爱立信:人力资源管理的启示

自1876年爱立信注册“拉?马爱?立信”以来,爱立信公司(以下简称爱立信)已经经历了一百多个春秋。多年来,爱立信在电信及相关设备供应方面均处于世界领先地位,已有100000多名员工在130个国家为客户解决电信需求问题。全球已有40%的移动电话接入爱立信网络,其AXE系统的销售范围也在全世界首屈一指。爱立信在世界范围取得无可否认的成功,归因于它“职业精神,相互尊重”的用人哲学。探讨爱立信的成功之因,其独树一帜的人力资源管理对策,对于我们确立企业人力资源管理发展战略不无启迪。一、进一步确立人本管理思想爱立信强调,人力根源于公司经…     

爱立信诺基亚中国论剑

5月22日,爱立信公司总裁兼首席执行官柯德川在京宣布爱立信中国研发总院正式成立,并称爱立信今后在全面提升中国研发水平的同时,将会把更多的重点研发任务放在中国.     

爱立信变革的报告

在现今竞争激烈的IT产业,企业想要存活,应该根据市场发展和消费者需求快速变化.在这方面,爱立信是一个很好的例子.所以这篇报告会在介绍爱立信公司背景和变革的基础之上,讨论爱立信采用了什么方式应对艰难的市场环境以及还需要怎样进一步的改变     

爱立信变革的报告(英文)

在现今竞争激烈的IT产业,企业想要存活,应该根据市场发展和消费者需求快速变化。在这方面,爱立信是一个很好的例子。所以这篇报告会在介绍爱立信公司背景和变革的基础之上,讨论爱立信采用了什么方式应对艰难的市场环境以及还需要怎样进一步的改变。     

美国三位杰出工商界人士成功探秘

<正>维珍航空公司创始人——有才华者不适合僵硬体制理查德·布兰森是拥有近30亿美元资产的著名企业家。他是维珍航空公司的创始人,也是拥有150多个公司的庞大联合企业维珍集团的老板。布兰森患有严重的诵读疑难症。学生时代对他来说简直是一场噩梦,他在僵硬的教学方     

当心激励的负效应——从德国DM不发奖金说起

<正>正常运转的企业都会发点奖金,以激励员工创造更好的业绩。但是,有一位企业家却坚决反对发奖金,他就是德国DM日用品和化妆品连锁超市的创始人格茨·维尔纳。三十多年前,格茨·维尔纳白手起家创建了DM超市,如今, DM已拥有一千多家连锁店、两万多名员工。DM员工的收入在同行中较高,但是没有奖金。维尔纳认     

未来3年中国芯片生产线数量争论不休

SEMI全球总裁兼CEO斯坦利·迈尔斯强调说,未来三年,中国大陆将兴建20条全新的芯片生产线。而美国半导体工业协会(SIA)总裁乔治·斯凯利斯却并不同意这一观点。他表示,中国大陆不可能在三年内兴建这么多新工厂,顶多能看到10到15座,而20至25座新工厂恐怕将是全球范围的目标。     

中资银行如何拓展个人银行业务

我国加入WTO后,银行业受到的冲击似乎首当其冲。以上海等大城市为主战场的中外金融机构竞争异常激烈。先是“南京爱立信倒戈事件”,爱立信公司提前归还交通银行的贷款而转向与花旗银行合作,引起的关注程度远远超越事件本身。花旗银行向南京爱立信公司提供的无追溯权的应收账     

爱立信的软硬节能术

爱立信总裁兼CEO思文凯是名户外爱好者。小时候他喜欢爬山游玩。成家立业后,繁忙的工作之余,他会找机会与家人一道开帆船旅行,或进行其它户外活动。在与大自然零距离的接触中,思文凯发现大自然正在悄悄地变脸。天气正在变暖,     

