The Modern Firm: Organizational Design for Performance and Growth

335 Pages·2007·1.11 MB·English

by  John Roberts

The Modern Firm
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The Modern
Firm
Organizational Design for
Performance and Growth
John Roberts
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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© Donald John Roberts 2004
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First published 2004
First published in paperback 2007
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Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain
by
Clays Ltd., St. Ives plc
ISBN 978–0–19–829376–7 (Hbk.)
978–0–19–829375–0 (Pbk.)
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To Kathy
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Contents
Preface ix
Preface to the Paperback Edition xiii
1. Strategy and Organization 1
2. Key Concepts for Organization
Design 32
3. The Nature and Purpose of the
Firm 74
4. Motivation in the Modern Firm 118
5. Organizing for Performance 180
6. Organizing for Growth and Innovation 243
7. Creating the Modern Firm:
Management and Leadership
Challenges 281
References 289
Index 303
vii
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Preface
The most fundamental responsibilities of general man-
agers are setting strategy and designing the organization
to implement it. Over the last decades the great value of
economics for the study of strategy and the practice of
strategizing has become evident. This book attempts to
show how economics can contribute in a similar way and
at a similar level to organizational design.
I hope that practicing managers will read and benefit
from this book. It is not, however, a “how to” book offer-
ing the final, simple answer about how to succeed.
Instead, it offers ways to think about the problem of
designing business organizations for performance and
growth. Both students of organizations and management
and practicing managers can benefit from having an
understanding of the basic principles of the economics of
organization and its application to business enterprises.
The book tries to offer this. It mixes case studies and
shorter examples with fundamental conceptual and theo-
retical material that is developed and presented in a non-
technical manner and then applied to the design problem.
It also seeks to explain some of the very great changes in
ix