3605 Posts Found

Few organizations know how to maximize knowledge worker performance to achieve optimum business results. Most executives focus exclusively on attracting and retaining talented individuals; few bother to ask how they can best support and enhance the performance of the knowledge workers they already employ. To determine how organizations can best enhance the performance of their knowledge workers, the authors studied how high-achievers solve problems and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Susan Cantrell, Thomas H. Davenport | Source: Accenture | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior

People today are raised to be niche thinkers. We’re all specialists in particular subject matters. We need to return to thinking more broadly to generate big ideas.

Content: Article | Author: Steve Hardy | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Poker’s own brand of ethics is different from the ethical ideals of civilized human relationships. The game calls for distrust of the other fellow. It ignores the claim of friendship. Cunning deception and concealment of one’s strength and intentions, not kindness and openheartedness, are vital in poker. No one thinks any the worse of poker on that account. And no one should think any the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Ethics

Running an organization does not license a manager to violate the norms and standards of society, but instead introduces a brand-new set of moral considerations based on stakeholder obligations. In respect of normatively legitimate stakeholders (e.g. financiers, employees, customers), the ethics of business implies more obligations rather than less.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Ethics, Social Responsibility (ESG)

On the playing field or in the boardroom, high performance depends as much on how people renew and recover energy as on how they expend it, on how they manage their lives as much as on how they manage their work. When people feel strong and resilient-physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually – they perform better, with more passion, for longer. They win, their families win, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Success / Failure

It’s been said that no one is a prophet in his own land, but can anyone be a prophet in his or her own organization? Apparently, the ancient adage seems to hold true even in our modern temples of commerce, says Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer. People in most companies, he has found, value knowledge possessed by outsiders more than they do knowledge possessed by members of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Isn’t stress the real test of personal and corporate values? The instant decisions executives make under pressure reveal the most about personal and corporate character.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Decision Making, Values

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rules on composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation, rather prevents loss than procures advantages; and often escapes miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honour. It quenches that ardour of enterprize, by which every thing is done that can claim praise or admiration, and represses that generous temerity which often fails and often succeeds. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Sources: Global Province, Idler 57 | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Personality / Behavior

Recruiters hiring business-school grads see a clear difference between male and female candidates.

Content: Article | Author: Ron Alsop | Source: CareerJournal (WSJ) | Subjects: Career, Women in Business

Workers’ general notions about the effectiveness of male and female managers can be as important as their actual leadership abilities or business results, according to a recent Wharton Executive Development program entitled, “Women in Leadership: Legacies, Opportunities & Challenges.” As a result, women executives need to be exceptionally aware of their own leadership styles and strengths — as well as changes underway in their organizations … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Leadership, Women in Business

The shift toward tacit (complex) interactions upends everything we know about organizations. Since the days of Alfred Sloan, corporations have resembled pyramids, with a limited number of tacit employees (managers) on top coordinating a broad span of workers engaged in production and transactional labor. Hierarchical structures and strict performance metrics that tabulate inputs and outputs therefore lie at the heart of most organizations today.

But the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Trends / Analysis

At its heart, reengineering is based on the century-old theory of Frederick Winslow Taylor, that variation is waste. His followers sought to root out variation by routinizing, and if possible automating, core business processes. This approach makes sense when applied to clerical, easily measured work, like insurance claims processing and call-center operations. But this process-oriented approach breaks down in cases where individuals must make decisions … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Strategy& | Subject: Reengineering

When endeavoring to improve internal customer service among individuals, workgroups, and departments, it is important to know what questions to address. The key questions should include:
* What do we measure?
* Who do we hold accountable?
* How do we begin to take action?

The assessment methodology and action learning process described here is one way to answer these questions.

Content: Article | Author: Charles D. Kerns, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Today’s virtual teams have yet to realize their full potential. They could learn a lot from Mother Nature’s teams.

Content: Article | Authors: Ken Thompson, Robin Good | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Organizational Behavior

To help organizations assess the return on their human capital investments, Accenture introduced a new assessment and analytic tool: the Accenture Human Capital Development Framework. The Accenture framework was developed by drawing on best practices and Accenture experience in human resource (HR) development, learning and knowledge management, workforce productivity, along with state-of-the-art measurement techniques. With the framework, an organization can better assess its core human … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: James M. Benton, Linda Kerzel, Meredith A. Vey, Robert J. Thomas, Susan Cantrell | Source: Accenture | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The goals of this article are to propose a free-market model of business ethics for firms of all sizes and types (by describing a past attempt to promote such a standard), to comment on the history of regulation and on the emergence and teachings of the discipline of “business ethics,” and to argue that Friedman’s perspective on corporate responsibility as outlined in 1970 and his … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Richard W. Wilcke | Source: The Independent Review | Subjects: Economics, Ethics

Teams that aren’t performing well or those being formed that won’t ever perform well are the victims of a mismatch of people with the project, the process, and the product. In quantifying these factors, the most complex and critical success element ‘the people who will do the work’ is often overlooked. While there are numerous reasons why teams fail, this paper has identified those that … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Customer Manufacturing Group | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Control the manner in which a man interprets his world, and you have gone a long way toward controlling his behavior.

Content: Quotation | Source: Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Since norms, whether formal or informal, reflect some underlying values, they are difficult to change unless it can be shown that the new behavior is also consistent with an important value, or that the old value itself needs to be changed.

Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

So much of what we hear and what we’re taught turns out to be false on closer scrutiny. Whether it is expert advice, what you read in the paper, or what your mother told you, if it is important, take the time to figure out for yourself whether it is really true.

Content: Quotation | Author: Steven D. Levitt | Sources: 800-CEO-READ (8CR), Business 2.0 | Subjects: Decision Making, Trends / Analysis