John Pourdehnad

Sustainability, organizational learning, and lessons learned from aviation

Purpose – While the importance of organizational learning for sustainability has been stressed by a number of authors in the literature, the practicalities of how organizational leaders might foster such learning are seldom treated. This paper seeks to demonstrate that there is much that could be learned from the aviation industry about organizational learning practice that could be gainfully applied by organizations in attempting to address the demands of triple bottom line sustainability.Design/methodology/approach – The exemplary safety record of the US commercial aviation industry is explored in this paper, and the principal functions of its underlying learning and adaptive system are reviewed. Generalized application of such a learning and adaptive system in an organization operating according to triple bottom line sustainability principles is described.Findings – Through the interaction of various functional components described in the paper, the commercial aviation industry has created a learning a...

On misdirecting management

The authors argue that consultants are of two types: self‐promoting gurus and educators. Gurus that pontificate and promote their proprietary problem solving techniques do not educate their clients. They promote maxims that define rules of behavior but do not increase the competence of managers. They promote their proprietary solution as a fix for all problems instead of trying to increase managerial understanding of a particular corporate puzzle. They provide maxims that are really platitudes and panaceas without proof of effectiveness. A significant proportion of the advice produced by such management gurus is either incorrectly inferred from data (but nevertheless may be true) or is unsubstantiated by genuine evidence. Examples are drawn from the work of Peters, Covey, de Geus, and Hamel. Recommendations for providing management with defensive measures include: recognition that flawed research techniques produces flawed evidence; recognition that many seemingly wise maxims are really platitudes; and effective selection and use of internal and external consultants who perceive their mission to be the individualized education of managers and the solution of their organization’s particular problems.

The irresponsibility and ineffectiveness of downsizing

The most frequent approach to improving white collar productivity is the meat axe—indiscriminate across-the-board staff cuts that can seriously weaken a division or department. Instead of going through a series of downsizings that yield no lasting cost reductions, companies need to manage internal operations and keep them under control. In turn, support units need to be made responsible for adapting their service functions to fit internal customer needs. They cannot be permitted to expand with few, if any, constraints on their growth.