Layoffs may be a firm's way of optimally responding to demand shifts, to changes in its industry position, or to unwelcome financial stress. But, within the current economic environment, and along with individuals' changing attitudes, the notion of layoffs has taken on a new dimension, which...

Incentives to innovate is a central element of innovation theory. In the private-investment model, innovators privately fund innovation and then use intellectual property protection mechanisms to appropriate returns from these investments. In the collective-action model, public subsidy funds...

By reference to a case study of the `Consumer Goods Corporation' and a number of other corporate transformations, Magne Orgland and Georg Von Krogh conclude that initiating, managing and sustaining successful corporate transformation requires serious attention to three principles which can be...

Companies communicate internally through their own phrases and concepts -- their own language. The local meaning of that language is very difficult to transpose into another company's language and culture. Georg von Krogh and Johan Roos point out that many businesses are careless in their use of...

Johan Roos and Georg von Krogh go beyond contemporary theories of firms' competitive advantages to point out that most firms compete on competencies, and therefore possession of competence is the key to success. Competence itself is simply the synthesis of a firm's particular task and knowledge...