In Search of Sustainable High Performance
Paper i proceeding, 2009
Quarterly capitalism has drawn with it an immense critique of the effects it has had on shortsighted
management of firm performance. If we look over decades, few organizations have
achieved sustainable high performance. As Charles O’Reilly points out, the life expectancy of
an American company is much less than the average American citizen. There are exceptions.
Hewlett Packard achieved sustained high performance for five decades through the early
1990s. Southwest Airlines has achieved it for over thirty years. In the professional services
industry McKinsey stands out. The question that concerns CEOs and management theorists is
how sustainable high performance can be achieved. Our ambition in this symposium is to put
together leading thinkers – Professors Michael Beer, Jay Galbraith, Charles Heckscher and
Charles O’Reilly III - to explore their most recent ideas on the requisite design elements of
firms aspiring to sustainable high performance as well as means for developing such
organizations.
matrix organizations
high commitment
collaborative enterprise
ambidexterity
sustained performance