designing business model for introduction to business class

The contemporary flexible, high-performance organization model is a primary alternative to the classical bureaucratic model, popularly known as Taylorism. Several historical trends have contributed to the development of the high-performance model.

Beginning in the 1930s, increased attention was focused on the human impact of work, especially in assembly-line type settings. The Hawthorne Studies, and especially their popular interpretation by Elton Mayo, a vigorous crusader against the boredom of factory jobs, made the case for the importance of considering the human element in the workplace. The focus of industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology was broadened from industrial efficiency and productivity to include human relations and employee satisfaction as key variables. Through the 1960s and 1970s there was a major push for job enrichment. Somewhat earlier, researchers at the Tavistock Institute had laid the foundation for the sociotechnical systems approach to the design of work. With its use of opensystem thinking and its emphasis on the multiskilled self-directed work team as the fundamental unit of work, the sociotechnical approach stood against Taylorism, and it captured in an embryonic way many of the essential elements that we now recognize as central to the high-performance organization model.

The Japanese revolution in manufacturing of the 1960s and 1970s dramatically highlighted another core weakness of the mechanistic model. Assemblyline workers who performed a narrow range of repetitive tasks typically did not know whether they were producing a quality product. When Japanese manufactured products suddenly came onto the world market, they were noted for their outstanding quality. Several quality techniques that are integral to the modern high-performance organization were popularized by the Japanese revolution: quality circles, statistical process control, total quality management, six sigma, just-in-time inventory management (Kanban), continuous improvement (Kaizen), and lean production, to name but a few.

The environment of business is marked by change. Huge environmental shifts—such as the growth of technology, the globalization of the economy, the changing demographics of the workforce, changing customer demands, increased competition, and the tightening regulatory environment—have pressed organizations to rethink their underlying assumptions, and their organizational structures and systems, to position themselves for success in the midst of such turbulence. The traditional bureaucratic organization model was not built for flexibility and does not fit a turbulent marketplace.

To achieve and sustain high levels of business performance and quality of work life (QWL) for employees in the highly competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, organizations have increasingly moved away from the bureaucratic structure of the past and embraced a series of practices, which collectively define the high-performance organization. The high-performance approach is intended to be comprehensive and superordinate; application of subcomponents (e.g., process reengineering, customer-supplier partnerships, work cells) in a piecemeal way is seen as a partial and incomplete solution to the complex problem of sustaining organizational excellence in a turbulent environment.

Although there does not appear to be a consensus on a single, comprehensive definition of the highperformance organization, the research and practice literature point to a set of common elements, many of which are visible in benchmark organizations:

Teams: ...