This book, The HP Phenomenon, tells the story of how Hewlett-Packard innovated and transformed itself six times while most of its competitors were unable to make even one significant transformation. It describes those transformations, how they started, how they prevailed, and how the challenges along the way were overcome, €"reinforcing David Packard's observation that "change and conflict are the only real constants." The book also details the philosophies, practices, and organizational principles that enabled this unprecedented sequence of innovations and transformations. In so doing, the authors capture the elusive "spirit of innovation" required to fuel growth and transformation in all companies: innovation that is customer-centered, contribution-driven, and growth-focused. The corporate ethos described in this book with its emphasis on bottom-up innovation and sufficient flexibility to see results brought to the marketplace and brought alive inside the company is radically different from current management "best practice." Thus, while primarily a history of Hewlett-Packard, The HP Phenomenon also holds profound lessons for engineers, managers, and organizational leaders hoping to transform their own organizations. "At last! The 'HP Way, that most famous of all corporate philosophies, has taken on an almost mythical status. But how did it really work? How did it make Hewlett-Packard the fastest growing, most admired, large company of the last half-century? Now, two important figures in HP's history, Chuck House and Raymond Price, have finally given us the whole story. The HP Phenomenon is the book we've been waiting for: the definitive treatise on how Bill and Dave ran their legendary company, day to day and year to year. It should be a core text for generations of young entrepreneurs and managers, a roadmap to building a great enterprise." €"Michael S. Malone, author of Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company

ResearchGate Logo

Discover the world's research

  • 20+ million members
  • 135+ million publications
  • 700k+ research projects

Join for free

... Packard and Hewlett spent a combined 31 years in the roles of President, CEO and Chairman of the company. 4 In 1957, Packard and Hewlett set forth a list of "shared values" that define the company operations today. These values (in part) include: Passion for Customers, Trust and Respect for Individuals, We Effectively Collaborate, Meaningful Innovation, Uncompromising Integrity. ...

... Although this paper is primarily analytical and conceptual, reviewing forces and vectors, and exploring HR determinants of these, the author had access to the original data collected by Doz & Kosonen, not just their published writing. This was complemented with a careful reading of several detailed corporate monographs (e.g., House & Price, 2009;Schein, 2003) with selected interviews of corporate leaders and observation of their leadership practices and with the result of s survey on strategic agility (Adler, 2012). ...

  • Yves Doz

Strategic agility, as an observable organization performance outcome, results from the behaviors and skills of the organization's managers in taking and implementing strategic actions. So, the key to strategic agility is not just analytical strategy from superior minds or thoughtful and effective organizational design but the set of management practices, behaviors, skills, values and beliefs that animate the senior management of an organization in making and implementing strategic commitments. In particular, earlier research suggests that three vectors of forces enable strategic agility: strategic sensitivity, resource fluidity and collective commitment. Taking these as a basis, we identify specific individual behaviors, and analyze and review how skills, and practices driving these behaviors, and their supporting HR practices affect the strength of each vector, and of the forces that provide energy in fostering strategic agility. This provides a profile of skills and capabilities individuals need in order to best contribute to the strategic agility of their organization and of HR practices to put in place.

... There is also some evidence to show that larger organisations are relatively more adept at implementing ambidexterity than smaller ones (O'Reilly and Tushman, 2013;Lubatkin et al., 2006;Lin et al., 2007). And finally, some studies have been able to capture the evolution in ambidexterity over time, in terms of how organisations adapt (House and Price, 2009) or how they may fail in either exploitation or exploration or in both (Danneels, 2011). These studies point towards organisational size or scale being associated with the ability to be ambidextrous. ...

... In contrast, empirical evidence shows that firms (over time) use specific combinations of strategies to achieve and maintain ambidexterity (e.g. House and Price, 2009;Raisch, 2008). For example, O'Reilly and Tushman (2013: 330) note that incumbent firms frequently approach breakthrough technologies or new business models via structural separation and then switch (back) to the contextual approach after the exploratory unit has achieved a certain level of legitimacy. ...

