Ronald Ashkenas, The Boundaryless Organization: Breaking the Chains of Organizational Structure, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995.

In this book, four top management strategists show how leading companies are busting boundaries in all directions--vertical, horizontal, external and geographic--and achieving stellar results. Using in-depth stories from such successful companies as GE, Samsung, and AlliedSignal, the book provides a practical action guide for creating boundaryless organizations.

Kathleen Eisenhardt and Shona L. Brown, “Patching: Restitching Business Portfolios in Dynamic Markets,” Harvard Business Review, May 1999.

In this landscape of continuous flux, it's more important to build corporate-level strategic processes that enable dynamic repositioning than it is to build any particular defensible position. That's why smart corporate strategists use patching, a process of mapping and remapping business units to create a shifting mix of highly focused, tightly aligned businesses that can respond to changing market opportunities. The authors illustrate how patching works and point out some common stumbling blocks.

Jay R. Galbraith, Designing Organizations:  An Executive Briefing on Strategy, Structure and Process, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995.

Drawing on over ten years of research, the author shows how organization design supports policies, behaviors, and performance. The book will equip leaders with the concrete understanding and tools necessary to select and implement the most efficient design and to create a superior organization.

David A. Garvin, Managing Quality: The Strategic Competitive Edge, New York: Free Press, 1988.

This seminal work is essential reading for managers, particularly since widely held assumptions and a growing mythology about quality have not produced the expected revolution in U.S. quality performance -- with few products able to match the quality and reliability levels of their overseas competitors. Garvin begins with a review of quality history in this country and an analysis of what Japan has done with the same concepts and ideas -- and done demonstratively better -- revealing the facts that prove quality is the best competitive weapon to dramatically increase profits and cut losses.

Dorothy Leonard-Barton, H. Kent Bowen, Kim B. Clark, Charles A. Holloway, and Steven C. Wheelwright, “How to Integrate Work and Deepen Expertise,” Harvard Business Review, September 1994.

To be a leader in global manufacturing in the 1990s, a company must excel in two seemingly contradictory ways. First, it must constantly build and refresh its individual areas of expertise so that it has the critical capabilities needed to stay ahead. And second, it must get its ever-changing mix of disciplines to work together in an ever-changing competitive environment.

Susan A. Mohrman, Jay R. Galbraith, Edward E., Lawler III, Tomorrow’s Organization:  Crafting Winning Capabilities in a Dynamic World, San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1998.

This book is a comprehensive examination of the changing nature of work and the changing character of the workplace. The role of human resources management is depicted in an expanded role that assumes a cross-functional position in the modern organization. Training is seen as a process of continuous learning rather than a preparation process. Teamwork is shown as an essential facet of technology as projects are too complex to be assigned to individuals. The authors describe an organizational architecture that combines market, social, and technical skills. The individual is described in a nested position within a group, within a business unit, within an organization.

David A. Nadler and Michael Tushman, Competing by Design:  The Power of Organizational Architecture, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

The search for competitive advantage, write management consultants and educators David Nadler and Michael Tushman, is "the defining goal of modern-day business." Competing by Design: The Power of Organizational Architecture, is their guide to reaching that goal through total integration of corporate structure, workplace culture, and employee motivation. Bringing all such processes together into one unified organization, they contend, is as important to a company's future as the architectural unity of the building that houses it.

Bruce A. Pasternack and Albert J. Viscio, The Centerless Corporation: A New Model for Transforming Your Organization for Growth and Prosperity, Simon & Schuster, 1998.

Bruce Pasternack and Albert Viscio, founding partners of Booz-Allen & Hamilton's Strategic Leadership Practice, have used a comprehensive study of current business behavior conducted by their consulting firm to develop a new structure for companies of the future. They argue that decreasing bureaucracy and increasing communication in an environment in which education and idea sharing are actively promoted are successful alternatives to the top-down style of central management still favored by many businesses.

Case Studies

Christopher W. L. Hart and Joan S. Livingston, “Florida Power & Light’s Quality Improvement Program,” HBS Case, 9-688-043, 1990.

Describes a major electric utility's highly successful effort to institute a comprehensive quality improvement program throughout the organization. Designed to be used in a comparative analysis of the quality improvement effort described in Paul Revere Insurance Co. (A). Students learn that there is no one "right way" to build the concept of defect-prevention into an organization (as espoused by such quality experts as Deming, Juran, and Crosby). Rather, the design and implementation of a quality improvement strategy need to be tailored to such variables as the nature of demand for an organization's service, its service-delivery process, corporate culture, organizational climate, financial performance, industry structure and trends, and competing demands for organizational attention. Important topics dealt with are program implementation, problem-solving methodology/philosophical roots, rewards and recognition, measuring results, maintaining momentum, and limitations/problems.