3605 Posts Found

Ethics programs have arisen in response to the public’s outcry over the perceived unethical behavior of American business. The rapid response in the establishment of ethics programs is encouraging, though interesting issues have emerged that merit discussion.

Content: Article | Author: Jere E. Yates | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Ethics

How do you define your people? Through the economic expansions and contractions of the past twenty years, executives have struggled to define and redefine the employer-employee relationship, using various analogies, metaphors, and sound bites to explain the complex, shifting connection.

Employees are no longer personnel, costs, or workers—they’re associates, assets, thinkers. They’re certainly not cogs in the industrial machine—today, they’re key links in the customer value … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: John M. Bremen, Thomas O. Davenport | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counterintuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers—and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Margaret A. Heffernan | Source: TED Conferences LLC | Subject: Organizational Behavior

There’s a human law that says that the gap between the one at the top and the average is a constant. And it’s terribly hard to work on that huge average. You work on the few at the top, and you raise them, and the rest will follow.

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Education, Management, Organizational Behavior, Training & Development

Five ways to boost the impact of new endeavors without adding bureaucracy or cost.

Content: Article | Authors: Jørn Bang Andersen, Robert C. Wolcott | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

You can’t build a great company by tolerating mediocre leaders. A Q&A with Raad Al-Saady, managing director at Abdul Latif Jameel.

Content: Thought Leader | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Anyone who pulls the organization in new directions must look inward as well as outward.

Content: Article | Authors: Erica Ariel Fox, Nate Boaz | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Where we get in trouble in this world is that people are pushing and shoving for three things: money, recognition, and power and status. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things—except if you define yourself by them. See, the opposite of money as a drive is generosity, generosity of time, talent, and treasure. The opposite of recognition is service, and the opposite of power … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ken Blanchard | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Wisdom

I’ve been studying decision-making at the top for many years and what I’ve found is that good decisions nearly always result from robust decision processes. Similarly, decisions that go wrong nearly always stem from procedural or organizational failures. In fact, just five mistakes account for the vast majority of poor decisions.

Content: Article | Author: Michael C. Mankins | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

Being prepared to make major changes is what most executives will not do or are not prepared to do. Certainly this is true of corporate boards. Look at their makeup: twelve guys who are in other businesses and who have other lives to live. Why would they want to create havoc? So […] they’ll make cautious instead of intrepid decisions. Boards are set up to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ricardo Semler | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Change Management, Corporate Governance, Management, Organizational Behavior

By eliminating the bottom 10 percent every year, you’re losing a tremendous investment, because these people could change places and be used in other ways. You’re also sending the message up and down the line that your company is a military hierarchy. The Welch paradigm is, after all, a military paradigm; it is a Norman Schwarzkopf paradigm. What’s the difference between them? None to speak … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ricardo Semler | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Human Resources, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

The Columbia Business School professor says the era of sustainable competitive advantage is being replaced by an age of flexibility. Are you ready?

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Rita Gunther McGrath, Theodore Kinni | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

It’s so easy for people to hide behind a mission statement, to follow the military model—to go there, find, and destroy. Why? That’s not a question to be asked. In the end, a mission statement is reductionist: If this is my mission, then everything else is not. Even more so a credo. When you say, That’s the way we do things around here, that signals … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ricardo Semler | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Management, Mission, Organizational Behavior, Vision

Simple decision rules, structures and relationships are not likely to be effective approaches when the task at hand involves making decisions in the context of complex systems. Ironically, many of our most embedded management practices—such as designing for optimization and for efficiency—only exacerbate the risks of things going wrong at a systems level. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the most robust complex systems are often not designed for … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Gökçe Sargut, Rita Gunther McGrath | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior, Risk Management

In a Stanford GSB presentation, the retired general explains how to succeed in a rapidly changing environment.

Content: Article | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

There’s a pretty healthy tradition in the U.S. of socializing debt and privatizing gain. I don’t think it’s worked out very well.

Content: Quotation | Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics, Government, Politics

In his book The Will to Lead, Marvin Bower urges senior managers to abandon command-and-control structures and adopt a program to develop leaders, starting with themselves. In this excerpt, he explores the attributes of leadership.

Editor’s Note: for someone of the author’s experience and reputation, I expected more from this piece. I am not saying there isn’t anything of value, but much of it is … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Marvin Bower | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

There’s a lot of research that says that people are motivated and retained by three critical things. The first and most important is their personal development. The second is social connectiveness. In other words, they really like the people they work with; a great team they’re with; their boss nurtures and supports them and gives them feedback. Third is that they’re recognized, and part of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Christopher A. Bartlett | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

I’ve been studying decision-making at the top for many years, and what I’ve found is that good decisions nearly always result from robust decision processes. Similarly, decisions that go wrong nearly always stem from procedural or organizational failures. In fact, when I and my colleagues at Bain & Co. conduct postmortems into decisions, we find that just five mistakes account for the vast majority of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Michael C. Mankins | Sources: Harvard Business Review, The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Finding the proper organizational model for a given firm is inherently difficult, but not impossible. If aligning the organization with the strategy is necessary for success, then finding out how the organization is impeding the strategy can lead to important insights about what has to change. Most organizations were not built by master designers; they have evolved over time in response to forces they see … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jeffrey W. Bennett, Paul F. Kocourek, Steven B. Hedlund, Thomas E. Pernsteiner | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior