The ambidextrous organization

Corporate executives must constantly look backward, attending to the products and processes of the past, while also gazing forward, preparing for the innovations that will define the future. This mental balancing act is one of the toughest of all managerial challenges--it requires executives to explore new opportunities even as they work diligently to exploit existing capabilities--and it's no surprise that few companies do it well. But as every businessperson knows, there are companies that do. What's their secret? These organizations separate their new, exploratory units from their traditional, exploitative ones, allowing them to have different processes, structures, and cultures; at the same time, they maintain tight links across units at the senior executive level. Such "ambidextrous organizations," as the authors call them, allow executives to pioneer radical or disruptive innovations while also pursuing incremental gains. Of utmost importance to the ambidextrous organization are ambidextrous managers--executives who have the ability to understand and be sensitive to the needs of very different kinds of businesses. They possess the attributes of rigorous cost cutters and free-thinking entrepreneurs while also maintaining the objectivity required to make difficult trade-offs. Almost every company needs to renew itself through the creation of breakthrough products and processes, but it shouldn't do so at the expense of its traditional business. Building an ambidextrous organization is by no means easy, but the structure itself, combining organizational separation with senior team integration, is not difficult to understand. Given the executive will to make it happen, any company can become ambidextrous.     

The passive-aggressive organization

Passive-aggressive organizations are friendly places to work: People are congenial, conflict is rare, and consensus is easy to reach. But, at the end of the day, even the best proposals fail to gain traction, and a company can go nowhere so imperturbably that it's easy to pretend everything is fine. Such companies are not necessarily saddled with mulishly passive-aggressive employees. Rather, they are filled with mostly well-intentioned people who are the victirms of flawed processes and policies. Commonly, a growing company's halfhearted or poorly thought-out attempts to decentralize give rise to multiple layers of managers, whose authority for making decisions becomes increasingly unclear. Some managers, as a result, hang back, while others won't own up to the calls they've made, inviting colleagues to second-guess or overturn the decisions. In such organizations, information does not circulate freely, and that makes it difficult for workers to understand the impact of their actions on company performance and for managers to correctly appraise employees' value to the organization. A failure to accurately match incentives to performance stifles initiative, and people do just enough to get by. Breaking free from this pattern is hard; a long history of seeing corporate initiatives ignored and then fade away tends to make people cynical. Often it's best to bring in an outsider to signal that this time things will be different. He or she will need to address every obstacle all at once: clarify decision rights; see to it that decisions stick; and reward people for sharing information and adding value, not for successfully negotiating corporate politics. If those steps are not taken, it's only a matter of time before the diseased elements of a passive-aggressive organization overwhelm the remaining healthy ones and drive the company into financial distress.     

Short horizons, time inconsistency, and optimal social security

We study the optimal provision of social security in a dynamically efficient economy using a continuous-time overlapping-generations model in which consumers have short planning horizons. The short-horizon mechanism leads to dynamic optimization that is time-inconsistent over the life cycle. Our calibrated general-equilibrium results are generally supportive of social security for a wide array of social welfare functions. Thus, the basic life-cycle model can be augmented with only this slight twist in order to rationalize a social security program with the current U.S. tax rate.     

未来组织演变的最大趋势

组织作为企业运营的载体,在新经济环境中也已经表现出一些新的发展趋势。通过对诸多客户案例的总结研究,长城战略咨询提出,未来组织将向“合伙化、小微化、自组织、平台化、生态化”发展。     

The future of social security

We analyze the effect of the projected demographic transition on the political support for social security, and equilibrium outcomes. Embedding a probabilistic-voting setup of electoral competition in the standard OLG model with capital accumulation, we find that intergenerational transfers arise in the absence of altruism, commitment, or trigger strategies. Closed-form solutions predict population ageing to lead to higher social security tax rates, a rising share of pensions in GDP, but eventually lower social security benefits per retiree. The response of equilibrium tax rates to demographic shocks reduces old-age consumption risk. Calibrated to match features of the U.S. economy, the model suggests that, in response to the projected demographic transition, social security tax rates will gradually increase to 16%. Other policies that distort labor supply will become less important; labor supply therefore will rise, in contrast with frequently voiced fears.     

