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MANAGEMENT AND ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR 7E
Mullins
Pearson Education 2005
Case Title
Source,
Number,
Length,
Teaching
Note
Geographical and
Industry Setting,
Company Size,
Timeframe
Chapter 2: The Nature of Organisational Behaviour
Management by
HBR Article
Organizational Behaviour
Whose
Reprint #
and Leadership
Objectives?
R0301H 9p
(HBR Classic)
GE's TwoDecade
Transformation:
Jack Welch's
Leadership
HBSP
# 9-399-150
24p
United States, Global;
industrial conglomerate;
$100 billion revenues;
293,000 employees; 19811998
Case Decision Issue
In this 1970 classic HBR article,
Harry Levinson shares practical
insights into the mysteries of
motivation and takes a fresh look
at the use and abuse of the most
powerful tools for inspiring and
guiding complex organizations. He
argues that to motivate people
successfully, management must
focus on the question, "How do we
meet both individual and
organizational requirements?"
When we make assumptions about
individual motivations and
increase pressure based on them,
we ignore the fact that people
work to meet their own
psychological needs. Commitment
must derive from the individual's
wishes to support the
organization's goals. Yet, the
individual's desires are entirely
absent from most performance
measurement systems; managers
assume that these desires are
perfectly aligned with corporate
goals and that if they're not, the
individual should move on. Selfmotivation occurs when individual
needs and organizational
requirements converge. Successful
management systems begin with
the employee's objectives. The
manager's task is to understand
the employee's needs and then,
with the employee, assess how
well the organization can meet
them.
GE is faced with Welch's
impending retirement and the
question on many minds is
whether anyone can sustain the
blistering pace of change and
growth characteristic of the Welch
era. After briefly describing GE's
heritage and Welch's
transformation of the company's
business portfolio of the 1980s,
the case chronicles Welch's
revitalization initiatives through
the late 1980s and 1990s. It
focuses on six of Welch's major
change programs: The "Software"
Initiatives, Globalization,
Redefining Leadership, Stretch
Objectives, Service Business
Development, and Six Sigma
Quality. Teaching Purpose: Can be
Southwest
Airlines: Using
Human
Resources for
Competitive
Advantage (A)
Case HR1A 24p
United States; airlines;
$2.2 billion revenues;
12,000 employees; 1994
Southwest
Airlines: Using
Human
Resources for
Competitive
Advantage (B)
Case # HR1B
7p
United States; airlines;
$2.2 billion revenues;
12,000 employees; 1994
Southwest
Airlines: Using
Human
Resources for
Competitive
Advantage (A)
and (B),
Teaching Note
Understanding
“People” People
Teaching Note
# HR1T 3p
United States; airlines;
$2.2 billion revenues;
12,000 employees; 1994
HBR Article
Reprint
#R0406E 9p
Human resources
management
used to develop multiple lessons,
including corporate strategy
development, transformational
change, management and
leadership, and corporate renewal.
In 1994 both United Airlines and
Continental Airlines launched lowcost airlines-within-an-airline to
compete with Southwest Airlines.
From 1991 until 1993 Southwest
had increased its market share of
the critical West Coast market
from 26% to 45%. This case
considers how Southwest had
developed a sustainable
competitive advantage and
emphasizes the role of human
resources as a lever for the
successful implementation of
strategy. Asks whether
competitors can successfully
imitate the Southwest approach.
During a summer executive
program for human resource
executives, the (A) case was
assigned. After reading the case, a
study group of four executives
decided that the description in the
(A) case was too positive and
could not be accurate. To test this,
the four conducted an impromptu
field study of the Southwest
station in San Jose. These
executives interviewed six
employees on duty. They reported
their findings during the case
discussion the following day. This
case is based on that report.
Nearly all areas of business--not
just sales and human resources-call for interpersonal savvy.
Relational know-how comprises a
greater variety of aptitudes than
many executives think. Some
people can "talk a dog off a meat
truck," as the saying goes. Others
are great at resolving
interpersonal conflicts. Some have
a knack for translating high-level
concepts for the masses. And
others thrive when they're
managing a team. Because people
do their best work when it most
closely matches their interests,
the authors contend, managers
can increase productivity by
taking into account employees'
relational interests and skills when
making personnel choices and
project assignments. After
analyzing the psychological tests
of more than 7,000 business
professionals, the authors
identified four dimensions of
relational work: influence,
interpersonal facilitation, relational
creativity, and team leadership.
This article explains each one and
offers practical advice to
managers--how to build a wellbalanced team, for instance, and
how to gauge the relational skills
of potential employees during
interviews. Understanding these
four dimensions will help you get
optimal performance from your
employees, appropriately reward
their work, and assist them in
setting career goals. It will also
help you make better choices
when it comes to your own career
development. To get started, try
the authors' free online
assessment tool, which measures
both your orientation toward
relational work in general and
your interest level in each of its
four dimensions.
Chapter 3: Approaches to organisation and management
Is Management
HBR Reprint
Negotiations
Still a Science?
Article
# 92603 8p
Why HardNosed
Executives
Should Care
About
Management
Theory
HBR Article
Reprint
# R0309D
7p
General management
Frederick Taylor's traditional
scientific approach to
management promised to provide
managers with the capacity to
predict and control the behavior of
the complex organizations they
led. But the world most managers
now inhabit often appears to be
unpredictable and even
uncontrollable. In the face of this
more volatile business
environment, the old-style
mechanisms of "scientific
management" seem positively
counterproductive. Just as
managers have become more
preoccupied with the volatility of
the business environment,
scientists have also become
preoccupied with the inherent
volatility--the "chaos" and
"complexity"--of nature. They are
developing new rules for complex
behavior in physical systems that
have intriguing parallels to the
kind of organizational behaviors
today's companies are trying to
encourage.
Theory often gets a bum rap
among managers because it's
associated with the word
"theoretical," which connotes
"impractical." But it shouldn't.
Because experience is solely about
the past, solid theories are the
only way managers can plan
future actions with any degree of
confidence. The key word here is
"solid." Gravity is a solid theory.
As such, it lets us predict that if
we step off a cliff we will fall,
without actually having to do so.
But business literature is replete
with theories that don't seem to
work in practice or actually
Spin-Out
Management:
Theory and
Practice
Business
Horizons Article
# BH088 10p
Organizational behaviour
and leadership
Chapter 4: The Nature of Organisations
The Ritz-Carlton HBSP
Washington, DC;
Hotel Co.
#9-601-163
hospitality; $1.5 billion
31p
revenues; 18,000
Teaching Notes
employees; 2000
#9-602-113
contradict each other. How can a
manager tell a good business
theory from a bad one? The first
step is to understand how good
theories are built. They develop in
stages: gathering data, organizing
it into categories, highlighting
significant differences, then
making generalizations explaining
what causes what, under which
circumstances. For instance,
professor Ananth Raman and his
colleagues collected data showing
that bar code-scanning systems
generated notoriously inaccurate
inventory records. These
observations led them to classify
the types of errors the scanning
systems produced and the types
of shops in which those errors
most often occurred. Recently,
some of Raman's doctoral
students worked as clerks to see
exactly what kinds of behavior
cause the errors. From this
foundation, a solid theory
predicting under which
circumstances bar code systems
work and don't work is beginning
to emerge. Once we forgo onesize-fits-all explanations and insist
that a theory describes the
circumstances under which it does
and doesn't work, we can bring
predictable success to the world of
management.
The structure of a firm plays a key
role in building an innovative and
market-driven organization. Due
to failures in the structure of
companies, growth opportunities
are sometimes not fully realized.
Spin-out management is a process
by which a new or existing part of
the organization is diversified from
the parent company. The goal is
to develop independently related
activities that enhance the firm's
innovative capabilities while
profiting at the same time from
the assets of the parent company,
thereby improving the staying
power of both.
In just seven days, The RitzCarlton transforms newly hired
employees into "Ladies and
Gentlemen Serving Ladies and
Gentlemen." The case details a
new hotel launch, focusing on the
unique blend of leadership, quality
processes, and values of selfrespect and dignity, to create
award-winning service. Teaching
Purpose: Allows students to
examine innovation and
improvement in a service industry.
Raises questions of when and how
to innovate in a successful service
operating system and the
The People Who
Make
Organizations
Go--or Stop
HBR Article
Reprint
#0206G 8p
Organizational behaviour
and analysis
Mary Kay
HBSP
Texas; cosmetics; $100
challenges of innovation for a
brand built on customer
experience. Teaching points
include the role of leadership and
values in creating a culture of
service and the need to manage
the tension between standardized
quality procedures and the
cultivation of empowered
employees who can customize
each interaction to meet the needs
of their customers.
Managers invariably use their
personal contacts when they need
to, say, meet an impossible
deadline or learn the truth about a
new boss. Increasingly, it's
through these informal networks-not just through traditional
organizational hierarchies--that
information is found and work gets
done. But to many senior
executives, informal networks are
unobservable and ungovernable-and, therefore, not amenable to
the tools of management. As a
result, executives tend to work
around informal networks or,
worse, try to ignore them. When
they do acknowledge the
networks' existence, executives
fall back on intuition--scarcely a
dependable tool--to guide them in
nurturing this social capital. It
doesn't have to be that way. It is
entirely possible to develop and
manage informal networks
systematically, say management
experts Cross and Prusak.
Specifically, senior executives
need to focus their attention on
four key role-players in informal
networks: Central connectors link
most employees in an informal
network with one another; they
provide the critical information or
expertise that the entire network
draws on to get work done.
Boundary spanners connect an
informal network with other parts
of the company or with similar
networks in other organizations.
Information brokers link different
subgroups in an informal network;
if they didn't, the network would
splinter into smaller, less effective
segments. And finally, there are
peripheral specialists, who anyone
in an informal network can turn to
for specialized expertise but who
work apart from most people in
the network. The authors describe
the four roles in detail, discuss the
use of a well-established tool
called social network analysis for
determining who these roleplayers are in the network, and
suggest ways that executives can
transform ineffective informal
networks into productive ones.
Introduces the student to Mary
Cosmetics Inc.
#9-481-126
13p
million sales per year;
1963-1980
Kay Cosmetics, Inc., its business,
its strategy, and its organization.
Provides the necessary
background for understanding the
contributions of Mary Kay Ash, the
company's founder and chairman.
