“Collaborative Organization” Authors Win 2012 Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize

The editors of MIT Sloan Management Review are pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize: Rob Cross, Peter Gray, Shirley Cunningham, Mark Showers and Robert J. Thomas.

In their Fall 2010 article “The Collaborative Organization: How to Make Employee Networks Really Work,” the authors discussed how the most effective organizations make smart use of employee networks to reduce costs, improve efficiency and spur innovation.

“Employee networks can have profound impacts in transforming rigid organizations into flexible units that can adapt and innovate,” write the authors. “But in making these changes, CIOs and other business leaders need to let go of some of their traditional management methods and embrace a different, more collaborative management model.”

You can read the award-winning article free for a limited time.

The Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize is awarded annually to the authors of the most outstanding MIT SMR article on planned change and organizational development from the previous academic year.

This year’s panel of judges for the prize consisted of three distinguished members of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty: Schussel Family Professor and Chair of the MIT Sloan Management Review Erik Brynjolfsson; recently retired senior lecturer in Information Technology Cyrus Gibson; and Erwin H. Schell Professor of Management John Van Maanen.