Книги

Boards of directors and corporate governance debates have been highly focused in the business press and even in research, but few universities offer courses on these topics. In this paper a research and teaching model is introduced, and we will show some examples of how such courses may be designed and how they relate to research. Examples are given for executive courses, undergraduate courses and graduate courses. The paper concludes by presenting the second international doctoral course on governance in SMEs.

The paper studies the relations between technological strategies and market success of firms, through an empirical analysis of the commercial aero-engine industry since 1948 to 1997 detailed at the level of competition among single firms products. It uses a multidimensional measure of technical progress through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for measuring technological performances of single products and firms and data on sales of each product over time for representing market success. The paper confirms the existence of heterogeneity of firms technological strategies and draws some main conclusions with respect to strategies of convergence and divergence from the technological frontier, first mover advantage and survival of inefficient products.

This paper was prepared as a background document for the forthcoming World Industrial Development report for UNIDO in 2001. While the link between technological knowledge and economic development is difficult to unravel, nonetheless, technological disparities play an immensely important role in explaining the diversity of development experience. Here we explore recent advances in the study of innovation processes, viewed through two different lenses, neoclassical and evolutionary theories of the firms. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for innovation policy in developing economies. We conclude that a central task of policy is to create a rich ecology of organisational and institutional support for the absorption of knowledge and the generation of innovative capabilities.

Considerable attention has been directed towards corporate governance issues in recent years. There are however various limitations in the international mainstream research on boards of directors. Few studies address research questions beyond investigating the relationship between board composition and company performance. Most research is moreover based on empirical evidence from large publicly held US corporations. This paper summarises the accumulated knowledge from 100 student reports on boards of directors in Scandinavia. The contributions of the reports show the need to explore the influence of various contingencies, and also to take various stakeholder perspectives into account when researching corporate governance and boards of directors. The reports also show the need to go beyond counting only numbers of directors to gain insight into board working structures and relationships between directors and managers. Several advantages compared to the US mainstream research tradition can in this connection be found in Scandinavian research about boards of directors.

The rapid evolution of the Balanced Scorecard into a strategic managment system is reported on in this book. The Balanced Scorecard approach retains traditional financial measures which reflect past organizational acheivements, but adds three new measures of future performance found necessary in this information age with its focus on customer relationships and long-term capabilities: customer, internal business process, and learning and growth. With these four perspectives providing the framework for the Balanced Scorecard, organizations can now measure how they create value for customers, how they can enhance internal competencies, and how they must invest in people, systems and procedures to improve future performance. According to the authors, the Balanced Scorecard has evolved from an improved measurement system to a core management system. For the first time there is a systematic process to implement and obtain feedback about strategy. This is an excellent introduction to new management styles.

Traditional management deals with the following boundaries of organizations: vertical hierarchical levels of staff; horizontal functional areas; external outreach relations; and geographic realities. To adopt a concept of boundarylessness necessary to cope with the ever-increasing rates of change, managers, in recognizing the need to go beyond traditional boundaries, need to shift paradigms in order to make the necessary adjustments in organizational structure and processes to meet the demands of a fast-moving world. The author provides tools to measure the strength of current boundaries and identifies means of eliminating the boundaries.

In todays competitive landscape organizational learning and knowledge management initiatives are emerging of powerful sources of competitive advantage. In this paper, the researches report on the design and expected result of a survey on knowledge management, which has been designed putting special emphasis on the interplay between the technical and non-technical aspects of learning and knowledge management initiatives. Questionnaires have been sent to 1100 firms from 11 industries in Spain, in order to be able to conduct both intra- and inter-industry analysis. In addition, in order to enrich the results, in-depth interviews was going to be held with selected companies. This allowed the authors to report on (1) what knowledge management initiatives was planned and carried out, (2) the role of technology in these initiatives, (3) the role of non-technical aspects like career planning and human resource policies, (4) the perceived effectiveness of the initiatives, and (5) the main underlying causal dynamics at work.

This paper sets out to assess the ability of Europes textile manufacturers to respond to the competitive challenge of low-cost producers from Eastern Europe and the Far East. In doing so it utilises Porters framework of the competitive advantage of nations to analyse the changing conditions under which the industry operates. The paper highlights the differing structure of the textile industry in the UK and Italy in order to demonstrate that the impact of competition may vary across the EU market as a whole. The conclusion suggests that the ability of European producers to resist the threat from low cost producers of textiles will lie in their ability to extend the strategy of developing high value added products directed towards the top-end of the market to embrace the middle range of consumers and it argues that the industrial groupings which feature collaborative but independent clusters of firms are most likely to succeed in this objective.

This report prepared by the Austrian Institute for Economic Research (WIFO) and the Vienna Institute for Comparative Economic Studies (WIIW) provides a timely and very useful piece of empirical evidence. Indeed, as one of the major economic flaws of the socialist system was its lack of openness, understanding how trade flows interact with the transition process is a key issue. Export growth has already played a crucial role in the recovery from the transition shock. Moreover, ensuring sustainable growth is closely related to the capacity of each transition country to reap the benefits of the openness to international trade and foreign investment. Concerning these aspects, however, the Central and Eastern European countries have been revealing a strong heterogeneity. By adopting a comparative approach and combining several approaches, the report sheds light on different interactions between trade, FDI and the process of economic transformation. As a result, it gives a comprehensive view on the strong and weak points of each countrys competitive position, and interesting conclusions are drawn on the extent of economic restructuring that probably still needs to take place. Compared with the existing literature, these are real original points to be stressed.

