Michael L. Tushman
There are 8 articles for this faculty member.
The Silo Lives! Analyzing Coordination and Communication in Multiunit Companies
| Q&A with: | Toby E. Stuart |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 22, 2008 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
A new Harvard Business School working paper looks inside the communications "black box" of a large company to understand who talks to whom, and finds the corporate silo as impenetrable as ever. Q&A with professor Toby E. Stuart.
Wellsprings of Creation: Perturbation and the Paradox of the Highly Disciplined Organization
| Authors: | David James Brunner, Bradley R. Staats, Michael L. Tushman, and David M. Upton |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 4, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | July 2008, revised June 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Many organizations struggle to balance the conflicting demands of efficiency and innovation. Organizations can become more efficient in the short run by replacing costly, unpredictable problem solving activity with consistent, streamlined routines. However, this efficiency often comes at the cost of long-run adaptability. The more organizational activity is dominated by stable routines, the less the organization learns, and the more rigid and inflexible it becomes. To escape this fate, the authors of this working paper theorize that highly disciplined organizations must actively engage in strategic and selective perturbation of established routines. A perturbation interrupts an established routine and creates an opportunity to innovate and learn. Using illustrations from Toyota, the authors investigate the conditions under which perturbations can sustain exploration in highly disciplined organizations.
Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization
| Authors: | Adam M. Kleinbaum, Toby E. Stuart, and Michael L. Tushman |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 31, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | July 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Coordination, and the communication it implies, is central to the very existence of organizations. Despite their fundamental role in the purpose of organizations, scholars have little understanding of actual interaction patterns in modern, complex, multiunit firms. To open the proverbial "black box" and begin to reveal the internal wiring of the firm, this paper presents a detailed, descriptive analysis of the network of communications among members of a large, structurally, functionally, geographically, and strategically diverse firm. The full data set comprises more than 100 million electronic mail messages and over 60 million electronic calendar entries for a sample of more 30,000 employees over a three-month period in 2006.
Published in 2007
Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams
| Authors: | Michael Tushman, Wendy K. Smith, Robert Chapman Wood, George Westerman and Charles O'Reilly |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 31, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Ambidextrous organizational designs are those that sustain current success while simultaneously building new products, services, or processes. This research looks at a sample of 13 business units and describes the relations between alternative organizational designs and innovation streams. These business units used 4 distinct organizational designs in service of innovating and improving existing products: functional, cross-functional, spinouts, and ambidextrous. The researchers also used longitudinal data in order to explore how designs evolve over time and how design transitions affect innovation success.
Ambidexterity as a Dynamic Capability: Resolving the Innovator's Dilemma
| Authors: | Charles A. O’Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 30, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Can organizations adapt and change—and if so, how does this occur? There are two major camps in the research on organizational change: those that argue for adaptation, and those that argue that as environments shift, inert organizations are replaced by new forms that better fit the changed context. There are data to support both arguments. This paper discusses the idea and practicality of ambidexterity and shows how the ability to simultaneously pursue emerging and mature strategies is a key element of long-term success.
Published in 2005
Balancing the Future Against Today's Needs
| Published: | August 22, 2005 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
It's hard to dream five years out when your organization is doing all it can to take care of the here and now. This article from Harvard Management Update offers a new lens for positioning growth efforts within your company while staying focused on your core strengths today.
Published in 2004
A Clear Eye for Innovation
| Published: | April 26, 2004 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
How did a weakening contact-lens company set its sights on a series of breakthroughs? A Harvard Business Review excerpt by Charles A. O’Reilly III and HBS professor Michael L. Tushman.
Published in 1999
Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
| Published: | November 16, 1999 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Executive Education |
A critical question confronting organizations today is not whether to change in response to their swiftly changing environment, but precisely how to manage that change. In this interview, HBS Professors Michael Tushman and Charles O'Reilly, developers of the Executive Education program Leading Change and Organizational Renewal, describe their thinking about the impact of rapid-fire change on contemporary organizations, and what managers must do to effectively lead the change process.
