Workplace, Teams, & Culture

Strategic alliances are assuming increasing prominence in the strategy of leading firms, large and small. Yet many alliances fail to meet expectations because little attention is given to nurturing the close working relationships and interpersonal connections that unite the partnering organizations. This case study follows the strategic alliance between two Fortune 500 firms (referred to as Alpha Communications and Omega Financial Services) as they developed a cobranded product. It explores the social architecture of the alliance and identifies the communication patterns that united the participants & #8212; and the beliefs that divided them. The researchers gathered data from the entire network of alliance participants, including the core team and a cadre of senior executives in the two firms. The result is a vivid and comprehensive portrait of the intricate web of relationships that formed in this alliance and the flow of communications within and across the partnering organizations. The interviews in the study revealed, for example, that fears of ulterior motives preoccupied managers on both sides, leading to a lack of trust. There was also a perceived imbalance in the degree of importance that each partner assigned to the alliance. One appointed senior managers, the other lower level managers, which led to significant pacing issues. Although managers in both firms agreed that the alliance made sense, inattention to the inner workings revealed bothersome incompatibilities. The firms’ different personnel structures also contributed to high levels of frustration. Omega used a centralized approach to control the outward flow of information, whereas Alpha used a decentralized approach. The researchers’ findings suggest that positive personal connections are crucial to the success of a partnership. Initial negotiations and senior management advocacy set the tone for the alliance, galvanizing support and promoting effective interpersonal ties. A well-integrated communication and work-flow network is required within and across the firms, so firms must carefully select team members who will match in rank and specialization those from the partnering organization. Regularly auditing the evolving ties between the organizations is valuable in gauging alliance health.

What do managers and executives believe and feel about workplace spirituality or assessments of its purported benefits? In this article, the authors present the results of a two-year empirical study based on face-to-face interviews and questionnaires. Participants differentiated strongly between religion and spirituality, viewing religion as a highly inappropriate form of expression and spirituality as a highly appropriate subject for the workplace. Most believed strongly that organizations must harness the immense spiritual energy within each person in order to produce world-class products and services. Meaning and purpose on the job are imparted by (ranked from highest to lowest in importance): (1) "the ability to realize my full potential as a person"; (2) being associated with a good organization or an ethical organization; (3) interesting work; (4) making money; (5) having good colleagues and serving humankind; (6) service to future generations; and (7) "service to my immediate community." Beyond a certain threshold, the authors point out, pay ceases to be the most important factor in work life, and higher needs prevail; the desire for "self-actualization" becomes paramount. The authors observed five basic designs or models in which organizations are religious or spiritual: -- The religious-based organization may be positive toward religion and spirituality or positive toward religion and negative toward spirituality. -- The evolutionary organization begins as strongly associated or identified with a particular religion and moves toward a more ecumenical position. -- The recovering organization adopts the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous as a way to foster spirituality. -- The socially responsible organization is led by someone guided by strong spiritual principles or values that are applied directly to the business for the betterment of society. -- The values-based organization is guided by general philosophical principles or values that are not aligned or associated with a particular religion or even with spirituality. -- Characterized by the underlying principle of hope, the models appear to have been precipitated by a critical event that caused intense difficulties for the company founders, heads, or the entire organization. All incorporate a principle or mechanism for limiting greed -- both the unlimited accumulation of money and the unrestrained pursuit of power. With a few notable exceptions, people who consider their organizations as being spiritual also see them as better than their less spiritual counterparts.

The corporation has emerged as perhaps the most powerful social and economic institution of modern society. Yet, corporations and their managers suffer from a profound social ambivalence. Believing this to be symptomatic of the unrealistically pessimistic assumptions that underlie current management doctrine, Ghoshal et al. encourage managers to replace the narrow economic assumptions of the past and recognize that: -- Modern societies are not market economies; they are organizational economies in which companies are the chief actors in creating value and advancing economic progress. -- The growth of firms and, therefore, economies is primarily dependent on the quality of their management. -- The foundation of a firm's activity is a new "moral contract" with employees and society, replacing paternalistic exploitation and value appropriation with employability and value creation in a relationship of shared destiny. In the 1980s, managers concentrated on enhancing competitiveness by improving their operating efficiencies. They cut costs, eliminated waste, downsized, and outsourced. They extracted value -- as reflected in shareholder returns -- but at what price? In contrast, firms that seem to continuously proliferate new products and technologies (for example, HP, 3M, Disney, and Microsoft) have never accepted this logic of auto-dismemberment. They have escaped what the authors term "the deadly pincer of dominant theory and practice": an almost exclusive focus on appropriation and control. A different management model is now taking shape, based on a better understanding of individual and corporate motivation. As companies switch their focus from value appropriation to value creation, facilitating cooperation among people takes precedence over enforcing compliance, and initiative is valued more than obedience. The manager's primary tasks become embedding trust, leading change, and establishing a sense of purpose within the company that allows strategy to emerge from within the organization, from the energy and alignment created by that sense of purpose. The core of the managerial role gives way to the "three Ps": purpose, process, and people -- replacing the traditional "strategy-structure-systems" trilogy that worked for companies in the past.

In rapidly changing markets, decisions that changeåÊa company's direction arise much more often.

Companies must understand their customers’ needs and appoint a manager to oversee the production of high-quality information.

The flat structures, service-oriented workforce, and participative decision processes of professional service firms are a model for larger organizations.

Executives, engineers, and operators often don't understand each other very well, and that lack of alignment can hinder learning.

How can you tell if your company is, indeed, a learning organization? What is a learning organization anyway? And how can you improve the learning systems in your company? The authors provide a framework for examining a company, based on its "learning orientations," a set of critical dimensions to organizational learning, and "facilitating factors," the processes that affect how easy or hard it is for learning to occur. They illustrate their model with examples from four firms they studied -- Motorola, Mutual Investment Corporation, Electricite de France, and Fiat -- and conclude that all organizations have systems that support learning.

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.