This case-based research report (Mohrman, S. and Pilllans, G. (Corporate Research Forum, 2013) focuses on trends in organization design and organization design solutions that are becoming increasingly common to help manage complexity and promote learning and innovation. The report chronicles some of the major organization design challenges faced by global corporations today.
Research and Insights Archive
Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
Available Content
Change Management is Obsolete: Learnings from Research and Practice About What’s Next, 7/30/13, Recording/Slides
There’s little disagreement that we are living in an increasingly VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. The question is what are we doing about it? In this webinar Chris Worley and Sue Mohrman will characterize the world we live in and explore the obsolescence of the design and change models that we use.
Building Networks and Partnerships for Sustainability
Christopher G. Worley, Philip H. Mirvis, Susan Albers Mohrman, and Abraham B. (Rami) Shani, Editors (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013) The volume explores how collaboration, partnership, and networks are being developed to support the achievement of economic, social, and environmental sustainability.
Corporate Boards and Sustainability, 4/25/13, Audio/Slides
What are corporate boards doing to assure that their corporations are sustainably effective? This webinar with Ed Lawler (Director, CEO) and Sue Mohrman (Senior Research Scientist, CEO) was a review of the data from our study of the role of corporate boards in sustainability.
Janice Schonwetter (AlignOrganizations): Organizational Design Refresher Webinar, 2/26/2013
Janice presents a case dealing with the redesign of HR in a large, global engineering design and services company. A very systematic example of working through the issues of leveraging services across businesses and across regions and how to organize for that.
It’s a Great Time to be a Physician: Building a Healthcare System that Works
Weisz, J., Mohrman, S. A., and McCracken, A. (Second River Healthcare Press, 2012) A first-hand account of the changes being demanded of the U.S. healthcare system, this book is written by Dr. Jeffrey Weisz for his fellow physicians.
So you Want to be Agile? Find a Balance Between “Fat” and “Muscle”, 1/10/2013
In this webinar, Chris Worley and Sue Mohrman will describe their learnings about designing organizations for agility. There are many paradoxes inherent in such designs. Agility requires accepting a certain amount of slack that absorbs the risk of investing in their future while relentlessly driving down costs in present operations; experimenting on the one hand while systematically incorporating what is learned on the other; and developing people to be ready for the future while making them expert in the present. In agile organizations, change is routine.
Sustainability: What Should Boards Do?
Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) and Susan A. Mohrman (CEO) explain that today, sustainability is not just a matter of good citizenship; it has become critical to the survival of corporations. Corporations need to operate in a sustainable manner in order to assure that they have strong communities and ecologies in which to operate.
HR and Sustainability, 11/27/2012
Ed Lawler, Sue Mohrman, and Chris Worley took a first look at data from a new study on sustainable organizations. A just-completed CEO study focused on HR’s role in corporate sustainability activities. It looked at what HR does and what it would like to do in regards to sustainability.
Organizing for Sustainable Health Care
Susan Albers Mohrman & A.B. (Rami) Shani explain that Health care, as it is currently organized, is not sustainable. Health care systems in the developed world are encountering increased demand for high quality health care but facing societal resource limits.
Exploring the Interface of Organization Design & Work System Design – Creating Sustainably Effective Organizations, 7/17/2012
Sue Mohrman and Chris Worley examine the relationship and the full system of capabilities required to create a sustainably effective organization. Both work system design and organization design are needed and must be orchestrated in order to align the resources and activities of the organization with strategy, and to ensure that valued high quality services and products are reliably and affordably delivered to the customer.
Large-Group Interventions: An Empirical Field Study of Their Composition, Process, and Outcomes
Large group interventions are an important method of organization change. This paper by Christopher G. Worley (CEO), Susan A. Mohrman (CEO), and Jennifer Nevitt (Microsoft) received the McGregor Award for the outstanding contribution to the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science for 2011.