Chapter 5: Organisational Goals, Strategy and Responsibilities
Ben & Jerry's
HBSP
Burlington, VT; ice
Ben & Jerry's is an antiHomemade Ice
#9-392-025
cream; mid-size; $58.5
establishment, values-driven
Cream, Inc.:
22p
million 1989 sales; 330
company that has become a
Keeping the
employees; 1991
successful venture. The dominant
Mission(s) Alive
founder, Ben Cohen, is not an
effective manager, but he brings
creative marketing and product
skills that have been important to
the company's success. He also is
controlling shareholder and the
force behind the company's
socially-minded culture. One of
the many policies that have
reflected Ben's values but which
has created difficulty in managing
the organization is the 5 to 1
compensation differential between
the top and the bottom of the
organization. Up to mid 1990, the
company was operating in an
explosive growth business with
relatively weak competitors; this
has changed by the time of the
case in September 1990. The case
opens as Chuck Lacy is taking
over as president. He needs to
decide what to do about the 5 to 1
rule and the related issues of
Ben's role, and the value of the
company's counterculture style.
Students must consider the
difficulty and importance of the
general manager's responsibility in
reconciling company values with
commercial imperatives and to
consider the effect of
compensation policy on morale
and organizational effectiveness.
Jan Carlzon:
HBSP
Sweden/Global;
Describes Jan Carlzon's actions on
CEO at SAS (A)
# 9-392-149
airline; large; $4
assuming the CEO's responsibility
16p
billion sales;
at SAS in a time of financial and
20,000 employees;
organizational difficulty. After
1980-1990
tracing Carlzon's development as
a manager, it focuses on the way
in which he developed, then
communicated a clear and
motivating strategic mission to
become "the world's best
businessman's airline." After a
spectacular turnaround,
organizational problems reemerge, and the case concludes
with Carlzon wondering if his
"second wave" can provide the
same impetus that he gained on
his first wave. Highlights the
power of a clear and wellcommunicated strategic mission
(strategic intent), but also
explores problems and limits that
can arise. Specifically, focuses on
the common problem of
motivating middle managers who
often feel disenfranchised by front
What’s a
Business For?
HBR Article
Reprint #
R0212C
6p
Social enterprise &
ethics
Corruption in
International
Business (A)
HBSP
# 9-701-128
10p
Business and government
Corruption in
International
Business (B)
HBSP
# 9-701-129
10p
Business and
government
line empowerment.
In the wake of the recent
corporate scandals, it's time to
reconsider the assumptions
underlying American-style stockmarket capitalism. That heady
doctrine--in which the market is
king, success is measured in
terms of shareholder value, and
profits are an end in themselves-enraptured America for a
generation, spread to Britain
during the 1980s, and recently
began to gain acceptance in
Continental Europe. But now,
many wonder whether the
American model is corrupt. The
American scandals are not just a
matter of dubious personal ethics
or of rogue companies fudging the
odd billion. And the cure for the
problems will not come solely from
tougher regulations. We must also
ask more fundamental questions:
Whom and what is a business for?
And are traditional ownership and
governance structures suited to
the knowledge economy?
According to corporate law, a
company's financiers are its
owners, and employees are
treated as property and recorded
as costs. But whereas that might
have been true in the early days
of industry, it does not reflect
today's reality. Now a company's
assets are increasingly found in
the employees who contribute
their time and talents rather than
in the stockholders who
temporarily contribute their
money. The language and
measures of business must be
reversed. In a knowledge
economy, a good business is a
community with a purpose, not a
piece of property.
Explores various aspects of
corruption in international
business. This case is organized in
two sections. The first section
provides a broad discussion of the
ethical, business, and legal
aspects of corruption. The second
section provides a series of
"caselets" that are designed to
promote discussion of how
students would act in particular
situations, as well as the potential
costs and benefits of these
actions. Teaching Purpose: To
introduce students to the issues
surrounding corruption in
international business.
Focuses on efforts to combat
corruption. Approaches include
international laws, international
agreements, efforts by
international development
organizations, and private efforts
by firms and non-governmental
Dawn Riley at
America True
(A)
HBSP
# 9-401-006
17p
San Francisco, CA; sports;
start-up; 100 employees;
1999-2000
Chapter 6: The Nature of Management
The Ritz-Carlton HBSP
Washington, DC;
Hotel Co.
#9-601-163
hospitality; $1.5 billion
31p
revenues; 18,000
Teaching Notes
employees; 2000
#9-602-113
Cambridge
Consulting
Group: Bob
Anderson
HBSP
# 9-496-023
5p
Boston, MA; consulting;
$85 million revenues
organizations. Teaching Purpose:
To introduce students to the
issues surrounding corruption in
international business.
Dawn Riley is the CEO/Captain of
America True, the first coed
syndicate to race for the America's
Cup. Over three years, based on
her vision for America True, she
built the syndicate from scratch,
bringing on investors and
sponsors, designing and building a
boat, and hiring a sailing crew to
race it. In June 1999, Riley must
decide how to handle the San
Francisco office now that America
True's base of operations is
moving to Auckland, New Zealand,
where racing will begin in four
months. She is facing pressure to
phase out the office to cut down
on costs, but Riley believes that
the people in San Francisco and
the work they are doing are key to
her vision for America True. She
must weigh the tension between
immediate pressures to win and
the longer-term sustainability of
her vision. Teaching Purpose: To
demonstrate the challenges of
leading a start-up: the importance
of communicating a vision,
aligning people around that vision,
and executing on it. To explore
issues of gender and power.
In just seven days, The RitzCarlton transforms newly hired
employees into "Ladies and
Gentlemen Serving Ladies and
Gentlemen." The case details a
new hotel launch, focusing on the
unique blend of leadership, quality
processes, and values of selfrespect and dignity, to create
award-winning service. Teaching
Purpose: Allows students to
examine innovation and
improvement in a service industry.
Raises questions of when and how
to innovate in a successful service
operating system and the
challenges of innovation for a
brand built on customer
experience. Teaching points
include the role of leadership and
values in creating a culture of
service and the need to manage
the tension between standardized
quality procedures and the
cultivation of empowered
employees who can customize
each interaction to meet the needs
of their customers.
Describes the situation facing the
head of a rapidly growing
industry-focused group within a
consulting company. Highlights
the dilemmas of being a
"producing manager" (i.e., a
professional who has both
A Letter to the
Chief Executive
HBR Article
Reprint
#R0210G
6p
Organizational behaviour
and leadership
Jeanne Lewis at
Staples, Inc. (A)
(Abridged)
HBSP
# 9-400-065
14p
Boston, MA; office supplies;
$5 billion revenues; 30,000
employees; 1997
individual production as well as
management responsibilities).
Issues raised include: delegation,
developing subordinates,
developing an agenda, and
building an organization. Teaching
Purpose: Demonstrates dilemmas
of the producing manager's role.
Beyond the recent accounting
scandals, something is wrong with
the way most companies are
managed today. That's the
message of this fictional letter
from a board member to a CEO,
written by Joseph Fuller, CEO of
the strategy consulting firm
Monitor Group. The letter
highlights the challenges and
complexities of running a business
in today's uncertain environment.
The letter addresses a single CEO
and company, yet it is intended to
speak to executives and boards
everywhere: "It wasn't the
recession that caused us to make
3 acquisitions in 2 years at very,
very high prices; the need to fuel
[unreasonable] growth did. Nor
was it the recession that caused
us to expand our capacity in
anticipation of gaining market
share; rather, it was our own
overly optimistic sales forecasts
that led us to that decision. Where
did those forecasts originate?
From line managers trying to fulfill
profit goals that we created after
meeting with the analysts. The
root cause of many of the
problems that became apparent in
the last 24 months lies not with
the economy, not with September
11, and not with the dot-com
bubble. Rather, it lies with that
willingness to be led by outside
forces--indeed, our own lack of
conviction about setting a course."
Restoring sound, strategic decision
making--thinking that looks
beyond tomorrow's analyst
reports--will go a long way toward
keeping those outside forces at
bay, according to Fuller.
Jeanne Lewis, after six years with
Staples, Inc., is promoted to
senior vice president of marketing.
She is to work for fifteen months
alongside her predecessor, a
legacy in the organization,
"learning the ropes" before he
moves on. This case is set nine
months after she begins working
with the marketing department. At
this time, Staples has just
emerged from a period of
prolonged litigation around an FTC
antitrust suit challenging Staples'
attempted merger with Office
Depot. Post-merger, Lewis must
determine how the marketing
department can most effectively
Jeanne Lewis at
Staples, Inc. (B)
Bill Gates and
the
Management of
Microsoft
Managing
Xerox’s
Multinational
Development
Center
HBSP
# 9-499-042
4p
HBSP
# 9-392-019
19p
Boston, MA; office supplies;
$5 billion revenues; 30,000
employees; 1997
United States; computer
software; large; $1.8 billion
revenues; 1991
HBSP
#9-490-029
20p
Rochester, NY; copiers;
Fortune 500; 40 employees
Chapter 7: Managerial Behaviour and Effectiveness
JetBlue
HBSP
New York, NY; airlines;
Airways:
# 9-801-354
start-up; 950 employees;
Starting from
20p
2000
Scratch
Teaching Notes
# 9-801-386
and efficiently help the company
maintain its competitive edge in
an increasingly competitive and
complex market. Looks at the
challenges a middle manager
faces "taking charge" and
managing change in a
revitalization situation in which a
more evolutionary approach is
appropriate. Teaching Purpose: To
illustrate the challenges of
managing change in a
revitalization (as opposed to
turnaround) situation in which a
more evolutionary approach is
appropriate. To explore the
challenges of managing change as
a middle manager. To manage the
network of relationships. To
highlight the challenges of the
"taking charge" process.
Supplements the (A) case.
In July 1991, Microsoft has
achieved record growth and
profitability in the PC software
industry. The case focuses on
Microsoft's founder and CEO, Bill
Gates, and his top management
team, as they seek to retain the
innovation and spirit of a small
company in a rapidly growing and
changing environment. Specific
issues include the management of
organizational complexity, cultural
change, CEO and COO interaction,
compensation, and leadership.
