What can explain the longevity gap between a company that survives for centuries--the Swedish company Stora, for example, which is more than 700 years old--and the average corporation, which does not last 20 years? A team at Royal Dutch/Shell Group explored that question. Arie de Geus, a retired Shell executive, writes about the team's findings and describes what he calls living companies-organizations that have beaten the high mortality rate of the average corporation. Many companies die young, de Geus argues, because their policies and practices are based too heavily on the thinking and language of economics. Their managers focus on producing goods and services and forget that the organization is a community of human beings that is in business--any business--to stay alive. In contrast, managers of living companies consider themselves to be stewards of a long-standing enterprise. Their priorities reflect their commitment to the organization's long-term survival in an unpredictable world. Like careful gardeners, they encourage growth and renewal without endangering the plant they are tending. They value profits the same way most people value oxygen: as necessary for life but not the purpose of it. They scuttle assets when necessary to make a dramatic change in the business portfolio. And they constantly search for new ideas. These managers also focus on developing people. They create opportunities for employees to learn from one another. Such organizations are suited for survival in a world in which success depends on the ability to learn, to adapt, and to evolve.
Although brand theorists suggest that what a person knows about a company (i.e., corporate associations) can influence perceptions of the company's products, little systematic research on these effects exists. The authors examine the effects of two general types of corporate associations on product responses: One focuses on the company's capabilities for producing products, that is, corporate ability (CA) associations, and the other focuses on the company's perceived social responsibility, that is, corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations. The results of three studies, including one that measures respondents' CA and CSR associations for well-known companies and one that uses consumers recruited in a shopping mall, demonstrate that (1) what consumers know about a company can influence their beliefs about and attitudes toward new products manufactured by that company, (2) CA and CSR associations may have different effects on consumer responses to products, and (3) products of companies with negative associations are not always destined to receive negative responses. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for marketing managers and further research.
The Idea of a Learning Company Why is The Learning Company Relevant Now? Are You a Learning Company? The Biography of Your Company Era Spotting Becoming a Learning Company 101 Glimpses of the Learning Company Unfinished Business.
A glance at an organizational chart can show who's the boss and who reports to whom. But this formal chart won't reveal which people confer on technical matters or discuss office politics over lunch. Much of the real work in any company gets done through this informal organization with its complex networks of relationships that cross functions and divisions. According to consultants David Krackhardt and Jeffrey Hanson, managers can harness the true power in their companies by diagramming three types of networks: the advice network, which reveals the people to whom others turn to get work done; the trust network, which uncovers who shares delicate information; and the communication network, which shows who talks about work-related matters. Using employee questionnaires, managers can generate network maps that will get to the root of many organizational problems. When a task force in a computer company, for example, was not achieving its goals, the CEO turned to network maps to find out why. He discovered that the task force leader was central in the advice network but marginal in the trust network. Task force members did not believe he would look out for their interests, so the CEO used the trust map to find someone to share responsibility for the group. And when a bank manager saw in the network map that there was little communication between tellers and supervisors, he looked for ways to foster interaction among employees of all levels. As companies continue to flatten and rely on teams, managers must rely less on their authority and more on understanding these informal networks. Managers who can use maps to identify, leverage, and revamp informal networks will have the key to success.
Abstract How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.
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Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. The Case for Doing at Least Some Good. 2. Corporate Social Initiatives: Six Options for Doing Good. 3. Corporate Cause Promotions: Increasing Awareness and Concern for Social Causes. 4. Cause-Related Marketing: Making Contributions to Causes Based on Product Sales. 5. Corporate Social Marketing: Supporting Behavior Change Campaigns. 6. Corporate Philanthropy: Making a Direct Contribution to a Cause. 7. Community Volunteering: Employees Donating Their Time and Talents. 8. Socially Responsible Business Practices: Discretionary Business Practices and Investments to Support Causes. 9. Twenty-five Best Practices for Doing the Most Good for the Company and the Cause. 10. A Marketing Approach to Winning Corporate Funding and Support for Social Initiatives: Ten Recommendations. Notes. Index.
Preface Chapter 1 In Good Company Chapter 2 Trust: The Air We Breathe Chapter 3 Networks and Communities: The Ties That Bind Chapter 4 Social Place, Social Time Chapter 5 Social Talk and Story: The Voice of Social Capital Chapter 6 The Challenge of Volatility Chapter 7 The Challenge of Virtuality Coda The Future of Social Capital Notes Suggested Readings Index About the Authors
The authors examine the growing and pervasive phenomenon of brand alliances as they affect consumers’ brand attitudes. The results of the main study (n = 350) and two replication studies (n = 150, n = 210) together demonstrate that (1) consumer attitudes toward the brand alliance influence subsequent impressions of each partner's brand (i.e., “spillover” effects), (2) brand familiarity moderates the strength of relations between constructs in a manner consistent with information integration and attitude accessibility theories, and (3) each partner brand is not necessarily affected equally by its participation in a particular alliance. These results represent a first, necessary step in understanding why and how a brand could be affected by “the company it keeps” in its brand alliance relationships.