社会改革过程中国家权力作用机制——以商鞅变法为例

商鞅变法是中国古代较为成功的一次社会改革,其成功原因各说纷纭,文章从国家权力角度进行了探讨,并得出了是最高统治者的支持给了商鞅运用各种形式权力的权限,对权威力的运用使秦民不得不服,对影响力的运用使秦民心服口服,对强制力的运用使秦民因恐惧而服,才是商鞅变法能够成功的真正原因.     

The institutionalisation of corporate social responsibility reporting

This study examines corporate social responsibility reporting (CSRR) structures through a comparison of the disclosures in two countries with different social issues. The analysis is guided by a focus on the legitimisation offered by isomorphism. We compare the 2007 annual report and website (including standalone report) CSRR of a matched sample of 18 Australian and 18 South African mining companies. Among the 30 comparisons of disclosure patterns, 29 show no difference. We also provide examples of specific disclosures that show a remarkable level of similarity in CSRR and in the CSRR management structures adopted in the two countries. Our findings show similar overall patterns of CSRR in diverse settings, while differences in CSRR content at a more detailed level remain. For example, companies refer to the applicable national regulations and rules; as well as to their specific local communities. These findings provide evidence that the same reporting templates are used in CSRR globally. There is evidence to suggest that CSRR is institutionalised through professionalization and other means, suggesting a need to interpret CSRR characteristics and patterns as a reflection of global CSRR templates. Management intent or company-specific characteristics, such as social and environmental performance, do not necessarily drive CSRR patterns.     

The social costs of unit banking restrictions

Many U.S. commercial banks are prohibited from establishing more than one full service office location. In the absence of free entry to the banking industry, this constraint may force unit banks to operate with a socially inefficient combination of inputs. Moreover, entry to the industry in unit banking states may be more difficult than in branching states, where market entrants need not necessarily acquire a new charter. If so, existing unit banks could price their output above marginal social cost, earning excess profits and imposing allocational inefficiencies. This paper demonstrates empirically that unit banking restrictions in the United States impose statistically and economically significant deadweight social costs.     

The futurists' social responsibility

The fatalistic view that [the future] is unforeseeable and inevitable is being abandoned. It is being recognized that there are a multitude of possible futures and that appropriate intervention can make a difference in their probabilities. This raises the exploration of the future, and the search for ways to influence its direction, to activities of great social responsibility. This responsibility is not just an academic one, and to discharge it more than perfunctorily we must cease to be mere spectators in our own ongoing history, and participate with determination in molding the future. It will take wisdom, courage, and sensitivity to human values to shape a better world. But the time is short, for events move ever more rapidly. Now is the time to commit ourselves fully to the problems of the future of our society.¹     

The organization of financial exchange markets: Theory and evidence

This article presents theory and evidence regarding the organization of financial exchange markets. It derives conditions under which (1) a member-owned exchange has a monopoly over the trade of a particular financial contract and its close substitutes, and (2) exchange members earn economic rents. Given these conditions, low cost suppliers of financial services form an exchange that is large enough to deter entry by competing exchanges but which is smaller than optimal. However, exchanges trading differentiated products may not merge to exploit all scope economies. Furthermore, exchanges that offer a variety of products may allow some members to trade only a subset of these products in order to preserve member rents. The evidence regarding exchange market shares, rents, and membership policies is broadly consistent with these predictions.     

From space to time : The music of old earth and new time

With this article I.F. Clarke resumes his series on the long advance towards modern ways of looking at the future. Two hundred years ago, he says, the world still managed well enough with the old short-scale measure of time. According to that system the beginning of human life dated from the creation of Adam and Eve on the afternoon of Friday, 28 October 4004 BC. Then came the first palaeontologists who pushed back the origins of organic life by millions of years. Their discoveries changed the perceived role of Homo sapiens in earth history as decisively as the Renaissance astronomers transformed all thinking about the place of our planet in the universe. The dominant evolutionary ideas of the 19th century joined with the evident technological advances to confirm the idea of progress as the most favoured doctrine of the age. It is still with us.     

The reorganization of children's social services in England

Through a case study of a London borough's children's social services department (CSD), this article highlights themes concerning the reorganization of children's social care provision. Reorganizations have been driven in part by tensions between the desire of social work professionals to maintain their autonomous modes of working, versus an increasingly managerialist outlook of more recent government initiatives. The acceptance and incorporation of managerialist ideals into working practices may be driven by a climate of greater risk aversion, leading to creeping risk management across CSDs.     