Describes a manager's role in
developing a staff group
responsible for enhancing the
efficiency of Xerox's worldwide
logistics and inventory
management systems. Illustrates
a range of management strategies
for upward and lateral influence in
a complex organizational context,
as well as the use of a number of
innovative human resource
management techniques. If used
with John A. Clendenin it allows
for the discussion of career
development issues.
JetBlue Airways shows how an
entrepreneurial venture can use
human resource management,
specifically a values-centered
approach to managing people, as
a source of competitive
advantage. The major challenge
faced by Ann Rhoades is to grow
this people-centered organization
at a rapid rate, while retaining
high standards for employee
selection and a small company
culture. Teaching Purpose: To
consider the role of human
resource management, leadership,
and values in a start-up venture,
and to address the tension
Microsoft’s Vega
Project:
Developing
People and
Products
HBSP
# 9-300-004
19p
Redmond, WA; computer
software; $20 billion
revenues; 31,000
employees; 1975-1998
Mark Twain
Bancshares Inc
HBSP
# 9-385-178
18p
St. Louis, MO; banking;
$750 million assets; 1984
The FailureTolerant Leader
HBR
Article Reprint
# R0208D
6p
Organizational behaviour
and leadership
between a strong organizational
culture and rapid growth.
Describes Microsoft's human
resource philosophies and policies
and illustrates how they work in
practice to provide the company
with a major source of competitive
advantage. Summarizes the
evolution of Microsoft's human
resource philosophies and policies.
Describes employee development,
motivation, and retention efforts
in one of Microsoft's product
groups. Focuses on Matt
MacLellan, a 26-year-old, 5-year
Microsoft veteran, particularly on
his careful development as a
project manager under Jim
Kaplan, his boss and mentor.
Dissatisfied with his project
management role, MacLellan
decides to become a developer
despite the fact that he had never
written code professionally.
Kaplan is faced with a difficult
decision of whether to support his
protege's radical career shift, and
how to do it not only to
MacLellan's satisfaction but also in
the organization's best interest.
Teaching Purpose: To illustrate the
role of senior management as
developer and coach of scarce
human assets and the role of
human resource policy in
supporting an organization's
development of competitive
advantage. (A decision-oriented
implementation case).
Describes the history,
management, and organization of
an extremely successful bank
holding company. The company
has had a very charismatic
chairman, has made MBAs bank
presidents at very early ages, and
has a long record of innovation.
Now deregulation and a coming
change of leadership may threaten
the "system" that has made the
bank so successful. The teaching
objectives are to display the
advantages and drawbacks of
management based on a strong
personality and strong values in
the face of major market changes.
"The fastest way to succeed,"
IBM's Thomas Watson, Sr., once
said, "is to double your failure
rate." In recent years, more and
more executives have embraced
Watson's point of view, coming to
understand what innovators have
always known: Failure is a
prerequisite to invention. Although
companies may grasp the value of
making mistakes at the level of
corporate practices, they have a
harder time accepting the idea at
the personal level. In this article,
psychologist and former Harvard
The
Chattanooga Ice
Cream Division
HBSP
# 9-498-001
11p
United States; food
products; $150 million
revenues; 750 employees;
1996
Chapter 8: The Nature of Leadership
Meg Whitman at HBSP
San Jose, CA; Internet;
eBay Inc
# 9-401-024
1999
32p
Teaching Notes
# 9-400-047
Crucibles of
Leadership
HBR
Article
# 0209B
7p
Business School professor Richard
Farson and co-author Ralph Keyes
discuss how companies can reduce
the fear of miscues. What's crucial
is the presence of failure-tolerant
leaders--executives who, through
their words and actions, help
employees overcome their
anxieties about making mistakes
and, in the process, create a
culture of intelligent risk-taking
that leads to sustained innovation.
Drawing from their research in
business, politics, sports, and
science, the authors identify
common practices among failuretolerant leaders. These leaders
break down the social and
bureaucratic barriers that separate
them from their followers. They
engage at a personal level with
the people they lead. They take a
nonjudgmental, analytical posture
as they interact with staff. They
openly admit their own mistakes.
And they try to root out the
destructive competitiveness built
into most organizations. Above all
else, failure-tolerant leaders push
people to see beyond traditional
definitions of success and failure.
They know that as long as a
person views failure as the
opposite of success, rather than
its complement, he or she will
never be able to take the risks
necessary for innovation.
Senior functional officers
(marketing, manufacturing,
research & development, control,
and human resources) clash over
alternative ideas for turning
around a business in decline. The
general manager is faced not only
with choosing between competing
ideas, but also managing conflict
and determining whether his
consensus-oriented style is
appropriate to the needs of the
situation. Teaching Purpose: To
introduce students to issues and
dilemmas of leadership of teams,
especially cross-functional teams
operating under pressure for
results.
Meg Whitman takes over as CEO
of eBay from the founder. She
must figure out how to lead the
company through a stage of
phenomenal growth without
compromising eBay's unique
external customer culture and
internal culture--its key success
factors. A rewritten version of an
earlier case.
What makes a great leader? Why
do some people appear to know
instinctively how to inspire
employees--bringing out their
confidence, loyalty, and
Wolfgang Keller
at KonigsbrauHellas A.E
HBSP
# 9-498-045
18p
Europe; brewery; mid-size;
$100 million sales
Taran Swan at
Nickelodeon
Latin America
(A)
HBSP
# 9-400-036
25p
Teaching Notes
# 9-400-037
5p
Miami, FL; cable television;
1998
Why Should
Anyone be Led
by You?
HBR
Article #
R00506
8p
dedication--whereas others
flounder again and again? No
simple formula can explain how
great leaders come to be, but
Bennis and Thomas believe it has
something to do with the ways
people handle adversity. The
authors' recent research suggests
that one of the most reliable
indicators and predictors of true
leadership is the ability to learn
from even the most negative
experiences. In interviewing more
than 40 leaders in business and
the public sector over the past 3
years, the authors discovered that
all of them--young and old alike-had endured intense, often
traumatic, experiences that
transformed them and became the
source of their distinctive
leadership abilities. Bennis and
Thomas call these shaping
experiences "crucibles," after the
vessels medieval alchemists used
in their attempts to turn base
metals into gold. For the
interviewees, their crucibles were
the points at which they were
forced to question who they were
and what was important to them.
These experiences made them
stronger and more confident and
changed their sense of purpose in
some fundamental way.
Raises issues concerning
performance evaluation,
performance appraisal, managing
ineffective performance, and
conflicts in management style. A
rewritten version of an earlier
case.
Eighteen months after launching
Nickelodeon Latin America,
general manager Taran Swan
must leave the company's Miami
headquarters for her New York
home because of complications
with her pregnancy. Unable to
travel for at least the next six
months, Swan must decide how
she will continue to run the
channel from New York. Should
she put an interim acting head in
place, and if so, who among her
team should it be? What
adjustments will she need to make
in her leadership style and
working relationships with her
team? The case describes the
channel's launch and first 18
months on the air, focusing on
how Swan puts together her team
and crafts the company's culture.
We all know that leaders need
vision and energy, but after an
exhaustive review of the most
influential theories on leadership-as well as workshops with
thousands of leaders and aspiring
leaders--the authors learned that
What Makes a
Leader?
HBR
Classic Article
#
R0401H
10p
Chapter 9: Individual Differences
Management of
HBR
Differences
Article
# 60612
9p
great leaders also share four
unexpected qualities: 1) They
selectively reveal their
weaknesses; 2) They rely heavily
on intuition to gauge the
appropriate timing and course of
their actions; 3) They manage
employees with "tough empathy";
and 4) They capitalize on their
differences. All four qualities are
necessary for inspirational
leadership, but they cannot be
used mechanically; they must be
mixed and matched to meet the
demands of particular situations.
Most important, however, is that
the qualities encourage
authenticity among leaders. To be
a true leader, the authors advise,
"Be yourself--more--with skill."
When asked to define the ideal
leader, many would emphasize
traits such as intelligence,
toughness, determination, and
vision--the qualities traditionally
associated with leadership. Often
left off the list are softer, more
personal qualities--but they are
also essential. Although a certain
degree of analytical and technical
skill is a minimum requirement for
success, studies indicate that
emotional intelligence may be the
key attribute that distinguishes
outstanding performers from
those who are merely adequate.
Psychologist and author Daniel
Goleman first brought the term
"emotional intelligence" to a wide
audience with his 1995 book of
the same name, and Goleman first
applied the concept to business
with this 1998 classic HBR article.
In his research at nearly 200
large, global companies, Goleman
found that truly effective leaders
are distinguished by a high degree
of emotional intelligence. Without
it, a person can have first-class
training, an incisive mind, and an
endless supply of good ideas, but
he or she still won't be a great
leader. The chief components of
emotional intelligence--selfawareness, self-regulation,
motivation, empathy, and social
skill--can sound unbusinesslike,
but Goleman, cochair of the
Consortium for Research on
Emotional Intelligence in
Organizations, based at Rutgers
University, found direct ties
between emotional intelligence
and measurable business results.
Managers may most effectively
approach the complex problems of
individual differences by first
assuming that the differences are
neither good nor bad, and that no
one right solution exists.
Yvette Hyater –
Adams and
Terry Larsen at
CoreState
Financial Corp
HBSP
# 9-401-023
15p
Philadelphia, PA; banking;
2,000 employees; 19931998
Bob Fifer
HBSP
# 9-495-013
11p
Teaching Note
# 9-498-063
United States; consulting
Avon Products
(A) and (B)
HBSP
# 9-301-059
22p
HBSP
#9–301-060
14p
New York, NY; beauty
products; $5 billion
revenues; 33,900
employees; 1992-1998
Diagnostic questions the manager
must ask concern: the nature of
the difference; the underlying
factors; and the stage to which
the interpersonal difference has
evolved. Available courses of
action include: avoidance,
repression, conflict, and problem
solving. A systematic approach to
the problem, which will result in a
solution that will preserve
corporate harmony and individual
initiative, is the goal.
Yvette Hyater-Adams, senior VP of
CoreStates Bank, and CEO Terry
Larsen reflect on their five-year
mentor-protege relationship. They
describe how building a
relationship across both race and
gender was challenging and
ultimately highly rewarding. Their
relationship develops in the
context of a major culture change
that Hyater-Adams and Larsen
were leading the organization
through. This case discusses the
impact their relationship had on
the organization and the change
process.
