Author: Chuck Piazza
Engaging Team Members: Managing by Building Relationships
As discussed in Keeping Team Members Engaged in a Distributed Workplace: Initial Thoughts for Discussion, it is hard to stay current with everything, let alone be fully active in all of the networks in which we are members. It is a challenge to accomplish work demands while fulfilling personal responsibilities, not to mention trying to… Read more »
Keeping Team Members Engaged in a Distributed Workplace: Initial Thoughts for Discussion
Organizations are a buzz with collaborative strategies. Increasingly, work environments are focusing on being team-oriented and enabling employees to establish and be engaged in organizational networks. While progress is being made, the picture is not totally rosy. It is not uncommon for members to find it difficult to stay engaged, to fully participate in an… Read more »
The Network Organization and Its Hybrid Workplace Systems
Geographically distributed, functioning in a global context and ongoing engagement with internal and external professionals are apt key descriptors of the 21st century organization. The complex pulsating networks in which an organization comes to life and thrives, in reality, is the organizations itself; while the planned and spontaneous connectivity that fills members’ daily work routines is… Read more »
Global Managers: Global Network as Their Office
Most, if not all, know the popular saying “Think globally and act locally.” Originally this saying was a cry for sustainable living; that is, to care for the earth’s environment by consciously examining and changing how one lives and works. Not only does this saying now refer to much more, when applying it to global… Read more »
Shifting From International to Inter-Cultural Global Manager
Over the last five decades, while business contexts were evolving from national to international to transnational and now to global, workplace environments were shifting from “control-oriented” hierarchies to interactive teams to social networking ecologies. Such shifts in perspectives, accompanied by innovations in digital-based information and communication systems, have led to dramatic changes in business models,… Read more »
A Workplace Without Borders
Over time, people across the world have self-organized themselves in a variety of ways. There are tribes, villages, towns and cities. Then there are city-states, nation-states and even empires. All have cultures, even subcultures that make them distinctive and give them an identity. They have borders that create separation and avenues of commerce that promote… Read more »
The Evolving Notion of “City Center”
The notion of city is morphing, including how it is structured and how it functions as a center of commerce. As they have done down through the ages, cities today are continuing to evolve. They are developing new forms of society and methods of commerce by weaving people and digital technology into dynamic systems not… Read more »
To connect or disconnect, that is the question
It is puzzling, even perplexing. How can people be more connected than at any other time in human history, yet live and work in such a disconnected manner? Sociologist Manuel Castells describes the Information Age as the era of the “network society,” a time of global interdependence due to cellphones, iPads, the Internet, social media,… Read more »
Reflections on Collaboration Gleaned from a Dialogue with OS Program Students
Organizations are dynamic interactive human social networks. Ecosystems of relationships enabling knowledge and practical wisdom to be applied so organizations can reach their mission and serve their clientele are the heart and soul of contemporary organizations. Increasingly, collaborative workplace systems are the preferred organizational model, but being collaborative is not easy. Plus, an organization must… Read more »