Feelings, oh whoa, feelings!

Emotion doesn't matter in the workplace, right? You don't get angry when an incompetent, yet politically-charged, peer gets promoted (and a raise) and you don't. What would happen to corporate ratings if an emotional metric were somehow deployed to evaluate them? Currently we have a "Top 100" employers to work for - but I'm not sure we can say systematically how to achieve a top rating in this category (aside from treating people like they are "people"). Paul Herr weighs in on this topic at:

http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/message-wall-street-its-all-about-feelings?utm_source=MIX+Fix&utm_campaign=ad1474b358-MIX_Fix_Aug20_2010&utm_medium=email

Reality fitness marketing

"Everyone has a big 'but,' Simone, let's talk about yours"
- PeeWee Herman in PeeWee's Big Adventure.

Nike attempts to reach a "larger" audience with its new promotions. If you haven't read "Just Do It," which I regard as one of the best marketing books ever, it's time to revisit. Meanwhile, check out this story on BusinessWeek.

Who's leading the hiring process? Small business

CareerBuilder's latest nationwide survey shows that small businesses – one of the major drivers for economic recovery and job growth – will be hiring in the second half of 2010.  Thirty-two percent of companies with 500 or fewer employees plan to add new employees in the months of July through December.  Twenty-one percent will hire full-time, 11 percent will hire part-time and 6 percent will hire contractors or temporary workers.  Of companies with 50 or fewer employees, 24 percent plan to hire in the second half of 2010.  The survey was completed in June 2010 and included more than 1,300 employers in businesses with 500 or fewer employees and more than 4,400 workers.

The article also lists the types of businesses entrepreneurs say they've started over the past year. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?

Read the full story on Yahoo! Finance here.

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Fast Company Most Creative People in Business

I'm late to reading this issue, but Fast Company has published its list of 100 most creative people in business. The link to the full list is here: Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business.

I was particularly struck by the convergence of art, programming, and humanity of Zachary Lieberman. Zachary Lieberman shows us how a person who considers himself an artist can enact changes in technology and peoples' lives.

"Dynamic capabilities" versus "satisficing" - Part II

Three weeks ago I posed a question: How do organizations really create new routines and capabilities? "Dynamic capabilities" allow organizations to develop new routines and capabilities to adapt to their competitive environment, whereas "satisficing" is a form of decision making under limited constraints that satisfies some desired goal, however imperfectly or sub-optimally. I gave current and former students the formal definitions of each concept and asked them to indicate by survey which concept they thought was appealing, interesting, and a more realistic depiction of what takes place in organizations. Here are the results.

"This concept is appealing to me" received much higher agreement with respondents for dynamic capabilities than satisficing.

Similarly, "this concept is interesting to me" received much higher agreement with respondents for dynamic capabilities than satisficing.

And yet respondents overwhelmingly indicated that they thought satisficing was a more realistic depiction of what takes place in organizations than they did dynamic capabilities.

Competing conclusions? (1) The satisficing literature failed to satisfy the explanatory requirements test for how organizations develop, recombine, and refine their routines and capabilities. (2) "Dynamic capabilities" sounds sexier than "satisficing." (3) The decision-making component in satisficing is important for "what really happens in organizations," but is less interesting or appealing than the theory that seemingly ignores managerial decision making. What do you think?

1,000 Pitches!

How do you come up with a really valuable and novel idea? One way is to start with 1,000 ideas (your own or those of others). The University of Michigan produced over 2,000 ideas in its "1,000 Pitches" site. Unlike business plan competitions, whose merits for students remain untested, pitching competitions allow a far greater range of participants, reduce the need for producing dressed-up pro forma financials, and can be far more engaging to a broader audience. What's your idea for a novel and valuable pitching competition?

"Dynamic capabilities" versus "satisficing"

How do organizations really create new routines and capabilities? Since its introduction in 1997 (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, SMJ, 1997), the theoretical lens of “dynamic capabilities” has gained considerable attention in the strategic management literature. Dynamic capabilities are a firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments. In other words, organizations use dynamic capabilities to develop new routines and capabilities to adapt to their competitive environment. In practice, however, organizations have been creating new routines and capabilities in response to changing environments well before the introduction of dynamic capabilities. An alternate theoretical view for explaining this comes from the managerial decision-making literature: satisficing - a form of decision making under limited constraints that satisfies some desired goal, however imperfectly or sub-optimally.

If you're reading this post, chances are you have just completed a survey in which I am trying to capture your impressions of these competing(?) approaches to capability building. The dynamic capabilities literature is one of the most popular areas in strategic management now, while satisficing seems to have fallen out of favor. With few exceptions (Winter, 2000, 2003), scholars have ignored satisficing in the management literature. No one offers it as an alternative explanation. There is no special interest group dedicated to satisficing, nor are there any research paper sessions at Academy of Management or Strategic Management Society meetings dedicated to satisficing. I hope to find out more about how these views work (or don't) together!