Explores the life and concerns of
Bob Fifer, HBS class of 1979 and
CEO of Kaiser Associates. Explores
the many influences on Bob's
development and his subsequent
career choices. It is written as a
biography with extensive quotes
from interviews with Bob. He
describes the role of his
upbringing and Jewish ethnicity in
the formation of his early selfconcept. Highlights the careerrelated choices he makes,
including college at Harvard,
attending business school, and
entering consulting. After years of
success and driven workaholic
behavior, Bob experiences
disillusionment and personal
tragedy. Readers are able to
examine the process of selfredirection that Bob engages in to
arrive at their own conclusion
about how successful and
enduring it is likely to be.
Teaching Purpose: Can be used as
part of a career module in courses
such as Introductory O.B., Career
Development, Entrepreneurship,
and Leadership. It is well-suited to
teach concepts related to adult
development, career-choice
making, and entrepreneurial
behavior.
The general manager of Avon
Mexico, Fernando Lezama, must
decide whether to promote a
woman to the position of vice
president of sales. If appointed,
the candidate would be the first
female in all of Latin America to
hold an executive position and one
Julia Stasch,
Business
Enterprise Trust
(A)
HBSP
# 9-993-015
5p
# 9-993-013
Case
Teaching Note
#9-993-016
10p
Chicago, IL; construction;
1988-1993
Chapter 10: The Nature of Learning
Building a
HBR Reprint
Learning
# 93402
Organization
14p
Framing for
CMR Article
of the first women in Mexico to
attain this level of responsibility.
Lezama's all-male executive team
has doubts about the candidate's
readiness but Lezama is also
cognizant of Avon's global vision
which calls for the advancement of
women at all levels of the
organization. Earlier in the year,
the Avon Mexico organization had
completed an exercise called
"appreciative inquiry" aimed at
enhancing gender relations in the
workforce. Teaching Purpose: To
examine the cultural aspects of
managing in the Mexican
environment and to illustrate the
use of "appreciative inquiry" as
part of a cultural change process.
A successful woman executive
attempts to integrate women into
the construction trade in Chicago.
Julia Stasch rose from office
assistant to president and chief
operating officer of a major
Chicago real estate firm, Stein &
Co. This case describes her
campaign to create expanded
opportunities for women and
minority-owned businesses as
suppliers to construction projects,
and for women and minority
workers on construction sites.
Discusses entrenched
discrimination in a particular
industry, and the creative change
strategies implemented by one
executive. Teaching Purpose: May
be used in Human Resources,
Organizational Behavior, Ethics,
and Diversity courses to help
students explore: 1) the design of
affirmative action and diversity
programs to address entrenched
discrimination; 2) the role of
business in encouraging diversity;
3) how one individual can create
social change; and 4) strategies
for increasing the acceptance of
diversity of the workplace.
Continuous improvement
programs are proliferating as
corporations seek to better
themselves and gain an edge.
Unfortunately, however, failed
programs far outnumber
successes, and improvement rates
remain low. That's because most
companies have failed to grasp a
basic truth. Before people and
companies can improve, they
must first learn. And to do this,
they need to look beyond rhetoric
and high philosophy and focus on
the fundamentals. Three critical
issues must be addressed before a
company can truly become a
learning organization: meaning,
management, and measurement.
The decision to adopt a new
Learning:
Lessons in
Successful
Technology
Implementation
# CMR 247
23p
Speeding up
Team Learning
HBR Article
# R0109J
7p
technology in the health care
setting is merely the first step in
an implementation journey.
Whereas some new technologies
are readily embraced by those
who must use them, most are met
with some resistance. In some
cases, members of diverse
groups--including administrators,
clinicians, and technicians--must
work together for a new
technology to take hold
effectively, becoming incorporated
into routine practice in an
organization. This article reports
on a qualitative study of hospitals
adopting a new technology for
minimally invasive cardiac surgery
that uncovered substantial
differences in both approach and
implementation success. Four case
studies are presented to illustrate
distinct, tacit frames held by the
leaders of each implementation
project and how these influenced
the team learning process and, in
turn, implementation success.
Cardiac surgery is one of
medicine's modern miracles. In an
operating room no larger than
many household kitchens, a
patient is rendered functionally
dead while a surgical team repairs
or replaces damaged arteries or
valves. Each operation requires
incredible teamwork--a single
error can have disastrous
consequences. In other words,
surgical teams are not all that
different from the cross-functional
teams that have become crucial to
business success. The challenge of
team management these days is
not simply to execute existing
processes efficiently. It's to
implement new processes as
quickly as possible. But adopting
new technologies or new business
processes is highly disruptive,
regardless of the industry. The
authors studied how surgical
teams at 16 major medical centers
implemented a difficult new
procedure for performing cardiac
surgery. The setting was ideal for
rigorously focusing on how teams
learn and why some learn faster
than others. The authors found
that the most successful teams
had leaders who actively managed
the groups' learning efforts.
Teams that most successfully
implemented the new technology
shared three essential
characteristics. They were
designed for learning; their
leaders framed the challenge so
that team members were highly
motivated to learn; and an
environment of psychological
safety fostered communication
The Anxiety of
Learning: An
Interview with
Edgar H Schein
HBR Article
# R0203H
7p
Capitalising on
Capabilities
HBR Article
# R0406J
8p
and innovation. The finding that
teams learn more quickly if they
are explicitly managed for learning
poses a challenge in many areas
of business. Team leaders in
business tend to be chosen more
for their technical expertise than
for their management skills. Team
leaders need to become adept at
creating learning environments,
and senior managers need to look
beyond technical competence and
identify leaders who can motivate
and manage teams of disparate
specialists.
Despite all of the time, money,
and energy that executives pour
into corporate change programs,
the stark reality is that few
companies ever succeed in
genuinely reinventing themselves.
That's because the people at those
companies rarely master the art of
transformational learning--that is,
eagerly challenging deeply held
assumptions about a company's
processes and, in response,
altering their thoughts and
actions. Instead, most people just
end up doing the same old things
in superficially tweaked ways. Why
is transformational learning so
hard to achieve? HBR senior editor
Diane Coutu explores this question
with psychologist and MIT
professor Edgar Schein, a worldrenowned expert on organizational
development. In sharp contrast to
the optimistic rhetoric that
permeates the debate on
corporate learning and change,
Schein is cautious about what
companies can and cannot
accomplish. Corporate culture can
change, he says, but this kind of
learning takes time, and it isn't
fun. In this article, he describes
two basic types of anxiety-learning anxiety and survival
anxiety--that drive radical
relearning in organizations.
Schein's theories spring from his
early research on how American
prisoners of war in Korea were
brainwashed by their captors.
Heavy socialization is back in style
in U.S. corporations today, Schein
says, even if no one is calling it
that.
By making the most of
organizational capabilities-employees' collective skills and
fields of expertise--you can
dramatically improve your
company's market value. Although
there is no magic list of
proficiencies that every
organization needs to succeed, the
authors identify 11 intangible
assets that well-managed
companies tend to have: talent,
speed, shared mind-set and
coherent brand identity,
accountability, collaboration,
learning, leadership, customer
connectivity, strategic unity,
innovation, and efficiency. Such
companies typically excel in only
three of these capabilities while
maintaining industry parity in the
other areas. Organizations that fall
below the norm in any of the 11
are likely candidates for
dysfunction and competitive
disadvantage. To determine how
your company fares in these
categories (or others, if the
generic list doesn't suit your
needs), the authors explain how
to conduct a "capabilities audit,"
describing in particular the
experiences and findings of two
companies that recently
performed such audits. In addition
to highlighting which intangible
assets are most important given
the organization's history and
strategy, this exercise gauges how
well your company delivers on its
capabilities and guides you in
developing an action plan for
improvement. A capabilities audit
can work for an entire
organization, a business unit, or a
region--indeed, for any part of a
company that has a strategy to
generate financial or customerrelated results. It enables
executives to assess overall
company strengths and
weaknesses, senior leaders to
define strategy, mid-level
managers to execute strategy,
and frontline leaders to achieve
tactical results.
Chapter 11: The
Jensen Shoes:
Lyndon
Twitchell’s Story
Jensen Shoes:
Jane Kravitz’s
Story
Process of Perception
HBSP
United States; shoes; $65
# 9-395-121
million revenues; 4,500
8p
employees; 1994
Teaching Note
# 9-396-017
HBSP
# 9-395-120
7p
Teaching Note
United States; shoes; $65
million revenues; 4,500
employees; 1994
Jane Kravitz (Caucasian female),
strategic product manager, and
Lyndon Twitchell (African
American male), a member of her
staff at Jensen Shoes, a successful
producer and marketer of casual,
athletic, and children's footwear,
are assigned to new positions and
to each other at the start of the
story. Presents their very different
points of view on their first couple
of months working together. Can
be taught in a variety of ways:
with all students receiving both
cases; half receiving one and half
receiving the other; or a third of
the class receiving both, one third
receiving one, and one third
receiving the other (as is
appropriate). Should be used with
Jensen Shoes: Jane Kravitz's
Story.
Jane Kravitz (Caucasian female),
strategic product manager, and
Lyndon Twitchell (African
American male), a member of her
9-396-017
Intel in China
Ivey/UWO
# 99C007
11p
Teaching Note
# 899C07
China; semiconductors;
small; 1998
Chapter 12: Work Motivation and Rewards
Mary Kay
HBSP
Dallas, TX; cosmetics; midCosmetics Inc:
# 9-190-103
size; $400 million sales;
Sales Force
16p
1989
Incentives
Teaching Notes
# 9-191-198
10p
Case
# 9-190-122
2p
How to Motivate
Your Problem
People
HBR Reprint
# 0301D
8p
staff at Jensen Shoes, a successful
producer and marketer of casual,
athletic, and children's footwear,
are assigned to new positions and
to each other at the start of the
story. Presents their very different
points of view on their first couple
of months working together. Can
be taught in a variety of ways:
with all students receiving both
cases; half receiving one and half
receiving the other; or a third of
the class receiving both, one third
receiving one, and one third
receiving the other (as is
appropriate). Should be used with
Jenson Shoes: Lyndon Twitchell's
Story.
Intel PRC was a division of Intel
Corp., a U.S. $20 billion
semiconductor manufacturer. A
newly appointed division head
makes a decision that an
employee responds to
emotionally, with a deep
resentment, creating the potential
for conflict within the department.
