FALL 1999 VOL. 41 · NO. 1 Creating a Market-Driven Organization As companies aspire to become market-driven, they exhort employees to get closer to customers, stay ahead of competitors, and make decisions based on their markets. Yet, even the best-intentioned senior managers find it difficult to translate those aspirations into action. Failed or flawed change […]
SUMMER 1999 VOL. 40 · NO. 4 Strategic Outsourcing: Leveraging Knowledge Capabilities The more companies outsource, the more they approach virtual organization, with knowledge centers interacting through mutual interest and electronic systems. To mitigate the risks associated with reduced authority, companies must develop “best in world” capabilities, leverage the capabilities of others and innovate constantly. […]
SPRING 1999 VOL. 40 · NO. 3 A New Manifesto for Management 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 […]
WINTER 1999 VOL. 40 · NO. 2 The Delta Model: Adaptive Management for a Changing World On the basis of research into 100 enterprises, the authors developed a helpful strategic tool, the Delta Model. Companies using the framework define strategic positions that reflect new sources of profitability, align the strategic options with their activities, and […]
FALL 1998 VOL. 40 · NO. 1 New Strategies in Emerging Markets Contrary to conventional wisdom, favorable government relations, pent-up demand, marketing productivity, marketing resources and on-the-spot learning can make early entry desirable even in emerging markets. Two management professors provide a framework that enables companies to assess long-term market potential, identify business prospects and […]
SUMMER 1998 VOL. 39 · NO. 4 Market Management to Transform the IT Organization In recent years, there have been calls and prescriptions for business transformation.1 There has also been growing pressure for radical change in how the IT function is organized and managed. Rockart et al. captured the consequences of an agenda for reform […]
SPRING 1998 VOL. 39 · NO. 3 Core IS Capabilities for Exploiting Information Technology For a company’s information technology to promote competitiveness, it must support strategy, be low in cost and high in quality, and use an appropriate platform. That all calls for flexibility of both IT systems and IT staff. Tapping three strands of […]
WINTER 1998 VOL. 39 · NO. 2 Strategy Innovation and the Quest for Value Strategy in many companies seems to have gone astray, and the author has identified the reason: Managers are focusing on it in isolation instead of establishing the preconditions to successful strategy innovation. Only those companies that are constantly able to reinvent […]
FALL 1997 VOL. 39 · NO. 1 How Microsoft Makes Large Teams Work Like Small Teams Common sense, industry experience, and some academic research all suggest that, when conducting any complex tasks, small teams of talented people are better than large teams of average or talented people. To develop new products quickly, for example, a […]
SUMMER 1997 VOL. 38 · NO. 4 Unexpected Connections: Considering Employees’ Personal Lives Can Revitalize Your Business At a corporate retreat on organizational learning, the vice president of finance for a major manufacturer leads a discussion to raise the “real” issues that inhibit learning and growth. He promises to listen and asks his people to […]
SPRING 1997 VOL. 38 · NO. 3 Strategic Innovation How can a company successfully attack an established market leader? How can it find new ways to compete that everyone else has missed? By breaking the rules of the game in its industry to find new sources of innovation, says this author. In a study of […]
WINTER 1997 VOL. 38 · NO. 2 An Improvisational Model for Change Management: The Case of Groupware Technologies Successfully managing technological change involves the ability to improvise in response to unexpected opportunities. Organizational changes associated with technology implementation don’t have a beginning and an end; they are ongoing. The authors identify three types of change […]
FALL 1996 VOL. 38 · NO. 1 Three Cultures of Management: The Key to Organizational Learning Why do organizations fail to learn how to learn and therefore remain competitively marginal? In this article, I try to explain why organizational innovations either don’t occur or fail to survive and proliferate. Some typical explanations revolve around vague […]
SUMMER 1996 VOL. 37 · NO. 4 Software-Based Innovation A revolution is now underway. Most innovation occurs first in software.1 And software is the primary element in all aspects of innovation from basic research through product introduction:Software provides the critical mechanism through which managers can lower the costs, compress the time cycles, and increase the […]
SPRING 1996 VOL. 37 · NO. 3 The Value of Selective IT Sourcing When Eastman Kodak turned over the bulk of its IT operations to three outsourcing partners in 1989, outsourcing was a $4 billion a year business.1 Today, that number has grown to nearly $40 billion a year, according to the estimates of industry […]
WINTER 1996 VOL. 37 · NO. 2 Ethical Leadership and the Psychology of Decision Making How can managers improve the ethical quality of their decisions and ensure that their decisions will not backfire? The authors discuss three types of theories that will help executives understand how they make the judgments on which they base their […]
FALL 1995 VOL. 37 · NO. 1 Rebuilding Behavioral Context: Turn Process Reengineering into People Rejuvenation Why are some companies able to remain vital, even after extensive reengineering, while others flounder and fail? The answer, according to these authors, lies in a company’s ability to rejuvenate its employees by establishing a behavioral context with four […]
SUMMER 1995 VOL. 36 · NO. 4 Improving the Corporate Disclosure Process During the past several years, the business community has been fascinated by a debate over the functioning of capital markets and the need for market reform. Contributing to the debate are a variety of academics, investors, financial commentators, and government policymakers who, through […]
SPRING 1995 VOL. 36 · NO. 3 CEO Thought Summit On October 28, 1994, the MIT Sloan School and Price Waterhouse cohosted a roundtable discussion among CEOs, PW partners, and Sloan faculty. Walter Kiechel, then managing editor of Fortune, moderated the discussion, which focused on the organization in the year 2020 — its size, structure, […]
WINTER 1995 VOL. 36 · NO. 2 How to Manage an IT Outsourcing Alliance Long-term sustained management of a strategic alliance is turning out to be the dominant challenge of effective IT outsourcing. From a relatively unusual entrepreneurial activity, IT outsourcing has recently exploded across the global corporate landscape.1 Xerox, Delta Airlines, AMP Insurance (Australia), […]