Articles

Total Quality Management (TQM) is more than a fad or a buzzword, argue the authors. It is even more than a technique for controlling and motivating employees. TQM is a challenge to conventional management techniques and to the theories that underlie them. Therefore it cannot simply be grafted onto existing management structures and systems. If its benefits are to be fully realized, then companies need to prepare themselves for organization-wide change -- including top management's relinquishing of power. Furthermore, TQM practices cannot be combined with strategic initiatives, such as corporate restructuring, that are based on conventional management theories. The failure of one or both programs is inevitable.

To the extent that buyer-supplier relationships can be cooperative, value can be created for both customers and vendors. Regrettably, the traditional behavior of some industries, particularly the U.S. automotive industry, often precludes cooperation. The authors describe one successful case -- the experiences of ABB and the Ford Motor Company during the design and construction of a $300 million facility. The authors explain the key factors that led to ABB's and Ford's success and how value-adding cooperation between buyers and suppliers can be fostered.

Japan has no more rabbits to pull out of the hat -- its automotive production system has matured, and the industry is in decline. So argues the author, who shows how exchange rates, demographics, and the increasing sophistication of U.S. management are causing a shift in relative competitiveness. Furthermore, these changes affect most Japanese industries, and U.S. managers should be prepared to take advantage of them.

Recent developments in computer software have substantially improved the group brainstorming process. The authors describe research showing that electronic brainstorming groups are more productive than groups that use traditional, oral brainstorming -- and participants like the process more. Electronic brainstorming allows widely dispersed groups to interact, reduces problems associated with oral brainstorming, and improves the productivity of larger groups.

Managers have learned that, to exploit the advantages of new process technologies, they must adapt those technologies to fit the organization and its strategy. But exactly how and when to make those changes is not well understood. The authors argue that technological improvement is seldom a steady process but instead alternates between short episodes of intensive change activity and longer periods of routine use. Data from European and U.S. firms show that adaptation to new technologies often occurs in a "lumpy" or episodic pattern. Examination of several leading Japanese organizations reveals a similar pattern, with one important difference: managers in these operations actively exploit the episodic pattern of adaptation around a given technology. Drawing on these observations, the authors suggest that managing the uneven pace of adaptation can yield important benefits to firms pursuing both efficiency and change.

Everyone is speeding products to market these days. But reducing product development time is only half of the equation; the other half is penetrating the market quickly. The author draws on published research and industry practice to develop five recommendations for reducing market penetration time. He also develops a tracking and diagnostic tool to help managers determine where their market penetration strategy is week.

Are supplier relationships critical to Japanese firms' success? And why are Japanese suppliers more cooperative and willing to take risks than U.S. suppliers? Using their research on supplier-automaker relationships in the United States and Japan, the authors focus on the advantages of the Japanese approach and suggest ways to adopt the practice for American companies.

Eastman Kodak's success in outsourcing its information systems (IS) department has triggered intense interest. Many executives are asking whether the IS function can be considered a commodity service, best managed by a large supplier. To dig beneath the media success stories, the authors studied fourteen Fortune "500" companies that faced outsourcing decisions. Their experiences are sobering news to anyone ready to jump on the bandwagon. More detailed descriptions of their case studies appear in the authors' book, Information Systems Outsourcing: Myths, Metaphors, and Realities (Wiley, 1993).

The topic of organizational learning has gained a lot of attention, but there is little agreement on what organizational learning means and even less on how to create a learning organization. The critical issue is how individual learning is transferred to the organization. The author develops a model that links individual and organizational learning through mental models, the thought constructs that affect how people and organizations operate in the world. His model can guide the search for new tools to help organizations learn.

The track record for information technology (IT) implementation is not very good. MIT's Management in the 1990s program concluded that the benefits of IT are not being realized because investment is heavily biased toward technology and not toward managing changes in process and organizational structure and culture. The authors draw on general change management literature to develop a framework for managing IT-enabled change. They argue that IT-enabled change is somewhat different from change driven by other concerns. Nonetheless, a number of models from the change management literature can be quite useful. Their framework provides a common language for managers implementing IT-based change and shows how technology, business processes, and organization must be adapted to each other for such change to be effective.