The incident forces the manager
to examine whether there are
deeper organizational or
communication problems he needs
to consider. Cross-cultural issues
come into play given that the
manager, although originally from
China, was educated and gathered
extensive experience in the west
and was thus considered an
expatriate by his employees. The
case examines the effect of
organizational culture on an
employee's behavior.
Describes the incentive system by
which Mary Kay Cosmetics
motivates the sales force of
200,000 independent agents who
comprise the firm's only
distribution channel. Illustrates
the powerful effect on sales-force
behavior that results when
creative types of employee
recognition are combined with
financial incentives. Focuses on
the challenges that managers face
when they try to reduce program
costs by modifying the VIP
automobile program that awards
the use of pink Cadillacs and other
cars to successful sales agents. A
detailed description of the
parameters and formulas that
drive the recognition and reward
programs is provided.
Managers who motivate with
incentives and the power of their
vision and passion succeed only in
energizing employees who want to
be motivated. So how do you
motivate intractable employees-the ones who never do what you
want and also take up all your
One More Time:
How Do you
Motivate
Employees?
HBR Reprint
#R0301F
9p
HCM Beverage
Co
Ivey
School/UWO
# 98C003
17p
Vietnam; food and kindred
products; mid-size; 1997
time? According to Nigel
Nicholson, you can't: Individuals
must motivate themselves.
Instead of pushing solutions on
problem employees, the manager
should pull solutions out of them
by creating circumstances in which
the employees can channel their
motivation toward achievable
goals. That means addressing any
obstacles--possibly even the
manager's own demotivating
style--that might be hindering the
employees. Using detailed
examples, Nicholson walks the
reader through his method,
pointing out potential pitfalls along
the way. First, the manager
creates a rich picture of the
problem person. Second, the
manager exercises flexibility and
reframes goals so that the
employee can meet them. Third,
in a carefully staged, face-to-face
conversation, the manager meets
with the problem employee on
neutral ground.
It's a manager's perennial
question: "How do I get an
employee to do what I want?" The
psychology of motivation is very
complex, but the surest way of
getting someone to do something
is to deliver a kick in the pants-put bluntly, the KITA. Companies
usually resort to positive KITAs,
ranging from fringe benefits to
employee counseling. But
although a KITA might produce
some change in behavior, it
doesn't motivate. Frederick
Herzberg, whose work influenced
a generation of scholars and
managers, likens motivation to an
internal generator. An employee
with an internal generator, he
argues, needs no KITA.
Achievement, recognition for
achievement, the work itself,
responsibility, and growth or
advancement motivate people.
The author cites research showing
that those intrinsic factors are
distinct from extrinsic, or KITA,
elements that lead to job
dissatisfaction. Jobs can be
changed and enriched. Managers
should focus on positions where
people's attitudes are poor. The
investment needed in industrial
engineering is cost effective, and
motivation will make a difference
in performance.
Mark Johnson, general manager of
HCM Beverage Co., must decide
what to do about the declining
performance of Vietnam-based
HCM Beverage. Employees seem
unmotivated and lackadaisical
about their work. These same
workers blame the weather for the
poor results. Figuring out the
problem and solution is Johnson's
major challenge.
Chapter 13: The
The Overhead
Reduction Task
Force
Nature of Work
HBSP
# 9-400-026
7p
Teaching Note
# 9-400-027
17p
Groups and Teams
United States; household
appliances; mid-size; 19771999
Brinkerhoff
International
(A)
HBSP
# 9-494-110
15p
Case
# 9-494-111
1p
Teaching Note
# 9-496-041
6p
Alberta, Canada; oil
drilling; $27 million
revenues; 1993
The
Chattanooga Ice
Cream Division
HBSP
# 9-498-001
11p
United States; food
products; $150 million
revenues; 750 employees;
1996
Technology for
Teams
Note
# 9-196-008
10p
A middle manager is about to
meet with his boss to discuss her
request that he head up a task
force to determine how overhead
can be reduced by 20%. He must
decide what to address in that
meeting and how the task force
should be launched and led. The
focus is on team leadership at four
stages in a team's life cycle: 1)
preparation, 2) initial meeting, 3)
mid-course consultation, and 4)
post-performance debriefing. A
rewritten version of an earlier
case.
Presents a study of two oil rigs
and their team relationships within
a context of dissension in lower
management ranks and a
president who is trying to expand
the business in a changing
economy. Teaching Purpose: To
show the importance of teamwork
at the bottom of a high-skill,
dangerous business.
Senior functional officers
(marketing, manufacturing,
research & development, control,
and human resources) clash over
alternative ideas for turning
around a business in decline. The
general manager is faced not only
with choosing between competing
ideas, but also managing conflict
and determining whether his
consensus-oriented style is
appropriate to the needs of the
situation. Teaching Purpose: To
introduce students to issues and
dilemmas of leadership of teams,
especially cross-functional teams
operating under pressure for
results.
The importance of groups in
organizations has long been
recognized but, until recently,
groups were always "tacked onto"
organizations that were designed
around individuals. It was not just
the logic of classical organizational
theory that perpetuated this focus
on the individual; the entire
entrepreneurial tradition of U.S.
society and culture supported it.
Recently, companies have begun
to break down these traditional
organizational and cultural
barriers and to recognize teams as
a formal unit of the organizational
structure. While autonomous (or
semi-autonomous) work teams
have operated within
manufacturing environments for
several decades, more recently
companies like General Electric,
IBM, and Frito-Lay have
attempted to create "empowered"
work teams as the basic unit of
organizational work throughout
their organizations. As companies
attempt to formally recognize the
team as a structural unit of the
organization, they are also forced
to reevaluate organizational
processes and structures that
detract from effective group
functioning. A growing number of
companies are finding that
technology can be an important
tool for facilitating team
processes.
Chapter 14: Working in Groups and Teams
Business Teams
HBSP
Wooster, OH; consumer
at Rubbermaid
# 9-897-165
products/plastics
Inc
26p
manufacturer; $2.3 billion
revenues; 14,500
employees; 1996
Datavision (A)
Speeding Up
Team Learning
HBSP
# 9-495-046
Case
15p
# 9-495-047
3p
Case
# 9-495-048
2p
Teaching Note
# 9-498-030
12p
HBR
Reprint #
R0109J
7p
Burlington, MA; computers;
$3 million revenues; 500
employees; 1993
Rubbermaid, a consumer products
company widely praised for its
innovation, has instituted a
company-wide experiment to
stimulate innovation even further.
The experiment consists of
creating small cross-functional
business teams within each
division, with each team being
responsible for the creation,
management, and profitability of a
particular product line. The
staffing, reporting structure, and
management of the business
teams vary across divisions, and
clear differences emerge in the
performance of four highlighted
teams. Teaching Purpose: To
explore the possibility of using
cross-functional teams within
established firms to simulate
entrepreneurial ventures and
accelerate innovation. Specific
topics include: options for staffing,
structuring, and managing crossfunctional business teams; the
difficulty of implementing crossfunctional teams in a company
with a strong functional structure;
the difficulty of balancing
accountability and empowerment
in "entrepreneurial" teams within
established firms; and the impact
of different management
approaches on the functioning of
business teams.
Depicts a "team-building"
intervention by an organizational
consultant at a small computer
company. Teaching Purpose:
Should promote discussion
surrounding such techniques.
Cardiac surgery is one of
medicine's modern miracles. In an
operating room no larger than
many household kitchens, a
patient is rendered functionally
dead while a surgical team repairs
or replaces damaged arteries or
valves. Each operation requires
incredible teamwork--a single
error can have disastrous
consequences. In other words,
surgical teams are not all that
different from the cross-functional
teams that have become crucial to
business success. The challenge of
team management these days is
not simply to execute existing
processes efficiently. It's to
implement new processes as
quickly as possible. But adopting
new technologies or new business
processes is highly disruptive,
regardless of the industry. The
authors studied how surgical
teams at 16 major medical centers
implemented a difficult new
procedure for performing cardiac
surgery. The setting was ideal for
rigorously focusing on how teams
learn and why some learn faster
than others. The authors found
that the most successful teams
had leaders who actively managed
the groups' learning efforts.
Teams that most successfully
implemented the new technology
shared three essential
characteristics. They were
designed for learning; their
leaders framed the challenge so
that team members were highly
motivated to learn; and an
environment of psychological
safety fostered communication
and innovation. The finding that
teams learn more quickly if they
are explicitly managed for learning
poses a challenge in many areas
of business. Team leaders in
business tend to be chosen more
for their technical expertise than
for their management skills. Team
leaders need to become adept at
creating learning environments,
and senior managers need to look
beyond technical competence and
identify leaders who can motivate
and manage teams of disparate
specialists.
Chapter 15: Organisation Structure and Design
Polycom Inc:
HBSP
United States;
Visualising
# 9-601-073
telecommunications; $500
Culture
16p
million revenues; 500
employees; 2000
Do you have a
well-designed
organisation?
HBR
Reprint #
R0203K
7p
Polycom is a rapidly growing
maker of video conferencing and
teleconferencing equipment.
Management is attempting to use
"natural work groups" as an
organizing mechanism, and to
build into the culture implicit rules
that will cause desired behaviors
to be self-policing.
For most companies, organization
design is neither a science nor an
art; it's an oxymoron.
Organizational structures evolve in
fits and starts, shaped more by
politics than by policies. Although
most executives can sense when
their organization designs are not
working well, few take meaningful
action, partly because they lack a
Why Hierarchies
Thrive
HBR
Article #
R0303G
6p
practical framework to guide
them. The authors of this article
provide just such a framework;
they present nine tests that can
be used either to evaluate an
existing organization design or
create a new one. Four "fit" tests
offer an initial screen: The market
advantage test asks whether a
design directs sufficient
management attention to the
company's sources of competitive
advantage; the parenting
advantage test determines
whether the design gives enough
attention to the corporate-level
activities that provide real value to
the company; the people test
shows whether the design reflects
the employees' strengths; and the
feasibility test looks at constraints
that may impede implementation.
