Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 13 written by Serguei Netessine and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 5 written by Dawn Iacobucci and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 16 written by George S. Day and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 19 written by Valery Yakubovich and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 23 written by Paul R. Kleindorfer and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Logistics is at the center of network-based manufacturing strategies, linking manufacturing sources with intermediate and final markets. As global logistics networks have grown and developed, they also have presented new challenges in managing risk and volatility across these broad, global networks. In this chapter, Kleindorfer and Visvikis discuss changes in logistics and financial instruments such as derivatives that have emerged to value and hedge the cost of capacity and services in these markets. They trace the recent history of maritime logistics and describe the convergence and integration of the physical and financial networks that underlie the valuation and use of logistics services. Global logistics illustrates how network-based strategies have integrated financial and physical networks. It also shows the emerging tools and competencies that have been needed to manage new risks arising from these broader networks.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 8 written by Steven O. Kimbrough and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artificial intelligence (AI) offers computational methodologies for modeling systems, which can be valuable in understanding networks. In this chapter, the author examines several types of applications of these methods in exploring how the behavior of individual agents leads to outcomes across networks. For example, he considers how one system, based on a Prisoner’s Dilemma that provides a higher payoff for players who don’t cooperate, can result in a surprising outcome in which cooperation dominates after many rounds of play. He also considers agent-based models--including turtles in a pond, showing discrimination effects; and sugar and spice trading, showing interactions through trading. Finally, he explores applications to ant colony optimization and swarming optimization of flocks of birds or schools of fish. He concludes that computational models offer important insights into networks, and the procedures used in modeling have a significant impact. The discussion also demonstrates that “networks matter,” affecting outcomes in sometimes unpredictable ways.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 11 written by Jan W. Rivkin and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Managers often must make decisions that depend on decisions in other parts of the organization. These interactions create a network of interdependent choices and make strategizing difficult. In this chapter, the authors explore the intersection between organizing and strategizing. Motivated by real examples that run contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors examine how firms organize themselves to strategize well. In particular, they examine “premature lock-in”--how a firm’s strategizing efforts can become stuck in a web of conflicting constraints prematurely, before managers have explored a wide enough range of possibilities. A key role of organizing is to free strategizing efforts and encourage broad search. At the same time, organizing must ensure that strategizing efforts stabilize after the firm discovers an effective set of choices. Balancing search and stability, the authors argue, is a central challenge of organizing. They explore this challenge with an agent-based simulation that shows (1) how a change in organizational structure[md]for example, a shift from decentralization to integration[md]may reflect not a reversal of early mistakes but an effective sequence of organizing; and (2) why firms may benefit from unnecessary overlap between departments. They conclude that a period of decentralization and unnecessary overlap can be seen as organizational mechanisms to ensure the broad, early search that a firm needs in order to cope with interactions among strategic decisions.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 22 written by Howard Kunreuther and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Networks increase interdependencies, which creates challenges for managing risks. This is especially apparent in areas such as security and enterprise risk management, where the actions of a single player in an interconnected network can wreak havoc on everyone in the network. The network, in this case, is only as strong as its weakest link. There are related problems in encouraging investments for prevention and protection, because the expected payoffs from such measures by one player are affected by the actions of other players in the network. This chapter examines the challenges of interdependent security (IDS) and strategies for addressing these, including coordination with broader networks such as industry organizations and government.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 6 written by Sonia Kleindorfer and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 18 written by Eric K. Clemons and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant messaging generation, wired and integrated into broad, flat networks almost from birth, will not function as their predecessors did when injected into the social networks that form their professional organizations. IM’ers are creating their own network styles and content, as well as their own informal, back-channel networks, different from those of their more senior coworkers, and more compatible with their personal styles and loyalties. If their adoption of workplace communications norms indeed differs from that of their predecessors, how will these individuals function differently as employees, and how will organizations need to adapt their training, their managerial styles, and their expectations of employees’ motivations, performance, and loyalty to incorporate these new employees? After reviewing the literature on social networks, the authors explore a few prominent and visible trends that affect employers and employees: (1) changing communications technologies and their implication for social organization; (2) changing perception of fact, technique, and reality, and implications for authority and decision styles; and (3) outsourcing, downsizing, and the erosion of organizational loyalty. They then offer qualitative impressions, as well as insights from an online survey (of 80 respondents), and explore implications for managers and organizations.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 25 written by Witold J. Henisz and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Network Challenge written by Paul R. Kleindorfer and published by Pearson Prentice Hall. This book was released on 2009 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 20 written by Prashant Kale and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an environment of rapid and discontinuous change, managers have turned to alliances to access the resources they need. But research on alliances shows that more than half fail, demonstrating the difficulty of managing these relationships. Based on their extensive research on alliances, the authors explore the relational capabilities needed for building and managing successful alliances. Using the case of Royal Philips, they explore the role of strategy, structure, systems, people, and culture in alliance success. They also discuss the need for ongoing adaptation and renewal of relational capabilities as the business and its environment change.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 15 written by Christoph Zott and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zott and Amit explore the role of business models in creating value through networks. They review earlier, firm-centric views of value creation, including Porter’s value chain, the resource-based view, and the transaction costs approach. They point out that business models go well beyond classic views of network theory (e.g., topography and structure) and include notions of purpose, acceptance, fairness, coherence, and viability. Based on their earlier framework for e-business models, they explore the role of four major interlinked value drivers: efficiency, complementarities, lock-in, and novelty. They argue that the focal firm’s business model acts as both an engine for value-creation and an invaluable construct for understanding the firm’s role in relation to other business model participants in the networks in which it is embedded.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 14 written by Christophe Van den Bulte and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social networks and word-of-mouth marketing are increasingly important, yet few current practices are based on a deep understanding of how the structure of networks can affect customer behavior and marketing outcomes. This chapter offers some critical observations on current word-of-mouth marketing practices and identifies four key questions that managers need to ask themselves before engaging in campaigns designed to leverage customer networks: Can we be confident that interpersonal influence or social contagion is really important? Why exactly would social contagion occur? Should we target key influentials? Can we identify and target those influentials? The answers to these questions cannot be taken for granted.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 17 written by Yoram (Jerry) R. Wind and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Network Challenge Chapter 21 written by Franklin Allen and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.