LegalNews.Net                                                    ishkabible - blog                                                              | search |

red.gif (67 bytes) Home Page
red.gif (326 bytes) Research
red.gif (67 bytes) Editorial Work
red.gif (67 bytes) Training


red.gif (67 bytes) Chug's background
red.gif (67 bytes) Going to College
red.gif (67 bytes) Earning a Living
green.gif (67 bytes) Worth Reading
     - The Classics
     - Law and Lawyers
green.gif (67 bytes)  - Organizations
     - organizations
     - quotations, books of
     - reference
     - The Rule of Law
red.gif (67 bytes) Selected Quotations

 

 

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been
attained, progress stops.   Thomas J.Watson Jr.

 

 

Federations work better than monolithic organizations because, along with strength, they offer the degree of flexibility we need to deal with these turbulent times.
Warren Bennis

 

Purpose is the central ingredient of power. Powerful people and
organizations have a strong, sometimes even skewed, sense of purpose ... a strong point of view is worth 80 I.Q. points.   Michael D. Eisner

 

 

[T]he dominant competitive weapon of the 21st century will be the education
and skills of the work force. 
Lester Thurow

 

 

If you are planning for one year, grow rice. If you are planning for 20
years, grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow men.
Chinese Proverb

 organizations: culture, change and behavior

"I believe we shall soon think of the leader as one who can organize the experience of the group … It is by organizing experience that we transform experience into power ... The task of the chief executive is to articulate the purpose which guides the integrated unity which his business aims to be. The ablest administrators do not merely draw logical conclusions from the array of facts of the past which their expert assistants bring to them; they have a vision of the future."       Mary Parker Follett

  • Series appearing in Forbes ASAP, August 25, 1997, "How the West Kicked Butt--From pathbreaking new products to billionaires by the bushel, the West is pulling away. Why?" (Forbes ASAP, August 25, 1997). "Historians will be correct to record the years 1971 and 1972 as the Great Westward Shift. That's when it became hardwired that California and the West would begin to outperform the rest of the United States economically. A big hint was dropped in late 1971 when Intel ran an ad in Electronic News announcing the 4004, the world's first microprocessor. George Gilder rightly claims that the most consequential product in the second half of the 20th century, ahead of jet aircraft, is the microprocessor."
  • An Interview with Chris Argyris - by Joel Kurtzman (Strategy & Business, First Quarter 1998) "In Professor Argyris's view, as articulated in "Knowledge for Action" (Jossey-Bass, 1993), one of his many books, there are two types of organizations, which he calls Model I and Model II. Though they may look the same from the outside, these two types differ significantly in the way they learn and, as a result, in their ability to perform over time and compete.
            Model I organizations have institutionalized a form of self-censorship that is defensive and limits real communication. Instead of telling the truth, people in Model I organizations, which Professor Argyris believes make up the majority of businesses, express only those views that the institutional culture deems appropriate. If individuals working in Model I companies believe they will be penalized for conveying bad news at a department meeting, for example, they will refrain from doing so.
            As a result, the organization will receive what Professor Argyris calls "invalid" knowledge about its condition. When that happens, companies find themselves drifting further and further from reality. And when they get into trouble, they often do not understand why. Because self-censorship does not go away when a company is in distress, the ability of the business to repair itself is impeded by the same forces that got it into trouble in the first place.
            Model II companies, on the other hand, manage their conversations better. Rather than censor knowledge, they have found a way to promote it and get it heard. Model II companies -- of which there are very few, in Professor Argyris's view -- differ from Model I organizations because they deal in valid knowledge. As a result, they are able to assess reality more correctly and solve problems as they occur.
            All of this explains why Model I and Model II companies differ markedly in the way they learn. Since Model I companies are not dealing with knowledge as effectively as Model II companies are, they are less likely to understand true cause and true effect.
    . . .
          Creating Model II companies takes work and discipline. People must feel secure about offering information, meaning that organizations must be transformed into places where it is safe to tell the truth.
            When that happens, managers can go about their real business, which is managing a company's knowledge, through its people."
  • "Two Scenarios for 21st Century Organizations: Shifting Networks of Small Firms or All-Encompassing 'Virtual Countries'?" by Robert J. Laubacher, Thomas W. Malone, and the MIT Scenario Working Group, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 1997 "Will organizations in the future be much larger, much smaller, or not very different in size from the organizations we know today?"

books

  • "Knowledge Management and Organizational Design" (Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy), by Paul S. Myers (Editor), paperback (Butterworth-Heinemann 1997). "[U]nique compilation of articles and book excerpts that describe how the form and management of an organization shapes its levels of knowledge transfer, innovation, and learning. The collection draws on fifty years of management thinking to address key challenges facing knowledge-intensive companies. The selections are concise, clearly written, and combine rich frameworks with examples drawn from real management experience. Issues discussed include decision making, organizational structure, innovation, strategic alliances, managing knowledge workers, and power relations. Knowledge Management And Organizational Design represents a variety of disciplines and approaches providing complementary answers to a critical set of knowledge management dilemmas. Knowledge Management and Organizational Design is useful and informative reading for anyone with a management task of any size or dimension." Midwest Book Review.  Buy this from Amazon.com . . .

related pages on LegalNews.Net

search the Amazon.com catalog:

URL: http://www.LegalNews.Net/read/economy.htm
Last updated: August 05, 2008