Five "good design" tests can help
a company refine its prospective
design. The specialist cultures test
ensures that there's sufficient
insulation for units that need to be
different from the prevailing
culture; the difficult-links test
determines whether a design
offers solutions for potentially
problematic unit-to-unit links; the
redundant-hierarchy test asks
whether the design has too many
parent levels; the accountability
test looks at whether every unit
has suitable controls; and the
flexibility test ensures that the
design lets the company adapt to
change. Once a design is altered,
the tests should be repeated.
Organizational decisions are
inevitably complex, and tweaking
one part of the design may
produce unanticipated
consequences elsewhere.
Hardly anyone has a good word to
say about hierarchies. They
routinely transform motivated and
loyal employees into disaffected
Dilberts. Yet, the intensity with
which we struggle against
hierarchies only serves to
highlight their durability. In this
article, organizational behavior
expert Harold J. Leavitt presents
neither a defense of human
hierarchies nor another attack on
them. Instead, he offers a reality
check, a reminder that hierarchy
remains the basic structure of
most, if not all, large, ongoing
human organizations. That's
because although they are often
depicted as being out of date,
hierarchies have proved to be
extraordinarily adaptive. Over the
past 50 years, for example, they
have co-opted the three major
managerial movements--human
relations, analytic management,
Trojan
Technologies
Inc:
Organizational
Structuring for
Growth and
Customer
Service
Field Case
# 99M019
8p
Canada; electric, gas, and
sanitary services; small;
1998
Chapter 16: Patterns of Structure and Work Organisation
Novartis
HBSP
Switzerland;
Pharma: The
# 9-101-030
pharmaceuticals; $21 billion
Business Unit
21p
revenues; 70,000
Model
employees; 2000
Buck & Pulleyn’s
Team
Management
HBSP
# 9-497-007
9p
Rochester, NY; advertising;
small; $26 million
revenues; 70 employees;
1996
and communities of practice.
Hierarchies also persist because
they deliver real practical and
psychological value, and they
fulfill our deep need for order and
security. Despite the good they
may do, however, hierarchies are
inevitably authoritarian.
A group of Trojan Technologies,
Inc. employees grappled with the
issue of how to structure the
business to interact effectively
with its customers and manage
the company's dramatic growth.
The London, Ontario manufacturer
of ultraviolet water disinfecting
systems believed that strong
customer service was key to its
recent and projected growth and
had come to the realization that
changes would have to be made
to continue to achieve both
simultaneously. The group hoped
to develop a structure to address
these issues. The executive vice
president was to lead the
development and implementation
of the new structure. The
transition to the new structure
was to coincide with the new fiscal
year.
In June 2000, Novartis
reorganized its pharmaceutical
business to form global business
units in oncology, transplantation,
ophthalmology, and mature
products. The remaining products
(primary care products) were
managed as before within global
functions (R&D), marketing, etc.)
The new organization created a
matrix structure and new roles
and responsibilities for heads of
business functions, CEOs of new
business units, and country
managers operating in over 100
countries. Teaching Purpose: To
explore the reasons for Novartis's
reorganizing into the new matrix
structure, the tensions and
challenges the new structure
creates, and the culture and
accountability needed to make the
new structure work.
In 1993, the firm began to move
from a traditional hierarchical
structure to client-focused teams.
The case describes the process
and some consequences of this
restructuring. Performance seems
to be improving, but some
employees preferred the structure
certainty and client variety of the
old days. How does management
deal with these issues? Teaching
Purpose: Team management has
become very popular, but
transitions from traditional
structures to teams are not easy.
The discussion will center on how
USA TODAY:
Pursuing the
Network
Strategy (A)
HBSP
# 9-402-010
18p
Virginia; newspaper; $700
million revenues; 3,000
employees; 2000
Eli-Lilly – 1998
(B): Emerging
Global
Organization
HBSP
# 9-399-174
15p
Global; pharmaceuticals;
Fortune 500; $12 billion
revenues; 10,000
employees; 1998
Chapter 17: Technology and Organisation
Napster and
Ivey/UWO
Global; music; 2000
MP3: Redefining
# 901M02
the Music
22p
Industry
Chaparral Steel:
Rapid Product
and Process
Development
HBSP
# 9-692-018
17p
Technology
Integration:
Turning Great
Research into
Great Products
HBR
Article
# 97304
11p
Texas; steel; 900
employees; 1983-1991
to deal with these issues.
Describes the evolution of USA
TODAY Online, the electronic
version of the newspaper, within
the organizational structure of the
newspaper. Describes the tensions
and issues that develop and the
pressure from the Online division
to be spun off. At the same time,
CEO Tom Curley sees a greater
strategic need for integration.
Poses the question of what degree
or type of strategic integration is
required, what degree of
organizational integration this
implies, and how it can be
achieved.
Examines major issues faced by
Eli Lilly as it evaluates the
appropriateness of a focused
matrix organization with extensive
use of cross-functional teams.
The music industry has changed
dramatically as a result of
technological and business
innovations that have transformed
how music is acquired, and how
value is created and distributed.
Napster, Inc. operated one of
several Web sites that allowed
Internet users free access to MP3
music files--which eventually led
to lawsuits around issues of the
protection of intellectual capital.
These issues lead to the
examination of the forces at play
in the transformation of the music
industry, the strategic alternatives
for players in the industry and the
legal context underpinning the
strategic alternatives, with a
particular focus on the protection
of intellectual capital.
One of the nation's foremost minimills' core competence is the rapid
realization of technology into
products. This case describes the
development of a highly
innovative casting technique and
features the role of the company's
culture in achieving its goals. The
company exemplifies a learning
organization.
In many industries, superior
technology integration--the
approach used to choose and
refine the technologies employed
in a new product, process, or
service--is the key to achieving
superior R&D productivity and
speed, and superior products. In
this article, which is based on an
ongoing study of R&D in various
segments of the global computer
industry, Marco Iansiti and
Jonathan West contend that
technology integration has
become much more important-and challenging--for obvious
reasons. A radical change in the
Technology and
Human
Vulnerability
Chapter 18: Job
Donna Klein and
Marriott
International
Inc (A) and (B)
approach of U.S. companies to
technology integration helps
explain the resurgence of the U.S.
electronics industry in the 1990s.
But one size does not fit all.
Indeed, the authors have found
that an approach that works well
in one country may not be the
best for another. To be effective,
an approach must suit the local
culture and conditions.
For most of the last 50 years,
technology knew its place. It's
very different today. Technology is
not only ubiquitous but has
become highly intrusive as well.
On the Internet, people invent
imaginary identities in virtual chat
rooms. Children are growing up
with interactive toy animals. If we
want to be sure we'll like who
we've become in 50 years, we
need to take a closer look at the
psychological effects of current
and future technologies. The
smartest people in technology
have already started. Universities
like MIT and Caltech have been
pouring millions of dollars into
researching what happens when
technology and humanity meet.
To learn more about this research,
HBR senior editor Diane L. Coutu
spoke with one of the field's most
distinguished scholars--Sherry
Turkle, MIT's Abby Rockefeller
Mauze Professor in the Program in
Science, Technology, and Society
and the author of Life on the
Screen, which explores how the
Internet is changing the way we
define ourselves. In a
conversation with Coutu, Turkle
discusses the psychological
dynamics that can develop
between people and their hightech toys, describes ways in which
machines might substitute for
managers, and explains how
technology is redefining what it
means to be human. She warns
that relatively small differences in
technology design can have
disproportionate effects on how
humans relate to technology, to
one another, and to themselves.
HBR Article
# R0309B
7p
Satisfaction and
HBSP
# 9-996-057
4p
HBSP
# 0-996-058
8p
TN
# 9-996-059
7p
Work Performance
Washington, DC; $8.9
billion revenues; 170,000
employees; 1994-1996
In the early 1990s, Donna Klein,
Director of Work/Life programs for
Marriott International, surveyed
hotel and resort managers and
found they increasingly were
relied upon to help employees
cope with the stresses of their
personal lives. Immigration, child
custody, spousal abuse-numerous personal issues were
requiring up to 50% of managers'
time and fueling extremely high
turnover among the company's
over 100,000 lower-wage
MacTemps:
Building
Commitment in
the Interim
Workforce
HBSP
# 9-497-005
20p
Nordstrom:
Dissension in
the Ranks?
HBSP
# 9-191-002
24p
United States; staffing; $56
million revenues; 130
employees
TN
# 9-497-065
15p
West Coast; retailing; 1989
HBSP
# 9-192-027
2p
TN
# 9-692-085
12p
SMA: MicroElectronic
Products
Division (A)
HBSP
# 9-400-034
19p
Switzerland; electronics
manufacturing; 1,200
employees; 1990
workers. While Marriott offered a
traditional dependent care
resource and referral service,
Klein realized that this service was
not particularly useful or
appropriate for hourly workers.
She understood that hourly
employees needed help finding
cost-effective ways to solve their
personal problems and more oneon-one consultation to help them
tap into their local resources.
Shocked by the survey results,
senior management asked Klein
and her associates to devise a
solution to address the problem.
Teaching Purpose: Encourages
discussion of work/life issues,
particularly those specific to
lower-wage employees. Allows
students to think creatively about
different approaches to real-life
human resource dilemmas.
MacTemps is a provider of
temporary workers skilled in
computer graphics and database
management. Unlike many
temporary agencies that treat
temps as a commodity, MacTemps
has attempted to build
relationships with temps through
offering benefits and training. This
case explores the pros and cons of
this strategy by presenting data
on the underlying economics of
the arrangement and the
characteristics of the temp force.
Teaching Purpose: To discuss the
economics of contingent work
arrangements, strategies for
building relationships with
workers/temps, strategies for
staffing firms in highly competitive
environments, and the changing
social contract between people
and organizations.
In 1989, the performance
measurement systems and
compensation policies of
Nordstrom Department Stores
unexpectedly came under attack
by employees, unions, and
government regulators. The case
describes the "sales-per-hour"
monitoring and compensation
system that many believed to be
instrumental in Nordstrom's
phenomenal success. Illustrates
how rapid company growth,
decentralized management, and
unrelenting pressure to perform
can distort performance
measurement systems and lead to
undesirable consequences.
The Micro-Electronic Products
Division of SMA has financial and
organizational problems. Conflict
and lack of coordination exist
between functional groups.
Employees do not have a sense of
direction and morale is low. The
Pull the Plug on
Stress
cause of these problems is found
in a change in business
environment followed by change
in organization and management.
A rewritten version of an earlier
case.
