MIT Sloan Management Review

Corporate Strategy, Leadership and Organization Studies

 

Toward a Definition of Corporate Transformation

By Barbara Blumenthal and Philippe Haspeslagh

April 15, 1994

WHAT IS CORPORATE TRANSFORMATION AND HOW CAN WE DEFINE A SUCCESSFUL ONE? THE AUTHORS PROPOSE A DEFINITION BASED ON behavioral changes throughout the organization and suggest a framework, built on their analysis of cases and interviews, for comparing transformations among firms.

Buy article & permissions

Recent articles and books have detailed how firms, in an effort to transform themselves, either succeed brilliantly or fail miserably. Academics and consultants have found a large audience for the lessons learned and techniques used at Xerox, Motorola, Ford, General Electric, British Airways, and AT&T, to mention a few. There is equal interest in the most troubled cases, as a Fortune cover story on dinosaurs — Sears, GM, and IBM — makes all too clear.1

In October 1992, we attended a Strategic Management Society conference entitled “Strategic Renaissance— The Transformation of Economic Enterprise,” where presenters discussed everything from the challenges of introducing brand management, to implementing a merger, to a complete reengineering of business processes — all under the heading of transformation. With such a broad range of issues to solve, it is not surprising that the lessons often seemed either inconsistent or “all over the map.” To add to the confusion, there were debates on whether some of the most cited cases like Ford and GE were, in fact, successful transformations.

In our opinion, a consensus on what transformation is will not emerge until it is better defined and given a framework so that firms facing similar issues and circumstances can make meaningful comparisons. Here we propose such a framework and use it to compare some of the best-known transformations. Our analysis... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

 
 

In This Issue

 

Best Sellers