexters — explains why it’s so difficult for all of us to get along. So do you have a problem with that?

Content: Related Content | Author: Katharine Mieszkowski | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Demographics, Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

We mortals are changeable. Alas, I must say more apt to change our minds when right than wrong. Wrong, we are stubborn indeed. Right, we are prone to vacillate and let opportunity escape.

Content: Quotation | Author: George S. Clason | Source: The Richest Man in Babylon | Subjects: Opportunity, Personality / Behavior

Lyle’s Law of Certitude: The more certain you are that you are correct, the more imperative it is to consider that you might be wrong.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lyle D. Feisel | Source: Tau Beta Pi | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

Using your authority to beat people down in your company may help you in the short term, but it isn’t good for morale. Most savvy, sophisticated executives are natural wooers because they understand that one of the most important things to people is their self-esteem, and it’s counterproductive to force people to go along with your idea rather than convince them of its merits. When … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Persuasion, Power / Authority

When leading business thinker Gary Hamel analyzes the central problems with the modern hierarchical organization, he sees 5 debilitating deficits: too few voices are heard; creativity is confined and constrained; decisions are under informed; institutional barriers separate capital from talent; and an inability to adapt to fast-changing circumstances.

The fix? With its inherent ability to collect, store, share distributed data and knowledge, the Web can turn … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Gary Hamel, Sean Silverthorne | Source: BNET | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The lesson of nearly thirty years of research into the psychology of economic decision-making is that the ways we feel about money — having it, making it, losing it — seldom add up. As hundreds of experiments since the 1970s have confirmed, we are haunted by the prospect of loss. Our perceptions are easily skewed according to how a problem is presented. We turn blind … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Economics, Personality / Behavior

This study identifies the top five contemporary challenges of the matrix organizational form. It also provides managers with the best practices that will improve their matrix organizations.

Content: Article | Authors: Laura Sue D’Annunzio, Thomas Sy | Source: Human Resource Planning | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The traditional, hierarchically based 20th-century model is not effective at organizing the thinking-intensive work of self-directed people who need to make subjective judgments based upon their own special knowledge. Such people work in all companies, in all industries, and in the digital age it is these people who create wealth. We need a model for such work-a model that uses hierarchical decision making only for … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

HBS Professor Andrew McAfee blogs about social networking software (SNS) like Facebook and its direct applicability within companies. Notably, he discusses the work of Mark Granovetter, a sociologist who wrote “The Strength of Weak Ties” (SWT) in 1973, a seminal article which argues that weak ties might actually be the more important ones for innovation and knowledge sharing.

Content: Article | Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Organizational Behavior

Quick decisions based on wrong assumptions lead to quick trouble. Quick decisions based on a faulty analogy do the same. “Ready, fire, aim” is a prescription for poor marksmanship.

Richard Neustadt asks, “are you facing a problem that can be solved or a condition that must be treated?” Mistaking one or the other can be painful.

Are you using a flawed analogy? Assumptions that are not true? … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Emerald Now | Subject: Decision Making

Fear constrains behavior. Love liberates it. So, if all you need is compliance, fear will probably do. But fear freezes initiative, stifles creativity, and provides no incentive to stretch and grow. Love is about wanting and allowing people to be at their best, and engaging with them to help them achieve that.

Content: Quotation | Author: Phil Dourado | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Fear / Doubt, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

ABSTRACT: Post-M&A organizational cultural change is a traumatic experience for organizational members. It generates resistance and contributes to M&A failure. Nevertheless, the literature on managing post-M&A cultural change is scarce and largely focused on overcoming the debilitating impact of inter-organizational cultural differences on communication. We argue that focus on cultural differences is important but not sufficient for a successful management strategy. Other factors, such as … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Anna Zueva, Pervez Ghauri | Source: Manchester Business School | Subject: Organizational Behavior

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Turns out you don’t need a lot of top-down discipline when four conditions are met:
1. First-line employees are responsible for results.
2. Team members have access to real-time performance data.
3. They have decision authority over the key variables that influence performance outcomes.
4. There’s a tight coupling between results, compensation, and recognition.

Content: Quotation | Source: FORTUNE | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Despite the rash of corporate scandals and the resulting rush to address the problem by adding more laws and regulations, seemingly little attention has been paid to how the nature (not the substance) of rules may or may not affect ethical decision-making. Drawing on work in the law, ethics, management, psychology, and other social sciences, this paper explores how several characteristics of rules may interfere … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Michael L. Michael | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subject: Ethics

ManyWorlds takes a look at the work of Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee on emotional intelligence, including a look at the four dimensions (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management) and six leadership styles: Commanding (or Coercive), Authoritative (or Visionary), Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, and Coaching.

Content: Article | Source: ManyWorlds | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Why apparently good decisions prove to be bad ones is often blamed on internal and external factors – unexpected economic hiccups or flawed market research, for example. Only rarely are bad decisions seen as the result of bad decision making, the process that governs the way managers make decisions. But as this author explains, examining and improving how decisions are made can often make the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: J. Frank Yates | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

“Shadowed by peril as we are, you would think we’d get pretty good at distinguishing the risks likeliest to do us in from the ones that are statistical long shots. But you would be wrong.” Despite its misleading title, this article explores the human (not just American) tendency to get calculations of risk wrong.

Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Kluger | Source: TIME | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Risk Management

The problem — and the essence of what makes forecasting hard — is that human nature is hardwired to abhor uncertainty. We are fascinated by change, but in our effort to avoid uncertainty we either dismiss outliers entirely or attempt to turn them into certainties that they are not.

Content: Quotation | Sources: Harvard Business Review, Six Rules for Effective Forecasting | Subjects: Decision Making, Future

In the age of increased global mobility, falling trade barriers, and explosive growth in international business, global expansion is on the agenda of most large enterprises. The question on every global company’s mind is (or should be) how can they best organize themselves for international operations. How do you build a “Chaordic” organization that is adaptive to changing conditions, controlling at the center while empowering … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Karen V. Beaman | Source: ADP Global Services | Subjects: International, Organizational Behavior