Stress is rampant, stress is
growing, and stress hurts the
bottom line. A 1999 study of
46,000 workers revealed that
health care costs are 147% higher
for those who are stressed or
depressed, independent of other
health issues. But what exactly is
stress? It usually refers to our
internal reaction to negative,
threatening, or worrisome
situations--a looming performance
report, say, or interactions with a
dismissive colleague. Accumulated
over time, negative stress can
depress you, burn you out, make
you sick, or even kill you--because
it's both an emotional and a
physiological habit. Of course,
many companies understand the
negative impact of cumulative
stress and offer programs to help
employees counteract it. The
problem is that employees in the
greatest need of help often don't
seek it. Since 1991, the authors
have studied the physiological
impact of stress on performance,
at both the individual and
organizational levels. Their goal
largely has been to decode the
underlying mechanics of stress.
After working with more than
50,000 workers and managers in
more than 100 organizations, the
authors have found that learning
to manage stress is easier than
most people think. They have
devised a scientifically based
system of tools, techniques, and
technologies that organizations
can use to reduce employee stress
and boost overall health and
performance.
HBR Article
# R0307J
6p
Chapter 19: Human Resource Management
Compensation
HBSP
Long Island, NY;
and
# 9-800-290
semiconductors; $6 billion
Performance
26p
revenues; 6,000
Evaluation at
employees; 1994-1998
Arrow
Electronics
The Firmwide
360 degree
Performance
Evaluation
Process at
Morgan Stanley
Human
Resources at
Hewlett-Packard
HBSP
# 9-498-053
16p
TN
# 9-400-078
12p
HBSP
# 9-495-051
27p
New York, NY; investment
banking; $1 billion
revenues; 2,000
employees; 1993-1995
California; high tech; large;
$25 billion revenues;
90,000 employees; 1979-
Describes a company's struggles
in implementing a subjective
performance rating system for its
employees. In particular, it
describes the difficulties faced by
the CEO in getting managers to
combat "ratings inflation"--that is,
to produce numerical ratings that
are both differentiated and "not
too high."
Describes Morgan Stanley's
firmwide, 360-degree performance
evaluation process. Evaluation
forms are included as exhibits.
Teaching Purpose: To introduce
students to a 360-degree
performance evaluation process.
Provides an overview of the
human resource policies and
practices applied by Hewlett-
(A) and (B)
HBSP
# 9-495-052
7p
1992
TN
# 9-497-022
7p
They’re Not
Employees,
They’re People
HBR Article
# R0202E
7p
Verizon
Communications
Inc:
Implementing a
Human
Resources
Balanced
Scorecard
HBSP
# 9-101-102
23p
United States;
telecommunications; $60
billion revenues; 260,000
employees; 1996-2000
Chapter 20: Resourcing the Organisation
Jet Blue
HBSP
New York, NY; airlines;
Airways:
# 9-801-354
start-up; 950 employees;
Starting from
20p
2000
Scratch
Packard (HP). Discusses HP's
reactions as an organization to
changes in its business
environment. As such, it is an
opportunity to analyze HP's
practices, and how they have been
affected through the years in all
four policy areas: stakeholder
influence, flows, rewards, and
work systems.
In this essay, business thinker
Peter Drucker examines the
changing dynamics of the
workforce--in particular, the need
for organizations to take just as
much care and responsibility when
managing temporary and contract
workers as they do with their
traditional employees. Two fastgrowing trends are demanding
that business leaders pay more
attention to employee relations,
Drucker says. First is the rise of
the temporary, or contract,
worker; 8 million to 10 million
temp workers are placed each day
worldwide. And they're not just
filling in at reception desks.
Today, there are temp suppliers
for every kind of job, all the way
up to CEO. Second, a growing
number of businesses are
outsourcing their employee
relations to professional employee
organizations (PEOs)--third-party
groups that handle the evermounting administrative tasks
associated with managing a
company's employees. Temps and
PEOs free up leaders to focus on
the business rather than on HR
files and paperwork. But if
organizations outsource those
functions, they need to be careful
not to damage relationships with
their people in the process,
Drucker concludes.
In early 2000, Verizon
Communications implemented a
Human Resources Balanced
Scorecard to evaluate the
effectiveness of and payoffs from
human resource management.
This case describes the benefits of
the scorecard and the challenges
of measurement and
implementation. Teaching
Purpose: To help students
understand: 1) how to implement
a Balanced Scorecard, 2) how to
measure and improve the
effectiveness of support functions,
and 3) how to link nonfinancial
measures to financial measures of
support functions when financial
benefits are difficult to quantify.
JetBlue Airways shows how an
entrepreneurial venture can use
human resource management,
specifically a values-centered
TN
# 9-801-386
6p
AvantGo
HBSP
# 9-601-095
19p
Silicon Valley, CA; high
technology/wireless/mobile;
310 employees; 1998-2000
The Ritz-Carlton
Hotel Company
HBSP
# 9-601-163
30p
Washington, DC;
hospitality; $1.5 billion
revenues; 18,000
employees; 2000
TN
# 9-602-113
SUPER VALU
Inc:
Professional
Development
Program
HBSP
# 0-900-019
21p
SG Cowen: New
Recruits
HBSP
# 9-402-028
15p
TN
# 9-900-020
4p
Minnesota; food
wholesale/retail; $17.4
billion revenues; 50,000
employees; 1999
New York; financial
services; 500 employees;
2001
approach to managing people, as
a source of competitive
advantage. The major challenge
faced by Ann Rhoades is to grow
this people-centered organization
at a rapid rate, while retaining
high standards for employee
selection and a small company
culture. Teaching Purpose: To
consider the role of human
resource management, leadership,
and values in a start-up venture,
and to address the tension
between a strong organizational
culture and rapid growth.
Richard Owen, CEO of AvantGo, is
preparing for a meeting in which
he will set the human resource
policy for the firm going forward.
It has been three months since
the company's IPO, and given the
tremendous cramp in hiring over
the six months prior to the IPO,
he knows that this meeting will set
the expectations for the many
annual evaluations that will follow.
Uppermost in his mind is the
decision on whether to implement
a "forced-curve" grading scheme,
and the implications of this
decision on staff perceptions and
notification.
In just seven days, the RitzCarlton transforms newly hired
employees into "Ladies and
Gentlemen Serving Ladies and
Gentlemen." The case details a
new hotel launch, focusing on the
unique blend of leadership, quality
processes, and values of selfrespect and dignity, to create
award-winning service.
SUPERVALU examines the creation
and implementation of a training
program for attracting and
retaining college graduates for the
nation's largest wholesale food
distribution company. It
addresses: 1) program design and
2) the management of the design
effort and program
implementation. The case is
appropriate for courses in
organizational behavior, human
resources management, and
general management. Teaching
Purpose: To learn how to manage
the creation, introduction, and
perpetuation of a complex training
program in a large, dynamic
business organization with a
strong culture.
Chip Rae, director of recruiting at
SG Cowen, must decide which
recruits to keep after the final
interview process for new outside
associate hires. Along with team
captains assigned to each school,
he reviews the criteria used to
make hiring decisions. Their new
strategy is to look beyond the top
10 core business schools for the
best of class in the top 25,
avoiding people in the middle of
their class. After some initial
resistance, senior managers
eventually see the wisdom of the
new strategy.
Chapter 21: Organisational Control and Power
Power is the
HBR Article
great motivator
# R0301J
9p
Balancing
Corporate
Power: A New
Federalist Paper
HBR Article
# 92604
9p
Nowadays, with organizations
growing ever flatter and
responsibility being pushed further
down the ranks, admitting to a
desire for power is a little out of
fashion. But as the research in this
1976 classic HBR article shows,
power is essential to good
management. In fact, when it
comes to managing big
companies, the desire for power-that is, a manager's desire to have
an impact, to be strong and
influential--is more important than
the need to get things done or the
wish to be liked. The need to
achieve, while important in small
companies, actually becomes
counterproductive in large,
complex organizations, leading
managers to try to do things
themselves rather than spread
tasks among many people. And
managers who need to be liked
tend to make exceptions for
particular subordinates' needs,
undermining morale. But seeking
power is not the same as seeking
glory. People who want power
only to further their own careers,
rather than the goals of the
organization, tend to have
subordinates who are loyal to
them but not to the company,
making them less effective on the
whole. And wanting power is not
the same as throwing it around.
Correlations between employee
morale and sales figures show
that individuals who manage by
fiat are less effective than those
whose style is more democratic.
As the many examples show, top
executives can learn to tell who
the good managers are likely to be
and to train existing ones to be
more effective. McKinsey Award
Winner.
Given that organizations are seen
more and more as minisocieties,
the prospect of applying political
principles to management makes
a great deal of sense. Federalism
is particularly appropriate because
it offers a well-recognized system
for dealing with paradoxes of
power and control: the need to
make things big by keeping them
small; to encourage autonomy but
within bounds; and to combine
variety and shared purpose.
Federalism responds to these
paradoxes by balancing power
Motorola
Corporation:
The View from
the CEO Office
HBSP
# 9-494-140
15p
Schaumburg, IL;
electronics; Fortune 500;
$17 billion revenues;
120,000 employees
Kentucky Fried
Chicken (Japan)
Limited
HBSP
# 9-387-043
20p
Japan, United States; fast
food; large; $2 billion
revenues; 1970-1983
Chapter 22: Organisation Development Culture
Sealed Air
HBSP
United States, Europe,
Corporation:
# 9-398-096
Asia; packaging (protective
Globalisation
18p
and specialty); $800 million
and Corporate
revenues; 4,200
Culture
HBSP
employees; 1997
among those in the center of the
organization, those in the centers
of expertise, and those in the
center of the action--the operating
businesses. Federalism avoids the
risks of autocracy and the
overcontrol of a central
bureaucracy. It ensures a
measure of democracy and
creates a "dispersed center" that
is more a network than a place.
McKinsey Award Winner.
Motorola, a leader in
semiconductors and
telecommunications, embarked on
an ambitious program of renewal
beginning in the early 1980s,
leading to dramatic improvements
in the company's quality, cycle
time, and growth. Much of this
progress was attributed to a major
investment in workers' skills and
in mechanisms that encouraged
teams of employees to work on
continuous improvement projects.
