The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office

by Ray Fisman, Tim Sullivan

Overview

We create organizations because we need to get a job done--something we couldn't do alone--and join them because we're inspired by their missions (and our paycheck). But once we're inside, these organizations rarely feel inspirational. Instead, we're often baffled by what we encounter: clueless managers, a lack of clear objectives, a seeming disregard for data, and the vast gulf between HR proclamations and our experience in the cubicle.

So where did it all go wrong?

In The Org, Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan explain the tradeoffs that every organization faces, arguing that this everyday dysfunction is actually inherent to the very nature of orgs. The Org diagnoses the root causes of that malfunction, beginning with the economic logic of why organizations exist in the first place, then working its way up through the org's structure from the lowly cubicle to the CEO's office.

Woven throughout with fascinating case studies-including McDonald's, al Qaeda, the Baltimore City Police Department, Procter and Gamble, the island nation of Samoa, and Google--The Org reveals why the give-and-take nature of organizations, while infuriating, nonetheless provides the best way to get the job done.

You'll learn:

• The purpose of meetings and why they will never go away
  
• Why even members of al Qaeda are required to submit Travel & Expense reports
  
• What managers are good for
  
• How the army and other orgs balance marching in lockstep with fostering innovation
  
• Why it's the hospital administration-not the heart surgeon-who is more likely to save your life
  
• That CEOs often spend over 80% of their time in meetings-and why that's exactly where they should be (and why they get paid so much)
  

Looking at life behind the red tape, The Org shows why the path from workshop to corporate behemoth is pockmarked with tradeoffs and competing incentives, but above all, demonstrates why organizations are central to human achievement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455517534
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/08/2013
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	573 KB

About the Author

Ray Fisman is the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and co-director of the Social Enterprise Program at the Columbia Business School. He is the author of Economic Gangsters with Ted Miguel. Tim Sullivan is the editorial director of Harvard Business Review Press and has worked at Basic Books, Portfolio, and Princeton University Press, where he helped build one of the most successful academic economics lists in the world.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Machine for Getting Stuff Done 1

Chapter 1 The Outsider 13

Chapter 2 Designing the Job 34

Chapter 3 Putting Together the Organizational Puzzle 67

Chapter 4 In Praise of Squelching Innovation 92

Chapter 5 What Management Is Good For 128

Chapter 6 The View from the Corner Office 156

Chapter 7 The Economics of Org Culture 191

Chapter 8 Disaster and Change 217

Conclusion: The Future Org 249

Acknowledgments 267

Notes 269

Index 295

About the Authors 309

Editorial Reviews

This is a tour through the history of modern corporations, as seen through the lens of organizational economics. Fisman (social enterprise, Columbia Univ.) and Sullivan (editor, Harvard Business Sch. Pr.) have combined forces to examine what makes organizations and executives tick and why we should care. They offer many interesting tidbits about corporations and executives, describing, for instance, how Henry Ford doubled the daily wage on his assembly line as a cost-cutting measure, because of its effect on employee retention. That decision, the authors maintain, can be seen as an early precursor of the comprehensive perks offered today at high-tech firms such as Google. Studies on organizational efficiency and corporate culture are cited frequently, with examples ranging from McDonald's Hamburger U. to the drastic change in culture at the FBI since the 9/11 attacks. VERDICT This well-written title is composed mainly of vignettes and anecdotes illustrating why companies do what they do, but doesn't offer much new information. Recommended only for larger business collections.—Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

Library Journal

Is corporate life really so bad? Columbia Business School professor Fisman and Harvard Business Review Press editorial director Sullivan have done an analysis of the modern office, and highlight the facets of it that are actually valuable and how they can be used to their best advantage. The authors spend some time considering how things got to be the way they are in the first place, and then dive into the meat of office organizational models that really work, such as the market-research-driven R&D of McDonald’s. Using examples of both traditional and surprising structures—HP, Kayak.com, the Catholic Church, Procter & Gamble, the U.S. Army, BP, the 9/11 Commission—the authors make a strong argument for the importance of good management and even for some of the harder-to-justify elements of office life, such as constantly distracted CEOs and dramatically high executive compensation. They propose that there’s much to be salvaged from our broken office culture; the book is not a defense of current structures, per se, but a levelheaded look at the pros of the Way Things Are Done, and a blueprint to improve it. The playful writing and thoughtful analysis make this an intriguing read for anyone interested in the structure of corporate America. Agent: Jay Mandel, William Morris Endeavor. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Compelling. . . . The Org aims to explain why organizations—be they private companies or government agencies—work the way they do.—-Eduardo Porter, New York Times