爱立信:从本地化走向区域融合

<正> 爱立信作为一家外资企业,在中国已有一百多年的历史。在1894年我们首次为上海提供了2000部电话。然而,在过去20年中爱立信在中国的业务才得以迅速发展,这是由于中国政府的开放政策,创造了有利的投资环境以及巨大的市场发展。今天,我们在中国成功的本地化策略,以及我们对如何促进本地化发展以实现更好的区域性合作和融合又有了新的进展。 在中国建立合资企业 到目前为止,爱立信已有10家合资企业分布在中国各地,为中国市场提供     

Level 5 leadership. The triumph of humility and fierce resolve

Boards of directors typically believe that transforming a company from merely good to truly great requires a larger-than-life personality--an egocentric chief to lead the corporate charge. Think "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap or Lee Iacocca. In fact, that's not the case, says author and leadership expert Jim Collins. The essential ingredient for taking a company to greatness is having a "Level 5" leader at the helm--an executive in whom extreme personal humility blends paradoxically with intense professional will. Collins paints a compelling and counter-intuitive portrait of the skills and personality traits necessary for effective leadership. He identifies the characteristics common to Level 5 leaders: humility, will, ferocious resolve, and the tendency to give credit to others while assigning blame to themselves. Collins fleshes out his Level 5 theory by telling colorful tales about 11 such leaders from recent business history. He contrasts the turnaround successes of outwardly humble, even shy, executives like Gillette's Colman M. Mockler and Kimberly-Clark's Darwin E. Smith with those of larger-than-life business leaders like Dunlap and Iacocca, who courted personal celebrity. The jury is still out on how to cultivate Level 5 leaders and whether it's even possible to do so, Collins admits. Some leaders have the Level 5 seed within; some don't. But Collins suggests using the findings from his research to strive for Level 5--for instance, getting the right people on board and creating a culture of discipline. "Our own lives and all that we touch will be better for the effort," he concludes.     

Are you a strategist or just a manager?

Perhaps the greatest strategist of all time was not a business executive but a general. Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the Prussian and German general staffs from 1858 to 1888, issued "directives" to his officers rather than specific commands. These guidelines for autonomous decision making encouraged Moltke's subordinates to show individual initiative. In this article, Hans Hinterhuber and Wolfgang Popp translate Moltke's example into business terms. According to Moltke, strategy is applied common sense and cannot be taught. The authors suggest that good entrepreneurs and managers--along with generals--are born with the qualities that make them successful. But even if managers have the potential to be good strategists, they must develop and hone their natural talents. And CEOs and top management can help by identifying and promoting such talents in their employees. Hinterhuber and Popp have created a questionnaire that helps measure strategic management competence. Managers and entrepreneurs take this test themselves, answering ten questions such as, "Do I have an entrepreneurial vision?", "Do I have a corporate philosophy?", and "Do I have competitive advantages?" Using the questionnaire, company management can evaluate managers being considered for a promotion. At the same time, those who take the test can use it to determine their own performance as strategists. Strategic managers provide subordinates with general guidelines, just as Helmuth von Moltke issued directives to his officers. And outstanding entrepreneurs create a corporate culture in which their vision, philosophy, and business strategies are implemented by employees who think independently.     

The CEO as organizational architect: an interview with Xerox's Paul Allaire. Interview by Robert Howard

As chairman and CEO of the Xerox Corporation, Paul Allaire leads a company that is a microcosm of the changes transforming American business. With the introduction of the first plain-paper copier in 1959, Xerox invented a new industry and launched itself on a decade of spectacular growth. But easy growth led Xerox to neglect the fundamentals of its core business, leaving the company vulnerable to low-cost Japanese competition. Starting in the mid-1980s, Xerox embarked on a long-term effort to regain its dominant position in world copier markets and to create a new platform for future growth. Thanks to the company's Leadership through Quality program, Xerox became the first major U.S. company to win back market share from the Japanese. Allaire describes his efforts to take Xerox's corporate transformation to a new level. Since becoming CEO in 1990, he has repositioned Xerox as "the document company" at the intersection of the worlds of paper-based and electronic information. And he has guided the company through a fundamental redesign of what he calls the "organizational architecture" of Xerox's document processing business. Few CEOs have approached the process of organizational redesign as systematically and methodically as Allaire has. He has created a new corporate structure that balances independent business divisions with integrated R&D and customer operations organizations. He has redefined managerial roles and responsibilities, changed the way managers are selected and compensated, and renewed the company's senior management ranks. And he has articulated the new values and behaviors Xerox managers will need to thrive in a more competitive and fast-changing business environment.     

