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The rapidly changing nature of the modern industrial world has helped spark a radical rethinking of the design of corporations, changes no less revolutionary than the wave of innovations associated with the names of Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford at the dawn of this century. In Redesigning the Firm, nineteen experts from one of the nation's premier business schools, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, take an informed look based on their own research at various aspects of this revolution, offering managers a host of insights and powerful tools for orchestrating change in their firm. Redesigning the Firm illuminates many of the challenges that confront the executive, approaching the issue from a wide variety of perspectives. The book considers, for instance, whether the firm's stockholders, directors, and managers should reevaluate how they distribute power and share information, and it explores why external board members often fail to exercise a strong voice in governance. It looks at the changing boundary of the firm, as partnerships and alliances have become more important, examining this new development in three types of market: emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, markets where economies of scale provide a critical advantage, and dynamic markets where speed is essential. It examines the use of suppliers in Japanese, American, and European firms, and finds the former to be more efficient. Some of the essays are quite eye-opening. For instance, one chapter demonstrates that firms can increase product variety at no extra cost, revealing how a study of the automotive industry shows that investing in training, in flexible manufacturing processes, and in better operations management will increase variety without compromising productivity or lowering quality. And one chapter sounds a strong note of dissent, contending that the design of organizations matters little to a global competitor--what matters is how managers think about the world, and how the operating procedures they use guide decision-making and behavior. In the final section, editors Bowman and Kogut reflect on two outstanding issues concerning the design of the firm: how much of what managers used to believe was critical to their success can they place outside their ownership boundaries; and how to deal with the complex challenges that modular design presents. The editors apply their conclusions to the Wharton School itself, making the book particularly valuable for anyone concerned with the quality and future of business education in America. Here then is the best thinking by leading experts in corporate design, who examine the best ways to generate speed, variety, and flexibility, to expand the firm over time and over national boundaries, and to prepare a corporation for the next century.
The business of biomimicry—companies the way nature intended.
How do we make the most of the greatest global shift in the world of work for a century and radically redesign the way we work—forever? Professor Lynda Gratton is the global thought-leader on the future of work. Drawing on thirty years of research into the technological, demographic, cultural, and societal trends that are shaping work and building on what we learned through our experiences of the pandemic, Gratton presents her innovative four-step framework for redesigning work that will help you: Understand your people and what drives performance Reimagine creative new ways to work Model and test these approaches within your organization Act and create to ensure your redesign has lasting benefits Gratton presents real-world case studies that show companies grappling with work challenges. These include the global bank HSBC, which built a multidisciplinary team to understand the employee experience; the Japanese technology company Fujitsu, which reimagined three kinds of “perfect” offices; and the Australian telecommunications company Telstra, which established new roles to coordinate work across the organization. Whether you’re working in a small team or running a multinational, Redesigning Work is the definitive book on how to transform your organization and make hybrid working work for you.
Image is king. Ten case studies plus an international showcase of work illustrate how a new visual identity can define a company and communicate its goals to the marketplace. Visual identity is a signature; learn how top firms redesign graphic signatures with success.
Why too much work and too little time is hurting workers and companies—and how a proven workplace redesign can benefit employees and the bottom line Today's ways of working are not working—even for professionals in "good" jobs. Responding to global competition and pressure from financial markets, companies are asking employees to do more with less, even as new technologies normalize 24/7 job expectations. In Overload, Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen document how this new intensification of work creates chronic stress, leading to burnout, attrition, and underperformance. "Flexible" work policies and corporate lip service about "work-life balance" don't come close to fixing the problem. But this unhealthy and unsustainable situation can be changed—and Overload shows how. Drawing on five years of research, including hundreds of interviews with employees and managers, Kelly and Moen tell the story of a major experiment that they helped design and implement at a Fortune 500 firm. The company adopted creative and practical work redesigns that gave workers more control over how and where they worked and encouraged managers to evaluate performance in new ways. The result? Employees' health, well-being, and ability to manage their personal and work lives improved, while the company benefited from higher job satisfaction and lower turnover. And, as Kelly and Moen show, such changes can—and should—be made on a wide scale. Complete with advice about ways that employees, managers, and corporate leaders can begin to question and fix one of today's most serious workplace problems, Overload is an inspiring account about how rethinking and redesigning work could transform our lives and companies.
