Winning Through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal Tushman, Michael L. and O'Reilly, Charles A., 256 pp., Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. Reviewed by Subodh P. Kulkarni, Assistant Professor in School of Business at Howard University, Washington, D.C. Professors Tushman and O'Reilly are well known for their research on innovation and organizational culture. In this book, the authors address a fundamental and interesting issue underlying organizational change and innovation: that of how firms can achieve a balance between stability and change. Businesses are not likely to prosper or survive in the long run without this balance. One of the book's key premises is that short-term success may constrain a firm's ability to change. Short term successes often occur in larger, older, more structured organizations, the source of structural and cultural inertia, which yields success in stable environments and failure when environments change. Therefore, a company's culture holds the key to success (or failure) in the long run. To create and sustain a competitive edge in the long run, companies must learn how to manage incremental and revolutionary change. The key, according to the authors, is to develop an "ambidextrous organization." Tushman and O'Reilly define ambidextrous organizations as those having internally consistent structures and an internal operating culture that provides for excelling today, while also planning for the future. The ambidextrous organizations are, thus, engaged in a balancing act between the management of incremental and revolutionary technologies. Further, these organizations have very different cultures within a company (or even a business unit, for that matter). Vision is vital to ambidextrous organizations, often displaying one vision that hosts multiple cultures in the unit. Of course, a firm can have multiple cultures under one roof by spinning off different business units and managing them independently. This is unacceptable to the authors. It is important to manage them as a whole, or as a system. The thing that holds the system components together is the overarching vision for the technology firm. That is why the book emphasizes strategic intent or competitive vision; because without a common, overarching purpose and set of values, the ambidextrous company just does not hold together. So it is not only different cultures, but different structures, systems, rewards, and competencies that need to be managed together. Drawing on their extensive research, consulting practice, as well as the experiences of managers from several "ambidextrous companies," the authors develop a model that can be used by executives to understand the dynamics of change necessary for long-term success. Toward this end, the book provides several tools for identifying and diagnosing the causes of performance gaps and for developing action plans to attain, and maintain, industry leadership. The book is divided into nine chapters. Chapter 1 is introductory, and it outlines the concepts underlying the authors' model. Chapter 2 highlights the significance of the concepts introduced earlier in the context of global change and innovation. Chapters 3 through 6 focus on the building of capabilities, competencies, and cultures that can generate a sustainable competitive advantage. Chapter 4 develops a model that highlights the congruence among an organization's strategies and four distinct factors: critical tasks, culture, structure, and people. A lack of congruence often results in performance gaps. Chapter 5 outlines how organizational culture-the selecting, socializing, and rewarding of workers consistent with the company's goals-promotes this congruence. It also illustrates how to assesses an organization's culture. Chapters 7 and 8 stand out in particular because in these chapters the authors introduce techniques for building an ambidextrous organization. …

Winning through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual structural equation model to investigate the relationships among self‐directed learning (SDL), organizational learning (OL), knowledge management capability (KMC) and organizational performance (OP) and to demonstrate the direct and indirect effect of SDL on OP from the perspectives of KMC and OL.Design/methodology/approach – An empirical study is conducted in 21 technological companies (N=236) in Taiwan and the collected survey data are used to test the relationships among the four dimensions expressed in the proposed structural equation model.Findings – The results show that SDL has a direct and significant impact on OL and KMC. SDL influences OP indirectly through OL and KMC. In addition, OL and KMC have direct and significant influences on OP.Research limitations/implications – The source of data collected is Taiwan, hence, the results may not be easily generalized to other areas or countries. However, the findings are valuable for manager...

What affects organizational performance?: The linking of learning and knowledge management

In recent years, interest on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has risen significantly in both the academic and business communities. This is confirmed by the growing number of conferences, journal publications, special issues and websites dedicated to the topic. Within this context, this paper reviews the existing literature related to decision-support tools and performance measurement for SSCM. A narrative literature review is carried out to capture qualitative evidence, while a systematic literature review is performed using classic bibliometric techniques to analyse the relevant body of knowledge identified in 384 papers published from 2000 to 2013. The key conclusions include: the evidence of a research field that is growing, the call for establishing the scope of current research, i.e. the need for integrated performance frameworks with new generation decision-support tools incorporating triple bottom line (TBL) approach for managing sustainable supply chains. There is a need to identify a ...

/pdf/a-review-of-decision-support-tools-and-performance-2s749x1fgp.pdf

A review of decision-support tools and performance measurement and sustainable supply chain management

The relationships among organisational culture, business environment, business strategy and functional strategies are rarely investigated in a holistic perspective. This leads to reductionism in modelling and prevents the full exploration of the potentially complex relationships among cultural orientation, business strategy and functional strategies and their impact on organisational performance. This paper, based on a sample drawn from food manufacturing businesses in Zimbabwe, recognises the pervasive impact of organisational culture on organisational strategy and functional strategies. As a result, it acknowledges the multi‐level impact of cultural orientation – allowing for the building of a conceptual model, linking cultural orientation, business environment, organisational strategy, functional strategies and performance – which is subsequently empirically tested.

Cultural Orientation: Its relationship with market orientation, innovation and organisational performance

Organizational innovations are often neglected in innovation theory. However, organizational change does have an impact on firm output, first directly and second, through its interrelationship with...

Organizational innovation in small European firms: A multidimensional approach:

The purpose of this empirical study is to develop a conceptual framework to understand how organisational culture and organisational learning contribute to innovation performance. The research was conducted in seven Taiwan's high-tech industries through distributing survey questionnaires, the results showed that there is a positive and significant association between organisational culture and innovation, and also between organisational learning and innovation performance as well. The findings also revealed that different types of organisational culture and learning have different levels of influence on innovation. This means that firms of efficient culture have the best process innovation, and firms of innovative culture have the best administrative and product innovation. As for organisational learning, the result proves that firms of high learning-oriented have better process, administrative and product innovation than those of low learning-oriented. The implications of this research are also discussed.

Chen Kuo Lee

Papers

The impact of organisational culture and learning on innovation performance