The Open Organization

The Open Organization
Author: Jim Whitehurst
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2015
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1625275277

Based on open source principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration, "open management" challenges conventional business ideas about what companies are, how they run, and how they make money. This book provides the blueprint for putting it into practice in your own firm. He covers challenges that have been missing from the conversation to date, among them: how to scale engagement; how to have healthy debates that net progress; and how to attract and keep the "Social Generation" of workers. Through a mix of vibrant stories, candid lessons, and tested processes, Whitehurst shows how Red Hat has blown the traditional operating model to pieces by emerging out of a pure bottom up culture and learning how to execute it at scale. And he explains what other companies are, and need to be doing to bring this open style into all facets of the organization.

The Path

The Path
Author: Michael Puett
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1476777853

For the first time, an award-winning Harvard professor shares his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how ancient ideas—like the fallacy of the authentic self—can guide you on the path to a good life today. Why is a course on ancient Chinese philosophers one of the most popular at Harvard? Because it challenges all our modern assumptions about what it takes to flourish. Astonishing teachings emerged two thousand years ago through the work of a succession of Chinese scholars exploring how humans can improve themselves and their society. And what are these counterintuitive ideas? Transformation comes not from looking within for a true self, but from creating conditions that produce new possibilities. Good relationships come not from being sincere and authentic, but from the rituals we perform within them. A good life emerges not from planning it out, but through training ourselves to respond well to small moments. Influence comes not from wielding power but from holding back. Excellence comes from what we choose to do, not our natural abilities. In other words, The Path “opens the mind” (Huffington Post) and upends everything we are told about how to lead a good life. Its most radical idea is that there is no path to follow in the first place—just a journey we create anew at every moment by seeing and doing things differently. “With its…spirited, convincing vision, revolutionary new insights can be gleaned from this book on how to approach life’s multifarious situations with both heart and head” (Kirkus Reviews). A note from the publisher: To read relevant passages from the original works of Chinese philosophy, see our ebook Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi: Selected Passages, available wherever books are sold.

Open to Think

Open to Think
Author: Dan Pontefract
Publisher: Figure 1 Publishing
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2018-09-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1773270281

While it may not occur to us on a daily basis, there is a widespread cultural tendency toward quick decisions and quick action. This pattern has resulted in many of our society's greatest successes, but even more of its failures. Though the root cause is by no means malicious, we have begun to reward speed over quality, and the negative effects suffered in both our personal and professional lives are potentially catastrophic. Best-selling author and Chief Envisioner Dan Pontefract offers the solution to this predicament with what he coins "Open Thinking," a cyclical process in which creativity is encouraged, critiquing leads to better decisions, and thoughtful action delivers positive, sustainable results. He proposes a return to balance between the three components of productive thought: dreaming, deciding, and doing. Based on organizational and societal data, academic research, historical studies, and a wide range of interviews, Open to Think is an appeal for a world of better thinking. Pontefract introduces tangible, actionable strategies to improve the way we think as organizations and individuals.

Primer on Decision Making

Primer on Decision Making
Author: James G. March
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 423
Release: 1994-05-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1439108331

Building on lecture notes from his acclaimed course at Stanford University, James March provides a brilliant introduction to decision making, a central human activity fundamental to individual, group, organizational, and societal life. March draws on research from all the disciplines of social and behavioral science to show decision making in its broadest context. By emphasizing how decisions are actually made -- as opposed to how they should be made -- he enables those involved in the process to understand it both as observers and as participants. March sheds new light on the decision-making process by delineating four deep issues that persistently divide students of decision making: Are decisions based on rational choices involving preferences and expected consequences, or on rules that are appropriate to the identity of the decision maker and the situation? Is decision making a consistent, clear process or one characterized by ambiguity and inconsistency? Is decision making significant primarily for its outcomes, or for the individual and social meanings it creates and sustains? And finally, are the outcomes of decision processes attributable solely to the actions of individuals, or to the combined influence of interacting individuals, organizations, and societies? March's observations on how intelligence is -- or is not -- achieved through decision making, and possibilities for enhancing decision intelligence, are also provided. March explains key concepts of vital importance to students of decision making and decision makers, such as limited rationality, history-dependent rules, and ambiguity, and weaves these ideas into a full depiction of decision making. He includes a discussion of the modern aspects of several classic issues underlying these concepts, such as the relation between reason and ignorance, intentionality and fate, and meaning and interpretation. This valuable textbook by one of the seminal figures in the history of organizational decision making will be required reading for a new generation of scholars, managers, and other decision makers.