Business firms around the world are experimenting with new organizational designs, changing their formal architectures, their routines and processes, and their corporate cultures as they seek to improve their current performance and their growth prospects. In the process they are changing the scope of their business operations, redrawing their organization charts, redefining the allocation of decision-making authority and responsibility, revamping the mechanisms for motivating and rewarding people, reconsidering which activities to conduct in-house and which to out-source, redesigning their information systems, and seeking to alter the shared beliefs, values and norms that their people hold. In this book, John Roberts argues that there are predictable, necessary relationships among these changes that will improve performance and growth. The organizations that are successful will establish patterns of fit among the elements of their organizational designs, their competitive strategies and the external environment in which they operate and will go about this in a holistic manner. The Modern Firm develops powerful conceptual frameworks for analyzing the interrelations between organizational design features, competitive strategy and the business environment. Written in a non-technical language, the book is nevertheless based on rigorous modeling and draws on numerous examples from eighteenth century fur trading companies to such modern firms such as BP and Nokia. Finally the book explores why these developments are happening now, pointing to the increase in global competition and changes in technology. Written by one of the world's leading economists and experts on business strategy and organization, The Modern Firm provides new insights into the changes going on in business today and will be of interest to academics, students and managers alike.
With much of the Asian Miracle destroyed and much of the Western world's awe for Asian ways of management dissipated, organizations there are changing with such speed that most of our knowledge about them is quickly outdated. Richter takes stock of East Asian management practices, as they are perceived so far, and he discusses the strategies that others propose to help Asian management redesign itself for the future—including a long-term agenda for change based on the cultural heritage of Confucianism. He analyzes the cultural underpinnings of Asian management practices, evaluates the influence of the Asian economic crisis on them, and discusses their potential for guiding Asian firms to a sustainable competitive advantage. He then provides examples of how Asian firms shape up their organizations and describes a short-term agenda to fix the weaknesses in Asian management, at least temporarily. Throughout, Richter avoids talk about strategic management as merely a theory: he adopts a broader definition that includes a value system to guide East Asian firms as they re-emerge and redevelop. The result is a challenging, intensely pragmatic analysis for decision-makers at all levels, in all countries and cultures, and it is a new stone in the foundation of academic research and thought. Richter opens with a discussion of the legacy of Confucianism and its impact on Asian management practices. He then proposes three intrinsic characteristics of Asian management: networks, trust, and collectivism. He gives a history of the Asian economic crisis, highlighting the failures of Asia's economic development and the flaws that appeared in its management practices. The third section of the book evaluates management practices that have emerged since then, and how they are perceived so far. Then, in the concluding section, he presents a new perspective on Asian management, short-term goals (fixing current management weaknesses), and long-term goals (incorporating its long abiding strengths). Throughout, Richter draws on the management theory enunciated by Hofstede and includes examples and case studies of recent developments across the region, and he also includes his own theories as well as those of others. Mr. Richter's book will be a welcome addition to the literature on business and the culture of Asia.
Effective design and manufacturing, both of which are necessary to produce high-quality products, are closely related. However, effective design is a prerequisite for effective manufacturing. This new book explores the status of engineering design practice, education, and research in the United States and recommends ways to improve design to increase U.S. industry's competitiveness in world markets.
This book by leadership and sustainability experts Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm provides an exciting and comprehensive framework for building regenerative life-affirming businesses. It offers a multitude of business cases, fascinating examples from nature's living systems, insights from the front-line pioneers and tools and techniques for leaders to succeed and thrive in the 21st century. Regenerative Leadership draws inspiration from pioneering thinking within biomimicry, circular economy, adult developmental psychology, anthropology, biophilia, sociology, complexity theory and next-stage leadership development. It connects the dots between these fields through a powerful framework that enables leadership to become regenerative: in harmony with life, building thriving, prosperous organizations amid transformational times. The book is a combination of theoretical frameworks, case studies, tools & practices: Everything the leader needs to be successful in the 21st century. Regenerative Leadership - what's it all about? While the future is uncertain, we clearly see an upward trend towards sustainable conscious business. And this is more than just a trend - we're witnessing a new kind of organization emerging. An organization which is able to rapidly sense and respond to the ever-changing business climate by innovating how and why it creates and delivers value, and the way it engages internally and externally with its ecosystem of employees, customers, suppliers, resources, investors, society and environment. This new kind of organization is the organization-as-living-system that is designed on the Logic of Life: life-affirming businesses that thrive from the inside out, by cultivating conditions conducive for life, internally and externally. These organizations nurture flourishing cultures while focusing on products and services that enhance society and the environment. Regenerative organizations will be tomorrow's success stories.
How inclusive methods can build elegant design solutions that work for all. Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. Inclusive design methods—designing objects with rather than for excluded users—can create elegant solutions that work well and benefit all. Holmes tells stories of pioneers of inclusive design, many of whom were drawn to work on inclusion because of their own experiences of exclusion. A gamer and designer who depends on voice recognition shows Holmes his “Wall of Exclusion,” which displays dozens of game controllers that require two hands to operate; an architect shares her firsthand knowledge of how design can fail communities, gleaned from growing up in Detroit's housing projects; an astronomer who began to lose her eyesight adapts a technique called “sonification” so she can “listen” to the stars. Designing for inclusion is not a feel-good sideline. Holmes shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies. It can be a catalyst for creativity and a boost for the bottom line as a customer base expands. And each time we remedy a mismatched interaction, we create an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways.