The Smarter Organization


Book Description

In The Smarter Organization, based on years of hands-on work with some of the world's most successful corporations, McGill and Slocum will show you how to make the idea of the learning organization become a practical reality in your company. Drawing upon real-life examples from over 175 companies, this book reveals what makes for a learning organization and how you can make your company smarter. You will learn how to create a learning culture, how to craft a learning strategy, how to design structures and systems that promote learning, how to motivate a work force through learning, and how to lead a learning organization.




The Smart Organization


Book Description

Why do some firms deliver a stream of successful products and services while others continually make poor R&D decisions? According to the Mathesons, successful firms have internalized the nine interlocking principles of smart organizations -- the building blocks of a corporate culture that emphasize making the right strategic decisions at the right times while aligning organizational practices to support these decisions and sustain their results. Among the nine principles are embracing uncertainty; open information flow; system thinking; and developing a value creation culture. Once in place, these values enable companies to make appropriate choices about their R&D planning, portfolio management, and project and business strategies. The authors stress the importance of evaluating trade-offs, creating alternatives, balancing risk and return, and getting buy-in across functional areas to ensure that decisions will be viable from both technical and management perspectives. "If more companies were to act like this, there might be less demand for off-the-peg strategies from consultants." -- The Economist, July 11, 1998.




Working in Digital and Smart Organizations


Book Description

Contributing to recent debate on the emergence of digital and agile work, this book explores the implications for labour and employment relations within and beyond organizational boundaries. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to the key issues and challenges of digitalization, this collection covers topics such as the gig economy, crowdworking and Industry 4.0. Theory and analysis are combined as the authors examine the impact of digital and smart work on organization, HRM and labour law. With comprehensive empirical evidence for those interested in understanding the more complex trajectories of today’s transforming work relationships, this book will not only appeal to students and academics but also to policy-makers, trade unionists and employers’ organizations.




An Intelligent Organization


Book Description

When everyone in an organization is focused on results it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. This book uses the experience of Nokia to develop a frame-work for the organization of the future - one which is efficient, learning and healthy.




Building an Innovative Learning Organization


Book Description

Institute a culture of learning to boost organizational performance and agility What makes organizations successful? Today, most successful companies are learning organizations. Building an Innovative Learning Organization shows you how to join their ranks and bring your organization up to the head of the class. This book is a practical, actionable guide on how to boost performance, successfully manage change, and innovate more quickly. Learning organizations are composed of engaged, motivated employees who continually seek improvement, which leads to organizational agility and the ability to innovate ahead of the curve. When you encourage learning at every level, from the intern to the C suite, you gain a more highly skilled workforce with a greater ability to act in any situation. Building an Innovative Learning Organization shows you how to create this culture in your organization, with detailed explanations, practical examples, and step-by-step instructions so you can get started right away. Written by a recognized thought leader in the training industry, this informative and insightful guide is your roadmap to a more effective organization. You will discover how to: Attract, retain, and motivate the best employees Become a more innovative and agile organization Create a culture of continuous self-improvement Encourage learning at all levels and translate it into action Learning and education doesn't end at graduation—it's a lifelong process that keeps you relevant, informed, and better able to achieve your goals. These same benefits apply at the organizational level, making the culture self-sustaining: learning organizations attract top workers, who drive the organization forward, which attracts more top workers. If you want the best people, you have to be their best option. Building an Innovative Learning Organization gives you a blueprint for building a culture of learning, for a stronger, more robust organization.




Intelligent Organization


Book Description




Smart Organizations and Smart Artifacts


Book Description

This book offers a multidisciplinary strategy for finding new and more effective human-computer interaction approaches, in particular from a socio-technical perspective, that facilitate the exploration and exploitation of benefits that information technologies (IT) offer organizations. Though the relationship between IT and organizations is certainly very strong, it is also one of the greatest obstacles to securing benefits from their interaction. The participation of organizational users in the planning and design stages of IT interfaces is the main area of human-computer interaction, where a wealth of contributions are positively enriching both the academic and management discussions. Thus, a new approach for managing this relationship is needed, one in which the different stakeholders are suitably taken into account. Moreover, the outstanding success of the 2.0 phenomenon offers an example of a relevant platform where human-computer interaction has been widely developed and exploited. Consequently, this will influence and already is influencing – the way IT and users interact with each other. The book is based on a selection of the best papers – original, double blind peer-reviewed contributions – from the annual conference of the Italian chapter of the AIS, held in Milan, Italy in December 2013.




Information Management for the Intelligent Organization


Book Description

Demonstrates how an organization can manage its information more effectively in order to increase its capacity to learn and adapt. Examines the relationship between information management and the intelligent organization and highlights the concept of environmental scanning, defined as the acquisition and use of information about the organization's external environment. Discusses the management of information sources and examines the use and potential of online databases and Internet resources. Includes case studies of environmental scanning in several organizations.




The Next Smart Step


Book Description

“A candid, readable, and useful book about how we can get past talking about gender bias and actually start doing something about it.” —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of ORIGINALS and GIVE AND TAKE, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife Empowering women empowers everyone. Women with confidence, equal pay, and leadership opportunity enrich workplace culture and help the whole organization. The first step is understanding that gender balance is not a zero-sum game. The Next Smart Step is a clear, assured guide to understanding the challenge of gender imbalance, implementing solutions, and equipping readers with the tools we all need to ensure change that is positive and enduring. It is about all of us becoming leaders. The Next Smart Step builds on a positive reality, helping readers recognize and manage unconscious biases, see diversity as a 21st-century skill, and work towards equal partnerships in the workplace. It outlines strategies for flexibility, communication, openness, and mutual respect. Gender equity is not only the right thing to do—it makes life better, workplace culture more diverse, opportunity more widely available, and organizations more successful. The Next Smart Step will help everyone from new hires to corporate executives learn the personal leadership this important issue demands.




Designing the Smart Organization


Book Description

Filling a gap in the literature, this book offers an innovative interdisciplinary approach to learning for corporate strategic development, linking the domains of strategy, organizational design, and learning. To demonstrate how this process drives the boundaries of the practice way beyond the established notion of simple training and management education, the book is filled with detailed case studies from leading global organizations, including Siemens, ABB, BASF, the US Army, PricewaterhouseCoopers, EADS, Novartis, and more. These studies reveal how large-scale corporations are using the power of dynamic corporate learning approaches to drive innovation, enhance cultural values, master post-merger integration, transform business models, enhance leadership culture, build technological expertise, foster strategic change processes, and ultimately increase bottom line results. For any company that wants to compete in the 21st century, Designing the Smart Organization offers inspiring perspectives for integrating corporate learning as a core business practice that will create sustainable strategic and organizational capabilities.