Articles

In an article written well before Enron became a euphemism for corporate irresponsibility, the authors make the case that such misdeeds, so prevalent in recent months, are symptoms of a syndrome of selfishness that has taken hold of our business institutions, our societies and our minds. Drawing on history, literature, philosophy and management thinking, they argue that the syndrome is built on a series of half-truths & #8212; or fabrications & #8212; each of which has driven a debilitating wedge into society. Our narrow view of ourselves as “economic man” has driven a wedge of distrust between our individual wants and our social needs. A distorted view of shareholder value has driven a wedge of disengagement between those who create economic performance and those who harvest it. Our obsession with heroic leadership has created a wedge of disconnection between leaders and everyone else. The glorification of the “lean and mean” organization has driven a wedge of discontinuity between short-term and long-term goals. And the convenient, widely held notion that “a rising tide lifts all boats” has ratified a wedge of disparity between the prime beneficiaries of stock-price increases and the large numbers of people disadvantaged by the corresponding actions. The authors challenge and deconstruct each of these flawed premises and offer an alternative. Real prosperity, they say, combines economic development with social generosity & #8212; and that requires a new philosophy of social and managerial engagement.

Executives make few moves more critical than their decisions about which technology-infrastructure investments will promote future strategic agility. To pinpoint best practices, three IT experts marshaled 10 years of data from 89 leading enterprises. One finding was that when companies describe their IT-infrastructure capabilities as services instead of equipment (say, the provision of a fully maintained laptop computer with access to all company systems and the Internet), they do a better job of putting a value on what they are buying. Understanding the 70 IT-infrastructure services that emerge consistently from the research can help executives identify which investments will make sense for which strategic business initiative. And understanding whether the contemplated initiative is supply-side, internally focused or demand-side can help managers decide whether to make the infrastructure investment on a business-unit level or enterprisewide. The authors find that leading companies are making regular, systematic, modular and targeted IT-infrastructure investments on the basis of overall strategic direction. If other companies can learn to recognize which IT-infrastructure capabilities are needed for which kinds of initiatives, they can have some assurance that the investments they make today will serve the strategies of tomorrow.

All organizations sense competitive pressure intuitively, but most, says the author, do not do a good job of managing it. That is, in part, because it is often difficult to see the overall pressure system & #8212; a complex, shifting pattern of overlapping contacts among rivals that continually alters the climate of an industry by changing the incentives for players to compete, mutually forbear or even formally cooperate. This article illustrates how pressure systems can be mapped and controlled to a significant extent. A map based on measured pressures has important implications for an organization’s market’ and competitor selection, growth plans, product-portfolio and diversification strategy, resource-allocation priorities, competitive-intelligence system, merger-and-acquisition strategy, and scenario-planning process. In any industry, companies can develop competitive strategy by using a pressure map to answer two critical questions: If the current pressure pattern continues, what position will my company ultimately hold? How can my company stabilize or shift the direction of pressure to reduce (or enhance) the predicted impact of the current pressure system? Through detailed discussion of the airline, automobile and European wireless-telecom industries, among others, the author demonstrates how pressure maps can reveal the underlying competitive dynamics of an industry. He then offers a variety of mechanisms by which organizations can and do affect their competitive landscapes & #8212; stabilizing or destabilizing them to greatest advantage.

The idiosyncratic aspects of electronic mail can obviate resolution.

Vertical command and control” sabotages organizations that need bottom-up innovation to be competitive. Yet organizational integration is increasingly essential. New research shows how technology is helping cutting-edge companies meet the challenge by integrating horizontally.” A fundamental management challenge, particularly in large, diversified global enterprises, is the tension between subunit autonomy and companywide cohesion. New research uncovers several ways top companies balance that tension.In the last decade, performance criteria often ignored how managers of subunits contributed to companywide performance. Empowerment efforts improved unit competitiveness but left knowledge sharing behind. Today (because customers’ needs span internal boundaries and because technology has changed the way innovation gets managed) managers are recognizing the need to address the integration side of the tension. At one company, BP, CEO John Browne created a peer-assist process to help his business-unit leaders integrate horizontally. Managers who ran similar businesses were assigned to help one another improve both individual and collective performance. As the culture evolved and managers successfully handled ever tougher endeavors, both entrepreneurship and mutual trust were strengthened. Executives who want to build horizontal integration without disrupting entrepreneurship must allow time for persistent action and reinforcement to take hold. Although they have to be relentless in driving the process, they must be patient about results. Such leaders will reap enhanced organizational capability and sustainable improvement of business performance.

Most executives today recognize that their organizations’ ability to manage knowledge effectively is a strategic imperative. Just how they should go about developing that ability is the challenge. As in most other areas of management advice, there is no shortage of useful frameworks, models and checklists to choose from. Unfortunately, these solutions are generally presented as applicable in any and all situations, and managers are left to make their own mistakes as they use one tool or another to limited effect. Executives can begin to take a more effective approach if they realize that knowledge has a life cycle. Over the course of a five-year study, the authors have devised a model to help explain the life of an idea in commercial settings. The model shows that new knowledge is born as something fairly nebulous and that it takes shape as it is tested, matures through application in a few settings, is diffused to a growing audience and eventually becomes widely understood and recognized as common practice. In this article, the authors develop the concept of the knowledge life cycle in detail and then describe the appropriate strategies for managing ideas at each stage of the cycle.