Showing results by publisher "Berrett-Koehler Publishers" in Workplace & Organisational Behaviour

For too long, companies and their leadership teams focused primarily on their products or services. Leaders are deeply dialed into the minutiae of their companies' operations. But veteran Silicon Valley consultant Deborah Perry Piscione says investments in new technologies or operations do not create innovations - people do.

In an era when people and money are flowing fast across international boundaries, physically and virtually, culture crashes have become increasingly frequent, says international business consultant Michael Landers. A culture crash is what happens when someone unwittingly offends, frustrates or mystifies a person from a different culture. This can lead to lost business, hurt feelings, damaged relationships, even international incidents.

Corporations are the most powerful entities on the planet. Unfortunately, many have had a long record of unprecedented and unbridled environmental degradation, social transgressions, and governance secrecy. Since by law they are beholden to their shareholders, some philanthropic trusts, pension funds, and other institutional investors have used shareholder advocacy to press for changes in corporate policy. But individual investors have largely been silent, thinking themselves powerless.

It may be hard to believe in an era of Walmart, Citizens United, and the Koch brothers, but corporations are on the decline. The number of American companies listed on the stock market dropped by half between 1996 and 2012. In recent years we've seen some of the most storied corporations go bankrupt (General Motors, Chrysler, Eastman Kodak) or disappear entirely (Bethlehem Steel, Lehman Brothers, Borders).

UPS is a household name and one of the most highly regarded American corporations by customers and investors alike. Who hasn't been delighted by a right-on-time delivery, one of the 18 million UPS makes every day? Founded over 100 years ago, UPS has moved steadily up the Fortune 500 as so many other corporations have dropped off. So what's the company's secret? Just ask a driver!

Globalization has created a superheated competitive business environment that demands innovation to stay ahead. But it's also created a hidden source of innovation right in your midst: the people in your organization who have deep experience in more than one culture - multiculturals. Having to integrate different cultural frameworks has enabled them to develop abilities that can contribute powerfully to building innovative organizations.

This audiobook teaches people at all levels - from entry-level associates to top executives - that it's up to them to help promote and preserve a winning culture of collaboration. The authors show that busting silos and bringing people together is an inside-out process that involves your heart (your character and intentions), your head (your beliefs and attitudes), and your hands (your actions and behaviors).

People are often skeptical that there is anything they can do to raise society's ethical level. Mark Pastin begs to differ. We can make a difference, and we don't need ethics "experts" to tell us what to do. He argues that we all have an innate ethical sense - what he calls an "ethics eye". He offers tools for sharpening the ethics eye so we can see and do the right thing ourselves, particularly in the workplace, where our decisions can affect not just ourselves but coworkers, clients, customers, and even an entire organization.

Using numerous examples, Robinson and Schroeder argue that the employees who interact directly with your customers, make your products, and provide your services are in the best position to see where problems exist and what improvements and new offerings would have the most impact.

Leading thinker and change consultant Peggy Holman provides leaders, trainers, and other agents of change grappling with disruption with a theory of "emergence" and tools for fostering it in organizations.

Karen Phelan is sorry. She really is. She tried to do business by the numbers-the management consultant way- developing measures, optimizing processes, and quantifying performance. The only problem is that businesses are run by people. And people can't be plugged into formulas or summed up in scorecards.

A noted economist and human capital expert, together with a multidisciplinary team, show that we've entered a new era in which good corporate behavior is no longer optional, it's the new imperative for success-and they have the data to prove it. Their Good Company Index ranking of the Fortune 100 takes the belief in the bottom-line benefits of good behavior out of the realm of faith and into the realm of facts.

Drawing on Linda Stout's thirty years of experience training organizers, advocates, activists, and coalition groups, Collective Visioning provides a revolutionary guide to collaboration within and across diverse organizations.

In this groundbreaking guide to building an ethical economy, Peter Brown and his colleagues at the Quaker Institute for the Future show readers how a system that embodies the core Quaker principle of "right relationship" can deliver a more equitable and sustainable future.

Whether people want more government or less, everyone wants an efficient government. Traditional thinking is that this requires a government to be run more like a business. But a government is not a business, and this approach merely replaces old problems with new ones. In their six-year, five-country study of 77 government organizations—ranging from small departments to entire states—Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder found that the predominant private-sector approaches to improvement don’t work well in the public sector.

This essential playbook shows how companies can scale success by coupling digital strategies with an investment in the health of their organizations and the people within. To scale and grow, a company must get the organizational elements right. That begins with having the right strategy, the right leadership to drive it, and the right talent, culture, and organizational design to realize a company’s potential. This is especially true in the AI era, where a company’s most valuable assets are its people.

In existence for decades, ERGs originated out of affirmative action policies and have evolved into powerful sources of employee activity and engagement. Organizations can leverage ERGs to support business goals, but ERGs can also play a critical role in creating a more inclusive work environment for marginalized individuals. 

Creating a diverse workplace needs to be an ongoing effort, not just the subject of occasional training. As Celeste Warren says, needed change won’t take place unless all employees feel that they have a role to play in creating the culture they would like to see in their organization. Regardless of what position you hold, you have the ability to impact change and create a more inclusive environment. Anyone can commit to becoming an unofficial diversity and inclusion ambassador in his or her organization.

Creating justice-centered organizations is the next frontier in DEI. This book shows how to go beyond compliance to address harm, share power, and create equity. Traditional DEI work has not succeeded at dismantling systems that perpetuate harm and exclude BIPOC groups.