The ultimately accountable job: leading today's sales organization

In recent years, sales leaders have had to devote considerable time and energy to establishing and maintaining disciplined processes. The thing is, many of them stop there--and they can't afford to, because the business environment has changed. Customers have gained power and gone global, channels have proliferated, more product companies are selling services, and many suppliers have begun providing a single point of contact for customers. Such changes require today's sales leaders to fill various new roles: Company leader. The best sales chiefs actively help formulate and execute company strategy, and they collaborate with all functions of the business to deliver value to customers. Customer champion. Customers want C-level relationships with suppliers in order to understand product strategy, look at offerings in advance, and participate in decisions made about future products--and sales leaders are in the best position to offer that kind of contact. Process guru. Although sales chiefs must look beyond the sales and customer processes they have honed over the past decade, they can't abandon them. The focus on process has become only more important as many organizations have begun bundling products and services to meet important customers' individual needs. Organization architect. Good sales leaders spend a lot of time evaluating and occasionally redesigning the sales organization's structure to ensure that it supports corporate strategy. Often, this involves finding the right balance between specialized and generalized sales roles. Course corrector. Sales leaders must watch the horizon, but they can't take their hands off the levers or forget about the dials. If they do, they might fail to respond when quick adjustments in priorities are needed.     

The expected discounted penalty function: from infinite time to finite time

In this paper we study the finite-time expected discounted penalty function (EDPF) and its decomposition in the classical risk model perturbed by diffusion. We first give the solution to a class of second-order partial integro-differential equations (PIDEs) with certain boundary conditions. We then show that the finite-time EDPFs as well as their decompositions satisfy this specific class of PIDEs so that their explicit expressions are obtained. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the finite-time EDPF may be expressed in terms of its ordinary counterpart (infinite-time) under the same risk model. Especially, the finite-time ruin probability due to oscillations and the finite-time ruin probability caused by a claim may also be expressed in terms of the corresponding quantities under the infinite-time horizon. Numerical examples are given when claims follow an exponential distribution.     

中国信用建设不能照搬别国模式

我国的信用体系建设结合了道德文化的建设与信用交易活动的经济制度安排,是有浓厚中国特色的复杂的社会系统工程,不能照搬别国或地区的发展模式.     

The social shaping approach to technology foresight

The social shaping of technology (SST) approach has been developed as a response and extension to the ideas of techno-economic rationality and linear conceptions of technology development and its consequences. The SST approach seems especially promising in areas of technology where visions are manifold, societal interests conflicting, and applications and markets are non-existing or still under construction. The emerging high technology areas and several areas of more sustainable development like organic food production and renewable energy are examples of this kind, where techno-economic networks are unstable or under construction and social and environmental potentials and risks difficult, if not impossible to assess. The paper explores the potential of a social shaping of technology approach to technology foresight within such technology areas and presents the methodological aspects herein: structure versus contingency, actor-network approach, laboratory programmes, techno-economic networks, actor worlds, development arenas. Experiences based on a recent Danish green technology foresight project concerned with environmental risks and opportunities related to nano-, bio- and ICT-technologies and foresight activities in relation to food are used as empirical references.     

The absence of corporate social responsibility reporting in Bangladesh

This paper aims to broaden the present corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting literature by extending its focus to the absence of CSR reporting within a developing country, an area which, to date, is relatively under researched in comparison to the more widely studied presence of CSR reporting within developed Western countries. In particular this paper concentrates upon the lack of disclosure on three particular eco-justice issues: child labour, equal opportunities and poverty alleviation. We examine why this is the case and thereby illuminate underlying motives behind corporate unwillingness to address these issues. For this purpose, 23 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with senior corporate managers in Bangladesh. The findings suggest that the main reasons for non-disclosure include lack of resources, the profit imperative, lack of legal requirements, lack of knowledge/awareness, poor performance and the fear of bad publicity. Given these findings the paper raises some serious concerns as to why corporations would ever be expected to voluntarily report on eco-justice issues where performance is poor and negative publicity would be generated and profit impaired. Further research is still required to uncover current injustices and to imagine what changes can be made.     

俄罗斯社会转型三百年

俄罗斯更具东方文明的特征 近年来的阅读让人们越来越发现,过去几十年里,我们所了解的俄罗斯近代史和有关苏联的史料,有许多地方需要重新认识.由于各种原因,或者因为爱之太深,或者由于恨之过激,我们都被灌输了一些不符合真实情况的宣教内容.