When European managers of differing cultural backgrounds meet, they often have considerable difficulties when it comes to understanding one another. These cultural dissimilarities have a decidedly negative influence on their ability to collaborate.. The factor Culture can be especially disturbing when the acting persons are not aware of their cultural dissimilarities. Since the differences between Europeans are not as obvious as between Japanese and German businessmen, for example, people tend to neglect the influence of Culture in business relations in Europe. One innovative way of researching cultural differences is the Cultural Standard Method. It is based on a qualitative research approach and provides a tool for identifying cultural differences on a more subtle level. The purpose of this paper is to describe the cultural standards method as a tool for the comparison of European business cultures and to give examples of recent research results.

Since Peter Senge published his groundbreaking book The Fifth Discipline, he and his associates have frequently been asked by the business community: "How do we go beyond the first steps of corporate change? How do we sustain momentum?" They know that companies and organizations cannot thrive today without learning to adapt their attitudes and practices. But companies that establish change initiatives discover, after initial success, that even the most promising efforts to transform or revitalize organizationsdespite interest, resources, and compelling business resultscan fail to sustain themselves over time. That's because organizations have complex, well-developed immune systems, aimed at preserving the status quo. Now, drawing upon new theories about leadership and the long-term success of change initiatives, and based upon twenty-five years of experience building learning organizations, the authors of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook show how to accelerate success and avoid the obstacles that can stall momentum. The Dance of Change, written for managers and executives at every level of an organization, reveals how business leaders can work together to anticipate the challenges that profound change will ultimately force the organization to face. Then, in a down-to-earth and compellingly clear format, readers will learn how to build the personal and organizational capabilities needed to meet those challenges. These challenges are not imposed from the outside; they are the product of assumptions and practices that people take for grantedan inherent, natural part of the processes of change. And they can stop innovation cold,unless managers at all levels learn to anticipate them and recognize the hidden rewards in each challenge, and the potential to spur further growth. Within the frequently encountered challenge of "Not Enough Time," for examplethe lack of control over time available for innovation and learning initiativeslies a valuable opportunity to reframe the way people organize their workplaces. This book identifies universal challenges that organizations ultimately find themselves confronting, including the challenge of "Fear and Anxiety"; the need to diffuse learning across organizational boundaries; the ways in which assumptions built in to corporate measurement systems can handcuff learning initiatives; and the almost unavoidable misunderstandings between "true believers" and nonbelievers in a company. Filled with individual and team exercises, in-depth accounts of sustaining learning initiatives by managers and leaders in the field, and well-tested practical advice, The Dance of Change provides an insider's perspective on implementing learning and change initiatives at such corporations as British Petroleum, Chrysler, Dupont, Ford, General Electric, Harley-Davidson, Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi Electric, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shell Oil Company, Toyota, the United States Army, and Xerox. It offers crucial advice for line-level managers, executive leaders, internal networkers, educators, and others who are struggling to put change initiatives into practice.

This paper contributes to the understanding of the importance of dynamic firm capabilities for corporate performance in isolating the effect of core competences on the performance of companies. It discusses and tests the assumed relation between core competences and economic performance, including the effect of the external appropriation of these competences through mergers and acquisitions as well as through strategic technology alliances. A major conclusion is that, particularly in high-tech sectors, a specific set of endogenous technological core capabilities is needed to generate performance differentials. Also, the external appropriation of competences does not seem to be an easy solution through which companies can improve their existing capabilities.

This book brings together six years of research and writing by two leading thinkers on global organization. Drawing on their detailed knowledge of major corporations, including ABB, Canon, 3M, and McKinsey, Ghoshal and Bartlett argue that we are witnessing the emergence of a new and radically different organizational form. The philosophy that underpins this form focuses on the power of the individual as the driver of value creation in the company and on the importance of individuality in management. Stressing the significance of purpose, process and people, their analysis pays particular attention to creating and leveraging knowledge, building organizational capabilities as well as developing individual competence. Readers may already be familiar with some of Ghoshal and Bartlett's ideas that have been published elsewhere-but by bringing them together here, they become at once more accessible and more challenging.

Corporations are suffering from a lack of leadership. Too many managers are unwilling to take charge due to beliefs in tradtional myths such as successful leaders are stable and organized. The focus of this book is to help managers further their abilities as leaders. The authors have discussed leadership skills with other leaders to learn their strengths and weaknesses.

This paper describes the theoretical frame of reference and research methods for a planned research program. The aim of the program is to explore different patterns of collaboration and power games between industrial designers, engineers and marketers. Two main theoretical strategies will be used: On one hand, we are trying to understand the different professional groups own sense-making of the situation. This is done through symbolic interactionism and Weick's theoretical perspective. On the other hand we also try to understand the collaboration from an outside analysis or a deconstruction influenced by Latour and Cooren.