Management Decision: Volume 40 Issue 3

An investigation of the decision process for selecting an ERP software: the case of ESC

Jacques Verville, Alannah Halingten

Decribes how ESC, a holding company for a gas and electric utility and non‐utility energy business, completed the acquisition of Oracle’s enterprise resource planning (ERP…

Vertical integration and economic performance: a managerial capability framework

Joseph Peyrefitte, Peggy A. Golden, Jeff Brice

Despite the indeterminate economic outcomes of vertical integration, several managers and researchers have questioned its viability. The article proposes that a better…

High‐performance companies: the distinguishing profile

Richard L. Osborne, Scott S. Cowen

Maintains that high performance companies have an unmistakable profile that separates them from also‐rans, including distinctive characteristics of the corporate culture, the…

Living in a fool’s paradise: the collapse of Barings’ Bank

Helga Drummond

Recalls that the collapse of Baring’s bank showed what may lie behind an apparently successful organization. Barings was destroyed by the unauthorised activities of a trader named…

Cycles of organisational learning: a conceptual approach

Peter Murray

Notes that, in an environment of rapid change, organisational learning theory appears to offer much for organisations trying to grapple with change and growth. However, not all…

Customer‐driven breakthroughs using QFD and policy deployment

Mike Walker

Achieving breakthrough improvements and ongoing organisational learning in complex and dynamic situations requires systematic management processes for logical, customer‐driven and…

Constructing the image of the other: a post‐colonial critique of the adaptation of Japanese human resource management practices

Alexander Styhre

Organization theory is becoming increasingly pluralistic, not only as continuous theoretical and methodological developments, but also in terms of facilitating a more polyvocal…

The messy history of OB&D: how three strands came to be seen as one rope

Eric B. Dent

The George Washington University organizational behavior students have been privileged to learn from professors who were students of three different founders of the field. The…

Machiavelli and modern management

John W. Swain

Shows how Machiavelli influenced modern management in much more fundamental ways than simply his well‐known advice to be ruthless, upon which many management writers focused…

Managing managers: an early twentieth century service industry information system

Alistair Mutch

This article examines the construction and operation of a service industry information system in the early years of the twentieth century. It sets the operations of the…