Successful Decision-making

Successful Decision-making
Author: Rudolf Grünig
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2006-03-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3540275037

Unlike other publications on decision making, the book focuses on discovering the problem, analyzing it and on developing and assessing solution options. One whole chapter describes a case study. It illustrates how the proposed decision making procedure is used in practice. Executives get an approach to systematically and successfully solving complex problems.

Organizational Decision Making

Organizational Decision Making
Author: Zur Shapira
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2002-03-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521890502

Explores decision making in organizations, highlighting the roles of incentive, conflict, power and politics.

Creating Great Choices

Creating Great Choices
Author: Jennifer Riel
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2017-08-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1633692973

"The rarest of business books that teaches decision makers how to think, not what to think." - Malcolm Gladwell When it comes to our hardest choices, it can seem as though making trade-offs is inevitable. But what about those crucial times when accepting the obvious trade-off just isn't good enough? What do we do when the choices in front of us don't get us what we need? Rather than choosing the least worst option, Creating Great Choices offers a model that guides you towards a new and superior answer... integrative thinking. First introduced by world-renowned strategic thinker Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind, integrative thinking is an approach to problem solving that uses opposing ideas as the basis for innovation. Now, in Creating Great Choices, Martin and his longtime thinking partner Jennifer Riel vividly illustrate how integrative thinking works, and how to do it. The book includes fresh stories of successful integrative thinkers that will demystify the process of creative problem solving, as well as practical tools and exercises to help readers engage with the ideas. And it lays out the authors' four-step methodology for creating great choices, which can be applied in virtually any context. The result is a replicable, thoughtful approach to finding a "third and better way" to make important choices in the face of unacceptable trade‐offs. Insightful and instructive, Creating Great Choices blends storytelling, theory, and hands-on advice to help any leader or manager facing a tough choice.

Extendable Rationality

Extendable Rationality
Author: Davide Secchi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2010-10-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 144197542X

“How do people make decisions in organizations?” is the question at the core of this book. Do people act rationally? Under what conditions can information and knowledge be shared to improve decision making? Davide Secchi applies concepts and theories from cognitive science, organizational behavior, and social psychology to explore the dynamics of decision making. In particular, he integrates “bounded rationality” (people are only partly rational; they have (a) limited computational capabilities and (b) limited access to information) and “distributed cognition” (knowledge is not confined to an individual, but is distributed across the members of a group) to build upon the pioneering work of Herbert Simon (1916-2001) on rational decision making and contribute fresh insights. This book is divided into two parts. The first part (Chapters 2 to 5) explores how recent studies on biases, prospect theory, heuristics, and emotions provide the so-called “map” of bounded rationality. The second part (Chapter 6 to 8) presents the idea of extendable rationality. In this section, Secchi identifies the limitations of bounded rationality and focuses more heavily on socially-based decision processes and the role of “docility” in teaching, managing, and executing decisions in organizations. The practical implications extend broadly to issues relating to change and innovation, as organizations adapt to evolving market conditions, implementing new systems, and effectively managing limited resources. The final chapter outlines an agenda for future research to help understand the decision making characteristics and capabilities of an organization.

Decision Making with Imperfect Decision Makers

Decision Making with Imperfect Decision Makers
Author: Tatiana Valentine Guy
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2011-11-13
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3642246478

Prescriptive Bayesian decision making has reached a high level of maturity and is well-supported algorithmically. However, experimental data shows that real decision makers choose such Bayes-optimal decisions surprisingly infrequently, often making decisions that are badly sub-optimal. So prevalent is such imperfect decision-making that it should be accepted as an inherent feature of real decision makers living within interacting societies. To date such societies have been investigated from an economic and gametheoretic perspective, and even to a degree from a physics perspective. However, little research has been done from the perspective of computer science and associated disciplines like machine learning, information theory and neuroscience. This book is a major contribution to such research. Some of the particular topics addressed include: How should we formalise rational decision making of a single imperfect decision maker? Does the answer change for a system of imperfect decision makers? Can we extend existing prescriptive theories for perfect decision makers to make them useful for imperfect ones? How can we exploit the relation of these problems to the control under varying and uncertain resources constraints as well as to the problem of the computational decision making? What can we learn from natural, engineered, and social systems to help us address these issues?

The Decision to Join

The Decision to Join
Author: James G. Dalton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Associations, institutions, etc
ISBN: 9780880342865

16,944 voices reveal the real reasons for joining or not. The Decision to Join: How Individuals Determine Value and Why They Choose to Belong, mines the motivations of nearly 17,000 individuals to give you insights that lead to a true competitive advantage. From membership marketing to strategic planning, The Decision to Join influences every aspect of your organization.