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People's tendency to hoard their information and release it only selectively is often a core problem in many corporate cultures. But some firms are finding that their employees are more eager to share when they perceive there's something in it for them--like appearing more valuable to their companies.

Airstream's ability to innovate and grow depends on balancing longtime owners' expectations with new buyers' desires. In this conversation, president and CEO Dicky Riegel speaks about making sure that the more the iconic, egg-shaped aluminum trailers change, the more they remain the same.

Regulators are trying to clear up the muddle created by earnings-report adjustments called "pro formas" that companies issue. Constraining such reporting, as the regulators seem bent on doing, isn't the solution. Firms should increase alternative reporting--and fully account for their accounting.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Some observers see outsourcing as a key trend (perhaps even the key trend) shaping the future of human resources. They envision HR departments focused entirely on strategic activities, leaving all the transactional and administrative activities to vendors. But, the author cautions that outsourcing any business activity creates potential risks as well as benefits: Companies can find themselves overly dependent on suppliers, and they can lose strength in strategically core competencies. The author synthesizes the strongest of the available research on the outsourcing decision and identifies the six key factors that companies should consider when making important outsourcing decisions. The framework, which helps assess the pros and cons of outsourcing, can be applied specifically to HR functions. In particular, it can help explicate the managerial issues of outsourcing agreements such as the recent landmark deal between BP and Exult Inc. That $600 million, seven-year arrangement provides a window into the many opportunities--and complexities--of HR outsourcing.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Over the past decade, companies have become increasingly aware of the social and environmental pressures facing business. Many management scholars and consultants have argued that these new demands offer terrific opportunities for progressive organizations, and innovation is one of the primary means by which companies can achieve sustainable growth. But, say the authors, the reality is that managers have had considerable difficulty dealing with sustainable-development pressures. Specifically, their innovation strategies are often inadequate to accommodate the highly complex and uncertain nature of these new demands. In response, the authors propose the concept of sustainable-development innovation, or SDI. In contrast to conventional, market-driven innovation, SDI considers the added constraints of social and environmental pressures. SDI is, therefore, usually more complex, because there is typically a wider range of stakeholders, and more ambiguous, as many of the parties have contradictory demands. Furthermore, sustainable-development pressures can be driven by science that has yet to be accepted fully by the scientific, political, and managerial communities. Organizations that fail to understand such issues could well find themselves making costly mistakes in bringing new technologies to market.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Corporate America has spent the last few years in restructuring mode, drastically reorganizing processes to wring profits from a battered economy. However beneficial these efforts may be to the bottom line, say the authors, a reliance on restructuring has had unintended negative side effects, as hierarchies that once controlled the direction of many companies become less relevant, and loyal employees become increasingly disheartened by disruptive--and often short-sighted--strategies. In response, companies resort to even more restructuring, frequently with less than optimal results. The authors recommend that companies shift away from knee-jerk responses such as restructuring and hierarchy building toward a transformation of established corporate structures, a wider distribution of knowledge, and the use of modern performance measurement systems and technologies. Citing examples at BP, North Carolina's Duke Power, and W.L. Gore, the authors claim that only companies developing their advantage on the agility and flexibility of their processes, people, and technologies can build lasting value for their company, customers, and employees.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. If a brand fails to develop or maintain differentiation, consumers have no basis for choosing it over others. The product's price will then be the determining factor in a decision to purchase. Absent differentiation, says the author, the core of any brand and its associated business--a loyal customer base--cannot be created or sustained. In a time when the competitive terrain for most brands is difficult to brutal, the author describes a new tool that can help companies maintain an advantage: the branded differentiator. A branded differentiator can be a feature, service, program, or ingredient. It must be meaningful to customers; that is, it must be both pertinent and substantial enough to matter when people are purchasing or using the product or service. It must also be actively managed (and, thus, be able to justify the investment of management time) over an extended period--years or even decades--so that it does not become stagnant. Explores the different types of branded differentiators, the pros and cons of developing them internally vs. looking outside for them, and questions about managing these brands-within-brands.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Most consumption experiences are the routine stuff of life--filling the gas tank, buying groceries, grabbing a quick lunch. Such tasks for the most part are neither fun nor painful; they're simply things that need to get checked off the list. Indeed, the authors say, they are so neutral that people often choose the seller with little thought and forget the experience in a matter of hours. Some providers of neutral services want to keep things that way. They want to be so convenient and reliable that people continue to use them unthinkingly. For certain mature service businesses, however, the addition of fun can be an important differentiator. The authors present three case studies taken from industries not known for fun--furniture retailing, consumer banking, and the grocery business--to show how it can be turned to profitable advantage. Jordan's Furniture, Commerce Bank, and Stew Leonard's operate their basic business models at a very high standard of excellence. But they also have what it takes to make a routine experience into something positive: strong leadership, a clear vision, a discriminating filter for new employees, a focus on hiring for attitudes rather than skills, and the ability to come up with the unexpected. The authors offer some general guidelines and cautionary notes to help managers who may want to try to emulate these successful companies.

