Filling The Gaps

*Notes on “Organizational Behavior and Organizational Design” lectures, taught by Prof. dr hab. Piotr Płoszajski, Warsaw School of Economics. First part here.*

In the past: The big eats the small.
Nowadays: The fast eats the slow.

The environment is changing extremely fast, but do we change with the same speed? Or better, should we? (or we should give it some time- new ideas/ theories are usually not successful from the very beginning)

Now people have more time to learn (increased life expectancy)

How to overcome the resistance of change?

Adaptivity: ability to forget things

There are different levels of leadership- it`s not always what to do; it could be- where to start from.

Middle managements will be no longer needed

New Economy: starts with technology and end with trust

Self correcting power as result of higher level of communication

“Swarm” design

/ The response of 10000 fishes at a change in the environment is two times less than the time of a single fish response /

Intelligent control appears as un-control or freedom
Un-intelligent control appears as external domination. (Lao Tzu)

If something becomes obvious to us, we don`t questioning it anymore. It becomes invisible, we stop thinking of it.

We should change the cognitive assumptions, not only the knowledge.

Are human-beings rational? (only to a certain extent )

If smth out from the things we have used to believed happens to not be true, that means that probably today we also believe in smth that`s not true, but we just don`t know it yet.

Two major approaches to behaviour change- external (changing the person’s mind) and internal (affecting the surrounding environment).

Lewin’s freeze phases- here and here. (the first result I found in the web)

Emotional= stop being rational.

Management creativity and imagination consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought

There won`t be a third part, because today was our last lecture. That was for sure one of the best courses I have had for 3 years in the university

Geert Hofstede , Cultural Dimensions:

1) Power Distance Index

2) Individualism

3) Masculinity

4)Uncertainty Avoidance Index

5) Long-Term Orientation

Just check the link and it would lead you to G. Hofstede`s web page and there you could read the explanations concerning the cultural dimensions.

I`m writing this because 1) there are still people who haven`t heard about them, although they use terms as “individualistic” country and 2) because I got to briefly explain the second one today and I could do it a bit better, so I needed some reminds

So far I have read only one article from Geert Hofstede- “Motivation, Leadership, and Organization: Do American Theories Apply Abroad?”, but I kindly recommend it to you. It was really interesting and it does not only explain how countries differ from each other, but also gives some explanation how culture affects management practices and how the latter should be adapt to a specific country in order to be more effective.

*Notes on “Organizational Behavior and Organizational Design” lectures, taught by Prof. dr hab. Piotr Płoszajski (see the end of the post), Warsaw School of Economics. Have in mind that we are provided with all of the materials in power points so these are only sentences I`ve wanted to remember, questions without answers, things that should be check out etc.*

Management is contextual. There`s no a single sentence “If A, then B”- everything is changing.

What is motivation when you don`t see the employee?

“Time is money” vs “Money is time”- the changing role of the time (our major resource).

The business environment it`s not only complicated, but also complex; not only global, but globally intensely interconnected.

Change requires learning. (fast )

Knowledge differs from understanding. Understanding is beyond the knowledge.

How we learn to understand? How to go to the point we don`t think? (ex. golf players- considering the weather, the grass etc)

There are 3 levels of managerial understanding: 1) Staring at… (learning, reading, seeing etc); 2) Level of seeing; 3) Level of understanding (the underlying mechanism)

Soft knowledge- intuition, feeling, guessing. (simple intuition- close in time and place.) But then: is feeling a knowledge?

The-ever-present dream –> to know whatever is to know. The consequence- nowadays the world is full of information. We probably know less today, than yesterday. The kind of knowledge company may need in order to have success and survive may not exist yet.

To have a look at the chaos theory.

Critical dependence of initial conditions (ex. 2 leaves in a mountain stream at the same initial position- always take a different direction)

How to go from complexity to simplicity?

Children have the ability to see the nature of things; growns-up seek safe equilibrium.

Century of right side of the brain?

We should see what everybody has seen, but think what nobody has thought.

Creativity doesn`t mean the same for everyone.

“Grey revolution”

For the first time in history the society will be rather old than young. (in next 10-20 years and up)

Pension funds will be one of the major factors in the market.

The health sector would be with the highest growth rate.

Could we talk for “The end of capitalism”? (Because of the aging society and different kind of social policies needed)

Reverse mortgage

Will China become rich before getting older? (to have a look at the FT archive if I remember correctly)

Immigration is no longer enough to compensate the low fertility rate in most of the western countries and USA.

New customer majority! (55+ ; the only one customer group which will raise in numbers)

Changing of the advertisement. (ex. Dove)

The scarcest resource nowadays- the attention of the customer.

Is it good for business to divide life “at work/ at rest/ at play”? (I`m not completely sure, but should be again a title from FT)- Isn`t it better when employees think all the time for the business, even if that means to make a phone call or send an email not connected with the work itself through the working hours?

Personalization of the products in order to achieve not only the customer’s satisfaction , but to take him to the stage of perfection.

Puma: the first one to make the connection between sport and fashion.

Where is the limit of integration of an employee?

How the new technology influence privacy?