美国企业界的哈佛——通用电气克劳顿管理学院

GE的董事长兼首席行政官杰克·韦尔奇曾说:“我要以克劳顿管理学院,以及‘克劳顿式的学习过程’在GE掀起一场文化革命。”本文介绍了GE的领导艺术学院及决策者大本营-克劳顿管理学院的历史及在GE辉煌发展史中所起的作用。     

The ultimate creativity machine. How BMW turns art into profit

Many companies face the challenge of balancing art with commerce. The conflict between corporate pragmatism and artistic passion and quality is persistent: designers chafe under corporate requirements, budgets, and deadlines, and nondesigners struggle to understand the business value of artistic choices. At German carmaker BMW, the fanaticism about design excellence is matched only by the company's driving desire to remain profitable. Global design director Chris Bangle presides over the intersection of art and commerce at BMW, managing the often-strained relationships among the designers, engineers, and business managers. Bangle goes to great lengths to protect his designers from the unproductive commentary of others in the company, literally posting "Stop: No Entry" signs on the design studio doors. He also protects the design process, making sure that time-to-market pressures do not harm the designs by shifting the focus to engineering too soon. As a mediator, Bangle appeals to the core values of the company and a deeply held sense about BMW-ness--a pride of product shared by everyone in the company that expresses itself in the classic quality of the cars. Every employee, designer and nondesigner alike, understands that if a car doesn't meet this standard of excellence, it's simply not a BMW--and customers won't buy it. Managing at the intersection of art and commerce means translating the language of art into the language of the corporation. In this First Person account, the author describes his inventive techniques for getting the best from his artists--and getting his ideas across to corporate managers.     

Execution without excuses. Interview by Thomas A. Stewart and Louise O'Brien

The success of Dell--it provides extraordinary rewards to shareholders, it can turn on a dime, and it has demonstrated impeccable timing in entering new markets--is based on more than its famous business model. High expectations and disciplined, consistent execution are embedded in the company's DNA. "We don't tolerate businesses that don't make money," founder Michael Dell tells HBR. "We used to hear all sorts of excuses for why a business didn't make money, but to us they all sounded like 'The dog ate my homework.' We just don't accept that." In order to double its revenues in a five-year period, the company had to adapt its execution-obsessed culture to new demands. In fact, Michael Dell and CEO Kevin Rollins realized they had a crisis on their hands."We had a very visible group of employees who'd gotten rich from stock options," Rollins says. "You can't build a great company on employees who say, 'If you pay me enough, I'll stay.'" Dell and Rollins knew they had to reignite the spirit of the company. They implemented an employee survey, whose results led to the creation of the Winning Culture initiative, now a top operating priority at Dell. They also defined the Soul of Dell: Focus on the customer, be open and direct in communications, be a good global citizen, have fun in winning. It turned outto be a huge motivator. And they increased the focus on developing people within the company. "We've changed as individuals and as an organization," Rollins says. "We want the world to see not just a great financial record and operational performance but a great company. We want to have leaders that other companies covet. We want a culture that makes people stick around for reasons other than money."     

