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A follow-up survey to one published in the Summer 1991 issue of Sloan Management Review ("How Much Has Really Changed between U.S. Automakers and Their Suppliers?" by Susan Helper) shows that long-term, closely linked relationships have performance advantages for automakers and their suppliers in both the United States and Japan. Although such high-performance relationships with customers are still more prevalent in Japan than in the United States, the nature of supplier relations in the two countries is converging in some respects. The current survey includes more than 600 automotive suppliers in the United States and almost 500 suppliers in Japan.

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.

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 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.

Managers don't need any more vague advice about paying better attention to customers. They need the practical, step-by-step methods described in this article. In 1990, a medical equipment manufacturer needed to redesign one of its products to beat an aggressive competitor. It used a method called the "House of Quality," which related market research information directly to product design, thereby helping the company focus effectively on the most important product benefits. The new design revolutionized the product and was a phenomenal success. Here's how the company did it.

Business process redesign has focused almost exclusively on improving the firm's internal operations. Although internal efficiency and effectiveness are important objectives, the authors agree that business network redesign -- reconceptualizing the role of the firm and its key business processes in the larger business network -- is of greater strategic importance. To support their argument, they analyze the evolution of Baxter's ASAP system, one of the most publicized but inadequately understood strategic information systems of the 1980s. They conclude by examining whether ASAP's early successes have positioned the firm well for the changing hospital supplies marketplace of the 1990s.

In 1982, Robert Benjamin published a forecast of the state of information technology in the year 1990. He wrote that the information systems environment was in a considerable state of "flux" and information systems managers could benefit from a prediction of the "endpoint scenario [in order to] focus major planning strategies." Ten years later, it's time to provide a new set of landmarks for another decade of flux. Benjamin and his coauthor, Jon Blunt, envision the information technology world of 2000. What can we expect? What should we not expect? And what can we not even begin to guess?

Some authors, and even some popular journals, have noted examples of the radical new organizational forms now emerging. This article illuminates the technological and services bases of these changes -- and examines how to manage them successfully. (Its companion article is "Technology in Services: Rethinking Strategic Focus" by J. B. Quinn, T.L. Doorley and P.C. Paquette; Sloan Management Review 31, no. 2 [1990]: 79-87.) Both articles build on the authors' earlier works published by Sloan Management Review, Scientific American, and the National Academy Press.

Besides the changes in organizational strategy described in the companion article, new service technologies also dictate substantive changes in strategic structures and strategic thinking. These include defining each value-creation activity as a service, asking in each case whether the company can perform that service better than anyone else in the world, and outsourcing or eliminating the activity if the answer to the question is "no." This article discusses how firms can best perform that analysis and implement the strategy that emerges from their analysis. (Its companion article is "Technology in Services: Rethinking Strategic Focus" by J. B. Quinn, T. L. Doorley and P. C. Paquette; Sloan Management Review 31, no. 2 [1990]: 67-78.)

International businesses faced new strategic challenges in the 1980s. Corporations that had once succeeded with relatively one-dimensional strategies -- efficiency, responsiveness, or ability to exploit learning -- were forced to broaden their outlook. Successful "transnational" corporations integrated all three of those characteristics. They did so by building on the strengths -- but accepting the limitations -- of their administrative heritages. This is the first of two articles; the second will describe how actual companies made that transition.