P.S. If something differs a bit from what has been said during the lectures, that means that I have “changed” it through my perception…

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Prof. dr hab. Piotr Płoszajski (in brief):

Director of Theory of Management Department at Warsaw School of Economics (SGH)
- Director of CEMS programme at SGH
- Chairman and founder of Polish - Japanese Management Center
- Lecturer at Harvard University, Princeton University, Boston University, Sloan School, MIT, World Bank, Oxford University, Cambridge University, London School of Economics

“Around-the-clock business” (or around-the-globe activities/ operations/ companies and etc- they are plenty of ways the term could be used) was our presentation’s topic for a course named “Time-based management”. Actually I had quite different view of what the course would look like - I hoped that the focus would be rather on the personal time management instead of focusing on companies using such model of management (look at the bottom of the text) but it was still OK though . Honestly, in the beginning, I wasn’t familiar with the term, but later on I found some quite interesting articles related to the topic. Hope it would be interesting for you as well.

In brief:

As I said, there are several ways of describing “Around-the-clock-operations” (ATCO), but they all include certain key elements as the ability of an operating unit to work in 24h/permanently, thanks to the usage of different time zones along with new information technology.

The term “Around-the-clock-operations” is generally used in the service sector and deals mostly with two major economic issues:
- Offshoring as a part of cost reduction (through cheap labor cost, due to economies of scale and price differences for similar products in two different economies for ex.)
- Time-management

One of the most important activities, related to the topic, is the phenomena of private tutoring (or at least we focussed on that one) and India as rising hub of the on-line education. More you could read here. If I should offer a kind of summary- the process works quite easy: you have an Indian teacher waking up early in the morning (3-4 am), turning on his computer and starting to teach his Americans students (mostly) who has just came back home after school. There is a large number of subjects that the tutoring companies offer. You’re using a virtual white board, web cameras and some special softwares. One of the greatest advantages is first, that the sessions are relatively much more cheaper than a face-to-face lesson in the USA and second, you don’t need to go out of home (on that way you also save your time and your parents don’t worry if you need to go at a home of a teacher you don’t know so well ) Why India? Two crucial factors- the language (English) and the large numbers of teachers, not really satisfied with what their salary is and to whom the on-line tutoring is a source of higher income.

Another example of around-the-clock operations are the call centers. There is a new trend among them- call centers offering personal assistance services. There is quite funny example how and what for you could use your personal secretary in this article.

The last one I’m going to mention is the outsourcing of IT projects. You could find more information here. I was quite amazed how these “knowledge factories” work, especially concerning how they are “passing” the knowledge among the different shifts (you have 16 minutes to make yourself familiar with what your colleagues have made before you and what has taken them 16 hours).

Here comes the question about the advantages and disadvantages and is it worthy?

Some of the advantages (in general, with no focus on a specific sector )are:

1. Great opportunities for development of the sector ( 100-150% growth rate estimated in 2007)
2. Time difference once seen as a drawback now seen as an advantage
3. Companies can build their strength on the multinational teams, different background of members and diversity of perspectives. In this way the services and products are more appealing to the global economy and more universal.
4. General cost saving (better positioning on the market)
5. Very short response time.
6. Access to expertise that is not available in the home country for two reasons: too expensive or general lack of it etc.

Some of the disadvantages (again in general) are:

1. Not convenient time schedule for employees in developing countries. People have to work in 3 shifts system or be able to work when there is a demand.
2. The quality of services can be lower than expected, as the ‘quality’ term is understood differently all over the world
3. Time zones differences makes everyone deregulate their biological clock as it requires:
Managers to travel to the ‘outsourcing centers’ frequently
People to be able to work in an unnatural times of the day
People who are managing the overseas operations to be able to work according to the time of the other country (compare US and India – 7 p.m. in US it is 7 a.m. in Bangalore)
4. Communication, cultural differences and language difference (the latter is a barrier, but not a gap). See this.
5. Lack of human contact can result in lack of motivation, misunderstandings; lack of team coherence… etc

Some of the main (positive) conclusions we made concerning ATCO are:
- It enhances the interdependence of the countries
- It build bridges among cultures
- It brings investment and development to developing countries
- It brings new technologies to developing countries and supports them in their development
- It makes people more flexible

At the same time there are many negative outcomes to be faced:
- People are being exploited and have to work against their biological clock
- Workers in developing countries are being underpaid (according to e.g. U.S. standards)
- The expertise is being drained form developing countries

In the end - that`s how our agenda was structured:

1. Introduction: Definition and Historical background.
2. The offshoring process. Inventions & Offshoring. Global time management & service offshoring
3. Example of activities: on-line tutoring, call centers, IT projects overseas
4. Advantages, Disadvantages and Challenges.
5. Conclusion.

Here are some more links, if you are interested in. Now the question is: Would you like to be one of them?

ProactiveNet E-Business Around-the-Clock, Rapid Response e-Transaction Management
U.S. firms move IT overseas
Yes, you can outsource your homework to India
India and the United States: An Emerging Global Partnership

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We were discussing Harvard Business School case studies as “People Express”, “Zara” (as ex. of fast fashion) “Honda today”, “Toyota”, as well as time based strategies (zero time: a conceptual architecture for 21st century enterprises), time management in supply chain, time in R&D area