The authors' mission to help you ‘descend into better-informed cynicism'—to find the ‘least dysfunctional' of all possible dysfunctional orgs—is the kind of literary stock that pays greater dividends.—-Trevor Butterworth, Wall Street Journal


Wonderfully entertaining.—-Marvin Weisbord, Strategy+Business


A voice of reasoned analysis amid the airport bookstore barkers. . . . Fisman and Sullivan's measured approach is far more valuable; the conclusions and insights presented in The Org are ones you can actually use.—-Sam Grobart, Bloomberg BusinessWeek


Fisman and Sullivan write in a casual, engaging fashion, a style that makes their book an impressively easy read.—-Erika Fry, Fortune


"The Org effortlessly blends the history of management theory with current best practices."—Leigh Buchanan, Inc.

From the Publisher

THE ORG is that rare thing: an insightful management book that's also fun to read...Reading it is like listening in as a team of McKinsey consultants spars with Dilbert.

Nathaniel Fick

THE ORG makes the world of work comprehensible to anyone who's been driven to cynicism by the dysfunction of nearly any organization. And with examples from McDonald's to the Methodist Church, it may even make life inside the org a little more fun.

Richard Florida

For many of us who are seeking a framework for understanding the confusing and rapidly evolving patterns of global supply chains and trade, THE ORG provides a wonderfully powerful and clear conceptual lens.

Michael Spence

"Falls well into the required reading for MBAs set. I believe it will be THE required reading on the subject of organisational economics. . . . if you like Downton Abbey, then you are going to appreciate your time with The Org."

Digitopoly.com

"An amiable guide, enjoyably wry without being jokey....[A]s an antidote to hokum, the authors' mission to help you "descend into better-informed cynicism"-to find the "least dysfunctional" of all possible dysfunctional orgs-is the kind of literary stock that pays greater dividends."

The Wall Street Journal

"...a compelling new book....The book offers telling insight on a topic that has ebbed and flowed across the world over the last 30 years, as governments of all stripes have set out to privatize state-owned enterprises and outsource services - what does the private sector do better than government, and what does it do worse?"

Eduardo Porter - The New York Times

"A voice of ­reasoned ­analysis amid the airport bookstore barkers . . . breezy and approachable . . . the conclusions and insights presented in THE ORG are ones you can actually use. Less Hollywood blockbuster and more a moody independent film, THE ORG is incisive on how things actually are, while leaving readers to find the answers."

Bloomberg Business Week

An investigation of organizations. A casual read of the news will frequently yield a story or two on a corporation or organization rotting from the inside--malfeasance, bungling product delivery, CEOs taking larger bonuses while pleading for more tax breaks, etc. Many of us are just ordinary Joes who don't understand how office culture can be so toxic; simultaneously, we're often cogs in the machine. Fisman (Social Enterprise/Columbia Business School) and Harvard Business Review Press editorial director Sullivan take this study of "the underlying logic of the office" beyond the common communication breakdown between management and labor, examining the balance of incentive-based rewards with fostering intrinsic motivations. Hewlett-Packard, they find, started with an emphasis on the latter and moved, as the company grew, toward the former. The authors explore a wide variety of organizations, deconstructing, reconstructing and questioning the different structures and their efficacy in fitting together to achieve the larger objective. Without the strict hierarchy provided by the Catholic Church, write the authors, the United Methodist Church is both freed and burdened with a greater flexibility at the local level to meet the tenets in their mission statement. This particular section of the book asks a question directly that is approached less specifically in other places: Does the idea of using incentive pay for pastors increase the number of souls those pastors might save? A mostly intriguing study of business and other organizations and the "trade-offs that [they] face as they grow and evolve."

Kirkus Reviews