261 Posts found for Source: European Business Forum (EBF)

With slow growth in its core European market, mobile phone giant Vodafone must focus its attention on emerging countries and new data services.

Content: Case Study | Author: Ashok Som | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Industry Specific | Industry: Telecommunications | Company: Vodafone

If you have a great idea, you want to set up your own firm, make a quick buck and a swift exit, then the limited liability structure makes sense. If, however, you want to grow a successful company over the long term, you should steer clear of the classical limited liability formula – it gives too much power to too few people.

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Legal

Businesses in the Western world are still governed by antiquated corporation laws. In the past, employees were regarded as an adjunct to business; they were simply the “hands” to operate the machines. Power was concentrated at the top. The law gave priority to the shareholders, based on the assumption that the human elements were mere extensions of the capital assets.

Most of today’s corporations, however, have … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Legal

Some knowledge is best treated as discrete. Knowledge that is well codified and will readily diffuse is often best served by hoarding strategies. Other types of knowledge may best be treated as residing in densely connected networks. Some of it may be well codified and abstract, some may take a narrative form, but much of it will remain embodied and won’t readily diffuse. It may … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Knowledge

A preoccupation with protecting and hoarding knowledge may actually prevent a company from creating new knowledge. Protection and creation are incompatible urges. The company that spends most of its energy hoarding and protecting its knowledge will have less energy for generating new knowledge and innovations in all aspects of its business. Innovative companies are generally those that do not rest on their intellectual laurels, but … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Innovation, Knowledge

Many “best practices”, though useful for illustrative reasons, are not ultimately implemented, because they don’t come with sufficient context to be successfully applied.

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Best Practices

Emirates Airline has bucked industry slumps with a 25 per cent annual growth rate since it was founded in 1985. What lies behind its success and what challenges does it face as it prepares to step up its expansion?

Content: Case Study | Authors: Donald Sull, L. Felipe Monteiro | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Industry Specific | Industry: Airlines | Company: Emirates Airline

Everyone is against micro managing but I think macro managing is far worse; it means you’re working at the big picture but you don’t know the details. CEOs who adopt this approach are incapable of coming up with interesting strategies or fresh approaches because they don’t know what’s going on in the business at ground level.

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Management

MBA programmes tend to emphasise analysis and technique – they teach you to understand market research, to evaluate financial data and so on. All those things are fine and important but if you take that to be management, you’re in trouble. Conventional MBA programmes are mostly for young people with little or no experience. Management isn’t a science or a profession that can be taught … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Management, MBA Related

The only helpful way to examine organisations and their management is as something neither moral nor immoral, but simply a phenomenon; not to look for proof that industry is honourable or dishonourable, but only for patterns of success and failure… and for the forces which produce them.

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Organizational Behavior

Machiavelli maintains that a sufficiency of virtú (virtue) allows leaders to recognize when chance has given them an opportunity, and to take advantage of fortuna (luck) by reacting quicker than competitors or opponents.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Morgen Witzel, Niccoló Machiavelli | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Leadership

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Attention, Information

It’s not just weak organisations that spiral into decline and fail. Managerial arrogance and inflexibility can bring even great companies to their knees.

Content: Article | Authors: Jagdish Sheth, Rajendra Sisodia | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Strategy, Trends / Analysis

The world’s most famous management writer may have spent most of his working life in the US, but he owes many of his ideas to his European origins.

Content: Article | Author: Peter Starbuck | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: History, People

Businesses aren’t based around relationships, as current theories of organisation would have us believe. They are based around physical things. So what are the implications for leaders, managers and employees?

Content: Article | Author: Brian Moeran | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Remember that old adage about a leader being someone who will take you to places you would never go on your own. Well, if you allow them to, customers will do that for you. If you really listen, they will tell you exactly where you are as a business. They tell you the painful truth, they are not worried about careers or promotion and they … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Customer Related, Leadership

Things bring people together. They oblige them to interact, and to enter into exchanges. Every day, organisations and institutions of all sorts are formed around things. Things create social situations that, in some cases, their participants are no more than dimly aware of and, in others, use ruthlessly to their advantage. Thus things take on a “social density”, contributing to and reinforcing certain kinds of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Organizational Behavior

An organisation’s unwillingness to change comes from the myopia of its leadership. An inability to change, on the other hand, comes from its processes.

Companies can be classified according to these two dimensions. Captive companies are those that are willing but not able to change. Arrogant companies have the ability to change, but are unwilling to do so. Legacy companies are neither willing nor able … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

For innovations to happen, someone must cross a boundary, and ideas must flow freely. It can be the boundary between two labs, between vendor and buyer, between two countries, between two sciences or between two schools. But it must be crossed. The power of innovation always lies in the combination of disparate constituents.

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Innovation

Is Europe too resistant to change? This is a tough question for Europe’s businesses to address as they strive to commercialise ideas that will become winning products and services in the global marketplace. Likewise it is a pressing question for policy makers, as stimulating innovation is one of the most pressing items on the EU agenda. This EBF debate offers discussion on the question by … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: International – Europe