Articles

Companies are examining their use of space more carefully to reduce occupancy costs. Misconceptions about the role of accommodation in organizations have led to costly inefficiencies in space planning and building use. Reducing square footage provides a company with a two-stage opportunity for improvement. First, space "right sizing" and redesign can lead to a better "fit" between work-space design and users' tasks; employees' work space can more effectively support work performance and improve productivity. Second, the process of making space cuts and changes is an opportunity for initiating broader-based corporate change in companies seeking to reduce overhead, empower employees, and reengineer work processes. The author offers examples that show how some companies have used work-space changes to transform their business and how CEOs can take full advantage of this opportunity.

For managers, the challenge of understanding nonmarket forces — government, interest groups, activists, and the public — is frequently more difficult than understanding the market environment. The author develops a strategy system of principles, frameworks, and action plans to deal with the issues, in-stitutions, interests, and information that characterize the nonmarket environment. He uses the concept of a rent chain, analogous to the value chain, to show how com-panies can participate in policy-setting processes and generate leverage to their own benefit.

When employers focus only on the direct, out-of-pocket costs of health care, they fail to consider the indirect costs of illness in the workplace form workers' impaired functioning on the job and absenteeism. The authors present a case study of the effects of clinical depression on direct and indirect health-related costs and provide a model that employers can apply to a wide range of illnesses to analyze their investments in health care. The authors apply the framework to several workplace situations -- employees' depression, cigarette smoking breaks, and arthritis -- to estimate the costs of lost productivity. They also show how to do a break-even analysis to determine when employers' investments in health interventions are likely justified.

The production-line approach to service is being challenged by an employee empowerment approach. Despite its growing popularity, many managers are till uncertain about empowerment’s impact. The authors describe the returns a company can expect from empowering service employees, which include a number of favorable business results, but new management changes as well.

In this case study, the authors describe Toshio Okuno's five techniques for managing major changes in his company.

Is it time to reform the financial reporting regulations that were established in the early 1900s? Will new regulations improve the corporate disclosure process? The authors conducted a national survey of corporate managers, financial analysts, and portfolio managers to examine their options on disclosure regulation and how companies communicate with the capital markets. Their analysis indicates that, while all three groups think market functioning is imperfect, they do not see a need for increased financial reporting regulation. Rather, the authors' analysis suggests that companies can improve the processes of disclosure and communication by developing a strategy for corporate information disclosure, upgrading the role of the investor relations staff, and voluntarily reporting nonfinancial information. Such improvements would increase management credibility, analysts' understanding of the firm, investors' patience, and, potentially, share value.

Marketing strategies are increasingly subject to public scrutiny and are being held to higher standards. Caveat emptor is no longer acceptable as a basis for justifying marketing practices. The author's "marketing ethics continuum" explains the shift in society's expectations of marketers and provides benchmarks against which marketers can evaluate their practices and perspectives. Today, consumers' interests are increasingly favored over producers'; consumers can make more informed choices, and less capable consumers are offered special protection. The author provides a practical framework - including the consumer sovereignty test - for marketers to apply to their decision making. The framework attempts to answer the question: What constitutes ethical marketing practice? The test examines consumer capability, information provision, and consumer choice.

Business reengineering holds great promise for companies by changing the way they do business and breaking down outdated assumptions and rules. But unless management gives information systems a prominent role in the reengineering project, the effort will be doomed to failure. The author traces a reengineering effort at Breezy Services Company, showing where management went wrong in ignoring IS's vital participation. He presents five steps toward better reengineering by assigning IS the tasks of project management and technical vision and leadership. Only by working together can business and IS managers ensure a successful reorganization of their company.

Reengineering is a risky business, and the risks result both when companies try to do too little in their reengineering efforts and when they try to do enough. They may make the wrong or inadequate changes to systems or processes, or they may make radical changes that lead to political backlashes. To manage the risks of reengineering, according to the author, it is essential to anticipate a company's future environmental and operational uncertainties and to achieve consensus on the changes that need to be made. Scenario analysis provides a way to avoid the obstacles to "revisioning" -- overconfidence, intellectual arrogance, and anchoring in the present.

In their decision-making activities, managers need to tread a fine line between ill-conceived, arbitrary decisions ("extinction by instinct") and an unhealthy obsession with number, analyses, and reports ("paralysis by analysis"). The author examines the over- and underuse of formal analysis and describes its underlying motives. She identifies three types of situations that lead to excessive analysis and three that lead to insufficient analysis. She concludes that, since the causes are frequently structural, simply exhorting managers to be more or less analytical is unlikely to solve the problem. Attention must be given to deeper structural and cultural issues. Moreover, because the obvious solution to one problem may drive the organization to the opposite one, rational yet efficient decision making is a complex balancing act that requires frequent diagnosis and realignment.