Presents a framework for the strategic management of corporate brands as seen from a top management perspective. Describes the change processes involved in a corporate branding effort at the LEGO Co. Whereas much of the literature on branding focuses on the initiation of a corporate branding effort (e.g., brand positioning, brand identity formulation, brand architecture design), this case follows the LEGO Co.'s branding process through four progressive phases: stating the brand, linking vision to culture and brand image, involving stakeholders in brand-relevant activities, and integrating the organization behind the brand. During this strategic shift, LEGO's top management vision, organizational culture, and stakeholder images became increasingly aligned.

An operating-level concept known as a process-complete architecture, and commonly called a cell, organizes work based on the start-to-finish processing needs of a family of similar products or services. This outcome-based form of organization contrasts with functional architectures that group similar activities together, but it offers more flexibility than an assembly-line approach. Research and anecdotal reports show strong evidence for the effectiveness of cells in terms of key operating priorities such as quality, cost, delivery speed, and the ability to meet changing customer requirements. Moreover, they are central to most "lean enterprise" efforts and may be applied to service delivery as well as manufacturing. In spite of their many advantages, not all work cells operate effectively over the long run. Many cell failures suffer from the tendency for organizations to drift back to their previous functionally oriented groupings. Identifies the characteristics of cells with staying power--cells that continue to support strategic objectives long after they are first initiated.

Business regulation is greatly shaped by a theory from economics and political science called "public choice." Public choice argues that regulation is sought by existing business organizations as a means to create barriers to entry for new competitors--something incumbent firms cannot do alone in the competitive environment. The Internet introduces different, and more complex, relationships between business and regulatory institutions as the territorial jurisdiction of traditional governmental agencies erodes and control over technology standards by business and nongovernmental organizations arises. With some important caveats, public choice theory offers important insights into exchange relationships between regulatory institutions and firms operating on the Internet. Examines a specific application of public choice to the case of the Linux Standards Base, an Internet-based governing board for the open-source operating system. The Linux Standards Base provides an example of regulation where the regulatory institution is a nongovernmental entity.

Over the last five years, a variety of market mechanisms have emerged to address various issues pertaining to business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. However, there is a general lack of understanding on the part of researchers and practitioners on two key issues: What are the key characteristics of these market mechanisms? What factors drive the choice of one market mechanism over the other? Addresses these questions through a study of 12 different market mechanisms in 200 B2B electronic marketplaces. Four factors--degree of fragmentation, asset specificity, complexity of product description, and complexity of value assessment--significantly drive the choice of an appropriate market mechanism for an organization. To gainfully exploit these market structures, organizations need to devise new strategies and reconfigure their supply chains.

How can a firm most effectively pursue environmental sustainability? Employs a systems dynamics approach to analyze two strategic environmental sustainability initiatives implemented by Norm Thompson Outfitters. Such an analysis provides a way to identify the key variables and their relationships, the roles of key stakeholders, and the leverage points used to support the sustainability initiatives. The experience of Norm Thompson demonstrates how using systems dynamics can assist a company in identifying and implementing environmental sustainability initiatives.

What motivates business firms to improve their environmental performance significantly? Why do some companies achieve better environmental performance than others? Through a study of 14 pulp mills in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, this article shows that more stringent regulatory requirements and increasing political pressure have brought about large improvements and convergence in environmental performance over the last 30 years, with many mills exceeding compliance requirements. In addition, corporate environmental management style and social license pressures from local communities and environmental activists have prodded some facilities further beyond compliance than others, whereas economic pressures have limited just how far ahead facilities have been willing to move.

In the early 1990s, Enterprise Rent-A-Car was experiencing dramatic growth, but future CEO Andy Taylor grew concerned that the quality and consistency of customer service might become a victim of that growth. Under his direction, the company took the bold step of tying field managers' career advancement directly to their operations' customer satisfaction performance, as measured by a monthly customer survey, the Enterprise Service Quality index (ESQi). Many managers were skeptical at first. But after ESQi was firmly in place, the company's average score for "completely satisfied" customers began to climb--and has been climbing ever since, along with market share.

Open source software programs (OSS) such as Linux and Apache give any interested party access to the source code, leading to a distributed innovation model in which users actively participate in the product's development. Often free, OSS products are distributed under many public licenses, are more reliable, and provide greater flexibility and choice. On the other hand, OSS leads to a proliferation of versions and may appeal only to high-end users. The system leads to fascinating competitive and cooperative relationships among companies, between a company and a community, and among communities. How can managers choose?

Executives who were rated "outstanding" by superiors used humor more than twice as often as those deemed just average. What's more, the funnier the executives were, the bigger their bonuses.

IBM director of web infrastructure software, Robert Sutor, is a key leader in the arcane world of web services. In this interview, he says it's just a matter of time before companies seamlessly connect their systems and software via the Internet through all-but-invisible applications. Web services will change the way we do business.

With companies' financial statements being scrutinized as never before, executives are under pressure to forecast the cost of major projects accurately. Earned-value management lets you do just that, alerting you if you're headed for an overrun.

Many investors and their advocates believe that separating the roles of board chairman and CEO would improve corporate governance. But the practice could encumber well-functioning businesses and harm shareholders.