Search results

The purpose of this paper is to review the current state of corporate learning from a business perspective and make specific recommendations for improvement.

Conclusions are reached based on personal experience at Caterpillar Inc. (Caterpillar University was named Best Overall Corporate University in 2004 and ranked 1st in ASTD BEST Awards for 2005), from numerous benchmarking visits with other companies and from discussions with other learning professionals.

It is found that learning is not managed like a business in most organizations which reduces its impact and influence. Worse, many in the learning profession continually apologize for the lack of rigor and discipline, believing that it is too hard or too difficult to manage learning like other lines of business. It is concluded that learning is not any more difficult to manage than the rest of business and two key requirements for success are suggested. First, the learning function should create a written business plan with specific, measurable objectives that are strategically aligned to the organization's overall goals. Second, the plan must be executed throughout the year with discipline, rigor, accountability and transparency. Examples of alignment and measurement scorecards are included.

Specific recommendations to run learning like a business, including sample reports.

The paper brings a business perspective to learning which will be valuable for HR and training professionals without business line experience. Intended for those who want to improve their existing T&D function or start a corporate university.

This article describes the five‐year success of a lean Six Sigma approach to improving operations that is also a way of doing better things – innovating in products, services, markets and even a company's underlying business model.

Consultants from IBM's Operations Strategy group and from the Institute for Business Value analyzed the innovation records of several leading companies that have implemented operations strategies based on Lean Six Sigma management techniques.

They found that lean Six Sigma initiatives also led to product innovations, such as Caterpillar's phenomenally successful low‐emissions diesel engine, and also to redesigned processes, including a streamlined supply chain. After five years, by 2005, revenues at Caterpillar had grown by 80 percent.

A case study of Caterpillar illustrates the points of the lean sigma six approach.

For more than five years, industry leaders have used company‐wide lean Six Sigma programs to create an organizational climate in which innovation becomes instinctive, and, consequently, they have surfaced major innovation opportunities that have revitalized their businesses.

Identifies several distinguishing characteristics that set successful approaches apart from those with a traditional operational improvement mindset. Successful innovators have: an innovation vision based on factual customer and market insights; leadership committed to perpetual innovation; alignment across the extended enterprise; organizational capabilities that made innovation habitual.

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study of motivation and barriers to employee participation in virtual knowledge‐sharing communities of practice at Caterpillar Inc., a Fortune 100, multinational corporation. The study indicates that, when employees view knowledge as a public good belonging to the whole organization, knowledge flows easily. However, even when individuals give the highest priority to the interests of the organization and of their community, they tend to shy away from contributing knowledge for a variety of reasons. Specifically, employees hesitate to contribute out of fear of criticism, or of misleading the community members (not being sure that their contributions are important, or completely accurate, or relevant to a specific discussion). To remove the identified barriers, there is a need for developing various types of trust, ranging from the knowledge‐based to the institution‐based trust. Future research directions and implications for KM practitioners are formulated.

The current chapter focuses on environmental and organizational factors that affect the performance appraisal context, performance evaluations, and rating accuracy. Drawing on the extant literature and focusing on current organizational practices, we propose a dynamic multi-level model of performance rating that takes these distal factors into consideration. In doing so, we also provide propositions explicating causal linkages between these distal factors, more proximal performance appraisal factors, and ultimately the accuracy of performance ratings. Furthermore, we identify current and emerging directions in performance appraisal research and practice. The implications of the current and emerging trends are then discussed in the context of our proposed model.

Using a sample of 29 virtual clusters, the paper examines new sources of clustering in the digital economy. The “virtual cluster” phenomenon highlights the most significant effect of the development of the information and communication technologies in the business environment. A virtual cluster is conceived as an e‐business community, made up of customers, suppliers, distributors and commerce providers sharing digital and knowledge networks for collaboration and competition. The purpose of this paper is to set out the characteristics of a new competitive space, in which a strategic role is played by virtual processes among partners, and to review the traditional sources of clustering in the digital economy environment (Romano et al., 1999). More specifically, this paper attempts to show the emerging overlap between digital and knowledge networks, which generates a new competitive space within a new global‐virtual learning environment. Finally, assuming that traditional sources of clustering are generally identified in specialisation (based on a sophisticated division of labour) and geographic proximity, the paper discusses how the role of organisational proximity acts as a substitute for geographic proximity in supporting coordination and tacit knowledge exchange. As it emerges from the analysis of our cases, from a managerial point of view, organisational proximity may be achieved through the implementation of supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM) strategies. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 23rd Institute of Small Business Affairs Annual Resource and Policy Conference in November 1999 in Leeds, UK.

