Business Processes
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- 15 Oct 2012
- Research & Ideas
Why Business IT Innovation is so Difficult
If done right, IT has the potential to completely transform business by flattening hierarchies, shrinking supply chains, and speeding communications, says professor Kristina Steffenson McElheran. Why, then, do so many companies get it wrong? Closed for comment; 6 Comment(s) posted.
- 08 Dec 2008
- Research & Ideas
Thinking Twice About Supply-Chain Layoffs
Cutting the wrong employees can be counterproductive for retailers, new research from Harvard Business School professor Zeynep Ton concludes. One suggestion: Pay attention to staff who handle mundane tasks such as stocking and labeling. Your customers do. Key concepts include: It may be employees that customers rarely see—stockers, shippers—whose work has a high influence on the shopping experience. When floor labor is insufficient, merchandise is often unavailable or too inaccessible for the customer to trouble with. Increasing the amount of labor at a store is associated with an increase in profit margin. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
- 12 Oct 1999
- Research & Ideas
A Perfect Fit: Aligning Organization & Strategy
Is your company organizationally fit? HBS Professor Michael Beer believes business success is a function of the fit between key organizational variables such as strategy, values, culture, employees, systems, organizational design, and the behavior of the senior management team. Beer and colleague Russell A. Eisenstat have developed a process,termed Organizational Fitness Profiling, by which corporations can cultivate organizational capabilities that enhance their competitiveness. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.
Platform Systems vs. Step Processes—The Value of Options and the Power of Modularity
Technology shapes organizations through incentives and rewards. This paper compares the value structure of platform systems and step processes, finding that step processes reward technical integration, unified governance, risk aversion, and the use of direct authority. Platform systems by contrast reward modularity, distributed governance, risk taking, and autonomous decision-making.