This article contributes to our understanding of organizational ambidexterity by introducing conflict as its microfoundation. Existing research distinguishes between three approaches to how organizations can be ambidextrous, that is, engage in both exploitation and exploration. They may sequentially shift the strategic focus of the organization over time, they may establish structural arrangements enabling the simultaneous pursuit of being both exploitative and explorative, or they may provide a supportive organizational context for ambidextrous behavior. However, we know little about how exactly ambidexterity is accomplished and managed. We argue that ambidexterity is a dynamic and conflict-laden phenomenon, and we locate conflict at the level of individuals, units, and organizations. We develop the argument that conflicts in social interaction serve as the microfoundation to organizing ambidexterity, but that their function and type vary across the different approaches toward ambidexterity. The perspective developed in this article opens up promising research avenues to examine how organizations purposefully manage ambidexterity.

  • Steven McCarthy

This article investigates the short lived digital typography graduate program formed between Stanford University's Departments of Art and Computer Science, which began in 1982 and ended in 1988. The program leveraged the design skills of typographer Charles Bigelow with the software mastery of computer scientist and mathematician Donald Knuth. Besides educating graduate students who would go on to create numerous typeface designs for Adobe in Silicon Valley, they collaborated on an applied research project for the American Mathematical Society with eminent typographer Hermann Zapf. Bigelow's historicist approach to type design aesthetics in the face of cutting-edge technology and postmodern design—both in his teaching and commercial typeface design—and the lack of interaction between the digital typography program and Stanford's Joint Program in Design (shared between Mechanical Engineering and Art) may have contributed to the demise of digital typography at Stanford University. Still, its influence was wide ranging and impactful.

This book examines change processes and the challenge of ambidexterity in military organizations. It discusses how military organizations can better adapt to the complex, and at times chaotic, environments they operate in by developing organizational ambidexterity. The authors identify various multiple tasks and functions of military organizations that require multi-dimensional and often contradictory operational, technological, cultural, and social skills. In analogy to the often-opposed functions performed by the right and left hand of the body, modern military organizations are no longer one-dimensional fighting machines, but characterized by a duality of tasks, such as fighting and peacekeeping which often make part and parcel of one and the same mission. The military is both a "hot" and a "cold" organization (a crisis management organization and a bureaucracy). As such, the book argues that these dualities are not necessarily opposed but can serve as complementary forces, like the yin and yang, to better the overall performance of these organizations. As a consequence, ambidextrous organizations excel at complex tasking and are adaptable to new challenges. Divided into four parts: 1) structures and networks; 2) cultural issues; 3) tasks and roles; 4) nations and allies, it appeals to scholars of military studies and organization studies as well as professionals working for governmental or military organizations.

  • John Krogstie John Krogstie
  • Haralambos Mouratidis
  • Jianwen Su

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of five international workshops held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in conjunction with the 28th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2016, in June 2016. The 16 full and 9 short papers were carefully selected from 51 submissions. The associated workshops were the Third International Workshop on Advances in Services DEsign based on the Notion of CApabiliy (ASDENCA) co-arranged with the First International Workshop on Business Model Dynamics and Information Systems Engineering (BumDISE), the Fourth International Workshop on Cognitive Aspects of Information Systems Engineering (COGNISE), the First International Workshop on Energy-awareness and Big Data Management in Information Systems (EnBIS), the Second International Workshop on Enterprise Modeling (EM), and the Sixth International Workshop on Information Systems Security Engineering (WISSE).

Praxis und Forschung erkennen den hohen Stellenwert von Kommunikation in organisationalen Veränderungen an, dennoch ist bislang unklar, wie Mitarbeitereinstellungen durch Kommunikation beeinflusst werden. Insbesondere die Entstehung und Wirkung von ambivalenten Einstellungen werden vernachlässigt. Diese Studie geht der Frage nach, wie sich die Change-Kommunikation auf positive, negative und ambivalente Einstellungen auswirkt. Anhand einer qualitativen Szenariostudie werden die Einstellungsausprägungen von 168 Mitarbeitern verglichen, die eine partizipative oder eine programmatische Change-Kommunikation erfahren haben. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass bei Mitarbeitern mit ambivalenten Einstellungen die wahrgenommene Unsicherheit besonders hoch ist und dass Ambivalenzen durch eine programmatische Kommunikation begünstigt wird. Zudem werden unterschiedliche Ambivalenztypen identifiziert, wobei insbesondere die kognitive und kognitiv-emotionale Ambivalenz bei den betroffenen Mitarbeitern stark ausgeprägt ist. Abschließend werden theoretische und praktische Implikationen der Studie aufgezeigt.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.