Book review: Changing the Game: Organizational Transformations of the First, Second and Third Kinds. Eric G. Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998.
✍ Scribed by Claire Simmers
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 53 KB
- Volume
- 21
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0894-3796
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The goal of this book is to provide a practical guidebook for managers and to add new perspectives to the question, Why do some organizations succeed while others fail?' Speci®cally, Flamholtz and Randle ask, Why do once powerful organizations go into decline with some returning to prosperity and others never returning?' Primarily, though, the authors ask, What can managers do to make organizations succeed?' Based on the authors' experience of over 20 years, they believe that the answer lies in the extent to which organizations recognize and are able to change the game' they are playing. The contributions of this book are not in the questions asked, but in the broader scope of dierent games played', and practical applications and examples. Flamholtz and Randle identify three dierent games' or types of transformations and present a comprehensive framework to help managers understand the rules of the new games and what they need to do to successfully manage organizational transformation processes.
This book is nicely organized into four parts. Continuing the game metaphor, the ®rst part contains two Chapters about what it means to change the game. Changes occur in the underlying business concept (the game that is being played), in the business strategy (how we'll play the game), or in both. The authors describe three types of transformations: (a) entrepreneurial to professional management; (b) revitalization of established companies ( playing the same game, but in a dierent way); and (c) business vision ( playing a new game). The authors acknowledge the complexity of business by recognizing that there are also compound transformations when an organization undergoes more than one of the three basic kinds of transformations at the same time.
The second Chapter is conceptual and provides a critical foundation for the rest of the book by oering a framework for managerial use. The design of a business enterprise is built around four critical factors: business design, building blocks of organizational success, organizational size, and organizational environment. The building blocks of organizational success are: (a) markets, products, and services (b) resource management (c) operational systems (d) management systems, and (e) corporate culture.
The second Chapter also presents some symptoms of organizational problems. There are growing pains such as: There are too few good managers' and The enterprise has continued to grow in sales, but not in pro®ts.' Then there are aging pains such as: We know what is best for our customers; we don't need to ask them.' And People are increasingly unwilling to take risks.' When I read the 10 growing pains and the 13 aging pains, I was nodding my head in agreement. Although commonsense, these are important indicators to those managers who listen, or to those consultants called in to help.
Next, Flamholtz and Randle provide what is just one of many synthesizing matrices that provide depth to their book and are an important contribution. They take the four key factors in¯uencing design of the business enterprise and cross-reference them by the three types of transformations. Thus for type 1 transformations (entrepreneurial to management) changing the business concept is not as important as changing the building blocks of organizational success. Thus each transformation involves ®nding a solution to `®t' among the four basic factors in¯uencing the successful design of a business.