[PDF] The Network Challenge Chapter 16 eBook

Author : George S. Day
Publisher : Pearson Education
Page : 42 pages
File Size : 50,13 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137015119

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Although networks in key business areas such as communications, supply chains, R&D, and sales are designed to improve the flow of information, people, or goods, they can also be used to improve the “peripheral vision” of the organization. In this chapter, the authors examine how networks can be used by organizations to scan, sense, and adapt to new and important signals from the organization’s strategic environment beyond its core focus. The first part of the chapter emphasizes the importance of peripheral vision in helping organizations not being blindsided by threats while seeing new opportunities sooner. The authors examine some key obstacles to using networks to better mine the periphery for early insight. They then explore how extended networks can help the organization be a responsive open system adapting faster to changes in the environment. They examine to what extent network constructs such as centrality, hierarchy, self-healing, distributed intelligence, multihoming, and latency can be used to improve organizational networks for scanning the periphery. The last section explores some of the leadership challenges associated with using networks to detect weak signals sooner.

Author : Manuel E. Sosa
Publisher : Pearson Education
Page : 43 pages
File Size : 13,44 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137015399

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Complex products, such as airplanes and automobiles, are designed by networks of design teams working on different components, often across organizations. The challenge in managing these networks is to decompose the project into manageable pieces but then coordinate the entire network to produce the best overall design. In this chapter, Manuel Sosa offers insights on this challenge. He examines the design structure matrix (DSM) as a project management tool for planning complex development efforts and discusses the engineering and managerial implications of considering complex products as networks of interconnected subsystems and components. In particular, he considers the impact of modularity on interactions among subcomponents. Finally, he examines organizational communications, overlaying product interfaces with communications interfaces of development teams to understand where communication links may be missing or unnecessary. The discussion offers insights on any complex design and coordination challenge, where networks of individuals or teams work together to contribute to a larger whole.

Author : Serguei Netessine
Publisher : Pearson Education
Page : 41 pages
File Size : 20,35 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137015070

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As manufacturing supply chains have moved from vertically integrated factories to diffused networks, manufacturers need to manage complex, global webs of suppliers. In this chapter, Netessine examines supply networks in two industries in particular: automobiles, and aerospace and defense. He explores how different strategies and technologies have helped companies manage, organize, and capitalize on their networks of suppliers. He discusses how Japanese automakers have used partnerships to outperform their U.S. rivals, who have taken a more adversarial approach to their suppliers. He also considers how companies such as Airbus and Boeing have used technology to coordinate and integrate far-flung networks. While Netessine notes that the formal study of network-based supply chains is just emerging, he offers insights from research and practice on the growing importance of supply networks and strategies for managing them successfully.

Author : Valery Yakubovich
Publisher : Pearson Education
Page : 41 pages
File Size : 49,8 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137015496

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Although any manager would recognize the importance of “networking” in finding, developing, and retaining employees, human resource management traditionally has focused on individuals. In this chapter, the authors point out that core HR processes such as recruitment and hiring, training and development, performance management, and retention all depend on networks. They consider the importance of weak ties in matching employees with jobs and “structural holes” in promoting creativity. They urge managers to make the shift from an atomized view to a network view of human resources--from focusing on the “trees” to understanding the “forest.” They show that networks can boost efficiency and productivity by facilitating information sharing, attracting talent, and strengthening employees’ commitment to the firm. But networks may also pose risks such as “lift-outs,” in which a departing employee takes other workers in his or her network. The authors explore how managers need to understand the impact of networks and how to “manage” them.

Author : Paul R. Kleindorfer
Publisher : Pearson Prentice Hall
Page : 590 pages
File Size : 48,28 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137011911

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While managers typically view business through the lens of a single firm, this book challenges readers to take a broader view of their enterprises and opportunities. Here, more than 50 leading thinkers in business and many other disciplines take on the challenge of understanding, managing, and leveraging networks.

