Chapters authored
Organizational Culture: A Systems Approach
The influence of organizational culture on performance is increasingly being recognized as a major force driving success in the 21st Century. Many models for organizational culture are widely employed by consultants worldwide. A fundamental weakness in most existing culture models is that they view culture as a stand-alone element within the organization. Accordingly, the tools used to provide insight to executives focus on the culture to the exclusion of other dynamic, interrelated, forces within the organization. We believe that this stand-alone view of culture contributes to the high failure rate of efforts to change the culture. This chapter introduces the Performance Triangle Model as a holistic approach to view organizational culture as part of an intricate, dynamic, interrelated triad of culture, leadership, and systems. We will describe the Performance Triangle and many underlying dimensions that comprise the triad and chart the emergence and development of the model. The later parts of the chapter will discuss practical applications that have been proven using a statistically validated diagnostic instrument that enable executives to recognize what is going in in their organizations then take effective, quick, targeted action. The PTM approach helps executive design agile organizations fit for the 21st Century.
Part of the book: Accounting and Finance Innovations
The Dunning-Kruger Effect on Organizational Agility
Designing organizations to quickly adapt to changing conditions, agility, has become a key dynamic capability for success in the 21st century. The Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that people overestimate their ability and that of the organization because they are ignorant of unknown, unkowns. Said another way, people tend to overestimate their ability because they do not know what they do not know. Conversely, executives tend to underestimate the ability of subordinates in the organization. This research project used the Performance Triangle model and accompanying diagnostic instrument to analyze the difference in perceptions between executives and workers in 374 organizations to identify possible disconnects in important capabilities of organizational agility: success, leadership, systems, culture, people, and resilience, along with 27 underlying individual elements. The results show that executives consistently, and significantly, overestimate the ability of themselves and their organization to adapt a change while underestimating the capabilities of workers. Executives were significantly overconfident in the dimensions of success, culture, people, and resilience. Differences in trust emerged as the single most statistically significant element that drives organizational agility. The authors conclude with a discussion of the managerial implications on how this condition influences the ability of organizations to quickly adapt to changing conditions …agility.
Part of the book: Business and Management Annual Volume 2023