September 11, 2001. A CEO's story

On the day of the terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center, 1,779 employees of Marsh & McLennan Companies had office space in the twin towers, and another 129 were visiting that day. From his office at MMC headquarters in midtown, CEO Jeffrey Greenberg watched in horror as the second plane hit. By the time the towers fell, he had gathered a team of his colleagues to begin to outline how the company would respond. In this first-person account, Greenberg relates what it was like to manage through the unimaginable. The needs of MMC's people, and the families of employees who perished, took top priority. In the midst of chaos and unforeseeable problems, Greenberg and his colleagues improvised ways of communicating and assembled a broad-based program of support. Help appeared from all sides, from people of various ranks, titles, and functional expertise within MMC as well as past chairmen, outside directors, and retired executives. An emergency communications center was immediately set up at MMC headquarters and became a centralized location for messages and information and a memorial to colleagues lost in the attacks. The company arranged for grief counselors and established a family assistance center and a Family Relationship Management Program for those who had lost MMC employees. It has also provided families with access to long-term psychological and financial counseling. At the same time, Greenberg offers lessons about leadership, company culture, and adaptability. He and his colleagues held responsibility for a business beset by operational destruction and financial losses and facing dramatically changed market conditions. Their resolve was not simply to keep it on course but to come back stronger than ever.     

Bottom-feeding for blockbuster businesses

Marketing experts tell companies to analyze their customer portfolios and weed out buyer segments that don't generate attractive returns. Loyalty experts stress the need to aim retention programs at "good" customers--profitable ones- and encourage the "bad" ones to buy from competitors. And customer-relationship-management software provides ever more sophisticated ways to identify and eliminate poorly performing customers. On the surface, the movement to banish unprofitable customers seems reasonable. But writing off a customer relationship simply because it is currently unprofitable is at best rash and at worst counterproductive. Executives shouldn't be asking themselves, How can we shun unprofitable customers? They need to ask, How can we make money off the customers that everyone else is shunning? When you look at apparently unattractive segments through this lens, you often see opportunities to serve those segments in ways that fundamentally change customer economics. Consider Paychex, a payroll-processing company that built a nearly billion-dollar business by serving small companies. Established players had ignored these customers on the assumption that small companies couldn't afford the service. When founder Tom Golisano couldn't convince his bosses at Electronic Accounting Systems that they were missing a major opportunity, he started a company that now serves 390,000 U.S. customers, each employing around 14 people. In this article, the authors look closely at bottom-feeders--companies that assessed the needs of supposedly unattractive customers and redesigned their business models to turn a profit by fulfilling those needs. And they offer lessons other executives can use to do the same.     

Transforming a conservative company--one laugh at a time.

You wouldn't think of Brady Corporation as an obvious place in which to find a fun culture. This traditional Midwestern company, a manufacturer of industrial signs and other identification products, didn't even allow employees to have coffee at their desks until 1989. But when Katherine Hudson became CEO in 1994, she and her executive team determined that injecting some fun into the company's serious culture could create positive effects within the organization and contribute to increased performance and sales. In this article, Hudson distills her approach to overhauling Brady's culture into six principles of serious fun: More people than you might think are comfortable having fun at work; used with an awareness of cultural sensitivities, fun and laughter really are well-understood international languages; humor can help companies get through tough times; fun can be embodied in formal programs; spontaneous efforts at humor can also be effective; and encouraging fun should begin at the top. She richly illustrates each principle with examples. At Brady, getting people to loosen up and enjoy themselves has fostered a company esprit de corps and greater team camaraderie. It has started conversations that have sparked innovation, helped to memorably convey corporate messages to employees, and increased productivity by reducing stress, among other benefits. And the company has doubled its sales and almost tripled its net income and market capitalization over the past seven years. Brady's experience suggests that promoting fun within the workplace can lead not only to a robust corporate culture but also to improved business performance.     

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, ETHICS, AND ORGANIZATIONAL ARCHITECTURE

Effective corporate leadership involves more than developing a good strategic plan and setting high ethical standards. It also means coming up with an organizational design that encourages the company's managers and employees to carry out its business plan and maintain its ethical standards.
In this article, the authors use the term organizational architecture to refer to three key elements of a company's design:

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  the assignment of decision-making authority–who gets to make what decisions;