Author : Sonia Kleindorfer
Publisher : Pearson Education
Page : 42 pages
File Size : 16,10 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137015356

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Biology remains the most extensive and complex information network on the planet. This chapter examines the nature of biological networks, including their inherent stability and risks to their resilience. After a general introduction exploring networks and biological systems, this chapter reviews (1) the evolution of biological networks; (2) principles that govern biological networks; and (3) measures of stability, productivity, and efficiency in biological networks. The authors use examples from food (energy) transfer in rainforests and coral reefs, as well as the creation of a biological network through colonization in Darwin’s Finches of the Galapagos Islands. Research shows that while large biological networks are inherently unstable, some are more stable than others.

Author : Witold J. Henisz
Publisher : Pearson Education
Page : 28 pages
File Size : 44,40 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137015550

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From oil companies seeking rights to drill to consumer products firms attempting to forestall a consumer boycott, organizations often seek to influence political or social policy to achieve their own objectives. But to exert this influence, they need to understand the structure of political and social networks. In this chapter, Witold Henisz examines how information about the structure of political and social networks can be integrated into data acquisition and analysis, as well as strategy implementation. Although sophisticated companies have long relied on an informal understanding of networks of informants to gather information about social and political actors at home and abroad, the analysis of the information and design of an influence strategy has too often occurred without reference to that structure. As Henisz points out, a more rigorous approach to analysis is transforming political and social risk management from art to quasi-formal science. This chapter outlines the past, present, and future frontiers of political and social risk management with particular attention to using an understanding of the network structure of diverse actors in perceiving, analyzing, and influencing the political and social environment.

Author : Dawn Iacobucci
Publisher : Pearson Education
Page : 40 pages
File Size : 18,34 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137015348

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This chapter provides an overview of social networks, the basic discipline from which ideas and terminology are drawn when characterizing popular phenomena such as “social networking” Internet sites like Facebook. The authors offer the reader a flavor of the theoretical and empirical research conducted by social network scholars since the 1930s. They explore how researchers have used social networks to generate and test economic, sociological, and organizational theories. They also examine broad insights from this research, as well as management implications in areas such as advertising, brands, loyalty, authenticity, and segmentation. The overriding message is that as power shifts from firms to social networks, companies have less control over their own destinies and need to pay more attention to networks.

Author : Yoram (Jerry) R. Wind
Publisher : Pearson Education
Page : 38 pages
File Size : 45,13 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137015127

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If you accept, in the words of Thomas Friedman, that “the world is flat,” how do you need to reshape your organization, management, and thinking for this new terrain? This chapter offers strategies and insights on the capability for “network orchestration” that is essential in designing and managing networks that are centrally controlled. While most management education is focused on competition at the firm level, competition today is increasingly “network against network.” This changes the way we approach strategy, supply chains, building competencies, and managing enterprises. The authors examine the strategies used by successful networked companies in diverse industries. Effective network orchestration requires balancing control with empowerment of customers, suppliers, and entrepreneurial managers; and building value more from integration than specialization. While the traditional focus of core competencies has been at the firm level, the rise of networked organizations means that companies need to take a broader view. Success is based less on the competencies that the organization owns than those that it can connect to. This means that core competencies in network orchestration and learning may become increasingly important because these meta-competencies allow organizations to assemble and flexibly reconfigure the competencies needed to fulfill a customer-driven value chain.

Author : Franklin Allen
Publisher : Pearson Education
Page : 38 pages
File Size : 28,10 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0137015518

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Modern financial systems exhibit a high degree of interdependence, with connections between financial institutions stemming from both the asset and the liability sides of their balance sheets. Networks--broadly understood as a collection of nodes and links between nodes--can be a useful representation of financial systems. By modeling economic interactions, network analysis can better explain certain economic phenomena. In this chapter, Allen and Babus argue that the use of network theories can enrich our understanding of financial systems. They explore several critical issues. First, they address the issue of systemic risk, by studying two questions: how resilient financial networks are to contagion, and how financial institutions form connections when exposed to the risk of contagion. Second, they consider how network theory can be used to explain freezes in the interbank market. Third, they examine how social networks can improve investment decisions and corporate governance, based on recent empirical results. Fourth, they examine the role of networks in distributing primary issues of securities. Finally, they consider the role of networks as a form of mutual monitoring, as in microfinance.