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1. Friendships and their significance in childhood and adolescence: introduction and comment William M. Bukowski, Andrew F. Newcomb and Willard W. Hartup Part I. The Nature of Friendship, its Measurement and Development: 2. Amicitia, drujba, shin-yu, philia, freund, friendship: on the cultural diversity of a human relationship Lothar Krappmann 3. The measurement of friendship perceptions: conceptual and methodological issues Wyndol Furman 4. The earliest friendships Carollee Howes 5. Determinants of friendship selection and quality: developmental perspectives Frances E. Aboud and Morton J. Mendelson Part II. Interdependence of Relationship Systems: 6. Parents' interpersonal relationships and children's friendships Anna Beth Doyle and Dorothy Markiewicz 7. Individual differences in friendship quality: links to child-mother attachment Kathryn A. Kerns 8. Need fulfilment, interpersonal competence, and the developmental contexts of early adolescent friendship Duane Buhrmester 9. Closeness and conflict in adolescent peer relationships: interdependence with friends and romantic partners Brett Laursen Part III. Friendship and its Relations to Other Aspects of Development: 10. Cooperation, close relationships, and cognitive development Willard W. Hartup 11. Friendship and morality: (how) are they related? William M. Bukowski and Lorrie K. Sippola 12. Friendships of maltreated children and adolescents: contexts for expressing and modifying relationship history Joseph M. Price Part IV. Friendship and Adaption: 13. The developmental significance of children's friendship relations Andrew F. Newcomb and Catherine L. Bagwell 14. Linkages between friendship and adjustment during early school transitions Gary W. Ladd and Becky J. Kochenderfer 15. Exploring the effects of friendship quality on social development Thomas J. Berndt 16. Distinguishing friendship from acceptance: implications for intervention and assessment Steven R. Asher, Jeffrey G. Parker and Diane Walker.
Considerable evidence tells us that ¿being liked¿ and ¿being disliked¿ are related to social competence, but evidence concerning friendships and their developmental significance is relatively weak. The argument is advanced that the developmental implications of these relationships cannot be specified without distinguishing between having friends, the identity of one's friends, and friendship quality. Most commonly, children are differentiated from one another in diagnosis and research only according to whether or not they have friends. The evidence shows that friends provide one another with cognitive and social scaffolding that differs from what nonfriends provide, and having friends supports good outcomes across normative transitions. But predicting developmental outcome also requires knowing about the behavioral characteristics and attitudes of children's friends as well as qualitative features of these relationships.
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Abstract Strategic technology partnering between firms has become a growing subject of interest to both companies experimenting with this mode of economic organization and researchers from a wide variety of academic disciplines. In this study an effort is made to measure the effect of strategic technology partnering on companies engaged in such joint efforts. A study of the relevant literature on interfirm cooperation generates some basic understanding of this phenomenon, after which the empirical analysis is expanded with linear structural modeling of a number of relevant explanatory variables setting strategic partnering in a more complex environment.
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In this article, the authors try to determine why and under what conditions consumers enter into strong, committed, and meaningful relationships with certain companies, becoming champions of these companies and their products. Drawing on theories of social identity and organizational identification, the authors propose that strong consumer–company relationships often result from consumers’ identification with those companies, which helps them satisfy one or more important self-definitional needs. The authors elaborate on the nature of consumer–company identification, including the company identity, and articulate a consumer-level conceptual framework that offers propositions regarding the key determinants and consequences of such identification in the marketplace.
Subjective measures of company performance are widely used in research and typically are interpreted as equivalent to objective measures. Yet, the assumption of equivalence is open to challenge. We compared the use of both types of measure in 3 separate samples. Findings were consistent in showing that: (a) subjective and objective measures of company performance were positively associated (convergent validity); (b) those relationships were stronger than those between measures of differing aspects of performance using the same method (discriminant validity); and (c) the relationships of subjective and objective company performance measures with a range of independent variables were equivalent (construct validity).
Based on theories of attribution and suspicion, three experiments highlight the mediating role of perceived sincerity of motives in determining the effectiveness of CSR activities. CSR activities improve a company's image when consumers attribute sincere motives, are ineffective when sincerity of motives is ambiguous, and hurt the company's image when motives are perceived as insincere. Variables affecting perceived sincerity include the benefit salience of the cause, the source through which consumers learn about CSR, and the ratio of CSR contributions and CSR‐related advertising. High benefit salience of the cause hurts the company, in particular when consumers learn about it from a company source. This backfire effect can be overcome by spending more on CSR activities than on advertising that features CSR.
corn'Good to Great'as based on five years of analysis.The background on how the book was developed is important.This book does not represent the opinion or thoughts of one personlike most other business books.One thousand four hundred and thirty five companies were examined under strict criteria and only eleven of them were identified as making the leap from good to great.Collins and his team reviewed books, articles and annual reports covering each company; examined financial analyses for each company, totaling nine hundred and eighty combined years of data; conducted 84 interviews with senior managers and board members of the companies: scrutinized the personal and professional records of ftAy-six CEOs; analyzed compensation plans for the companies; and reviewed layoffs, corporate ownership, "media hype," and the role of technology for the companies.With the list narrowed to eleven candidates.the next step in the analysis was to isolate what it took to make the transition from good to great.At this point, each of the eleven companies was paired with a comparison companya company with similar attributes that could have made the transition, but didn'.