Designing Organizations to Create Value: From Strategy to Structure by Zimmerman, Jerold; Brickley, James; Smith, Clifford;

Short description:

A Three-Pronged Strategy for Boosting Organizational Performance--and Shareholder Value

As a business leader in today's increasingly competitive global race, you need more than fads and buzzwords. You need a focused, cross-functional organizational design, one that will foster intercompany communication and help you identify and resolve minor issues before they become major barriers to success.

Designing Organizations to Create Value draws on recent research as well as the authors' hands-on experience to outline an integrated framework for coordinating the three critical aspects of organizational architecture:

• Assignment of decision-making authority
• Development of effective performance evaluation systems
• Creation of a logical and motivating compensation structure

Executives and senior-level decision makers must focus on the entirety of their organizations--as opposed to one particular facet such as strategy, quality, or logistics--to build an efficient and interconnected company. Let Designing Organizations to Create Value provide you with methods to systematically analyze all of your organizational issues and reconstruct your workforce into that of a balanced, functional, and battle-ready market leader.

"In today's environment, managers are under increasing pressure to address organizational issues and manage organizational change. . . . The business literature to date has . . . failed to provide managers with an integrated approach to identifying and solving organizational problems. Our book is designed to provide a systematic, comprehensive framework for analyzing organizational issues, one that can be consistently applied in addressing problems and structuring more effective organizations."--From the Preface

"Value creation" is more than just another buzz phrase; it is, in fact, the time-honored key to business success. Designing Organizations to Create Value is today's most top-to-bottom examination of the ever-elusive topic of value--how it is measured, how firms create and capture it, and how the drive for value impacts the strategy of the entire firm.

Rather than focusing on one aspect or strategy, however, this comprehensive book details virtually every area that influences value creation, including:

• Proven strategies for efficient deployment of knowledge throughout an organization
• Decentralization, and the necessity of implementing proper checks and balances
• The essential and interwoven roles of institutional innovation, strategy, and dynamic leadership

By whatever name, in whatever era, value creation is a requisite for long-term organizational survival and success. Designing Organizations to Create Value combines decades of multidisciplinary research with case studies from market leaders such as General Electric, Honda, and Wal-Mart to illustrate the payoffs from effective organizational design--and provide a practical, sensible approach for creating value at every level and with every process of your organization.