Fall 1996, Vol. 38, No. 1

 

Last June, the Sloan Management Review staff had the invigorating, terrifying experience of watching, from behind a one-way mirror, SMR subscribers discuss our product. We were impressed by our readers' thoughtfulness, were heartened by their good opinion, and came back to the office inspired to make SMR more useful and more user-friendly. This issue premieres two changes suggested by the focus groups.

First, we're introducing a new department, called "Executive Briefings," at the end of the issue. It consists of two or three-paragraph summaries of each article that should help readers preview the issue, plus get the gist of articles they don't want to read straight through. We'll also use the summaries on our web site in a searchable abstract index. We hope to have that up by the end of the year.

The second change concerns format, not content. We'd never thought much about where people read SMR. It turns out it happens a lot in airplanes, airports, and taxicabs — places where there's enough noise and jiggle that small type can be annoying. The type in this issue is larger and, we hope, easier to read. SMR articles are rigorous and require concentration; it's a bit much that we've asked your eyes to work as hard as your brains. We apologize.

Management thinking suffers, often, from lack of historical context. Today's trends acknowledge no forebears and — perhaps as a result? — disappear unmourned when the next trend comes along. Edgar Schein, more than anyone I know, brings his decades of experience with him when he approaches a "new" topic. It's no accident that his article "How Can Organizations Learn Faster? The Challenge of Entering the Green Room" has been a best-selling reprint since it appeared three years ago; it applied his deep knowledge of social psychology to that trendy (and vital) subject, organizational learning. "Three Cultures of Management: The Key to Organizational Learning," our lead article, continues that process. Schein did seminal work in the 1960s and 1970s on how distinctive professional cultures affect the workplace; this article uses that work to deepen our understanding of learning in today's organizations.

Henry Mintzberg has always liked pushing the envelope — so when he counsels moderation, I'm apt to listen. With Joseph Lampel, he's written a piece on the trend toward customization. They suggest that, just as there's a logic to individualization, so too there's a logic (still in effect) to aggregation. They propose a continuum of strategies running between pure standardization and pure customization; most products will logically fall somewhere between the extremes.

"Develop Long-Term Competitiveness through IT Assets" has already generated considerable buzz in presentations around the country. Jeanne Ross, Cynthia Beath, and Dale Goodhue propose that using IT to enhance competitiveness depends on management of three assets: IT human resources, a reusable technology base, and a strong partnership between IT and business management. IT guru John Rockart calls this article "the real thing."

Rockart, Ross, and Michael Earl collaborate on another piece in this issue: "Eight Imperatives for the New IT Organization." Rockart and Earl have contributed many articles individually to SMR; this is the first time they've collaborated here. We think you'll enjoy the result.

The banking industry talks a good line about quality and service delivery, but most banks focus on reducing labor costs and competing on price. Jobs are designed for minimally skilled, often part-time workers who will probably leave after a short period of employment. Brent Keltner and David Finegold suggest that, for some banking sectors, a major strategic shift is in order: they should be competing on value. How? By investing in their people: training, creating career ladders, promoting from within, offering modularized training for high-skill positions, and forming partnerships with community colleges.

If you have manufacturing people preaching quality, finance people preaching activity-based costing, and IT people preaching process-based restructuring, you may feel you're living in a Tower of Babel. K.J. Euske and Steven Player rather bravely chose to decode the various improvement methods and thereby created a coherent picture of their relationships and relative merits. Michael Blaine interprets the U.S. trade deficit differently than most economists would. "Trade, FDI, and the Dollar: Explaining the U.S. Trade Deficit" is a carefully argued, interesting alternative explanation.

Firms pay millions to be official sponsors of major athletic events, then have the spotlight taken away from them by "ambush" sponsors that, for example, purchase TV advertising time and thereby confuse viewers as to the "real" sponsor. In our final article, Tony Meenaghan analyzes the logistics and ethics of this practice.

— Sarah Cliffe

 

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