Tough love vs management innovation
I heard about France Telecom’s nth employee suicide, while reading Industry Week’s article on innovative management approaches by Nucor and Costco. On the one hand you have 80s style corporate re-organization of a behemoth, which takes its toll on employees brought up on french public-sector work ethic. On the other hand, you have two companies whose innovation efforts are focused on empowering the workforce. They achieve this by promoting an ethic of egalitarianism, which aligns their goals with those of the company – the secret behind Toyota’s success (In 2005, Toyota’s top executives earned only one-tenth as much as Ford’s – Takeouchi et al.,2008).
Takeouchi, H., Osono, E., Shimizu, H. (2008) The Contradictions that Drive Toyota’s Success. Harvard Business Review, June 2008.
