3605 Posts Found

I have seen brilliant entrepreneurial strategies falter as an organization grows and matures. Obviously, you manage a $25 billion company differently than you do a $25 million company. But you change your practices, not your principles. You learn how to communicate with large numbers of employees by using videotapes, newsletters, weekly updates, frequent visits to the field. You share not only what’s going on in … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

A financial analyst once asked me if I was afraid of losing control of our organization. I told him I’ve never had control and I never wanted it. If you create an environment where the people truly participate, you don’t need control. They know what needs to be done, and they do it. And the more that people will devote themselves to your cause on … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

…everyone has a core drama that leads to their personality style. What makes each of us the person we are is the dominance of some inner wish. The wish to be loved, or to be understood, or noticed. The wish to be free from conflict, or to help, or to be able to hurt others. The wish to achieve or the wish to fail. When … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: CGE&Y Center for Business Innovation (CBI) | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

“An astute observer of large corporations, Professor Todd R. Zenger noticed that many companies appeared to switch back and forth irrationally between a centralized and decentralized structure. Traditional organizational theory dictates that organizations choose a structure based on the notion of “contingent fit.” That is, an organization’s structure is matched to market strategies, exchange conditions, or the environment. As long as these factors remain stable, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Discovery@Olin | Subject: Organizational Behavior

In his classic novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon. A karass is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable links, that actually gets stuff done. A granfalloon, on the other hand, is a “false karass,” a bureaucratic structure that looks like a team but is “meaningless in terms of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Steven Johnson | Source: Discover | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist [or] … academic scribbler of a few years back.

Content: Quotation | Source: Business 2.0 | Subjects: Economics, Politics

A number of companies have discovered how difficult it is to do well by doing good. Some question whether it makes any economic sense at all.

Content: Article | Author: Andrew W. Singer | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Ethics, Social Responsibility (ESG)

It is not enough to change or re-regulate the rules of corporate capitalism. The present crisis requires a more substantive transformation of business.

Content: Article | Author: Laszlo Zsolnai | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Ethics, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Culture. We blithely use the term for just about anything–a vibrant culture, a dominant culture, a corporate culture. But do we really know what we’re saying, what culture really means? Or do we most often assume that the term is just a convenient way to group those with a common purpose or goal and a method for achieving it? Isn’t a corporate culture, for example, … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Edgar H. Schein | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Paying your employees more for hitting specific targets may backfire, according to HBS professor Michael Beer. As he learned in his study of thirteen pay-for-performance plans at Hewlett-Packard, the unspoken contract may make or break these programs.

Content: Article | Author: Martha Lagace | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Effective organizations put people in jobs in which they can do the most good. They place people — and allow people to place themselves — according to their strengths.

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Globalization undermines neither the welfare state nor democracy, our survey argues; it is entirely consistent with sound environmental policies; above all, far from increasing poverty in the third world, it is the most effective force for reducing poverty known to mankind. But what about the view that globalization is a kind of cultural conquest? This too is plainly wrong. Under a market system, economic interaction … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: The Economist | Subjects: Culture, International

This browsable, well-maintained directory of resources related to business ethics includes articles, publications, case studies, corporate codes of ethics, professional organizations and associations, and more. From librarian Sharon Stoerger of the University of Illinois.

Content: Online Resource | Author: Sharon Stoerger | Subject: Ethics

This is a penetrating exploration of the challenge of business ethics – free of preachy prescriptions – from three of today’s most influential psychologists. The book, based on a five-year study of multiple professions, examines the kinds of changes that would probably need to occur in business management for ethics-oriented systems to take root.

Content: Book | Authors: Howard E. Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon | Subjects: Ethics, Social Responsibility (ESG)

The five A’s vs one R and a conversation with the authors of The Trusted Leader.

Content: Article | Authors: Anne Seibold Drapeau, Robert Galford | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Great book on how to coach by focusing on the good to best employees instead of the traditional approach which focuses more on problem employees. The authors are two Babson Professors who are also consultants. The book was used one of my MBA courses and it is well-written and provides many real-world cases and applications. I recommend this book highly.

Content: Book | Authors: James Hunt, Joseph Weintraub | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Corporate “vision” is one of management theory’s less coherent concepts, and this ambitious study attempts to make it a little clearer. Lipton, a management professor and founder of an eponymous consulting firm, argues that growing companies require a vision-a “precise idea of their raison d’etre, strategy and values” that is both inspiring and concrete enough to guide action. His aim herein is to give readers … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Mark Lipton | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Aligning IT with the business tops the list of goals for most CIOs. Here are the top IT issues and challenges facing CIOs in achieving that goal.

Content: Article | Author: Harris Kern | Source: TechRepublic | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Organizational Behavior

“Executives spend too much time drafting, wordsmithing, and redrafting vision statements, mission statements, values statements, purpose statements, aspiration statements, and so on. They spend nowhere near enough time trying to align their organizations with the values and visions already in place.”

Content: Article | Author: Jim Collins | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

A classic written more than 25 years ago dealing with the ins and outs of corporate life.

Content: Book | Author: Robert Townsend | Subject: Organizational Behavior