What does it take to lead a company which is learning to change and changing to learn? Discusses the practices and principles of proven leaders from firms such as PepsiCo, Tata, Toyota and Wal‐Mart.

As the speed of change in the business world continues to increase, it is clear that few companies can afford to slow the momentum of continuous transformation merely to give themselves time to find and install a new chief executive. The experience of US telecommunications firm Ameritech...

When advances by competitors and rising price‐consciousness from consumers intensified the battle for market share, the Quaker Oats company reacted by striving to create a high performance organization. Explains the role which the Quaker University played in the process.

What does your human resources department do? More particularly, what should it be doing? A recent survey of more than 1,000 human resources and employee relations executives in North America sheds light on these and other questions.

Business faces a set of critical human problems, and is downgrading the very human resource departments which are supposed to help it to find solutions. Argues that salvation lies in the hands of human resource specialists themselves, who must switch from being administrators and huggers to...

Booming on the surface, US planemaker Boeing is a company in transition. Its jets represented two‐thirds of the dollar value of all commercial airplanes ordered last year. Its defence division, already the prime contractor on NASA’s space station, is competing on the Joint Strike Fighter jet...

What is the McDonald’s recipe for international success? Describes how the company translates its winning human resource practices into many different cultural settings.

If you sense that there are underlying concerns in your company about a major new development or problem, how do you bring them to the surface? One solution is to hold an agendaless meeting, at which employees sit in a circle and are invited to speak out about the matters on their mind. Explores...

How does your company ensure the effectiveness of its research and development (R&D)? There is, of course, no easy or foolproof way. US firm Westinghouse believes that assessment by the businesses of R&D’s performance against ambitious, quantifiable and mutually set objectives is crucial. But...