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\"A usable method for learning from failure Everyone is talking about failure these days. It's ok to fail-it's how you learn. But how exactly do you take failure's lessons and roll them into future success? Until now, there was no repeatable method for doing so. In this book, Anjali Sastry (MIT) and Kara Penn (Mission Spark) provide the missing link: a feedback loop that teaches us how to learn from our mistakes. The step-by-step process they suggest is easy, usable, and repeatable. The authors teach us how to adopt the process and guide us to putting it in place. The book is filled with stories of organizations and teams that have used the method, and includes a practically-oriented \"how to\" section to help teams move on from failure, as well as key findings drawn from relevant literature on learning, innovation, and psychology that underpin this approach. For anyone-innovators, engineers, managers, change-makers, and executives-who isn't afraid to fail, this book will help you pick up the pieces and apply them to future successes. \"-- Provided by publisher.

A simulation model that formalizes the conventional theory of punctuated organizational change highlights a problem: under a wide range of conditions, organizations appear to fail following reorientation. I propose additions to the theory to account for punctuated transformation. The first adds a routine for monitoring organization-environment consistency; the second is a heuristic that suspends change for a trial period following a reorientation. I show the necessity of the trial period in simulations demonstrating that, while external events may set the pace of organizational change in some environments, under turbulent conditions successful change requires internal pacing, which suspends performance evaluation for a period following a reorientation.

Managing Strategic Innovation and Change, by Michael L. Tushman and Philip Anderson, is reviewed. Managing Strategic Innovation and Change, by Michael L. Tushman and Philip Anderson, is reviewed.

Reputations rise and fall. In this Part of the Corporate Reputation Review attention focusses on companies whose star is waning. The presentations made at the Stern School of Business conference and now published below comprise a distillation of the insights gained by a senior crisis-management practitioner, as well as three case studies and three more empirically-oriented crisis communication studies. Included in panelists' presenta- tions are theoretical frameworks which seek to explain the behavior of managers and opponents during crisis situations. Managing in Times of Crisis - Ray O'Rourke, Burson-Marsteller Dow Corning's Breast Implant Controversy: Managing Reputation in the Face of 'Junk Science' - Paul A. Argenti, Dartmouth College Fanning Fires: Mitsubishi Motors and the EEOC - Irv Schenkler, New York University Increasing Effectiveness of Managing Strategic Issues Affecting a Firm's Reputation - Cees B.M. van Riel and Frans A.J. van den Bosch, Erasmus University Corporate Environmental Reputation: Comparing Two Industries - Glen Dowell, Anjali Sastry, Stuart Hart and Jeff Bernicke, University of Michigan Two-Way Mirroring: Identity and Reputation when Things go Wrong - C. Marlene Fiol and Sarah Kovoor-Misra, University of Colorado at Denver Corporate Reputation and its Effect on Organizational Actions: How Reputations are Managed - Suzanne M. Carter and Janet M. Dukerich, University of Texas at Austin

To address an ongoing debate about the nature of organizational change, I examine three contrasting views of organizational evolution: the adaptive organizational learning perspective (Levinthal and March, 1981); the population ecology conception, which emphasizes structural inertia (Hannan and Freeman, 1984); and the punctuated change model, in which deep change takes place only during relatively rare reorientations (Tushman and Romanelli, 1985).Drawing on a textual analysis, I develop causal feedback maps to represent the endogenous processes that each set of theorists argue shape organizational evolution. The causal analysis highlights problems in the original explanations. In comparing these maps, differences and similarities between competing models of change emerge. I find that the theories differ less from each other than the literature suggests.The punctuated change theory provides the starting point for formalizing a model of organizational evolution. I describe the formulation in detail, relating the model to the original text. Simulation tests address the question: Can the patterns of behavior described by the theorists be generated by the organizational routines, decision rules. relationships, and structures they describe? I discover that the theory fails to account for the process whereby reorientations end. To generate the posited pattern of punctuated change, organizational decision rules must change, or be suspended, for a period immediately following a reorganization.Next, by adding the variables and relationships described by proponents of the adaptive and ecological views, the initial model is expanded. Here I ask: Can a single model, albeit with different parameter values, depict all three behavior modes? Or must equations be added or removed to depict the different theories? My results show that the theories are structurally similar: with only minor adjustments, the same model exhibits adaptive, revolutionary, and evolutionary change. Variables that relate to time and timing influence the shifts between behavior modes, suggesting that assumptions about time constants, delays, response times, and rates of change are central in distinguishing between competing views of organizational change. I explore how different strategies for change and alternative models of the organization affect performance in varying environments. Drawing on simulation results, I generate testable hypotheses about organizational evolution.

Probable scenario after a nuclear attack; based on the 1980 computer model commissioned by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency.

While the US could survive a \"small\" nuclear attack, the collapse of the economy could cause 50% of the survivors to die from starvation. Nuclear war-fighting strategies usually focus attacks on such key industries as oil facilities, whose destruction would halt nationwide transportation. The effect of a temporary transportation collapse on the US economy was examined using a 1980 computer model commissioned by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency. Based on the model, an attack on liquid-fuel facilities would kill only 10% of the population outright, but would lead to shortages of energy, transportation, and food that could cause mass starvation and economic collapse over the next 2 or 3 years. The study reveals that an effective deterrent need comprise fewer than 1,000 nuclear weapons. The findings also suggest the Strategic Defense Initiative is a worthless expense because the number of weapons that could devastate the US is simply too small. Even a 99% effective defense would not keep the country from collapsing under an attack by the USSR.