The Modern Firm

Organizational Design for Performance and Growth

John Roberts

Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies

332 pages | 5 figures and 2 tables | 234x156mm

978-0-19-829376-7 | Hardback | 08 April 2004

Also available as: Paperback

Price: £71.00

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Latest thinking from one of the world's leading economists and experts on business strategy and organization
Distills Roberts' thinking on economics and strategy into a short and accessible book
Draws on numerous actual examples, including modern firms such as BP and Nokia
Based on the author's inaugural Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies

Business firms around the world are experimenting with new organizational designs, changing their formal architectures, their routines and processes, and their corporate cultures as they seek to improve their current performance and their growth prospects. In the process they are changing the scope of their business operations, redrawing their organization charts, redefining the allocation of decision-making authority and responsibility, revamping the mechanisms for motivating and rewarding people, reconsidering which activities to conduct in-house and which to out-source, redesigning their information systems, and seeking to alter the shared beliefs, values and norms that their people hold.

In this book, John Roberts argues that there are predictable, necessary relationships among these changes that will improve performance and growth. The organizations that are successful will establish patterns of fit among the elements of their organizational designs, their competitive strategies and the external environment in which they operate and will go about this in a holistic manner.

The Modern Firm develops powerful conceptual frameworks for analyzing the interrelations between organizational design features, competitive strategy and the business environment. Written in a non-technical language, the book is nevertheless based on rigorous modeling and draws on numerous examples from eighteenth century fur trading companies to such modern firms such as BP and Nokia. Finally the book explores why these developments are happening now, pointing to the increase in global competition and changes in technology.

Written by one of the world's leading economists and experts on business strategy and organization, The Modern Firm provides new insights into the changes going on in business today and will be of interest to academics, students and managers alike.
The Modern Firm was the Economist Best Business Book of the Year 2004.

Readership: Academics, graduate students in business and economics MBAs, consultants, managers, and strategic planners.

The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.

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The Modern Firm

Organizational Design for Performance and Growth

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