Managers typically think that the competitive pressure their companies experience is solely the result of the behavior of their rivals. But, by mapping the system of pressures in which they operate, they can make the optimal choice of competitors, allies and markets to gain superior strategic influence over the evolution of their industry and their organization”s role in it.
As companies increasingly turn to emotion-based marketing to help retain their customers, they frequently employ the element of surprise — such as offering unanticipated awards to members of loyalty programs. But according to a June 2002 working paper, such tactics often don't work as intended.
Millions of businesspeople worldwide rely on e-mail as a fundamental communication tool. Managers use it to organize meetings, coordinate virtual work teams, make announcements — and communicate about disputes.
In the wake of the past year's reports of numerous corporate misdeeds, relatively few businesses have thought about making substantive voluntary changes in their ways of working. And, among companies that have made changes, the actions are general rather than specific.
Multinational corporations that use both contract protections and localization strategies are most successful overseas.
The greatest benefits come from a tight fit between organizational processes and the enterprise application software.
As the Internet becomes ubiquitous in business life, early fears that it would disrupt the business models of many companies (for example, by enabling customers to switch suppliers easily) have subsided.
Risk has been a top-of-mind consideration since September 11, but corporations are also concerned with less catastrophic forms of risk: customer credit problems, labor strikes, changes in market acceptance or energy prices — any type of uncertainty that could cause their businesses to stray from plan.
Venture capital has dried up. Business pages report on getting back to basics. It has even become fashionable to snicker about the foolish mass hallucination of the New Economy. Anyone with a new idea in a corporation is being told “cost cutting is our focus right now.&
Thus far, researchers and managers alike have a very limited understanding of what makes knowledge workers tick. But by manipulating two key leverage points, companies can begin to shift the balance from art toward science.
For the past two decades, business leaders have focused exclusively on shareholder value. In a time of terrorism and corporate scandal, a much broader vision is imperative, as Yale School of Management Dean Jeffrey E. Garten explains.
Recent research indicates that managers at top-performing companies are able to identify the nature and array of initiatives they may need to implement, then determine the unique combination of IT service clusters necessary to create that agility.
Knowledge isn’t static, but it often gets managed as if it were. Companies that want to develop and use knowledge most profitably should start treating it differently according to the stages of its life.
Global companies today are struggling with a Catch-22. On one side is the legacy of the 1990s, when investors became accustomed to double-digit annual growth.
In this article, the authors make the case that corporate misdeeds 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 — or fabrications — each of which has driven a debilitating wedge into society.
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.
The tacit knowledge shared among geographically agglomerated companies may have more to do with marketing than technology.