In 1994 top management
considered whether to promote a
corporate-wide empowerment
initiative that would encourage an
unprecedented downward
delegation of responsibilities. With
very ambitious global growth
goals, Motorola aspired to be "the
finest corporation in the world,"
with an organization that was both
more flexible and participative and
dedicated to continuous
improvement. The case focuses on
the role of the CEO office in
promoting corporate initiatives
while preserving the $17 billion
corporation's decentralized
structure.
Describes the internationalization
of the Kentucky Fried Chicken
(KFC) fast food chain, focusing on
KFC's entry into Japan. An
entrepreneurial country general
manager, Lou Weston, battles
numerous problems to establish
the business and is eventually
highly successful. In doing so,
Weston ignores or circumvents
policies and control from KFC's
headquarters and becomes very
upset when more sophisticated
planning, coordination, and control
systems begin to constrain his
freedom. The case presents both
the headquarters and subsidiary
perspectives and allows discussion
of the conflicts between strategic
planning and control and
entrepreneurial independence in a
multinational company.
Sealed Air Corp.'s CEO and COO
are considering what approach
they should take to building a
seamless corporate culture
worldwide. Anticipating continuing
# 9-398-097
34p
Meg Whitman at
eBay Inc (A)
HBSP
# 9-401-024
32p
San Jose, CA; Internet;
1999
Corning – 198396: Transition
at the Top
HBSP
# 9-401-034
30p
Corning, NY; glass; Fortune
500; $5 billion revenues;
20,000 employees; 19831996
Follow on Case
# 9-401-035
Slade Plating
Department
HBSP
# 9-496-018
11p
Campaigning for
Change
HBR article
# R0207G
5p
Michigan; metal products
growth and expansion, especially
outside the United States, they
are concerned with preserving and
promoting the culture that has
been one of the company's key
assets. However, their
experiences in integrating
acquired companies, especially
outside the United States, have
heightened their awareness of
differences among the regional
cultures of the world and the
challenges they face in
maintaining a unified corporate
culture. Teaching Purpose: To
illustrate the challenges of building
a single corporate culture in a
global enterprise and to explore
the tensions between U.S. culture
and cultures of Europe and Asia.
Meg Whitman takes over as CEO
of eBay from the founder. She
must figure out how to lead the
company through a stage of
phenomenal growth without
compromising eBay's unique
external customer culture and
internal culture--its key success
factors. A rewritten version of an
earlier case.
Focuses on Jamie Houghton's
efforts to revitalize Corning from
1983-1996, including the
development of a very strong set
of values and culture. The issue
centers around Roger Ackerman's
rise to president, then
chairman/CEO, and his drive to
both change the business
strategically and financially and
develop a new culture to support
this change.
Describes a conflict between the
values and norms of a segment of
an internal social system and
those of management and the
wider culture. Includes decision
opportunity. A rewritten version of
an earlier case.
Most organizations must change if
they're to stay alive. Change is
tough to accomplish, but it's not
impossible and can be
systematized. The author, who
has been involved in change
initiatives at scores of companies,
believes that the success of such
programs has more to do with
execution than with
conceptualization. The successful
change programs he observed had
one thing in common: They
employed three distinct but linked
campaigns--political, marketing,
and military. A political campaign
creates a coalition strong enough
to support and guide the initiative.
A marketing campaign must go
beyond simply publicizing the
initiative's benefits. It focuses on
listening to ideas that bubble up
Agilent
Technologies:
Organisational
Change
(A) and (B)
Stanford GSB
0D1A
35p
Change Without
Pain
HBR Article
# R00401
5p
0D1B
2p
technology; $10.8 billion
revenues; 46,000
employees; 2000-2001
from the field as well as on
working with lead customers to
design the initiative. A clearly
articulated theme for the
transformation program must also
be developed. A military campaign
deploys executives' scarce
resources of attention and time.
Successful executives launch all
three campaigns simultaneously.
The three always feed on one
another, and if any one campaign
is not properly implemented, the
change initiative is bound to fail.
On March 2, 1999, HewlettPackard (HP) announced a plan to
create a separate company,
subsequently named Agilent
Technologies, made up of HP's
businesses in test and
measurement, semiconductor
products, healthcare solutions,
chemical analysis, and the related
portions of HP laboratories. In
developing the transformation
strategy, Agilent president and
CEO, Ned Barnholt, grappled with
how to improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of the new company
while still maintaining the best
portions of HP's culture and
practices. Barnholt adopted HP's
values of innovation and
contribution, trust and respect for
individuals, and uncompromising
integrity, but he added three new
values: speed, focus, and
accountability. Barnholt also
wanted to improve the company's
efficiency in terms of shared
services. In mid-2001, the Agilent
team faced a series of unexpected
challenges. On April 5, 2001,
Barnholt announced that business
conditions had worsened further
than previously expected. Barnholt
wondered whether he and his
team had gone too far in the
organizational and cultural
changes they had tried to
implement. He wondered whether
his vision of speed, focus, and
accountability would be
compatible with HP's legacy values
and culture, and if so, how would
he integrate the two? Teaching
Purpose: Students will analyze
how a company such as Agilent
grappled with the challenges of
transforming an ingrained HP
culture within a brand new work
environment. Students will get a
sense of the challenges spun-off
companies such as Agilent face,
assess Agilent's strategies and
implementation, and recommend
additional strategies and steps.
Change or perish is a corporate
truism, but so is its unhappy
corollary: many companies change
and perish. The process of change
can tear an organization apart.
Drawing on his research over ten
years, the author suggests that
companies alternate major change
initiatives with carefully paced
periods of smaller, organic
change, using processes he calls
tinkering and kludging (kludging is
tinkering on a large scale). The
result is dynamic stability, which
allows change without fatal pain.
Citing examples from General
Electric to Barnesandnoble.com,
the author describes dynamic
stability as a process of continual
but relatively small
reconfigurations of existing
practices and business models
rather than the creation of new
ones. As they tinker and kludge,
successful companies would be
wise to follow these four
guidelines: reward shameless
borrowing; appoint a chief
memory officer who can help the
company avoid making the same
old mistakes; tinker and kludge
internally before searching for
solutions externally; and hire
generalists, because generalists
tend to be more adept at tinkering
and kludging. As a paradigm of
successful pacing, the author cites
the efforts of Lou Gerstner at IBM,
American Express Travel Related
Services, and RJR Nabisco.
Chapter 23: Management Development and Organisational Effectiveness
Wainwright
HBSP
Missouri; automotive
Traces the growth of Wainwright,
Industries:
# 9-396-219
supplier; $28 million
a small automotive supply
Beyond the
15p
revenues; 300 employees;
company, focusing on its
Baldridge
1979-1996
commitment to quality in 1981
and the evolution of its quality
culture. Breakthrough programs
that stress "trust and belief" in the
workforce and commitment to
customers result in Wainwright
winning the Malcolm Baldrige
Award in 1994.
Breakthrough
HBR Article
HBR's editors searched for the
Ideas for 2004:
# R0402A
best new ideas related to the
The HBR list
20p
practice of management and came
up with a collection that is as
diverse as it is provocative. The
2004 HBR List includes emergent
concepts from biology, network
science, management theory, and
more. A few highlights: Richard
Florida wonders why U.S. society
doesn't seem to be thinking about
the flow of people as the key to
America's advantage in the
"creative age." Diane L. Coutu
describes how the revolution in
neurosciences will have a major
impact on business. Clayton M.
Christensen explains the law of
conservation of attractive profits:
When attractive profits disappear
at one stage in the value chain
because a product becomes
commoditized, the opportunity to
Getting the
truth into
Workplace
Surveys
HBR Article
# R0202K
7p
Rudi Gassner
and the
Executive
Committee of
BMG
International
(A)
HBSP
# 9-494-055
21p
TN
# 9-494-122
27p
Global;
entertainment/music;
large; $2 billion revenues;
1993
earn attractive profits with
proprietary products usually
emerges at an adjacent stage.
Daniel H. Pink explains why the
master of fine arts is the new
MBA. Herminia Ibarra describes
how companies can get the most
out of managers returning from
leadership-development
programs. Iqbal Quadir suggests a
radical fix for the third world's
trade problems: Get the World
Bank to lend to rich countries so
that there are resources for
retraining workers in dying
industries.
There's no doubt that companies
can benefit from workplace
surveys and questionnaires. Good
surveys accurately home in on the
problems the company wants
information about. They are
designed so that as many people
as possible actually respond. And
good survey design ensures that
the spectrum of responses is
unbiased. In this article, the
author, a former research scientist
at the University of Michigan and
currently the president of a survey
design firm, explores some glaring
failures of survey design and
provides 16 guidelines to improve
workplace assessment tools.
Applied judiciously, these rules will
not only make a tangible
difference in the quality and
usefulness of the data obtained,
but will also produce an increased
response rate. The guidelines-and the problems they address-fall into five areas: content,
format, language, measurement,
and administration. Following the
guidelines in this article will help
you get unbiased, representative,
and useful information from your
workplace survey.
Explores the roles of CEO Rudi
Gassner and the 9-person
executive committee in leading
BMG International. BMG
International is the international
music subsidiary of Bertlesmann,
a German company that is the
second-largest media
conglomerate in the world.
Describes a 1993 decision that
Gassner and the executive
committee must make about
whether or not to change
managers' business plans and
bonus targets as a result of a
newly negotiate reduced
manufacturing cost. Allows for
discussion of a number of timely
and important issues: 1) the
complexities of managing and
growing a large global business;
2) the tensions between
centralized corporate control and
3M: Profile of an
Innovating
Company
HBSP
# 9-395-016
20p
United States; high
technology products;
Fortune 500
decentralized local management in
a global organization; 3) the
impact of leadership style on
corporate culture and
performance; 4) the challenges of
leading a senior mangement
team; and 5) the final decision by
CEO Rudi Gassner and the
subsequent actions taken by the
members of the executive
committee.
Traces the birth and development
of 3M Corp., focusing in particular
on the origins of its
entrepreneurially-based ability to
innovate. In particular, it
highlights the role of CEO William
L. McKnight in creating a unique
set of values, policies, and
structures to nurture and develop
continuous renewal. With the
changing environment of the
1980s, however, a new generation
of CEOs begin to adopt new
policies and change the cultural
norms that helped 3M grow. The
trigger issue focuses on what
other changes are required.