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Many Companies Wasting Talented Staff, Say GSB Authors
August 25, 2000
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—In this tight labor market where companies are desperate to find more talent, two Stanford Business School professors suggest a novel approach: find talent in your own backyard, shop floors or office blocks. Too many companies waste the talent they have on staff by using systems like the old command-and-control leaders of Communist countries—they don't really know how to instill shared values and then train and support their people to take on responsibility for success.
That's the thesis of a new book, Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People, by Charles A. O'Reilly III, the Frank E. Buck Professor of Human Resources Management and Organizational Behavior, and Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
The two use case studies of innovative companies to demonstrate how they have created added value by fostering the creativity, motivation, and commitment of their people. The companies profiled are Southwest Airlines, Cisco Systems, The Men's Wear house, SAS Institute, PSS World Medical, AES, New United Motors Manufacturing Inc and Cypress Semiconductor.
"In a world in which all work is knowledge work and intellectual capital is crucial for economic success, it is logical that the ability to attract, retain, and use the talents of people provides a competitive edge," the authors write. The faster pace of competition and technical change, they say, means that "local adaptations are quicker" when employers are not "mired down in hierarchy, rules and buck passing."
Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People, Charles A. O'Reilly III, and Jeffrey Pfeffer, Harvard Business School Press, 2000
—Ben Pimentel