Every summer since 1957 selected leaders of U.S. industry have convened at a rustic but elegant Vail, Colo., conference facility to take a three‐week “leadership development” seminar from professors of the highly rated University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Often the business school's Center for Continuing Studies' staff has had to turn away would‐be participants, including some very distinguished business leaders. But this year, the course will not be offered—university officials canceled it, citing declining profitability.

I examine patterns of making or deferring strategic repatriations that firms can use to either meet analysts' forecasts or defer to maintain future reported earnings flexibility. First, I examine the extent to which firms repatriate earnings from high foreign tax subsidiaries to decrease US tax expense, resulting in increased net income and lower cash taxes. Using federal tax return information, I find evidence that firms strategically repatriate these earnings to meet or beat current analysts' forecasts. Next, I find evidence that firms that are able to obtain current year tax reductions defer these repatriations in an attempt to build cookie-jar reserves. Lastly, I find that firms do not disclose high foreign tax repatriations (HTRs), even when required by SEC rules. This study contributes to the earnings management, tax avoidance, and disclosure literature by examining a discretionary tax planning strategy.

Sloping topographies in urban areas are often under-utilised due to complex designs and difficult access, resulting in low construction productivity and high cost. Automated construction techniques are usually limited to flat sites or lab spaces. This research combines concepts for automated and prefabricated construction with hillside dwelling design. It proposes a strategy to integrate both aspects and to equally inform design process and design output. The aims are to turn hillside access and construction automation into design generators, improve productivity and use more affordable hillside sites.

Analysis of typologies for hillside housing and automated construction techniques is used to derive principles and parameters to inform a strategy and generative script for setting out, volumetric disposition and access and using the topography as a design-generator. The output from the generative script and tool can then form the basis of a high-density, low-rise dwelling development suited for serial, automation-assisted construction. The strategy is tested on a case study site.

The typological analysis helps devising strategies for integrating construction robotics and design criteria for hillside housing. The generative script illustrates how a strategy is implemented and used in a design tool able to absorb varying input data, including topographies. This generates innovative, site-specific design outcomes, suited for a process that adapts contemporary construction automation techniques and allows for more efficient use of hillside sites.

This research builds on construction automation methods and proposes novel combinations and adaptations for use on hillside sites. It demonstrates how robotics and generative tools can inform early design stages.

As companies become increasingly interested in doing business within Eastern bloc countries, ordinary issues critical to success will be of paramount importance. Although the basic principles and rationale used and the factors involved in investment decisions such as site selection will not change, the relative importance of the factors, particularly those that are intangible and constantly changing, could be drastically different. Reviews the factors to consider when venturing into these newly independent states, presents examples and offers suggestions for US firms considering Eastern bloc locations for expansion.

The purpose of this paper is to profile the successful implementation of a corporate‐wide supplier diversity program utilized by Caterpillar, Inc., one of the Fortune 500 companies. Caterpillar's supplier diversity program can be a blue‐print for other companies which would like to accomplish the corporate mission of promoting the free enterprise system by prohibiting restraints of trade, unfair practices, reciprocity, or abuse of economic power.

To comply with stricter government regulations demanding a diverse supplier base and match a supplier base to changing customer demographics, a growing number of purchasing organizations have launched supplier diversity programs. Despite such a trend and abundant theory about the supplier diversity program, there is a paucity of case‐based research that can explain what it takes to become a supplier diversity champion. To fill the void left by previous studies, the paper conducted an in‐depth analysis of Capterpillar's best‐practices and unearthed its secret behind the success.

Through Caterpillar's case, it was found that a supplier diversity program could not only help save sourcing cost, but also enhance quality at the source. Thus, it offers long‐term competitive advantages. Also, a key to the successful supplier diversity program is the buying firm's ability to adapt to new cultural change that breaks the ties with “good old boys networks”.

The paper elaborated on six different strategic initiatives that provided equal contractual opportunity to historically underutilized but qualified suppliers such as small, small disadvantaged, or women‐owned small businesses and leveraged such opportunity to create a strategic sourcing advantage. Other organizations that wish to develop supplier diversity programs may consider these strategic initiatives and emulate Caterpillar's success.